Hideaway at Royalton Negril

The Royalton Hideaway was pretty average. We had asked for a place on a nice beach and if you are looking for that, book something ON 7 mile beach. The beach at Royalton Hideaway is super small, in a bay so the water is a bit stagnant. If you long to hear waves crashing on the beach this is not your spot. The service was overall pretty good. The workers were friendly enough. Of all of the all inclusive places I have stayed the Royalton had the most food choices but the worst food. I like a good diet coke in the morning and they were difficult for the workers to find. The only place you could get one until 10 am when the bar opened was the stuffy indoor cafeteria (which believe me, when you want to be in the sun is dingy). Our room was nice. The AC didnt work all that well so it was a bit damp. It was clean. I would say that the Royalton should consider non smoking buildings as we would try to enjoy some patio time in the morning and the people below were smoking on their patio most days.

I planned and booked Hideaway @ Royalton for a girls trip for 9 girls. I was so excited as the description of the resort really seemed like a perfect fit for me and my girls. I returned home last night and my one word of advice to future travelers to Negril: Don't do it. Definitely go to Negril, but do NOT stay here. To begin, the check in process was an absolute mess. It really set the tone for how the rest of the trip would be. After booking the resort 6 months in advance, and maintaining contact with resort staff regarding our needs/preferences, we were told we could only be given rooms with 1 king bed, instead of the double beds we requested. While this was a minor annoyance for some members of our group, for others, who were booked 3 to a room, this really was unacceptable. One of the girls was forced to spend our 4 night stay sleeping on a rollaway bed in the corner of her room. That's not my idea of a luxury all inclusive vacation, nor was it hers given the price we paid to stay at this resort. After 30 minutes of protest, we were told nothing would deb done to accommodate us and given our bracelets and room numbers. We weren't told until the night before check out that we could have used "resort credits" toward room upgrades. We were told we weren't provided with this information because: "We didn't ask." We weren't given a tour of the facility upon check in or at any point at all. In regards to the tour desk at the resort, ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. We spent hours waiting at this desk for: corrected information, correcting mistakes on bookings, or traveling to the front desk so that the attendant could get enough wifi connectivity to process our payments. On two occasions we were told to "come back later" to see if our bookings had gone through. In addition, we were given the wrong pick up times for two of our excursions - which completely threw off our entire day on the resort. They need to invest in a router or some sort of Wifi fix, because we were forced to travel to the front desk (and wait literally hours) just to book services/excursions. The same holds true for the spa services. The spa itself was decent, although a lot of the jets in the hydrotherapy room and the steam room was out of order (this information should have been provided to us prior to us booking services in which use of these facilities was included). Furthermore, we were required to fill out our paperwork at the spa (standard) and then, once again, walk to the front desk and wait in line behind guests checking in/out to make payment for our spa services: so relaxing (NOT). It completely ate into our time at the spa and our overall day. The food at the resort was OK. The Jerk Hut and Dorado were delicious. Hunter and the buffet were not good at all. We attempted to visit Calypso on two occasions but were denied both times because of our group size (this is insane to me). Zen was good entertainment but the food left much to be desired. Each night we waited approximately 1-2 hours to be seated for dinner (despite seeing many empty tables inside). The dining efficiency seriously needs to be looked at. Finally, there were a few perks @ the resort I do want to rate positively: bartender Chickpea, pool staff Keane, fitness staff Kaffain, and restaurant staff Ricardo did go above and beyond to make our trip more memorable despite the many hiccups the resort presented us with. I certainly hope they get some recognition for being customer oriented and just friendly and attentive people! Overall, the resort is beautiful and has SO much potential to be amazing, but in its current state, I truly would not recommend any of my friends or family visiting. I hope necessary changes can be made so that other guests who have looked forward to their trip for months can enjoy it in the way we wanted to but couldn't.

