The Virgin Islands

Soon after I decided to expand the search beyond Antigua I picked up the book about the Virgin Islands.  These islands are quite close to the US so travel to them would be easy.  I started looking closely into St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John of the US Virgin Islands.

St. Thomas is the more cosmopolitan of the three.  Many cruise ships stop here and they have a big airport served by many different airlines.  It's known as the Mall of the Caribbean because there is great shopping here but it's also supposed to be quite Americanized without a lot of local color or character.  St. Croix is a little quieter, with less commercialization but it's also a stop on many cruises.  St. John is much quieter than the other two.  So much so, it doesn't have its own airport.  To get there you must fly to St. Thomas and take a ferry to St. John.  Rockefeller bought a large percentage of the island and gifted it to the US as a state park so it's mostly undeveloped natural beauty.  Can you guess which island I gravitated towards immediately?

And... I completely fell in love with this one hotel on St John.  Their website was absolutely stunning.  Their photos of other weddings really captured my heart and I pictured us standing on that beach.  One prior review mentioned that the place was so natural that a wild deer peeked through the trees during their ceremony to watch them say their vows!  Wow! They described how they meet you from your flight and check you in to the hotel there and then, tagging your bags and transporting them separately.  They bring you to their private dock in St. Thomas and transport you to St. John on their own private ferry, providing a glass of champagne on the way.  When you get to St. John your bags have been delivered to your room already.  I exchanged several emails back and forth with their wedding coordinator and started to commit my heart to this place.  The room rate was reasonable and the food options and everything else were something we could work with.  All that was left was to do my due diligence and then sign a contract.  I knew Jenni would be on trip advisor first thing when I told everyone about the place so I had to go read the reviews before the final go ahead.

And, then everything crashed.  The reviews on trip advisor were TERRIBLE.  And there were lots of them.  And they were very recent.  And they showed photos to back up their complaints.  There was no denying these reviews.  The fabulous rooms?  Were dirty, badly maintained with photos of mold growing in the bathroom and the ceiling of the bedroom.  Many people talked about the bad state of repair of the rooms.  The fabulous airport transfer? One couple told a story about how it took 5 hours.  They were abandoned at the ferry dock with no food or water for several hours because the ferry was delayed.  The staff were really unfriendly.  The way they handled a hurricane coming through was terrible on the guests.  They simply closed all the restaurants, stopped most of the services and left the guests to fend for themselves.  That's a very different story from many other resorts in the Caribbean who are much better equipped for the expected bad weather. The bad reviews went on and on. The lower price tag on the rooms made sense. The more I read the more I realized I couldn't settle on this resort. 

I was back on the search again.