Sandals Regency La Toc

Most gorgeous view I’ve ever seen! Travis went above and beyond to take care of us all week and made our trip unforgettable.

My husband and I chose Sandals La Toc for our honeymoon with high expectations, especially after paying for a butler-level Rondoval suite. Unfortunately, the experience did not match the luxury that was advertised. Our room had significant maintenance issues from the moment we arrived. Water leaked through multiple doors on three different occasions, and part of the rooftop flooring shifted under our feet, with several tiles filled with water. Even after reporting it, nothing was addressed, and we couldn’t safely use the space. We also never received a proper tour or orientation of the resort, leaving us unsure of where restaurants, amenities, and activities were located. This resulted in missed opportunities and unnecessary confusion during what should have been a relaxing trip. Room service was consistently disappointing. Food took nearly two hours to arrive, was cold every time, and on one occasion made both of us sick. This was especially frustrating considering the additional cost for a butler suite. Butler service overall felt uncoordinated and inconsistent. Only a couple of team members were helpful, while others were frequently unavailable or made us feel like an inconvenience. We often had to figure out reservations and directions on our own, even while watching other guests receive far more attentive service. Dining reservations were also mishandled. Despite requesting bookings early, we were told certain restaurants weren’t available until our final night, and several reservations were incorrect. Pre-arrival requests for specific drinks and snacks were ignored until we escalated it, which was disappointing given the premium price point. Even simple breakfast service lacked attention—after asking multiple times for coffee at the Pavilion, it never arrived while tables around us were served. Our final day ended with more miscommunication. We were told we could check out later due to our helicopter departure, only to be informed the morning of that we needed to leave the room two hours earlier, leaving us rushed and stressed. Overall, our honeymoon experience at Sandals La Toc fell far below expectations. With the room issues, service inconsistencies, and repeated miscommunications, we did not feel we received the value we paid for and would not return to this property.

Still here experiencing time together and celebrating 40 years anniversary and 60th birthday. So will post again but at the moment life is good and surrounded by happiness smiles care and kindness xx

