Just returned from a very relaxing honemoon. The hotel was wonderful and amazingly clean. Although, upon arrival we had to wait 4 hours for our room (check in is at 4pm) and we did not receive our free upgrade. The rooms at the Marina are small, so we were a bit dissapointed upon first glance.
We were on the all inclusive plan, which I highly recommend because we spent A LOT of "money" on food and beverages that week. The food was excellent as well as the drinks. L G's Steak house was fabulous and the Let's go Latin show was great! You can also have dinner on the beach, which was peaceful and yummy as well. There are a lot of options for meals so we never went hungry.
The hotel was always spotless. There was a horrible storm one night that flooded the whole lobby (and island) and we were amazed to see how quickly it was cleaned. The Marina pool was wonderful, clean and the perfect temp. We did not spend any time at the Ocean Suites, so can not comment.
What really made this hotel excellent was the private island. SIMPLY AMAZING! Because of the storm half of the adult side was closed, but they were constantly repairing it. It was a private tropical paradise filled with many fish, flamingos, iguana's and other marine life. We loved relaxing on our floats as well as snorkeling. This feature made the hotel far better than the others like the Hyatt and Radisson. They are too crowded. (we spend half the day there one day). The water taxi was so much fun. We did have a few times were we had to wait 20 minutes due to crowds, but I didn't really mind. I had no where to be!
We both had a wonderful time and would return in a heartbeat. I would also return to the Renassaince (although I would get a better room-the resort view is the pitts). It was also great to be within walking distance of the shops and restaraunts. (EL GAUCHOS is YUMMMMY- and very close by). I did not find the island as friendly as everyones says, but they were still nice.
PS. The airplanes were not that noisy. Yes, you did hear them but there ware only about 4 flights a day. Hardly a problem

I've read through the reviews below and wish I had before we booked our honeymoon! However we still enjoyed ourselves and had a very happy honeymoon, even if I can't help wondering if it would have been even better somewhere else. I am not going to go into as much length as some of the reviews, suffice it to say that I agree with many of the points, both good and bad. The Marina part of the Renaissance Hotel is noisy, is not the part depicted in the travel brochure, and the rooms are pretty small. The service is very variable and we had the worst food I have ever been served as a late night snack in the Blue bar. The service in the spa was marvellous, though, and the private island is a major bonus, although we were eaten alive by insects. They get very bad by 5.00 or so which is probably why they close the island at 7.00. We visited the other resort areas and reckoned that it was best to be in Oranjestad as there is even less to do outside the 'downtown' area. To sum Aruba up, there is absolutely nothing of interest to see or do here, no local cuisine, no local culture, no scenery, but the people are lovely, the climate is mild and you can have a very relaxing time there. It is not a patch on Lanzarote or El Hierro in the Canaries, even before you allow for the very long travel time from Europe. Would I go again? I'm afraid not, there are too many interesting places out there and if I wanted a last minute booking, it's back to the Canaries.

Where do I begin, firstly I should point out, I'm British and not American. So am used to generally less than average service within Europe. What I wasn't expecting was to see this sort of sloppy argumentative service in a place, which was filled with Dutch and American service staff.

Trip Advisor seems to have a lot of American tourists rave about Aruba, which is very surprising as our US cousins usually have an impeccable standard for service and sloppiness in any form isn't usually tolerated.

Whilst I wouldn't want to be overly critical of the hotel, the staff or the island in general, I do feel that too many people are giving the whole Aruba experience a great review and do seem somewhat biased. I would say, if your planning on going to Aruba, you might want to re-think it. I certainly wouldnt go for a honeymoon.

The Hotel
Without naming the hotel, it can be easily found as it is the only one with a private island. The staff, in general were quite friendly, polite and courteous. Although when we arrived at the hotel (after some 15 hours of travelling), we were given the wrong room. This "wrong room" had no curtains and whilst I am not shy about undressing, I don't necessarily want the rest of the hotel to see (our room was an inward facing one) although I'd booked an Ocean view, which upon reflection once we had moved into it the next day, was actually a "front of the hotel view", which overlooks the pool, the bar and main road (one of the few roads Aruba has)

The mini bar was empty; a policy I was told had recently been changed to remove all drinks from the room. However there was an open can of soda in the minibar cupboard, by the looks of it, it has been there for some time. Lets not mention the smell. The rest of the room was adequate, however one must comment on how well the pictures of the hotel had been taken on almost every website I viewed before going on this holiday.

