TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

We just got back from a trip to Grand Lido. This was our first trip to this specific property. The grounds, rooms and total property are beautiful and well kept. The staff is where the real experience starts. They were absolutely amazing and were above and beyond to make our stay memorable. Started with Conley and Tianna as butlers. They were attentive and responded quickly and provided everything we needed and more. Loved the little surprise for our anniversary. The pool staff with Peaches and Kirk were the best. Don’t let these two go and don’t move them to the other pools as they are so good at what they do for the Grand Lido guests. Philisia could the best daily lunches. Best food on the property. And Twinkle was fun and treated us great when covering for people’s time off! Highly recommend this hotel and property. Had a couple minor growing pains from the restart but nothing worth mentioning as was easy to find alternatives and the staff made everything work.

My husband booked the penthouse suite at the Grand Lido Negril through the Marriott Bonvoy website (Vacations by Bonvoy). The package we booked included airfare, Club Mobay at the airport, roundtrip private ground transport, a $300 resort credit, and 24/7 butler service. My husband e-mailed the resort multiple times prior to the trip trying to confirm our room request (9310) and that Club Mobay and ground transport were setup. He tried multiple contact emails provided by the website, and he never received any responses from the resort. Finally after two hours of phone calls being routed through multiple customer service agents, my husband finally reached someone at the Royalton Negril who was able to assist him. My husband found out that no provisions had been made for us because as far as the Grand Lido Negril was concerned we had booked our vacation package via Expedia, and the resort didn't recognize any of the included items. Eventually the resort did provide us with roundtrip ground transport, but they were unable to arrange for Club Mobay to assist us with customs at the airport. The resort did give us room 9310, which is the penthouse facing away from the main part of the resort complex and was reportedly the quieter location. However, upon arrival to our room, we quickly discovered three problems 1) the large private hot tub on our terrace didn't heat, none of jets were working, and the pool was actively leaking a large amount of water 2) the jets on the jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom wouldn't stay on and the bath tub drain was broken 3) the second rain shower head in the master bathroom had no hot water coming out even after running it for over ten minutes We ended up hosting maintenance people in our room 3 days out of our 5 day stay. One of those days we had maintenance people in our room for almost six hours. I had more repair people in and out of my room in 3 days than I had in the last 3 years at my house. During my prolonged contact with the maintenance personnel of the resort, I gleaned these pearls. 1) The outdoor hot tub, that was the main selling point of the penthouse for me, had been broken for YEARS. The heater does not work. If you want the hot tub "heated", the pool person comes to drain some of the water out and fills it with hot water like it's a gigantic outdoor bath tub. So you have a "heated" tub for the duration of a normal bath. The silver control buttons on the tub are purely decorative at this point because the maintenance people disconnected them years ago due to bubble blower and half the jets being non-functional. If you want the half of the jets that kinda work turned on, you have to call maintenance to crawl under the wood deck and manually activate the jets. However, activating the jets makes the chronic leak of the hot tub worse so you'll have water pouring out from under the decking onto the terrace until the water drains down to the level of the jets. There are no plans to do the proper repairs to make the outdoor hot tub fully functional. In its current state, it is literally a shallow wading pool that leaks, and no one should expect to enjoy a genuine hot tub experience in room 9310. 2) It took two separate visits for maintenance to get the indoor jacuzzi's jets to stay on. However, with the jets working, it became apparent there was a serious problem with lime scale build up in the water lines so it looked like someone upended a jar of fish food into the tub every time the jets were turned on. During the multiple hours of line flushing that occurred, that's when I learned that the resort can run out of water. At least twice a day during our stay, there would just be periods of time when the room had no water because the reservoir tanks will run dry during heavy usage like when the hotel is filling the pools or when all the guests are showering in the morning or after a beach day. I had to apologize the housekeeping twice because we were unable to flush the toilets prior to their daily service. Also, the drain of the jacuzzi tub has been broken for a long time, and housekeeping just uses a flat head screw driver to pry the cover off in order to drain the tub. So I used the handle of my nail clippers to drain the jacuzzi tub during the grand total two times I was able to use the tub at all. 3) While the resort was shutdown for renovations post-hurricane, Royalton really didn't go through and do any serious work in the guest rooms. I was renting the most expensive room on the property, and my husband and I were tripping over loose floor tiles in the bedroom the entire trip. Maintenance was made aware of the loose tiles, but maintenance made zero attempt to do anything about it. BTW, the second rain shower head never managed to put out more than lukewarm water after maintenance looked it over. Apparently it was plumbed wrong all along, and they have no plans to fix it. As far as the food goes, throw out all the restaurant reviews that were written before the resort closed down for "renovations" because things are considerably different now. The food is genuinely lackluster across the entire resort. Honestly, I've had better meals at Golden Corral, Applebee's, and Chili's than anything the restaurants are currently producing. 1) They advertise twelve restaurants, but the reality is that they only open two to three restaurants a night in addition to the buffet and the sports bar. It is completely chaotic what restaurants will be open because frequently the resort will decide right before 1800, which restaurants will serve dinner. It is highly advisable to get the Diamond Club for preferential seating because EVERYONE at the Royalton, Hideaway, and Grand Lido are trying to eat at two or three restaurants, and the restaurants run out of a lot of items by 2000. In fact, the servers will tell you upfront that 10-20% of the menu is unavailable, or they're substituting out items due to availability. You want to book the 1800 or 1830 time slots at your preferred restaurant for the best chance of getting what you want off the menu, and we had to use our butlers pretty much every day to get us added to the earlier seating times because the reservation app showed no availability very quickly. Service at all the restaurants was extremely slow-as in it takes about an hour to get your entree from any of the restaurants you choose because the waitstaff and kitchen are all understaffed and stressed. There is low accuracy in what you will be served because we got the wrong appetizers and sides at every restaurant, and at a couple of restaurants the server just flat out forgot to bring parts of our meal. 2) As things currently stand, Hunter's Steakhouse has none of the better cuts of beef as noted in previous years. The only beef on the standard menu was New York strip (lots of gristle from two dinners there) and flank steak (can be really tough) though I lucked out and had one tender piece. However, it was the size of Snicker's bar. Yes, the portions are small at ALL the restaurants. You probably want to order multiple entrees if you have a hearty appetite. Ribeye and tomahawk are an additional charge. We splurged on the ribeye ($75) and received a laughably small piece of meat with no discernible cap. It was literally half an inch thick. We also splurged on the tomahawk on our last night at the resort because we were desperate to have something better to eat. The tomahawk was $152, and the menu claimed it was prime but it chewed like leather even cooked at medium rare. BTW, all the sides we tried were terrible-watery flavorless "creamed spinach" and mashed potatoes made from a box of potato flakes. They were out of the chocolate mousse both times we were there, and the cheesecake is just whatever. 