This was my second trip to Provo. My first trip was 3 years ago and I stayed at the Ocean Club West. I chose to stay at the Sands this time because I visited the resort when I was there last and enjoyed the restaurant and staff seemed friendly. Also everyone seems to say positive things about the Sands.



Well honestly, I was not impressed. First of all when I got there I didn't have a reservation. They cancelled it. What happened was I booked a package, but the return flight was wrong so I had to cancel and rebook the entire trip. When the Sands got the cancellation request from travelocity they cancelled both reservations! Well the positive thing was that I did wind up getting a free upgrade.

As planned, I did spend most of my time on the beach and at the resort. I had a very hard time getting a washcloth from housekeeping. They never left one when they serviced the room or in the evening during the 'turndown' service. When I asked for one they would say they didn't have any. I wound up reusing quite a few of them. One day I caught up with a housekeeper and she gave me four washcloths. I hid them in my suitcase because I knew I wouldn't be getting anymore. And sure enough I didn't get anymore.

One evening I was going to sit on the sofa in my room to read a book. I sat on the sofa only to discover it smelled very bad. Smelled like dirty, soiled clothes had been sitting on it for a while. The housekeeper came the next day and attempted to clean it, but to no avail. I didn't sit on the sofa anymore.

One morning my toilet broke and wouldn't flush. I took the top off to see that the chain was broken. Even though I thought housekeeping might report the problem once they saw the lid was off, I decided to report it to the front desk. Amazingly when I got back to my room at 5pm, the toilet was still broken (and housekeeping had been there). I had to go to the housekeeping manager to get the toilet fixed.

I used the gym daily to fight off the vacation pounds. The air-conditioning in the gym was broken all week long. The resident manager told me they had to order a part from somewhere (not on the island). On top of that, often times the water dispenser in the gym wasn't working. So you were suffocating and thirsty.

My last complaint the wait staff didn't come to the beach often enough to take drink orders. They came between 0 and 2 times in a 6 or 7 hour timespan.

In general, I would say 30 to 40 percent of the staff acted like they didn't want to be there. I did wind up talking to a few of the locals and they complained about the influx of folks from other islands and Asia taking all the jobs. Maybe this has something to do with the sometimes less than happy staff. There were a couple of other service issues that I won't bother mention, you get the picture. The place all dressed up, but the service needs improvement.

I would say the positive elements of the trip were as follows:

In general, the restaurant is pretty good (especially the dinner specials)

Gardens are beautiful and kept up well.

Weather was pretty good. Wednesday it did get very windy and everyone had to leave the beach, but after that the days got better and better.

The room was very nice although I think they need to schedule a monthly scrubdown for the rooms where they clean all the corners and crevices, etc