Jamaica, Beaches Ocho Rios Family Holiday

Donna Bidwell on 28 May 2015
We stayed at Beaches Ocho Rios on 1st May 2015 for 7 nights. We booked a Greek Beachfront Concierge Terrace suite which looked right onto the beach, we had a huge terrace which was great for the children and having a concierge room meant we also had a fridge of beers and soft drinks, wine and spirits in the room and a coffee maker, which are all replenished daily.

I sell a lot of Sandals and Beaches holidays and appreciate that they can be very expensive, however after experiencing Beaches Ocho Rios as a family, I can completely understand why it is more money than other hotels and I think it is worth that bit more. We had a brilliant holiday and the children had the best time ever.

The little water park area is a perfect size to be able to still keep an eye on the children. The restaurants were all lovely, although I think it could do with having one or two more. They had 3 a la carte options, one of them white glove service and then a buffet which was different themes each night and also the BBQ park and a Crepe area.

It wasn’t busy when we went which was lovely. The pool never got over busy and there were always some sunbeds spare. Trip advisor mentioned about the sunbeds getting full very early, but we never found this an issue.

Now the kids camp…These guys were brilliant, the activities were great and the sesame street characters joined them a lot too. They had flower spotting with Grover, story time with Bert & Ernie, Cooking with the cookie monster, magic with Abby Cadaby, it really was great! They take them to the water park, take them to the beach, take them for games outside, have movie times, lots of arts and crafts, they would take them to lunch and dinner and then the shows on the evenings.

Our children didn’t want to eat with us the last 4 nights as they wanted to dine with their friends at kids camp, which we let them as it was their holiday and all about what they wanted to do. We then got lovely meals with no squabbling and they were then happy with their friends. The sesame street shows were so good! They also do a weekly parade which was brilliant. I literally could not fault any of the staff and the entertainment, I was very impressed.

Twice a week they do a character breakfast where the children all get a goodie bag with a mini sesame street teddy and other bits, all the characters come into this too and go around the tables, this is a must do!

We also arranged the Night Night Tuck in with the Cookie Monster, at 9pm the cookie Monster arrived at our room with his person to surprise the children, he did bed time exercises with them, then he got into bed with the children and laid with them under the covers while the story teller read them a bed time story and asked the children questions about what they remembered from the story. It was very good and priceless, this is something I would 100% recommend to my customers to do.

The beach was man made and wasn’t very big, as we live close to the beach we are never big beach people while away anyway so this wasn’t an issue but those who love the beach did say that it wasn’t the best. It was still lovely though.

We could arrange lots of trips from the hotel and these trips can also be pre booked before going which I can arrange too. Our children were having such a great time with their friends and with kids camp that they didn’t want to venture out in the end, not even to the Dolphin Cove which is what we had planned. They have swam with dolphins before and I suppose they were happy with the time they did it, but they were adamant that they didn’t want to do it, so we never pursued it if they were having such a great time.

Sandals Ochi Beach is about 15 minutes’ drive away from Beaches and you can use the facilities here if you wish, this is adults only though. So one evening while the children were in kids camp we did go over to sandals and enjoy a lovely meal at Soy which is the sushi bar. We love the sushi at Sandals and this was amazing. We only spent an hour here before getting back but it was well worth doing.

We decided to pre book the Mombay Lounge at the airport coming home, this was a great move! This lounge was perfect for the children as they had a play room so they were occupied for a few hours while we had friends playing on the TVs, the snacks were wraps, hot pasties, sushi and sandwiches. As well as hot drinks, soft and alcoholic drinks included too. I will be recommending people to book this when departing from Montego Bay.

We had such a lovely holiday that I would definitely book to go to Beaches again and next time try out Beaches Negril or Beaches Turks & Caicos. Beaches Barbados is currently being built and won’t be open for about 18 months plus. So it is great that another Beaches is being added to the brand.

The great thing about this holiday was how well the children were catered for and how friendly the staff were to everyone. They made everyone feel special. Our children went into kids camp whenever they wanted to, they can go in and out anytime between 9am and 9pm, we would want to obviously spend a lot of the day with them, but if there was an activity they wanted to do we would of course let them do it.

Please feel free to call me for any further advice or information, I have a lot more photos and videos and have shared most of these on my business Facebook page, so feel free to follow me on Facebook and take a look at my page.