THIS PLACE IS A COMPLETE DUMP – DON’T BELIEVE
ANYTHING YOU READ ON THEIR WEBSITE
The Buccaneer, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
http://www.thebuccaneer.com/

I searched the web for the perfect winter break destination for my 7 year old daughter and myself. We wanted to go somewhere warm and beautiful to enjoy the sunshine and beaches of a tropical island. We also were interested in going to a family resort filled with kid friendly activities.

Having visited many islands in the Caribbean, I was aware of the slower pace and laid back feeling of island life and I was prepared to “go with the flow” and accept the inherent minor inefficiencies as part of the island charm.
My search led me to the Buccaneer Hotel in St. Croix. The website boasted that “The Buccaneer is a premier destination resort for golf, tennis, water sports, weddings, honeymoons and family vacations.” They listed endorsements and accolades from a number of reputable publications and people:
One of Top 25 Hotels In The Caribbean"
"One of Top 500 Hotels In The World"- Travel & Leisure Magazine
"One of the World's Top Fifty Tropical Resorts."
"Top 25, Reader's Choice Top 100 Award" - Conde Nast Traveler
"Top 20 Caribbean Resorts Platinum List" - Celebrated Living
National Geographic Traveler's "Stay List"
"Expedia Insiders Select List 2007" - expedia.com
"What a great place!" - Donald Trump on "Live with Regis and Kelly"
"One of the Best Family Resorts" - Forbes
"A superb experience." - Miami Herald
Wow – I thought this place must be pretty magical. Though the place was pricey, I felt that a one week stay in a fantastic place would be a great way to bring in the New Year. – Besides, spending money in a US territory was a good American thing to do in our tough economic times. I even sort of justified the expense by convincing myself that if everyone stops spending in these places they will not survive the economic downturn. It would be horrible to see the oldest resort in the Caribbean fail - so it would be a win-win. I would do my part and get to enjoy one of the most fabulous resorts in the world!

There were no direct flights from New York, so we flew to Puerto Rico and made our connection on an 8 passenger plane to St. Croix. Upon arrival, we took a cab from the airport to the resort, checked in at the front desk and got into a van to “tour the property.” We traveled down hill to the tennis courts and mermaid beach area and then headed down and around to our room – 307. It was described when we booked as an oceanfront deluxe room at $800 per night.

We could hardly wait to see what $800 would get us. We were sure it would be fabulous. When we arrived at 307, the driver complained, “I am so tired” and that was before he helped tote our 2 bags into the room.

“I’ll just leave your bags in the van while I show you around your room”, he said. He opened the door and moved along the floor past the dead bugs and stopped at the writing table against the wall. He pointed toward the desk and said, “here you have a telephone” and as he looked he hesitated and said … “well there is supposed to be a phone here, but it’s not. Anyway you do have one by the bed at least that one is still there.” He then looked back at the desk and said to himself, “I wonder where the phone went?” He paused and continued, “Oh well, let me show you the rest.”

He pointed to the dirty window at the front of the room and said, “And as you can see you have a beautiful view of the golf course.” As he opened the door to the patio, he said, “ This is your outdoor area to sit and relax.” The patio looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while, overgrown with weeds and littered with rusty nails.

We went back inside to the room that was supposed to have 2 queen size beds. According to the photo on the website the rooms looked bright and cheerful like you would expect on a tropical island – instead our room had an off-whitish- yellowish-brownish-tanish rundown décor with one king and a window seat with a worn, stained and torn cushion. The bed proved to be worse than it looked as the supporting board did not stay intact. When the bed fell apart, we notified the turn-down attendant. She attempted to contact someone via telephone but no one answered. She then sheepishly asked, “Do you think you could try to sleep on it anyway and we can get someone here to fix it tomorrow?” I said, “I don’t think we can sleep on it [The mattress was sagging at a 45 degree angle.] It really needs to be fixed. She looked at it again and said, “I think you are right, I’ll try to get someone to come by in an hour.” The maintenance man did come by sometime before 10 pm and pulled the bed apart and fixed the broken board. Upon putting the bed back together, he cautioned us, “Be careful, the problem is that the board was cut a bit too short and if you move too fast it will fall out again.”

So off to the rest of the room tour we went. Here is your coffee and tea service. It will be refreshed everyday. Beneath the coffee and tea service was a chest of drawers. He opened the first drawer and showed us a plastic laundry bag. “If you want to have anything washed or dry cleaned, just put it in this bag and bring it up to the front desk and they will clean it for you,” he explained. I thought to myself, “you have got to be kidding”. The front desk was at the top of a long steep hill that many guests could not climb and this guy wants me to haul my dirty laundry up there! I suggested that perhaps I could just call for someone to pick it up and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess you could do that.”