So then…an honest review of Sandals La Toc, our first ever Sandals visit, and I’m afraid our last. I say “honest”, as you may well find similar themes with other reviews…that should tell you something. And “honest” because if you check my TripAdvisor join date, you will see I have been a member for years, as curiously there do seem to be a high number of 5 star La Toc reviewers who only joined TripAdvisor in 2025… We’ve done a few other all inclusive resort stays, in Cuba, Mauritius and Dubai, which were all great and delivered a romantic, stress-free, super relaxed holiday…but sadly this was something Sandals completely and utterly failed on. In fairness the location is great, the site is generally very clean, the beach is beautiful and the gardens immaculately tended to, however most of the problems were simply down to the staff. I’m writing this as an honest and hopefully balanced review…you may decide that none of this matters to you, but just be aware of what to expect if you are handing over your hard earned cash to stay at the resort. On arrival at the security gate in the late afternoon, we witnessed security doing a “bag check” of employees departing for the day. Whilst you could argue this means Sandals take security seriously, it’s a “look” you might expect to find at an Amazon warehouse, and not at the supposed 5 star resort you’re going to be staying in, where staff have a key to your room! This didn’t sit well with us, was there some kind of trust issue here? We’d not gone for a Butler, but we had gone with the premium “Club Sandals” option. Either way, on arrival, the staff sing you the Sandals song. Now, I know some people love this, but when you arrive as just a couple rather than a big group, it’s a bit, erm, awkward. Especially for us Brits. But we’re on holiday, let’s just move on and enjoy it, eh? Whilst checking in, we wanted to check the local attractions on TripAdvisor, but guess what, Sandals actually block the app and website! Top tip, just buy yourself a Maya eSim and switch off the hotel WiFi, job done. This was the second “seems a bit odd” kinda moment after the security check…why not let travellers/guests onto the world’s most popular travel site when…erm…on holiday? Suitably relieved of $400 US for “incidentals” at this “all inclusive” resort we were shown to our room (more on that deposit later…) The room was fine at first glance, decent enough size, shower in the bathroom, and a big circular bath outside on our balcony overlooking the beach that I rather liked. Fills up quick though, so keep an eye on it! Unfortunately, the privacy curtain was covered in mould/mildew. Further poking around the room revealed a faulty fan switch (we could live with it), the loo door hanging off the rails (I quickly fixed this, so why on earth couldn’t maintenance/housekeeping?) and a cupboard door also off its runners (we just left it as is). There was a well-stocked bar (behind another door hanging off its hinges) and various top shelf drinks (which were all covered in a LOT of dust!) Our first meal at Neptune’s really started to set the alarm bells ringing. First, we were queuing for ages for a seat. I appreciate we’d arrived when it was busy, however once seated, waiter after waitress just walked past empty handed without offering us a drinks menu or a drink…it’s almost as if everyone was deliberately avoiding any kind of eye contact! After eventually managing to grab someone and ask for the drinks menu twice, I just gave up and just asked for two beers which were eventually plonked down on the table after about a quarter of an hour. Despite side plates and butter knives turning up soon after, the bread only arrived after the main course. As for pudding, we just gave up on it and ate the bread… During the week at two other restaurants, I twice gave up having asked multiple times for a drink at dinner (just a simple beer, it should not be hard) and just left the table and walked to a bar to get one to bring back. Absolutely ridiculous. Mind you, at least we’d actually got into the restaurants and got a table. There was a constant comedy of errors here too. Wrong timings for bookings. No record of bookings. Or being sat in the waiting area at Soy, only to be “leapfrogged” by other guests who had arrived later. Apparently, this was “our fault” for not hearing our room number being called, which was beyond frustrating, as every time the waitress had come in to the “waiting room” to call room numbers, we’d listened intently. Funnily enough, we bumped into another couple the next day who’d seen the whole thing unfold, and they said exactly the same thing kept happening that night to lots of other guests after us. On the flip side, the sushi/sashimi at Soy really is first class, some of the very best I have eaten. Likewise upstairs at Kimono, the teppanyaki chefs are talented entertainers, cooking up very tasty food in front of you whilst keeping you amused with some incredible skills/tricks. Why the front of house staff cannot take some pointers from them about eye contact with guests, smiling etc, is beyond us. The guy who we presumed was the manager at Soy was also attentive and proactive, looking around…let me clear these plates here, take an order there, smile at someone else there. Again, the breakfast staff could really take some lessons from him here, because on one particular day breakfast was just ridiculous. We queued for absolutely ages for a table, probably because staff were all too happy to stroll around empty handed, avoiding eye contact, and not clearing used plates, or were happy to just throw a napkin over used plates to deter the four birds pecking away it the contents rather than displaying a bit of initiative and clearing it away. Once eventually seated, there were however no plates to actually enable us to get any food…it took me over five minutes, asking multiple people, before finally getting one. There was also no orange juice either, and after 45 minutes of being told it was “probably” being refilled, the story started