Tamarijn Aruba All Inclusive

Rooms, food, and services were excellent. The beach is very rocky Definitely need beach shoes.

We went for our honeymoon and while we LOVED Aruba, we’re not sure that we would return to the Tamarijn. The Good: -Room was clean and comfy, but nothing fancy. The AC worked great, the bed wasn’t a hard rock. Had plenty of storage space for clothes and a nice covered patio to sit out on in the mornings and evenings with a great view of the beautiful water. -Snack bar has several options to choose from -Plenty of fruity frozen drinks, if you like sweets. -IF you get there early the buffet is pretty good. The menu changed everyday so it wasn’t too redundant but the food was good. Not great, but good. Aruba is expensive, so being able to save by eating at least breakfast and lunch there helped to not break the bank. -Direct beach access (although rocky in a lot of places but you can walk shortly down to sand access) -Couple of cute shops and boutiques to wander around -Almost every night they had local vendors come in to set up stands where they sold art, jewelry, and general souvenirs. Not pushy, just more of like an open market which I thought was really cool. -Plenty of pools around the resort (if you have kids, we preferred to be in the ocean) The Bad: -Food. The only option where you don’t have to have reservations for is the buffet. If you don’t get there within the first hour the food is picked over and what is left looks dried out an old. Cheese/meat buffet was covered in flies and warm. Salad bar had watered down dressings often, and browned lettuce often. Meat always looked dried out and old. The only thing that was pretty good were the special request bars, that you also had to stand in line for, that made special requests like hamburgers or MYO pasta bowls. -This part had us pretty upset, in order to take advantage of the restaurants you have to make reservations. BUT, you have to go down to concierge desk to do so. Where there was ONE person working, a line full of people waiting, and each person taking as much as 15-20 minutes to be taken care of. AND, they will only let you make reservations for THAT NIGHT and THE NEXT NIGHT. But, by mid morning ALL was booked and you were just out of luck. We were only able to actually eat at one restaurant our entire trip (7 nights), and it was the Ginger Asian place that was a dressed up horrible attempt at Asian food. One morning we were down at the desk at 8 AM and all reservations were taken for that night and the next but they wouldn’t allow you to try for anything past that. Absolutely ridiculous!! Also, we saw it ourselves and we spoke with several other guests who said they entered these “restaurants” to see plenty of tables open and empty, so how were they always completely booked with half of the seating empty?? I was very frustrated that this was listed as included in our booking and they didn’t even make an attempt at actually providing it. -Rude staff. I understand that you cannot expect any certain level of friendliness amongst other cultures just because it’s not quite what you’re used to at home, but acting annoyed or putout when a guest needs help is unacceptable. Standing in line for 30 mins to make a dinner reservation you never get only to be told “too bad, try tomorrow” or “thats not my job” or “nothing I can do for you” are things I certainly didn’t expect on our honeymoon. Poorly planned and poorly executed policies. -Pushy sales at concierge. Got talked into attending a seminar for $100 off our excursion. Booked it three days in advance but quickly decided we didn’t want to do it. Went to cancel. WOULDN'T REFUND OUR MONEY WHERE WE PAID IT. Made us go to another resort where the seminar to receive a credit card refund, then come back to our resort to cancel the actual excursion and no one knew how to do it. Finally got it cancelled, but then several hours later they called our room directly to ask why we cancelled the seminar and AGAIN attempted to get us to rebook by telling us we had to come BACK down to concierge, stand in line again, because somehow “we” hadn’t cancelled it correctly (not my problem, your staff does the cancelling in your system). After arguing for several minutes that we had in fact cancelled and actually received a refund, she realized we were not going to be re-booking the tour and gave up and admitted that we had in fact gotten everything done correctly. In fact, that was the most effort we had seen out of any concierge, though we would have rather seen the effort in HELPING us not in pushing us into a seminar. -Beach towels. You have to walk to one small stand on the other side of the resort to receive beach towels. They give you a card for each person staying and you trade them for towels. If you don’t return the card at checkout you are charged. WHY are beach towels not left in your room?! Why should I have to walk across the resort (to a stand that opens late and closes early) to get towels that can be assigned to the rooms and charged for IF the same amount aren’t left in the room at checkout?? We ended up having to use the same beach towels our entire trip because the stand was either not staffed or closed by the time we got back to the resort from our day out. -Alcohol/Bar. Cheap bottom shelf and won’t even give you real glasses. They have real glasses in buffet (that you can take out) and restaurants but won’t poor you a glass of wine (horrible wine ON TAP) in anything but plastic cafeteria glasses. If cafeteria glasses don’t scream luxury vacation I don’t know what does! -Snack bars routinely ran out of items they claim to provide. Everyday we’d go to order either a snack or drink that’s included in the price we paid for our vacation, only to be told by a bored staff member “nope, out of that for the rest of the day. We are the last resort to get delivered to, don’t know when we will have it again”. Soooo, I can’t get the snacks included in my price, I can’t get access to the restaurants included in my price, and if I don’t wait for the doors to open I never even get the fresh buffet food included in my price?? What IS actually included then?? -Can hear EVERYTHING your room neighbors say and do. Pray they don’t bring kids or ride with the sun. We were woken EVERY SINGLE MORNING by slamming doors and loud neighbors. Hey it’s their vacation too, they can get up and get excited as early as they want, but maybe do a better job at sound proofing the rooms? -Shows at night are clearly geared towards kids. In fact, more often than not the performers WERE kids. Overall, I think this might be a good place for families traveling with several children who are ok spending the majority of time in the pool, eating chicken nuggets and Mac and cheese from the buffet, and being entertained by other children dancing and singing each night by the pools. However, this was NOT quite the luxurious honeymoon we had been sold on. We ABSOLUTELY LOVED the island and hopefully will return.