The restaurant
The next morning, we thought we would have a look at what the Aruban culture had to offer in terms of culinary delights. A US style service was on the menu, bit of a dissapointment, but nevertheless we continued. US style breakfasts have to be seen/eaten to be beleived, this was going to be a good start to our time there. The restaurant was virtually empty with only some 6 other people in the place and at least 5 serving staff. I asked for Eggs Benedict, a rather straight forward dish, which came with fruit on the side. As I'm mot a big fan of savoury and sweet things in the same dish, I politely asked for there to be no fruit on my plate and requested tea instead of coffee (I am British after all). When the food came, it had fruit on the plate. Naturally I thought this poor woman perhaps didn't understand me, so I pointed out I'd requested my breakfast a specific way, with no fruit, "Oh you should just eat it anyway, if you don't like it just eat around it" was the reply I got. The Tea came with cream, not milk or lemon. Five minutes later the milk arrived with a harmonious thunk as it was almost dropped onto our table. The service got steadily worse from this point.

This rather appalling style of service continued almost every day, no matter how we requested breakfast, it always came back the way the waitress decided, so by the time we left the resort we had been served by all of waiting staff, so it wasn't even just one bad waitress, they all seemed to want to serve you how they wanted to.
It wasn't the fact they never listened to our breakfast orders, actually once they realised we were British, most went to great lengths to ask about England, mostly just to hear out accents! it was more the fact they actually argued with us about it when it came back wrong which I couldnt quite understand. So much for the customer is always right.

The nightlife
Forget it, there isn't any. Now as I mentioned our hotel was the one with the private island which closed at 6pm (the private island not the hotel), the sunsets around 7pm (very quickly). So nightlife for our particular hotel started and stopped with the "Blue" bar, which boasted drinks next to the pool and a selection of the latest music to sooth away your day. Dido, Madonna, Joss Stone and a selection of lesser artists were on the projected video screen whilst US sports featured on monitor opposite the bar, and after a few mixed drinks was a pleasant end to the evening. However an awful sense of dejavu took place every night. As it turns out the hotel only had about 8 videos, which we were subjected to at least 5 times a night every night. Not a big play list.

Walking about the island town there are a variety of 'local' places to eat and drink, but be warned, if you don?t like Steak or Fish dishes your going to find it hard to eat. Drinks were all the same and although I liked the cocktails, each bar had exactly the same menu, which we found more amusing as our time went on.

Our stay was during the local elections and as such no alcoholic drinks were available the night before voting began. In the restaurant we decided to eat that night, we were told 'if the police came' say the frozen drinks were non-alcoholic.

There is a casino well we counted two actually, which just seemed rather tacky and oh so out of place. If I want to gamble I will go to Vegas not Aruba.

The day excursions, under the sea and to the famous Lighthouse, helicopter rides around the island, just seemed to be one anti climax after another. Although the evening sunset cruise captain seemed to think he was captaining an evening booze cruise boat and played lots of high energy dance songs with an open bar. There was even one guy rapping at one point on the boat... This clearly was lost upon those of us who wanted to watch the sunset with our loved ones, but we made the best of it.

The other overly talked about attraction is the 'Butterfly farm', which sounds great then you hear the opening speech from the staff there. 'There are NO butterflies native to Aruba, we buy them all in'. Forgive me, but how can it be a local attraction that everybody makes such a fuss about, if it isn?t native to the island in the first place.

There are of course other hotels on the island and upon reflection if I had to go back, and I do mean 'had' to go back I would choose a different hotel as the day we spent touring the rest of the hotels I generally found the service to be more of what I expected.

The scenery
There really isn't any. Aruba seems very man made, from the airport to the private island, there?s nothing to see for miles and should you hire out a car (we did) you?ll spend 3 hours driving around one of the dozern of so roads (seriously there aren't many) looking for such things as the Natural bridge (which collapsed the week before we arrived) and the Natural pool, a place we couldn't get too as we didn't hire out a 4x4. We actually gave up part way through our day driving about and went back to the private island to watch the flamingos and geckos.

If you get to Baby Beach, just look at the lovely ocean, exotic fish swimming around your toes and then turn around to see the Petroleum and diesel plant spewing too much pollution into the air. Its something out of a Stephen King novel, how all the view?s you see of baby beach are taken in such a way that the plant is behind the camera.


