Sandals Regency La Toc

Our stay was amazing. We stayed in the new rondoval suites and our butlers were Charles, Garvin, and Kyle! They were absolutely best! They took the best care of us we feel so spoiled!!

Great staff like Nigel and Shevinius at the Cricketeer keep me coming back

Many of the reviews here relate to having great service from butlers and therefore giving 5 stars. I know that the butlers solicit reviews so that’s not unusual. However these reviews don’t really give much of an idea of the resort itself, and what it’s like in the “cheap seats” without a butler. We visited for 10 nights in the middle of January. We visit the Caribbean every year, but never during the winter months – the resort seemed to be at full capacity. It was very disappointing to have to get up at 6.30am or earlier every day just to get a sunbed. This isn’t a resort for beach lovers because there isn’t much of a beach, but because of that, it isn’t particularly good for those who prefer to sit around the pool because you’re all fighting for limited sunbeds, and obviously the butlers have reserved the majority. I have to say that having been to Sandals 3 times to 2 different resorts, the butler/non butler divide has never been as noticeable as at La Toc. I would say that the proportion of butler suites here is higher than at other resorts, and this is probably due to how large and hilly the resort is – people just don’t want to walk anywhere so the butlers pick them up on their golf buggies. There are 3 pools – the main pool, the Pitons (quiet) pool, and the sunset bluff pool. Its one hell of a trek to visit all 3 on the search for sunbeds. We booked an Emerald Honeymoon Hideaway Grande Luxe room which I think is the cheapest or one of the cheapest rooms. These are on the hillside and run up to the very edge of the resort. The room was as shown on the website and we were happy with it, we even had a view of the sea which we weren’t expecting. We liked the fact it was a bit of a quirky layout and not a generic box hotel room – it gave Caribbean vibes. There was a shuttle bus that you can wait for at reception that takes you all over the resort, so after a week of walking up and down the hill we did start waiting for the shuttle at the end of the day. No complaints about the servicing of the room, it was very good and the mini bar was topped up daily. We visited all of the restaurants and were happy with the food in all of them but the service was mainly poor, especially in the French restaurant La Toc which is a reservation only restaurant, it was also lacking in atmosphere. Buccan was interesting, but I didn’t enjoy the food, it was more of an experience than a good meal. During the day we mainly sat around the Pitons pool and luckily the bar was only a few steps away as we only had drinks service for 2 days, but this seems normal for Sandals. Having to get up at 6.30 in the morning meant that we didn’t fancy staying up to watch the evening entertainment, and we wouldn’t have known what was going on anyway as it wasn’t really advertised – I’m sure we missed some good evenings. We did visit the two other Sandals and did prefer them over La Toc so maybe if we visited St Lucia again we would stay at one of them. The shuttle bus is handy to travel between the other sites, but one night after a meal at The Grande, we decided to get a taxi back which cost $40. Most reviews say don’t take the free airport shuttle bus but we loved it! We wished we had a hire car to drive as the road was a real driver’s road – hardly any potholes compared to the roads in the UK! It reminded us of the roads in Wales or Scotland. Overall we wouldn’t stay at this resort again, it just wasn’t relaxing – the thought of having to get up early in the morning and then the room being so far away from the main areas (and up a steep hill) but this obviously wouldn’t be the case if we’d booked a room closer to the main areas; however, it just didn’t have the relaxing vibe we look for. We did love sitting at Neptunes and hearing the waves crashing on the sand though…..

The staff was so attentive and personable. Cleus, Marissa, Igian, John, Skye, Terry, Sheldon, Lindy, Nadia, Shelton greeted us everyday with a smile by name. There were many more.

This was our first Sandals experience. We stayed for 10 nights in a Club Level room. The stay generally met our expectations but there were a few areas that in our view require attention to achieve a truly 5 star experience. Be aware that the journey from the airport is an interesting one on very windy roads up and down hills and took over an hour. Not ideal after a long flight but not helped in our case by some major road works! On the positive all the staff were great and generally couldn’t do enough for you. The food while very good probably lacked the wow factor even in the a la carte restaurants where I would suggest avoiding the 8.00 bookings if possible to ensure prompt service and to make sure all the dishes are available. The Japanese restaurant was our favorite of the a la carte restaurants. The drinks and cocktails were very good as was the waiter service around the pool where Share and Lerry deserve a special mention. The entertainment team worked very hard during the day and the evening entertainment was also quite good. Our visit coincided with the Super Bowl and Valentines Day where special events were laid on in the evening which were very good. The biggest negative was getting up every morning at 6.00am to try and secure a sun bed in a favorable location where many were secured even earlier by Butlers for their clients. We also never got the App working properly and gave up after 3 unsuccessful visits to the Customer Service team. Our overall experience certainly hasn’t deterred us from visiting a Sandals resort again and we would hope to do so in the future.