We (my boyfriend and I of 7 years, we're both 23 years old) stayed here in room #1152 of the Frangipani building from, August 21-26th 2009.
We booked our package through Expedia and paid about $650 per person and that consisted of our round trip flights from Boston (connected in Charlotte), 5 nights accommodations in an "Ocean-view" room, and our "shuttle" service (which was really a taxi) to and from the resort to Freeport airport. Which quite frankly, we think was a killer deal (even with it being hurricane season)!
But let me start off by saying, KNOW what you're booking if you plan to stay here. This resort is secluded! If you are young like us or just in general are looking for shopping, entertainment, nightlife, or any of the touristy stuff then you most likely do NOT want to stay here as you are a good 45 minutes from all of that and roundtrip taxi fares are not cheap from here (expect a minimum of $75 one-way to go back to where everything is)!
This place is gorgeous, pretty quiet, and isolated and for people who want just simple relaxation WITHOUT things like horseback riding on the beach, dolphin adventures, shopping, tours, lots of restaurant choices. John Travolta actually owns one of the beachfront buildings on this property, which is where his son Jett sadly passed away... However, let’s look on the bright side! If John Travolta stays here, then this place must be beautiful... and obviously secluded!
POSITIVES:
The staff was very friendly. If you were smiling, they were smiling. We didn't experience any disgruntled employees while we were there. Yea, service was slow compared to New England but that's to be expected given the laid back culture of the Bahamas. They always seemed eager to please you. I checked the minimarket and there were no scrubber sponges or SOS pads so I asked the front desk if there was any way I could get one since I found some shells on the beach with plant growths on them that needed to be scrubbed before I took them home. They contacted the housekeeping staff and within 5 minutes they got me a scrubber sponge. I really do feel that was going above and beyond to make me happy.
The woman who checked us in was very friendly, they made a copy of my credit card which I was a bit alarmed about because I had prepaid for our stay and asked prior to arrival if all incidentals could be paid with cash because my credit card charges a ridiculous fee for international transactions. However, in the end we were able to pay cash (US dollars) at checkout for all room charges we made at the resort.
The resort has a mini-market with some drinks, food, candy, toiletries, and branded clothing. Some of the prices are bad, others aren't so much. Just be aware that most of the stuff is not labeled with a price. A can of Coke was about 75 cents.
Reception Area. Just around the corner from the mini market is a reception area that we didn't find out about until we were waiting for our shuttle to leave. In this reception area are two computers with access to the internet and a printer! There is no mention of this on their website so I'm noting it here, if you do not have a laptop to access their free wi-fi/get access to the internet--there are computers you can use in this reception area! I'm not sure what hours it operates on, but this can be useful if you need to print plane tickets or check email.
The "Ocean View" suite we had (#1152, Frangipani building) was nice but it was mostly a somewhat blocked view of their pool because of palm trees with a very tiny sliver of ocean. So make sure you know what you're booking and what the differences are! "Ocean View" suites are considered the second floor suites with the balconies but do NOT come with a full on "Ocean View" (so you may be around the pool anyway). If a full-on ocean view is what you want, cough up some more cash for the "Ocean Front" room or else you will only get a sliver of ocean in view with the "Ocean View" rooms.
The kitchenette in the suite is pretty nice! Full size fridge (ice cube trays in the freezer), microwave (hidden behind a cabinet), electric stove top, a toaster, coffee maker, dish washer (Cascade and some Palmolive was under the sink), and a few utensils with place settings. But there are NO cooking pots or dish rags to wash by hand. I thought there would be no toaster based on room descriptions I read so I was a bit bummed to see it there, because I would have packed other types of food. Thinking back on this trip, I wish I had packed a few of those stupid Flavor-ice type popsicles (that don't need refrigeration), pop-tarts, and pre-cupped microwavable foods along with the oatmeal packets and small packages of cookies that I did pack. It would have saved us money on meals.
The bathroom in the suite was large and clean (but not perfect, see my negatives). There was a separate walled off toilet area from the main bathroom area. Which, I should make a note about the toilet... I couldn't figure out where the flusher was! So to those used to using a toggle to flush, the flusher is actually sitting on top of the tank, it's a round silver circle that you have to press down/in. The tub was huge with an optional hand-held sprayer. The glass shower was nice with the shower head as well as optional hand-held shower head.