as always had a amazing time at the Tamarijn in Aruba The food was amazing - the service spectacular - and views breathtaking

We had a wonderful experience booking through cheap Caribbean and ended up with the option for about the same price to stay at the Tamarijn or Divi. We chose the Tamarijn because of the rooms right on the beach. Unfortunately, the experience for my wife, 2 year old, 7 year old, and myself with the rooms was a terrible one unlike any other I've had before. On our first day we opened the balcony door and as soon as we did so a smell of raw sewage entered our room. It was being drawn in through our air conditioner water line apparently. We asked the front desk to check into it and after calling 3 times with no one showing up to the room over 2 hours we had to walk to the front desk and ask in person. Eventually they sent someone who told us we needed to call the front desk to take care of it....face palm.... The front desk told us they would see if another room was available but never got back to us. The next day after flushing our toilet, the toilet continued to run (no clogs) and flooded our entire room with toilet water. We called the front desk to tell them about this since it was an emergency, 15 minutes went by and no one showed up as the room continued to flood. We had to run to the front desk in person which is the only way they would send someone. Because of this they finally moved us from our sewage smelling flooded room. The next day we left our new room for breakfast and when we returned we found that the privacy bolt lock (top chain) was somehow locked. Apparently it locked itself somehow when we left. Again, we needed to go to the front desk who was again terribly unhelpful about sending a locksmith to fix the door for us. The same day a number of our key cards stopped working. I've had this happen at other hotels and I usually don't care. But when I told them they simply asked for the room number and issued new keys without asking my identity or for my identification. So it seems if you ask for new keys for anyroom, they would likely just give them to you....very scary. I'm not a picky traveler and this is the first time anything like this has happened to me at any resort or hotel. My friends stayed at the Divi and booked through Cheap Caribbean and had no issues. Again, cheap caribbean was great for booking, the Tamarijn beaches, food, and pools were nice. But the rooms and service was such that I may never book with cheap carribbean again and definitely never stay at the Tamarijn and recommend people avoid this resort altogether since there are so many other great choices around Aruba.