He went on to the bathroom and said, “Here is your coffee pot, you don’t have to keep it in the bathroom … you can if you want or you could put it anywhere.” He then looked at the orange can of bug spray and said, “And your bug spray is for the morning and night.”

As he left the bathroom to go get our bags, I looked at the dirty mirror, the ripped and stained shower curtain and thought, what a dump!

He arrived with our 2 wheeled bags. I tipped him twenty bucks hoping that the service would be better than the dirty and tired accommodations.

I began to unpack our suitcases and realized that there were no hangers in the closet. I called for hangers and received a dozen. We were two travelling and staying for 8 days, we had to call and request more hangers.

After unpacking, we went out to our patio and took another look. Yes, we did have a view of the golf course; but we were supposed to have an Ocean Front Deluxe room. There was nothing nice about our room and I couldn’t imagine that we were in our $800 a night luxury resort hotel room. This dirty dingy room looked worse than any road side hotel that I had stayed at during my summer travels cross country as a college student.

The next day, I went up to the front desk with a map of the property and asked the attendant to show me the ocean front rooms. He pointed to the area labeled oceanfront that was adjacent to series of rooms that included our little dump room 307. While pointing to our room, I asked, “Well is this area oceanfront too?” He confirmed that it was. I said, “But our view is the golf course, not the ocean.” He reconfirmed that they consider all the rooms along the line oceanfront.

So after a day I realized that things may be different than what they appear. I just wanted to be sure that I got what I ordered and they have confirmed that room 307 on the golf course is an oceanfront deluxe room.

Breakfast was a “complimentary buffet” served at the top of the hill from 7:30 am to 10:30 am. Our first morning trek, we arrived at breakfast at about 9:00 the hostess sat us at a table by the bar about as far as you could sit from the buffet.

We made our way to the buffet that had run out of the daily special, cereal and most of the fruits. The waitress delivered a pot of cold coffee and never returned to our table again until she delivered our check and said, “This is such a far walk.”

There was not a morning that we arrived at breakfast to a complete buffet. The water was always empty and if it wasn’t empty there were no glasses available. One morning we actually got water. My daughter went and filled two glasses and brought them to the table. I looked at mine to take the first sip and noticed it had pink lipstick on the rim – not my lipstick and not my daughter’s either. I looked at hers and it was dirty too – The toaster either burned the toast or didn’t toast at all. And though there were many empty tables close to the buffet, the hostess always attempted to put us as far away as she could and only reluctantly allowed us to sit closer to the buffet.

Overall the place had a hectic, unorganized, stressful feeling. The personnel looked unhappy and imposed upon. - Hardly a warm and inviting experience.

We managed to get our coffee pot out of the bathroom and placed it where the phone was supposed to have been. I managed to make a cup of tea for the first three days and realized on day four that our coffee/tea service had never been replenished. I called the front desk and let them know that our coffee service had not been replenished since our arrival and that we were out of tea. Housekeeping showed up with coffee and no tea. I explained that we were out of tea and she eventually returned with tea. She let me choose the tea of my liking and gave me 4 tea bags. All seemed good until the next day when the housekeeper took the tea bags.

Each morning when we left the room for breakfast at 9, we put the “please make up the room” tag on our door. For the first four days, our room was not cleaned until after 1pm. I thought; how can this be? I read the hotel information guide that outlined rooms are cleaned between 9 am and 2 pm, if you would like your room cleaned at a specific time, please dial 720. I called and requested that our room be cleaned between 9:30 and 10:30. The woman who answered took the information and then asked if I could contact housekeeping instead. I replied, “The number in the hotel guide is the number I called and you have answered and taken my request, can’t you contact your housekeeping staff and get this organized?” She responded that she could. Progress, I thought. Maybe it just takes a bit of time to get the service rolling around here.

I still find it curious that our room would be on the list of last rooms to clean each day unless I specifically requested otherwise.

The following day our room was serviced before 11am and the tea bags were taken. I called housekeeping and asked why the tea was taken and asked if I could get the tea replenished…again. Interestingly, they never provided any utensils – I tried to keep a plastic knife to stir my tea, but it too was taken on day four.

I tried to convince myself that these were isolated incidents and that the luxury resort feeling was going to reveal itself.