There was a decent size flat screen LCD TV in the room with AV jacks so I could playback pictures from my camera on it with my cameras cables. A safe was in the closet to lock up our valuables and it worked, along with two guest robes. A small washer/dryer unit along with an ironing board was hidden in another closet. This ended up being great for us as we were able to dry our sneakers that got soaked during a storm we got caught in and wash some of our clothes before coming home. The water fills up in the washer very slowly though, and ALWAYS clean the lint trap on the dryer before doing a load. Ours looked like it hadn't been emptied from the last 3 times it was used prior to us. The in-room temperature control unit was pretty nice. If you opened the door to the balcony it would trip the air conditioner to shut off until the doors were shut. There were blackout curtains as well as window sheers which felt a lot like a tough mosquito net.
The beach. It's quiet, and secluded. We weren't approached by any kind of vendors. There's lounge chairs strewn along it and a couple hammocks. It was nice at high tide the water comes up to just the end of the loungers and we could snorkel out a pretty far distance over the grassy bottom. We snorkeled about 4 days and always saw at least one thing new each day. (Fish, barracuda Conch, sea snails, urchins, anemones, sting rays, sea biscuits, sea stars) Had it not been for the grassy bottom then I'm sure there would not have been much to see for marine life while snorkeling.
The resort offers some watersport activities for free. Just check them out at the towel shack on the beach and sign a waiver. We did kayaking one day but they also have hobbie cats and snorkel gear you can check out (we brought our own snorkel gear from home). There is NO marked “snorkel trail”.
The marina has some of the prettiest, bluish turquoise water that I've ever seen and it was neat watching the different boats come in and dock.
There is a long jetty that curves out at the left end of the beach but before the marina that has a weather station tower at the end of it. We walked out on that many times during our stay to go looking out at the water (we saw a sea turtle surfacing one time and someone spear fishing), we watched the sunset and a few lightning storms (got some AMAZING photos here! Check my Flickr.com account I mention at the bottom of this review to see them). I really do think that was our favorite part of the place because we took so many pictures from here.
The Straw Bar: Service again, always with a smile. The women serving us always had a welcoming and jovial sense of humor. We only had a few meals here (breakfast twice, lunch once) and mainly got drinks. Breakfast was great though. I really enjoyed the coconut french toast.
Bonefish Folley's: We went here every night for dinner. The dining area really presents a nice atmosphere. Generally we were alone when we ate around 6pm or 7pm but the one night we came around 8:30pm it seemed as though everyone staying at the resort was there for dinner. They serve corn bread as your bread before the meal which I thought was good. I'm no foodie, but I loved the conch fritters, cracked conch, and personal pizzas. I could pass on the "cheeseburger in paradise" though as it didn't meet my expectations. They always had fantastic mixed drinks with just the right amount of alcohol (I recommend a goombay smash or a frozen bahama mama). The waitresses were always nice too. If you want to be cheap, a couple nights we both ordered personal pizzas and ate half then boxed up the other half’s of our pizzas to heat up in the microwave and eat the next day for lunch in the room!
Aqua: We didn't eat here so I can't rate it. The menu prices were a bit too steep for our budget.
We practically had the place to ourselves! So many people got scared off and cancelled their reservations thinking that Hurricane Bill was going to hit the island but it never did. There were maybe 4 other groups of people there during our entire stay.
NEGATIVES:
The ride on the shuttle (which was really a taxi) that was included with our booked package price to get to Old Bahama Bay... really presents a depressing drive as others have stated in past reviews. You pass a lot of abandoned buildings and dead trees that were the result of hurricane damage several years ago, but once you get to Old Bahama Bay it's totally different.
The taxi drivers, both on our way to Old Bahama Bay and leaving to go to the airport had their flaws. I only mention them because their "shuttle service" was included in the upgrade price of our Ocean-view room and arranged by Old Bahama Bay and not an extra service paid for through Expedia. Our driver bringing us to the resort wouldn't stop talking about how he was hurting for money and laying it on thick that he was expecting a tip. Also, that we (my boyfriend and I) as U.S. licensed drivers cannot rent cars on Grand Bahama Island since we drive on the right hand side--which is NOT true! He also was quoting us an extremely high rate of $150 one way, to bring us to Lucaya and then more to go to Gold Rock CREEK and not the BEACH that I specified as they are 2 entirely different places (creek is further than the beach). He was feeding us lies to try to get our business! I'm so glad I looked up info here first before ever thinking to trust this guy. On the way back to the airport the day we were leaving my boyfriend, being the alert cop he is, noticed the driver snorting snuff, falling asleep at the wheel, and drifting lanes while I was taking pictures through the window. I noticed the car drift from time to time but since I was seated directly behind the driver I didn't realize he was doing snuff!
