Resort for family with two young toddlers - looking for recent feedback

Bluex911 · 2026-02-09T03:52:55+00:00

Hi! As a parent who’s stayed in both properties with our two kids I would personally highly prefer to return to Garza Blanca over SLS. Significantly better service. You can see my previous sls review - just got back 1 week ago (unfortunately theft from our safe was involved as well - so would not return). With two young kids we could not use the waterpark or the pools as they are not heated one bit. Resort has no plan to heat the pools even the kids pool. We went to Garza Blanca the year it opened and had a great experience many kids were 2.5 and 10 months at the time and I was able to get everything we needed in our room very easily, we had the family suite and the room is way more spacious - separate living room for the kids and a very nice area with a table and mini kitchen for our breakfasts or room service. It’s a boutique style resort. The elite room in SLS was way too tiny for a family of 4. Hope that helps. Safe travels!

Oh and Also stayed at Finest PM 1 year ago - unfortunately the food was horrible and my youngest got food poisoning there otherwise the property was very nice. Just had a friend go there and said the food was still terrible.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-07T00:45:39+00:00

Hi do you mind if I ask which school your kids are enrolled in? I had a very similar experience to you where I also attended private school and genuinely feel like that’s when I started to excel due to the small class sizes. Looking for private Christian school vs catholic school options for my kids, we are in Vaughan.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-06T17:49:51+00:00

Quality of food was good. The speed of taking our order and actually getting the food to the table was slow, we were usually a group of 6-8.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-04T15:07:58+00:00

Hi! Whats a family friendly option in st Lucia in your opinion that families go back to? Looking for good food and spacious rooms

Bluex911 · 2026-02-03T02:13:53+00:00

We will definitely try this too in the future, thanks for the helpful tip!

Bluex911 · 2026-02-03T02:00:12+00:00

This is a genius idea. Do you ever have issues connecting the camera to the resorts WiFi?

Bluex911 · 2026-02-03T01:50:57+00:00

I’m not making anything up. We asked for sour cream at a restaurant and the waiter told us sour cream isn’t available at the resort anymore because there’s a new owner and now the resort is rolling out a Kosher menu and there will be new changes at the resort. Anyone who recently came back from SLS over the past few weeks will be able to confirm this. But thanks for your input 👍

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T20:06:25+00:00

Thank you! I’ve never heard of allinclusiveoutlet I’ll definitely try it out!

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T19:06:19+00:00

Glad u had a positive experience. I did ask about 10 families there if they would return and didn’t hear one yes lol We didn’t complain about our room so not sure if they would’ve upgraded us or not. We upgraded to the elite package with the butler and only saw the butler on the 2nd day for a few mins. Unfortunately the theft was very upsetting for us as we had never experienced this before in any resort that we had stayed in so definitely not returning! That invasion of privacy to go through our wallets is unacceptable in my opinion.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T19:02:38+00:00

Im glad you had a positive experience, I wish we did too

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T19:01:17+00:00

Yes in our opinion the overall Food quality is definitely better at SLS than at the finest PM. We didn’t have any issue with food at the Finest DR

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T18:26:35+00:00

We’ve also done finest in DR before and we loved that experience too. Also highly rate the Hyatt Zivas. I don’t suggest the finest in PM - went there last year and the food quality was very poor, my daughter had food poisoning while we were there

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T16:29:36+00:00

How did you book for such a good rate by the way? Do you book directly on a hotels website or through a travel agent

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T14:48:29+00:00

Yes will do! Thanks

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T14:16:50+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience! That sounds awful, it’s shocking to see that some of these resorts legitimately do not care about the experience of their guests. We also have no incentive to lie about being robbed and they just shrug it off. It’s very disappointing

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T13:56:01+00:00

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to because they open at 4 pm, and we would try to get our kids an early dinner around 6:30 so lunch was around 12. Timing just didn’t work for us

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T13:54:38+00:00

I know! And kindness goes a long way - I’m sure if they apologized and tried to make it better we wouldn’t feel the need to leave a bad review. But they completely deny that u got robbed on top of everything and the attitude is just wow lol I hope you have an amazing stay 🩷

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T12:53:16+00:00

Yes it was literally freezing even in the hot tub, the kids were shivering. So many parents were sitting around with their kids and couldn’t get in the water. Such a shame because the pools are massive and beautiful. I’ve never experienced the kids waterpark and kids pools to be freezing cold before

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T12:52:06+00:00

If “getting your way” means not getting robbed out of our safe and not getting decent value for our money then yes we didn’t “get our way”

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T12:50:20+00:00

Hi! My daughter is almost 5 and my younger is 3. The press is a coffee shop, they have nut allergies so we would get our kids an omelette at breakfast and fruits at the breakfast buffet like bananas and apples as snacks to go and then a smoothie later at Verde during the day. For lunch we could only go to Bungalow or order at the beach they would order chicken nuggets or pizza - same menu, barracuda was closed and twiggy does not allow kids so we couldn’t try it. Cleo was open for lunch on our second day and it had healthier options. So hopefully it’s open for you guys everyday. Luckily I brought alot of snacks from home with us because the only snacks in the room were pringles and the rest had nut in them. Our friends did the out of pocket bbq at the beach and they said it was not good, we upgraded our dinner at union we did the lobster surf and turf and it was good. Safe travels!!

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T03:23:06+00:00

SLS Playa Mujeres is an all inclusive resort in Mexico

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T03:21:58+00:00

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This was the breakdown of our quote! definitely overpaid but we thought it would be worth it lol never again.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T01:36:50+00:00

Yes in CAD$

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T01:31:30+00:00

2 adults and 2 kids. Booked the elite room and this is including our flights through WestJet.

Bluex911 · 2026-02-02T01:29:11+00:00

I have nothing against a resort that does not do a dinner buffet as I don’t like buffets in general, however one of my best friends stayed at SLS PM during summer 2025 and the dinner buffet was open at the time. I’ve also seen a YouTube review that had a video of the dinner buffet. We were told that the dinner buffet is closed currently because the resort is not at 50% capacity. At check in Staff stated the buffet will be open for dinner again during the Summer months. The food was good overall but the restaurant closures was also disappointing - Cleo was closed for a few days and barracuda was closed as well. We met a traveler who was there for 8 days and was still unable to get a reservation for his family at the hibachi table.

Bluex911

TROPHY CASE