We went to the Grotto Beach Snack Bar for lunch. We arrived to find people seated and four empty tables. The person acting as cook-waitress-bartender told us that she didn’t have any chairs and offered, “If you would like, I can take your order and hopefully some chairs will become available by the time your food is ready.” We took the offer and placed our sandwich order. We waited 20 minutes for chairs along with a party of four that arrived a few minutes behind us. As our drinks finally arrived, the party of 4 quickly took the chairs that became available from the table next to us when that party left frustrated after waiting indefinitely for their well done burger.

I mentioned to the cook-waitress-bartender that the party after us took the chairs. She then went over to the party; apologized for the inconvenience; and asked them to get up and wait for the next chairs because there was a party ahead of them.

Needless to say, this made for an uncomfortable dining experience.. A party of four stood watching us eat as we sat in “their chairs.” An hour and change later we finished eating and waited another 20 minutes for the cook-waitress-bartender to finishing chatting with guests at a table in the shade so that we could sign for our $40 sandwiches. Again, we tipped generously hoping the service would improve.

I found it impossible to imagine how a place like this earned such a terrific reputation. I was convinced that things would get better and that the previous events were just flukes.

The following day, I decided to try my luck at the Mermaid restaurant. I ordered a banana daiquiri and a hot dog and settled into reading my book. About fifteen minutes later the drink arrived. My experience so far, indicated that was about the amount of time it took to get a drink so I considered it normal Buccaneer service.

I drank my drink and waited about another 45 minutes until the manager came by and said, “Have you received your meal yet? I know you have been here a long time.” When I told her that I was still waiting, she offered to order me another drink. Eventually the drink arrived and the cold hotdog was delivered by the waitress several minutes later. So I waited over an hour for a cold hotdog at this luxury resort. Even though I did have a chair this time; the wait was just as long. I was beginning to understand that Buccaneer service was something that I had never experienced at any other luxury resort in my life.


When the manager came to my table to asked, “Are you enjoying your meal?” I looked at her and said, “No. I waited over an hour for a hotdog that is cold. How can this be?” I explained that I had gone to the Grotto yesterday and they didn’t have enough chairs – because they were broken – and it had taken over an hour to get a sandwich from the snack bar. I decided to have lunch at the Mermaid where I thought that I may have a better chance of getting a seat and having a quick lunch. I told the waitress that I felt that this property had the worst service I had ever seen. She apologized and asked if I wanted my hotdog heated. She took the plate and returned with a heated hotdog on a soggy roll and burnt sauerkraut. I asked for the check and she said, “Don’t worry, I am sorry for this.”

So where does everyone eat lunch I thought.

We arrived on Friday, and it is now Tuesday. Every Tuesday there is a Welcome Party thrown on the lawn at the top of the hill from 5 pm – 6 pm. The owner hosts the party and I was curious to see who was managing this Hell Hole.

There is a family of five standing by the sidewalk and the wife turns to us and says, “Is this your first time here?” I respond, “Yes it is, how about for you?” She replies this is our fourth trip here. I was astonished. “Really…has the place changed a lot since your last trip?” The woman replied, “Not really, it is pretty much the same.”

I thought to myself, what am I missing? How do you come back to this place when there are so many better places in the world to stay? I told her that I found the place very run down and the service was the poorest that I have ever seen in my life. I related my lunch experiences and she told me, “We never eat at those places. Everyone knows that the Grotto and The Mermaid are horrible and then told me that they always go out to eat. The only time they eat at the Buccaneer is for the breakfast buffet because the kids like it. As she explained that we shouldn’t eat at the beach side restaurants, her three teenage kids all chimed in as said, “Yeah, those places are really gross, we never eat there.”

Again, I am confused. How do folks return to a resort again and again where they find the food unsuitable to eat?

Eventually she said, “we don’t really come here for the food or the service - our family really enjoys the beach and my kids are all water rats so we find this place so easy to come and spend the day in the water.”

I thought to myself that there are lots of great beaches and many on the island outside of the Buccaneer resort. Why spend $800+ bucks a night to stay at a place that has horrible food and horrible service?

As I spoke to this nice family, the manager came between us and bent down to pick up an empty glass from the sidewalk. We all look at him strangely as he wedged himself between the woman and me and bent over. I thought to myself, if the manager finds it appropriate to bend over wedged between two women speaking to each other, how surprised should I be about the way this place is run?

My daughter wanted to attend the Kid Camp. I went with my daughter and watched as the counselor had seven kids from ages 3-8 in a swimming pool. There was no lifeguard and she had three kids who could not swim wearing life vests in water over their heads. I wondered what happens if one kid needs help? What if someone starts choking? – there is no other adult around. One woman in water with seven kids – and three of them wouldn’t obey the counselor. I gave the counselor a lot credit for tremendous effort, but I cannot imagine why the property would put such responsibility on one person and take such a risk with the lives of children.