The bathroom. The light within/above the glass shower was damaged, the shower head was partially clogged and would not spray out of all the holes, and some of the superficial decorative hardware kept falling off. The whirlpool part of the tub didn't work and the motor for it would randomly turn on during the night and we could hear it from the bed. The water took forever to warm up and even at it's warmest it still wasn't that hot. For a place with a 4 diamond rating from AAA, I would have thought that details like this would not be overlooked.
The kitchenette. The ice bucket in the kitchen was rusted. And as mentioned before, although they supplied dish detergents, there was no dish rag or sponge if you were to wash your dishes by hand. And it also would have been nice if there were at least 1 pot to use on the stove (I could have brought a box of spaghetti to save us on eating out if there was one!).
Bugs. They're inevitable when traveling to the Caribbean apparently... but if you go out just about when the sun is setting, be prepared to wear bug spray. Those little buggers will eat you alive (no see-um's, as in "you-don't-see-them's", they're tiny gnat-like mosquitoes). There was no bug spray in our room; I thank my lucky stars for bringing some "OFF!" from home after reading a review here. It took one night of those bites to make me realize how essential it is, especially if you plan on walking around outside at sunset and want to take pictures. Also, even though all doors are shut to your room, don't be surprised to find a bunch of red tiny ants infesting any opened food on the counters of the kitchenette that you leave out. Seal it, and store anything opened in the fridge to avoid this problem. And dare I even mention the large bites we began to find on ourselves near the end of our stay? I don't know what a bed bug looks like but... we certainly found a few dead bugs in the sheets with squashed fresh blood that made me cringe... and they definitely were not there the first couple nights of our stay.
The Straw Bar: As I said in the positives, we mainly got drinks here. However, I felt that many of my frozen mixed drinks were rather weak most of the time compared to the one's I'd get during dinner at Bonefish Folley's.
Bonefish Folley's: Nothing negative at all really, just that it can get kind of pricey to keep eating out on the on-site restaurants. We found ourselves spending $50 per night, before tip, on dinner when we ate here and that was on 2 mid-priced meals with 3 alcoholic drinks.
The beach. If you don't go out at high tide... then during low tide it's very grassy and seaweed ridden. The sand in general is not "powder soft" but ok... however the very far right side of the beach (past the last suite building) is full of stones and sharp broken shells which hurts if you're barefoot.
Housekeeping. Okay, I know I mentioned it as a positive but there were a few things overlooked. When lounging in the chairs on the balcony I found an empty food wrapper tucked between the cushion and the wicker chair that wasn't from us. And I do have to note that we are not demanding travelers at all. We put the "privacy please/do not disturb" note up at all times, no matter where we travel, for two reasons: 1) we don't want to be disturbed and 2) we don't want our belongings disturbed. BUT we had two incidences where we were disturbed... Our second day there we were hanging out and falling asleep on the balcony with the doors shut and next thing we knew someone was knocking on the door from the inside of our room and it scared us to death! Housekeeping had come into the room, despite the sign, asking if we wanted service (she claimed it blew off our door... these signs are inserted in the lock with a very snug fit so there's no way it "blew off"). I politely told them no and they left. Which, I'll give them some leeway because they probably thought it was strange that here we are at a AAA 4-diamond hotel and not wanting any service (like I said, we're really laid back and non-demanding)... but then on our 4th day there another incident happened. The "do not disturb" sign was up and I was napping in the bed while my boyfriend was out on the balcony with the doors shut when there was knocking at our door. I woke up and answered it only to be asked again if we wanted service, and I said no--she then left with a bewildered look. Waking me up from my nap really ticked me off. My sign was up for a reason.
We couldn't pick up any service at all for our Verizon cell phones while at Old Bahama Bay.
OVERALL:
Would we stay here again? Yes, if were simply looking for relaxation and the price was right. But we would definitely try to do something about bringing more of our own non-perishable foods. If we were looking for more excitement and touristy stuff, then no-it's just not convenient for that. If you come here definitely go to the beach at high tide, and go on the jetty at sunset for some great photos-just make sure you wear bug spray! Check out a few of the pictures I posted with this review. I can't post nearly as many as I'd like to at good quality so if you'd like to see even more (higher quality photos) from our stay look me up (Karascorner) on Flickr.com, go to my "Sets" of pictures, and go to the set titled "Old Bahama Bay, West End, Grand Bahama Island". The place is gorgeous, see for yourself.