3) Calypso made Hunter's Steakhouse look like a superstar. I got conch fritters that were still raw batter in the center, and honestly, those fritters didn't deserve the title of "conch" because it was all batter with maybe a confetti size piece of conch per fritter. I also had the whole snapper, which turned out to be the size of my hand (I wear a 6.5 glove), and it was fried to the consistency of jerky. My husband ordered a couple desserts because he didn't want any of the entrees, and he was told that they were out of chocolate mousse and he only took two bites from the cheesecake before he pushed it away stating that we would be stopping by the buffet afterward. 4) Dorado was the best restaurant we dined at for dinner. Breakfast is meh. You can DIY a better breakfast over at the buffet, but truth be told Golden Corral's breakfast buffet blows Gourmet Marche's breakfast out of the water. I think because Dorado serves fewer diners being restricted only to Hideaway and Grand Lido guests there is more attention paid to the food preparation. It's a quieter ambiance with more attentive wait staff. You're far less likely to get funny looks asking for extra portions or two entrees than you are from Hunter's, Calypso, and Zen. We dined at Dorado five times, and it was the best food we had on the property. Was it gourmet? Absolutely not, but it was very decent. Like all the other restaurants about 20% of the items on the menu were unavailable or substituted for something else. The sea bass was never available our entire stay, and the default fish substitution was snapper. We realized that the Royalton got a great deal on a bulk order of snapper, New York strip, and chuck eye because we were fed different iterations of that at five different restaurants. Yup, same proteins slightly different cookery at all the restaurants. 5) I had high hopes for Zen from previous reviews, but the experience made me hang my head in despair. They were out of their beef option when we were seated. The hostess and the waitstaff were all irritable and impatient-just barely holding it together from snapping and going postal on the guests. I ordered the tuna sashimi. I received GRAY fish. I declined to eat gray tuna on grounds that I didn't want to be sick for the remainder of my trip. The snapper I received still had the scales attached to its skin. The chicken karaage we had for our entree was about the size of an eight piece nuggets from KFC, but it was literally the first hot meal we'd had on the entire property since service is normally so slow that all the food shows up at your table lukewarm. So I give Zen props on being able to serve a hot meal. Zen only had 1 of the 3 listed desserts available when we dined so my husband and I both had the matcha cheesecake. There was no matcha flavor. It was just cream cheese put through a blender, barely sweetened, food colored green, and topped with dry cake crumbs that tasted like Pillsbury's pistachio cake mix. We gave up on the "matcha" cheesecake and proceeded down the walkway to the Gourmet Marche buffet for dessert. 6) The Gourmet Marche is a mediocre buffet that is beautifully presented. Honestly, all the restaurants on property are beautiful environments in which you will be served lackluster food. The workers at the buffet have a tendency to overcook everything. In fact, I think every kitchen on the resort's philosophy is when in doubt cook it till it's really dead. The best thing the buffet offers is the dessert selection. They clearly are allowed to experiment on their desserts because there are things there that I've never experienced anywhere else. If they happen to have their strawberry mousse and red velvet cake available at the same time, grab both and eat them together. It's a good combination. Also their chocolate cake drowned in their vanilla ice cream is another solid combination. 7) Ocean Point re-opened for the first time while we were there. Our server informed us that the cooktop had been broken the entire time the resort had been reopened, and the location was cooking for the very first time when we dined. The servers and the hostess were really nice, and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt as far as how future dining experiences will go. I had seafood bisque-it was literally 3 shrimp bathed in something that tasted like overly sweet tomato basil soup. I made it better with salt. BTW, I think all the restaurants on the property have a salt allergy because they don't put much salt in the food and sometimes it's even hard to get salt and pepper shakers from the wait staff because they don't have very many of them. I got both mussels and New York strip for my entrees. Anyone who ordered only the mussels for their entree would be sad because it's literally twelve mussels in bland marinara sauce. So it's not enough to fill anyone up. The New York strip was the same beef I had at all the other restaurants-cut half an inch thick trimmed badly so it had sections of gristle to eat around. The true highlight of my dining experience at Ocean Point was the creme brulee. I received a cast iron skillet full of boiling lava hot egg custard with no crunchy sugar top. Yes, I was served hot egg custard straight from the oven. Suffice it to say the husband and I went to Gourmet Marche for dessert yet again. The worst part of my trip was pool side at the Grand Lido. I'll be upfront. The Au-Naturel thing was my husband's idea. He lost 80 lbs and is working out. He is in the best shape of his life, and he feels good about walking around naked. Me-not so much, but a clothing optional resort was not a deal breaker so I handed him my credit card and let him book the vacation. The website states that Grand Lido Negril is clothing optional. Per the property's wishes, I never wore a swimsuit down to the pool area for lunch. I wore a sheer silk pool cover and nothing else when I was walking around or having drinks. It was 100% obvious I was never wearing a swimsuit because my cover was see through-nipples and all. I was compliant about shucking my cover to enter the pool completely naked. On the third day that I went down to the pool area to eat lunch from the grill, the security guard came up to me while I was seated at the bar. She informed me that I needed to be completely naked and expected to disrobe right there. She said I had to be naked to be present at the pool. There was another woman seated at the swim up bar in a purple tea shirt and another woman wrapped in a tie dye cover up on a lounge. The security person said nothing to those women, but she decided to single me out for wardrobe correction. I declined to be forced into stripping on command. Instead, I tipped the bartender, the grill attendant, and the poolside butler explaining that the security person stated that I was not welcome at the pool wearing a cover. I stopped by my husband's lounge, explained to him what happened, and stated I was going back up to the room. I never returned to the pool for the remainder of my trip. I was mentally done with the trip from there on out. I had paid for the most expensive room on the resort wanting to enjoy the privacy of a well-appointed room. However, I never got to enjoy the outdoor hot tub that was 50% of the reason why I booked the room in the first place. I never got to relax in my room because there were maintenance people, butlers, and housekeeping going in and out during most of the daylight hours. When I sought refuge at the pool, I got told that I was inappropriately attired and needed to strip down on command. Yes, I booked the room at a discount during the low season. However, it was still an $800/night room where the features most important to me were broken, and the website's promise of gourmet dining experiences was patently untrue. BTW, to add insult to injury, the resort management refused to honor our $300 resort credit and wanted us to sign an NDA that we would not publicly disclose our experience on any of the review websites in exchange for a $400 rebate for what they termed the inconveniences we experienced. My husband and I told them that they could keep their hush money. We would much rather share our vacation story and help others make educated decisions with their vacation dollars.

