Summary if you don't want to read this: we loved it here and can't wait to come back some day. Amazing views for day, modern resort. If you get a chance, tour the country, our day on a private tour was one of the best tours I had and a major highlight of the trip. On the service front, you give what you get, meaning we found if we started with a smile and kindness, we got it right back and then some! (As I had in my 6 other trips to Beaches/Sandals i have taken before this trip.) The Scuba diving is awesome and will only get better the longer they are opened. The place is long so you will do some walking (just working off drinks and food) This is a pool resort, not a beach resort. Review time: So, this trip was a year in the making for our 1-year anniversary, as I booked it on our honeymoon last August last year at Sandals Grenada. When I booked it, I expected bumps because it was newly bought and remodeled Sandals property and after the mixed reviews across all the social media sites, I was pretty worried about how it would go and expected the worst. In life, I plan for the worst, and then when it works out, I am super happy and never disappointed. I will say I was mad at myself on how much time I wasted worrying about this trip looking back. Sandals/Beaches for me is like a choose your own adventure game where you can do as little or as much as you want. When we first arrived, the daily activities/restaurants schedule was not on the sandals app nor was Loop working. Gladly it came online day 3 of our trip. The staff was always super friendly and helpful towards us and we never had anyone dismiss or treat us poorly. We had the opposite experience actually. We tend to smile and say hello and because of this approach, we were ALWAYS got treated the same way back. People tend to give back what you give and that is so true of the staff @ Curaçao and those we met outside of the resort on our private tour of the island. The resort-absolutely gorgeous and one of the most modern Sandals/Beaches I've been to. You can see it in the attached photos. It was amazing how much work had been since it opened in June. Our room - we booked a Club Level Beachfront Sunchi Room with Patio Tranquility Soaking Tub - WBC. (video attached.) We expected a walk out on to the beach but that is not what the room was. Maybe I didn't understand correctly. With that being said, we were in building 4 with a pretty nice view of the garden around it and you did have a partial beach view. A video of the room is attached along with a photo of the view. In Grenada we had a Rondoval Butler Suite and just loved having breakfast daily on our patio and I was able to recreate that with the club room and room service. The room itself was very nice and modern. Because of the shower design, it's best to point the rain shower head and handheld handle towards the sealed wall to avoid any water getting out. AC worked great (see issues part for it be stuck on a certain temp.,) didn't turn on the TV and tons of room for stuff. The bed was super comfortable and we slept great nightly. Plugs wise, we had a couple of adapters that I purchased to keep our phones, tablet, gopro etc charged, along with our vacation power strips that we always keep in our luggage for trips. Can you hear the nightly entertainment in the Sunchi rooms? 100% but it didn’t bug us. We tend to get up early and not sleep in because we are in paradise. We tend to enjoy our times and are usually ready for bed and fall asleep fairly quickly. While we were there it ended around 11pm during the week and seemed to go a little later om Friday night. We did have a speaker we brought that we could turn up a bit if needed. The main pool-nicest pool I've ever been in. Visually pleasing during the day and at night. Wow so pretty at night, sunset and sunrise. We spent the first 3 days there, and it's great, but we found that we liked the small pool because it was a bit less chaotic than the large pool plus the small pool bar was nice to have right by us with less of a wait time to get drinks. Unfortunately, someone puked in the large pool and it was closed for an afternoon. (Nothing Sandals did but as I say when it comes to drinking on a vacation like this, it's a marathon not a sprint so we try to be aware of our buzz control. I would be super embarrassed if I caused an issue this.) The large pool is the party pool for sure. Pool/beach seats-I got up every day at 6am and got our spot for the day and went back to bed. This matched every resort I've been to. It would be awesome if people would take of their towels when done with the seats so other can get seats. (#justsaying). It was easier to get a seat on the beach area it seemed. If you have a butler, they take care of it. The bars- Our favorites were the lobby bar (Alana one of the bartenders is up training people from Grenada was just the best, the small pool bar and the beach bar as we found that was the best place for frozen drinks. The main pool bar was slower because it was just slammed busy. (And it's a new resort open for 6 weeks.) We also learned to go to the bar Pietra if we needed ice as it was close to our room. The machine nearby our room broke, but no worries. Club Sandals: If you get a club room, use them! Lee Andrea took great care of us, got us set for all of our reservations, booked our snorkeling trips + the club events we went to rocked. Tipping- Never saw it, but frankly I'm not really paying attention to others for the most part besides wondering what that drink they are having so we can order it. When we request a drink, we approach with a positive attitude because both my wife and I have worked in the service industry, and we understand what it's like to work in the industry. Beach- this is an atypical beach for Sandals. The beach is in a canal and the beach area is long. Tons of shade spots and chairs. We enjoyed our beach day, but in water, (video/photos attached.) it's a mix of rocks and sand with a long floating dock. There is no way to have a beach in the ocean side as it's pretty windy and would be red flag all the time, meaning no swimming or water sports. Because of the pool, the beach didn’t mater as much to us, but it may for some. Scuba/water sports - it is a new operation and they do the best they can with what they have. A scuba boat is ordered and should be here shortly, but some days you dive off a rental snorkeling boat, and other days you do shore dives. Based on the boat, I preferred the shore dives over the boat. It will be awesome to see when they have all the supplies they need to run a proper scuba operation. They currently do have limited space, but as a single diver I was able to get on the days I wanted. The dives I went on rocked (9 turtles one dive, Tugboat was just an awesome pier next to wall to a tugboat that was sicken) and the team at the water sports was top notch and try really hard to help everyone they come in contact with. Special thanks to Julian, Sheidy, Arlette, Nathaniel, Michel for being so welcoming and helpful. Bjorn was my dive master on my 3 days of diving, and couldn't have been better. His dive plans rocked allowing me to get 5 dives 40+ minutes which is huge for a heavy breather like I am. His knowledge and friendly demeaner towards me and others were amazing. Thank for making my diving experience so awesome When the watersports team has all the tools they need, it will be, in my opinion, one of the best Sandals diving operations. A note about shore diving. 