Conclusion
Overall, I'd like to say we had a great time, Aruba does boast one of the cleanest beaches I?ve ever seen. The water is clear and the sand is warm, most of the people we met were friendly, however you are left with the whole ?Butlins? experience. Its like you?ve seen and done it all before, eaten the same food, had the same drinks, but why we flew for 15 hours is slightly beyond me to experience something central Europe has to offer...

If you enjoy, service which isn't up to par, food which you can get anywhere and an attitude which seems to thrive on telling you to ?make the best at what you've got?, you will love Aruba.

I personally went to Aruba to sit on a beach with my girlfriend, stare lovingly into her eyes and talk about the future and on that merit alone I thought it was a fantastic holiday.

Our initial first choice was Hawaii and we have a poignant picture of one of us standing by a signpost letting us know it was 9000 km?s away...

Next time I shall go with my gut instinct and go somewhere else....

My husband and I stayed at the hotel for a week in September. When we arrived at the airport, it was very quick and easy to go through customs. However, coming back is a different story. I will go into more details later. When we gathered all of our luggage, we headed outside and was escorted into a cab. The hotel is only about 15 minutes from the airport. When we arrived, the staff was very friendly. My husband is a Platinum Member with Marriott so we were upgraded to a room that overlooked the harbor. It was a nice view, however, it was so noisy that after the first night we had to move to the other side of the hotel to escape the noise. Be aware that this hotel is in a downtown area and on a main street. There is a lot of traffic! The best rooms are located towards the back of the hotel. There was still noise, but not as bad. The pool is nothing to speak of. It is located in the main lobby area and overlooks onto the street. The rooms do have refrigerators in them. We went to the local market which is down the street from the hotel and stocked up on food for breakfast and lunch. It saved us a lot of money! The stores are closed on Sundays and pretty much shut down at 6pm. There is a shopping center across the street and a movie theater as well. There is a Wendy's, Dunkin Donuts, Sbarro, Hagen Dazs (sp?), Subway and some other little places to eat. Oh ya, the casino at the hotel is so much nicer than the one across the sreet. Dress code is casual! Also across the street is the Ocean Suites. It kinda depends what you like to do on your vacation and what you can tolerate. The families with kids were at the Ocean Suites. It is a much nicer property and off the main road. The rooms are like little apartments. If you are worried about noise and do not mind spending the extra money, I would suggest staying here. My husband and I have said that when we go back, we will stay at the Suites. Also at the Suites, they have a little man made beach with a pond. Great for kids! The best part of the hotel no matter where you stay is the private island. Heaven!! You take a boat that you can pick up at either hotel and it is about a 10 munite boat ride out in the ocean. When you arrive there are 2 sides. The side to the right is for adults. Women can go topless. The majority of the women were fully clothed when we were there. To the left is the family side. On the adult side there are flamingos that walk around. They are so beautiful! There are also a lot of huge iguanas everywhere. They are friendly and have no problem with coming close to you. At 12pm everyday, is there feeding time. Try to check it out. The towels are available on the island. You can pick them up on the left side of the beach. There are servers who walk around and take food and drink orders. What we did was bring are own soft cooler. We were not the only ones either. We packed food and our own drinks and layed out all day. Like I said before, if you want to save a lot of money, go to the market and stock up! My husband bought a six-pack of their local beer for the price he paid for one beer. BRING BUG SPRAY!! There were so many mosquitos on the island! People, including us, were getting bit alive. We spoke to one Dutch tourist who said that he had never noticed such a problem before, but for whatever reason they were in abundance when we were there. We also checked out the Marriott in Palm Beach. Yes, the resort is beautiful, but there is nothing to do outside of the resort. You basically are stuck! You have to take the bus into downtown where the Renaissance is. It all depends what you are looking for in your vacation. If you want luxury and do not care about the money, the Marriott would be a good pick. I really liked the location of the Renaissance. Everything in town was walking distance. There were a lot of places in different price ranges to eat at. The people on the island are so friendly! Everyone stopped for us when we crossed the streets. The staff at the hotels were also so very kind. We would go back and when we do, we will stay at the Ocean Suites. Okay, now for the info. when you return. It is true when they say to give yourself 3 hours to arrive at the airport before your flight! My husband is a 1K flyer with United so we did not have to stand in the long lines. We gave ourselves an hour in a half and we were okay. The lines were long!! After you check in, you stand in line to go through customs. There is only one line for all airlines. After you get through this, then you go and get into another line for security and then you pick up your luggage and place it an a carousel and then you stand in the last security line and then you can go to your gate. We really enjoyed our vacation! Enjoy!