The folks at the Kids’ Camp were nice. Overworked, underpaid, under appreciated and visibly frustrated with the lack of management. Each day seemed to offer a different type of frustration. The kids’ meals were late because the kitchen was short staffed. The Kids Camp was short staffed because they needed a beach attendant. The beach attendant was frustrated because there weren’t any clean towels. The water stand usually was out of water and getting a drink required waiting indefinitely. The Grotto cook was frustrated because they ran out of sandwich rolls. The ice machine leaked – the chairs were broken and the beach attendant wasn’t certified so they couldn’t let anyone use the kayaks.

My experience with the concierge was equally disturbing. He couldn’t answer any questions about what to do, where to go or where to eat without checking with someone else or looking it up in a book. After realizing this guy was rather new to the job, I asked how long he had worked there and he told me he had been there less than a year. From what I understood, he didn’t need to know the island or even have concierge experience to sit in that chair; he had been a bartender in North Carolina and was really getting burnt out and needed a change. He applied at the Buccaneer and got the job… shuttle driver, front door attendant and yes when the seat was vacant he was a concierge too. I am not sure how he performed his other jobs, but he was uninformed about the activities on the property and any scheduled events.

Never have I ever witnessed such visible chaos. The place was poorly maintained, poorly provisioned, poorly staffed and just plain dirty. The employees were miserable and from what I gathered while there, many of the employees were new and inexperienced, old and tired or suffering from short timers syndrome – their days were numbered and they had plans to leave within the next days or weeks. From what I understand some of them called in sick the week we visited the Buccaneer leaving the place short staffed.

The dirty room took its toll on me and eventually I just borrowed a bottle of Windex from the unattended maid’s cart that sat outside of our room for the better part of a day and cleaned the sinks and counter in the bathroom and the mirrors and table in our room. I weeded the patio and left a couple of rusty nails on the patio table – they were still on the patio when we checked out days later.

On this 340 acre property it does have golf and tennis – and the views are spectacular. Tennis or a game of golf may not be so bad at this place, however that doesn’t provide any reason to actually stay at the Buccaneer. Perhaps stop to play and go elsewhere to eat, shower and sleep.

It’s such a shame to have a beautiful location in the heart of the US Virgin Islands run like a roadside no frills motel on US Route 66. With three eating locations – the Terrace restaurant at the top of the hill serving a lame buffet breakfast until 10:30 am and dinner -reservations required - from 5:30-9:30 pm; not enough chairs lunch at the Grotto noon – 5 pm; and Mermaid lunch – plenty of room but couldn’t manage to get both sufficient wait staff and cooking staff at the same time. You couldn’t get room service or restaurant service anytime after 9:30 pm. The general store did have snacks but closed daily by 6pm. Though they had a mini fridge in the room, they didn’t even have a mini bar. Food was generally hard to come by and generally bad when you could actually get it.

A few days into our stay, I decided to enjoy the beach, sit in the sun and read a book. I felt that if I avoided the services, I could not be disappointed. So at about 10:45 am I headed over to the Grotto Beach and attempted to get a beach towel, of course, there were none so I just went down to the beach and grabbed a lounge. Just as I arranged my chair in the position of the shining sun and settled myself into the chair with my book in hand, I heard the grinding and whizzing of a gas powered mower. I looked up from my book and saw a gardener with an industrial weed wacker grooming the area adjacent to the beach. After a half hour, I realized that this guy was going to be a while. So I got up and decided to move to the dirty weed infested patio of room 307. Incredibly, by the time I arrived at the patio, only moments later the lawn maintenance man also made his way within ear shot of the patio at room 307. He continued mowing for the next hour or so.


Though I did make my concerns known, it did little good. They attempted to offer to change our room on the 5th day of our stay, but I couldn’t imagine that the service of the place would change. It couldn’t be just room 307 that was dirty. The restaurants couldn’t be targeting us specifically to offer bad service. We couldn’t be the only ones being offered dirty glasses. I don’t think that they specifically ran out of clean towels or dining chairs just for folks in room 307. So the repacking and unpacking for the remaining two and a half days at this hell hole hardly seemed worth the effort. We didn’t get a discount and received no apology other than “Ohhh, we are sorry that you weren’t able to enjoy your stay.”

If you are looking for lousy service, lousy food, employees with a bad attitude, a dirty room, broken furniture, insufficient beach equipment, an inexperienced and uninformed concierge, a complete lack of service and you are willing to pay $800+ bucks a night – I am sure there is a broken bed with a worn out comforter waiting for you at the Buccaneer.