to wear thin. Poolside/beachside…well if you weren’t up at 6am to claim your sun bed you were out of luck. Turns out the Butler service also includes getting you a sunbed…even if you have no intention of turning up to use it! It’s an absolute joke and reminiscent of a cheap package holiday, not an expensive 5 star resort! Sandals need to get a bit more “Dubai” about things, patrol the beds and if they’ve not been used for an hour, they are made available for other guests. Talking of which, lounger towels were often in very short supply which was frustrating at times (it the Caribbean, it rains, towels get wet, have enough fresh ones for goodness sake!). As mentioned before the view over the beach is lovely, but be prepared for noisy, drunken “entertainment” from the pool every afternoon, tacky “battle of the sexes” type games, and couples’ kayak racing across the pool, that kind of thing. You might read this and think “that sounds great!”, but sorry our club 18-30 days are long gone and this was just annoying, and there was no escape from the games DJ/pumping music and live PA turned up to 11, even though only a very small percentage of the guests seemed to want to take part. If you are expecting a nice afternoon doze on your sun lounger listening to the sea, forget it. If your room is close to the pool you are really stuffed, (and some of the ground floor rooms open right out onto the poolside, so forget any privacy unless you keep the curtains closed! Again, to bring balance to the entertainment, the steel band laid on one evening were ridiculously talented (tune after tune played perfectly with no sheet music/iPads anywhere!) and the karaoke in the piano bar was fun and well organised…well all apart from the constant stench in that place, and the bit where I moved my bar stool to the wrong place next to the erm, bar, and was rudely screamed at by a member of bar staff at the top of her voice for being in the wrong place. I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life, absolutely astonishing that I was actually paying Sandals for that experience. Other “entertainment” is provided when housekeeping make up your room, take all the towels and don’t leave any new ones (oh how we laughed), and also when you get back to your room late afternoon to get ready for dinner and find out they’ve not been at all! Again, credit where it’s due, the DJ “battle” silent disco was great fun, even if I did nearly cut myself to ribbons on the exposed screw heads in the gents’ loo. Please see picture, believe it or not these are screws holding the loo roll holder in the adjoining cubicle. It’s a picture that perfectly sums up the general “can’t be bothered to do it properly or care about the guests” attitude of the place. Now I’m sure if we’d been bent over even further on the price and had opted for a butler some of these things may not have happened. Probably because a) the butlers know all the issues and can navigate around them, and b) your butler is the “one throat to choke” rather than just disappearing into the melee never to be seen again like so many of the staff. Sandals, for goodness sake it does NOT have to be like this. Hire the right people, train and pay them well. Explain that in a service role it’s customary for the staff to stand out the way of the customers if you are both about to walk into each other. Explain about making eye contact and giving a smile at the bar, not just pointing a finger and saying “you”. Explain that the right answer for the question “excuse me, we’ve been waiting ages now for our main course, is it actually coming please” is actually “sure, let me check for you” and not “should be” before walking off. Get staff to be like the smiling minibus drivers, the attentive manageress at Pitons, some of the smiley cocktail mixers. And make sure that your staff know it is never EVER ok to rudely shout at a paying customer because he’s moved his bar stool to the wrong part of the bar. Talking of bars, the drinks are an absolute lottery. Expect cocktails that contain zero alcohol, and virgin cocktails that are lethal. Expect some drinks to be made with care and a smile, and others to be absolutely undrinkable. Now, all we need to do is to wait for our unusued $400 incidentals refund to come back. This could take up to three weeks apparently. According to Sandals this is due to “the banks” and obviously nothing whatsoever to do with a nice little side earner for Sandals as they hold on to your money as long as possible. No doubt Sandals will just regurgitate the points in this review, and concentrate on the good stuff as they seem to do on all the other ones. The bottom line is that this is probably the most frustrating and disappointing holiday experience we have ever had, at any price, and there is absolutely no way we would ever return to a Sandals resort ever again. It’s just down to the staff, and sadly the staff who genuinely make a real effort have all their hard work ruined by those who clearly couldn’t care less. But if you’re happy to pay thousands of pounds to be fighting over sunbeds, not have your room made up, be shouted at by staff, and have to leave your restaurant table to go and get your own drinks, this could be the perfect resort for you! One silver lining…was that we were genuinely happy to be leaving and didn’t get the end of holiday blues! So on Sandals…tell us what you are ACTUALLY going to do to improve stuff? Don’t just re-quote all this, what TANGIBLE changes are you going to make?

We stayed for our honeymoon in the Sunset Bluff room with butler service. Our butler Marvin went above and beyond always anticipating our needs by preparing us snacks, meals, even dropping off drinks and food by the pool as we were there all day. Titus was our other butler who was always a delight and splendid. We are breakfast at the Pavilion as our favorite option due to it being a buffet style. We loved using the floating rings in the beach when the ocean was swimmable. Entertainment picked up towards the end of the week.