We rented the penthouse suite. The outdoor Jacuzzi leaks water to the point they had to refill it every other day. Only a couple jets worked and the blowers were completely non functional. You can't control anything yourself maintenance has to come and turn on the jets or the heater not both manually under the skirt. The Jacuzzi in the bathroom the jets would not stay on. They repaired it on our 2nd day and it worked that night but the next night it was no longer working. They came again on our 4th day and tore it apart and fixed it again. There are lose tiles in the bedroom that I tripped on in my slippers. We had maintenance in our room pretty much every day of the trip. The cleaning is just the facade. If you look at baseboards or behind doors and in crevices you see they are filthy. The resort is beautiful. The grounds are well kept. The areas aound the pools and bars were all fine. The tables at the Dorado and Ocean Pointe were not steady however and would slosh your drinks every time you touched the table. The food was extremely lackluster. Only a couple of the restaurants are open a night and the menus are very limited. Often items were unavailable or replaced with something cheaper. It all screamed corporate cost cutting. Having read lots of reviews from the past we had high expectations but the reality of today is this place is not worth it. All the premium cuts of beef and things like lobster are now additional charges and even when you decide to splurge on them the results are ridiculously bad. Now the staff on a whole were wonderful. They would so anything in their power to make things right but they can't repair things that they don't have parts for and are handcuffed by corporate policies. Also the ocean access at the grand lido is no longer available. You can do as others have done while we were here and climb over the railing and climb down the rocks.

Went here for our 16 year anniversary. Was a wonderful time. The entire staff was friendly and warm with everything they did. Tianna and Conley are the best at their jobs. The grounds were kept absolutely perfect. This was up above a 5 star experience.

Went here for our 16 year anniversary. I would like to complement the entire staff for showing my wife and I and truly wonderful experience. To Tianna and Conley you are the best at your jobs, your warm hearts and great spirit. I want to say to them Thank you so much for a truly unforgettable time. To the rest of the Royalton staff, thank you for you warmth and fantastic hospitality. Food was fantastic and every category is 5 stars.