"We're getting married”!! The Philemons title will be official in 2 weeks, so it was only right to have a proper "send off" with our bridesmaids and groomsmen. I am a huge fan of themes and my maid of honor and closest friend knew just the right theme to carry out. Girls LOVE Beyonce, period. This bride in particular, however, stans for our Queen B. The maid of honor found creative ways to implement this theme into a lot of our activities. The bachelorette included: a booze cruise with snorkeling and a stop at the Margaritaville waterpark in Ochos Rios, a private (and suprise) candlelit dinner on the beach, a Beyonce music video theme night, a surprise massage at the spa, and a general wig/lingerie theme night. We did all this in a total of four nights. We stayed at the adults only RIU Montego Bay Resort (all Inclusive). I'll give a brief overview of our experiences with our transportation, the marijuana dispensary, the booze cruise, as well as my brutally honest review of our resort. The main take away is that I would definitely recommend Jamaica as a bachelorette destination :)
Transportation
I utilized Booking.com Taxi for round trip pick-up and drop-off services between the airport and our resort. I have mixed feelings about utilizing this service because we had two separate experiences with booking.com. Everything about our pick-up from the resort was phenomenal! We were picked up by a local company called Island Tours. We were a large group of 12 girls and round trip transportation was only $16 USD per person. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by the cutest old man with a sign that had the brides name on it. Initially we could not find him, but there were several friendly airport staff members that helped direct us to him. He picked us up with a mini bus that also had my name on the front windshield. He had a few assistants that took our bags and placed them onto the bus. We had no issues regarding our luggage throughout the duration of our trip. The driver was also kind enough to make a stop for us at Island Strains, the marijuana dispensary, for no additional cost.
Island Strains:
The dispensary itself was absolutely beautiful and had a separate entrance to their waterside restaurant/ lounge as well. Our experience with the dispensary was quick and efficient. They accepted debit/credit cards as well as US dollars. The best part- you do NOT need a medical marijuana identification to make purchases at this dispensary. They used to advertise it on their website but recently took that down. They sell pre-rolls to make your life easier, but we found that when you compare prices that it was just better to purchase it by the gram. We all made our purchases and came right back to the bus, which was parked right out front of the dispensary. We tipped the driver once he dropped us off and they carried our bags out for us and helped bring them into the resort.
Now here is where booking.com taxi gets a bad review from me. Our pick-up reservation was canceled just five minutes before our scheduled pick-up time for our departure back to the airport. My guess is that they utilize different local taxi companies and that you don't always know which one you are getting. So my suggestion is to google search Island Tours transportation in Montego Bay and book with them directly since I can only speak on our experience with them. Our resort luckily had taxi services on stand-by and were able to arrange for our transportation at just $5 USD per person. If I am being honest, however, I don't recall the name of the taxi company that essentially saved the day. We also had no issues with that company and they were friendly and professional.
Booze Cruise
Our private booze cruise was booked through Jaital.com. We had the BEST experience with them and moving forward, I will probably only utilize this company if I ever returned and wanted a private experience. The boat was much bigger than what was being offered by other companies and they were able to make last minute adjustments to take us to the Margarittaville waterpark in Ochos Rios. We spent about $127 USD per person and that price included round trip hotel pick-up and drop off, lunch, open bar, snorkeling, as well as our stop at Margarittaville. Overall our tour was about 6 hours because the car ride to the boat was in Ochos Rios and that was aboutan hour away. The only hiccup that took place was that I had arranged to make that stop at Margaritaville prior, however, there was miscommunication and they actually extended our time on the boat thinking we would no longer need to make the stop. All it took was one call from the boat captain and they quickly fixed their mistake. In addition to this stop, the minivan that transported us made two other stops. The driver stopped at a local restaurant so that we can try their authentic patties, which were divine. Majority ruled that the shrimp patty was our favorite. The driver made another stop on the side of the road for fresh fruit that was being sold, and as you can imagine it was also delicious. The party boat was the highlight of our trip even though we had an extremely early pick-up at 6:45 AM! This was mainly the groups fault for waiting up until one week prior to book the trip. If anything the company was very accommodating for taking us in such short notice. They even gave us extra time to swim in the ocean and had several assistants and floaters on board to help some of the group members that could not swim. The water was calm and easy to swim in, although most of the members were too drunk to actually engage in the snorkeling and watch the little sea creatures. Trust me when I tell you that you will want to book with Jaital.com for your private booze cruise!
Resort- Riu Montego Bay
I'm going to get straight to it and say this was probably one of my least favorite resorts that I have EVER been to. We managed to make the best of it and thankfully still had an amazing girls trip. This adults only, all inclusive resort, was recently remodeled and you can tell that a lot of the resort's designs were updated and new. However, there were too many kinks at the resort to go unnoticed. Keep in mind that this was during the Covid period so naturally there would be some limitations in place. To keep it short and simple i'll write down some of the pros and cons of the resort:
Pros:
- The buffet was probably one of the better buffet's that I've been to when it came down to all-inclusive resorts
- The resort was really big so if they really wanted to enforce social distancing, they could of easily done so
- There were several pools to choose from and the temperature was comfortable
- It didn't take too long to get a drink from the pool bar
- The staff was phenomenal! They were all very friendly and professional
- Daily housekeeping was maintained and they did a good job with restocking items (towels, toiletries, etc).
- The massage services were good, but nothing to rave about.
- The private dinner on the beach was beautiful and the food was great! I ordered the surf and turf, which included your typical lobster tail, steak, and mashed potatoes. We also had champagne to accompany our meals. The servers were fantastic and very entertaining.
Cons:
- You had to wait in line anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes for a drink at any of the bars. It is possible that more bars were open but we typically only saw the pool bar and the lobby bar open so the lines were very long. Also the resort was at full capacity (so I do not think Covid was a great excuse).
- They also used Covid as an excuse for not having room service even though it is still advertised on their website.
- They did not stock the mini fridge with anything, not even water in any of the rooms. Once again, they used Covid as the excuse. - There was no elevator and we were on the 4th floor- not a big deal for daily walking but to being your suitcases up and down was a struggle.
- They only had 2 other restaurants aside from the buffet option. The two options included an Asian fusion restaurant and an Italian restaurant. The Asian fusion restaurant was buffet style, and neither one of the restaurants were that great in my opinion.
- The resort somewhat gave me South beach/spring break vibes, which isn't necessarily a con to other people.
- The check in was smooth for the bride, however, they pretty much gave everyone else in the group a difficult time. They couldn't accommodate early check in for majority of the group and when they finally did check in two of the girls, they forgot to send the bags up to their rooms.
- The resort was so big that you had to walk long distances to get to and from your room to any other place on the resort.
- The room keys stopped working for some of the rooms and you had to walk all the way back to the lobby to have it fixed (this happened several times and was pretty frustrating).
- You have to keep telling the bartenders to make the drinks really strong so that they don't taste watered down.
In summary- go to Montego Bay for your girls trip, book your excursions with Jaital, and visit the marijuana dispensary if your friendly to the greens! Do not, however, book your stay at the Riu Montego Bay resort. There are much better resorts out there and you should take advantage of that, especially if you are not on a tight budget.
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