50% of the dives on the island can be made from shore, and I was super happy I had a full 3mm wetsuit plus 3mm boats for the dives. The entry points can be rocky and I saw other people get scraped up on these dives. Entertainment: We only went a few nights because we tend to get up early to enjoy the day buy WOW!- No cheese ball watered down resort entertainment, we found that I was really good; Adult themed, damn sexy even at time with humor mixed in. The lights and effects best I’ve seen. I've attached some videos. Food- I tried to include collage photos from each place we ate at along with the menu. Gatsu/Gatsu- we love sushi and the it was super good and quick. (Attached is a collage photo of our meals and menu) We had dinner there twice. Zuka- had dinner after a long day of having a bit too much fun with drinks so we ended up having our pre-dinner drinks and appetizers onsite, but took our meals to go. (#sandalstips you can do this) When we ate them later, they hit the spot and allowed us to get to bed. Kanaal Cafe/Cheese/Wine Bar- Talk about creating something that my wife and i just adore. House wine is included, they offer "Managers" Wine list if you want to purchase buy the bottle. The coffee, the wine, the cheese, and freshly made Crêpes just did our tummy's so well; Thanks to Zorina, Isaura, and Anthony for being so kind to us when we visited. Food Trucks- Loves this idea and enjoyed the food the two times we had it. Pietra-we had breakfast here most days. Full buffet style with a custom egg station for omelets and eggs anyway that you want. Service was quick and super friendly. Gesmeline greeted us with a smile and even gave me a hug. Talk about making me feel loved and at home! (and I'm not much of a hugger but it was so sweet so I'm a hugger in Curaçao I guess.) The entire team managed by Celeste made us feel at home. We also had lunch there a few times and it was good. Pizza plus other things available. Butches-we had dinner here twice. Really, really good. I don't time food normally but people we had spoken to said they had received slow service at some of the restaurants. Our meal took 32 minutes from the time we ordered to we go the main course. (That is a super-fast for a "steak house") #sandalstip if you see something you want, ask for it Vincent- Delivered on the night we ate there. Such a great meal and the staff was just amazing. Timed our meal here: 29 minutes and 58 seconds. (super-fast for a "fancy" place) Welcome Back Dinner- Always good and delivered again. (See the photos and menu) I am a big fan of this dinner as they tend to bring the best of best. We sat with 3 other very nice couples and the company, food and service made for the dinner. The dinner started with a cocktail party, traditional sandals background photo plus the NEW 360 photos booth. Very cool. Strand- Only had lunch here, but it was very good and fast! Aolos- we did not eat here. Club Room Service- Order 4 times, twice for breakfast, 1 time for desserts plus water because we ran out one evening. All 3 times, timelines as when food would arrive were hit. You can also you can order breakfast the night before to be delivered to your room. Issues-far and few between, and appropriate handled when talking to the front desk or on loop. We had an issue with being checked into the wrong area of the resort when we got there and it was quickly fixed to our satisfaction. Our AC was actually too cold, because the thermostat was stuck at 16 Celsius/60.9 Fahrenheit. When made aware, they had the engineering team out to fix that night, with the final fix the next morning. (We would rather be to cold than hot so we slept like babies at night.) Kale one of hotel Manager even came up to us our last night when he saw our name on the reservation list to see if things go fixed. That is a first for me, and I thanked him for checking. I really wish I could have done better job of writing down all the great people who took such care of us. I will do better next trip. Thanks to Keisha in the Loyalty and Travel dept was on point and did a great job helping up booking our next trip a few years down the line. Gift shop was fully stocked, we did get most of our "gifts" on our island tour. Other stuff- Curaçao Island Tour- This is a huge part of our vacation plan and it delivered better than planned! We reached out to a local tour provider and customized a tour of the island that hit every spot and things we wanted to see. It was customized to what WE wanted to do and it delivered. Our stops included the following on our tour: Breath of Curaçao/Eye of Curaçao Playa Grandi aka Turtle beach-5 turtles well snorkeling. Grote kanip (one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen) Santa Martha Bay Playa Cas Abao Saliña Jan Kok, Herma1nus, Sibirie (Flamingos) Next we headed to downtown Willemstad for a lunch, a tour and shopping. We had lunch at Old Market-aka Plasa bieu for a local lunch starting with pumpkin pancake/aka Repa di Pampuna (a local specialty), I got the Giambi (see the menu), my wife got the Mahi Mahi. Lunch was unquestionably local and very good. I'm on vacation and I try new things:) Next up was shopping for gifts for family and friends back home plus a stop at the local cigar shop, along with photos at all of the hot photo spots downtown. It was great to learn about the downtown, the history and future plans. We also took a tour of the historic district and our final stop was at the I love Curaçao monument. We left at 9am and got back 5:30pm just as planned. What a amazing private tour with a lovely woman whose knowledge of the island was second to none with energy that was contagious. All day tours are hard so we appreciated her engery and love for Curaçao. (search Cristina Ramirez Lionarons/Carsons Car for details) Curaçao is a amazing and beautiful island and I think a tour is a must for anyone who visits. Thanks for a wonderful trip! Cheers and happy traveling.…