We had a Swim-out room at the Diamond Club in Hideway for our honeymoon last week. The whole resort is HUGE so be prepared to walk everywhere! Overall we had a great time but there definitely was a few things that need improvement. --Pros- Let me start by saying the place is BEAUTIFUL. The hotel is new and very clean, the room was awesome and the bed was sooo comfy! They don't skimp out on the alcohol like a lot of other all inclusive places do. They always have some kind of entertainment each day & night. Scores bar stays open until 2am. (Even though it's great, it does get a little boring going to the same bar night after night.) The spa was awesome! We loved the sauna & hydro pool!! I think we used it every single day. Everyone is very friendly, we hungout and made friends with a few of the workers when they got off work and had so much fun. Our butlers Demari & Clinton were great, always there when you need them! Demari suprised us one day by decorating our room & tub with rose petals and pretty lighting for our honeymoon. We loved that! Having picker food in the diamond club lounge was a plus. Also the coffee shop was wonderful! And that view!! --Cons- Our rainshower was broken and never got fixed even after we kept asking. Someone is always trying to take professional photoshoot type pictures and then you come to find out that they are charging $20 a picture or $480 for all! Not worth it and you missed out on actually taking the pictures yourselves. The food was only ok. To others it was good but we are a little spoiled coming from NJ/NY area where we have amazing food. But the service at most of the restaurants really were very slow. Probably my biggest con would be that you can't sleep in from a late night because they stop serving breakfast by 10:30 and don't open for lunch until 12:30. Was not fun being hungover and trying to get some eggs at 1030 am and they tell you no. By the time we walked all the way back to our room and put in room service order it was 10:55. They called us to confirm at 11:02 and tell us room service stops at 11 and we were too late. We had an excursion planned for 1 that we wanted to eat first but couldn't. Very annoying! The pools are cold so you can't go night swimming in your swim-out room. There is no Jacuzzi in Hideway, only 1 at Royalton and it is not hot so the kids are playing in it. The Beaches are very small and very rocky. It hurts your feet to walk into the ocean. So I recommend checking out the beautiful 7 mile beach outside of the resort. I wish we had done that more. Also beach chairs fill up FAST, people wake up at 6am to put their towels down and leave them for later which is so annoying when you have to walk around the whole resort just to find something not reserved. We did have our butler able to save us 2 seats 1 day so that was good atleast. Even though hideaway is adults only, you have to walk to do anything and then you are around children. Wasn't a big deal for us but may be for others. Lastly, our honeymoon package included dinner on the beach. Now instead of setting it up for us in hideaway where we paid for, they put us in the Royalton section where kids were constantly running around and screaming while we were trying to have a romantic dinner. It was very pricey so we wanted to get as much out of the hotel for the money we spent but I definitely wish we ventured outside of the resort more than we did. The local food was much better than what we had at the restaurants in the resort. Same goes for the beach. Overall we had a good time. It's hard not to in Negril. Would I recommend this hotel to others? Yeah.. but I probably would try a different place next time.

First, as far as the resort goes, the rooms were large and comfortable with very comfortable mattresses. I don't know if they are finished decorating it yet, since Royalton just took it over, but the walls in the rooms and hallways was very cold and stark.....no pictures or decorations. I was a little disappointed in some of the facilities. There was only one tennis court in a building with a concrete surface covered in astroturf. There was a nice pool in the family resort, but only a small one in the adult resort, but it did have a swim up bar (nice). SCUBA diving and snorkeling was available by boat right from the beach, but the weather was not good for it during our stay. All of the logistics arranged for by CheapCaribbean (airport transfers, VIP lounge at airport, etc.) worked flawlessly.....no surprises or disappointments. My biggest issue with the trip was with CheapCaribbean. When deciding on which resort of the 3 offered [Grand Lido (clothing optional), family or Hideaway (adult only) ] we were told that if we stayed at Hideaway, we would have access to the other Royalton properties (they are all connected). This was not true. CheapCaribbean misrepresented this. We stayed at Hideaway and were not allowed access to Grand Lido or the Diamond Club area. If we had known this, we would have stayed at Grand Lido.