Honeymoon in Tahiti
 

We are planning our honeymoon for late august and are very interested in Tahiti and Moorea. We know we would like to stay in an overwater bungalow. Has anyone stayed at The Beachcomer Parkroyal in Tahiti or the new Shearton on Moorea. So far, these are our choices, but I would like some suggestions or warnings! We abosultely would like the bungalow to be clean and have a bathroom. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks! :o) <BR>

I have heard good things about the Moorea Sheraton. We just got back from the Pearl Beach Resort in Bora Bora, which was amazing. Spend as little time as possible on the island of Tahiti - it's just for layovers. Good luck!

my wife and i spent our honeymoon at the hotel bora bora, moorea beachcomer, and a final two nites on tahiti. i would absolutely recommend that you go to bora bora and stay there. there's no reason to bop around to different islands. on bora bora we spent 4 days doing the 4x4 tour, renting wave runners, taking out a charter for snorkeling and biking the island. it would be very easy to spend the remaining time just relaxing. <BR> <BR>the hotel bora bora was incredible....very layed back, great service, friendly, manicured grounds, immaculate rooms, and good food. also we stayed in one of the deep overwater bungalows which is tough to beat....just slipped off our back deck for some snorkeling. <BR> <BR>on moorea we originally checked into the sofitel which was unbearably dirty. we were forced to eat a dinner there (inedible) and stay for a night but then switched to the beachcomber. we had a garden villa at the beachcomber (harry connick and his family were there at the time filming "south pacific" so my wife was happy) and overall the resort is nice, with good food and the cool dolphin shows. however, moorea does not hold a candle to bora bora. <BR> <BR>we thought it was worthwile decompressing in tahiti for two nites and the beachcomber there is quite nice....great restaurant (lotus i think), nice pools, and new rooms. we also took an afternoon jaunt into papeete (market wasn't that interesting but it's nice to check out their city). <BR> <BR>have a great time.

Thanks for the responses. <BR> <BR>jd - Can you tell me any more about the Beachcomber on Moorea? I am looking at pictures, which look beautiful, but I am still skeptical. Were the grounds clean and farily new looking? I've heard a lot about NOT staying at an older resort. From my research on the Beachcomer, some of the rooms & OWB were renovated in the 1990's. Any insight would be most helpful! :o)

the rooms at the parkroyal were certainly nice enough...clean and well kept. we were in a garden villa and friends we met were in an owb that was just as nice. the grounds of the hotel were absolutely well kept, as was the beach and dock. my wife and i are both fairly sensitive to cleanliness (especially having escaped the sofitel which was downright nauseating) and there were no problems at the parkroyal. <BR> <BR>having been at the hotel bora bora prior to the parkroyal, the key drawback was that moorea overall did not have the same magic. the waterways at the parkroyal are manmade and although the dolphin quest is interesting, it always draws a crowd with cameras. as a result, the island and hotel did not have the "end of the earth" feel of bora bora. also - and i have no explanation for this - the natives on bora bora seemed to us to be more friendly and open than those on moorea. <BR> <BR>to drone on a bit more....my recommendation would be to skip moorea all together and go to bora bora. split your time between the owb's and a less expensive garden villa - at the hotel bora bora villas on the beach were ideal and essentially provided a private sliver of sand. <BR> <BR>hope some of this diatribe helps. <BR> <BR>once again, enjoy your trip.

We just got back from our honeymoon which we spent a week on Moorea and had an excellent time. We stayed at the Sheraton - and if you do go to Moorea (which again, we thought was wonderful - but we didn't go to Bora Bora) I suggest the Sheraton. We originally booked at the Beachcomber - but kept hearing bad things about it. We finally decided to switch when we realized that our overwater bungalow was not really overwater - not like the Sheraton. We visited the Beachcomber while we were there and didn't think the two hotels even compared. The Sheraton had a much more smaller, island type feel to it whereas the Beachcomber felt more 'Americanized'. The overwater bugalows at the Sheraton were very much over water - with a large window in the floor of your bungalow that lets you see the most amazing fish! When we switched hotels (we also switched travel agents because we had such a bad one) we lost our $200 deposit - and once we were there we realized it was completely worth it. Either way - you'll have a great time, I think it's impossible not to in FP, but if the additional cost is okay for you - I can't say enough about how much we liked the Sheraton...

Amy, on another board, someone said the showers LEAKED all over the bathroom floors at the Sheraton! Did you have this problem as well?

We are also thinking about a honeymoon in FP in March and can't decide where to go or what to do- Bora Bora is a definite and we will probably stay in a OW bungalow- but we would like to go for more than a week and I think that more than a week at one place will get to be too much- we want to see more!! Where else can we go that's interesting and different?

Bill, <BR>That is in fact true about the showers leaking...sort of... <BR> <BR>When we first arrived at the Sheraton we had a garden room they let us use to take a shower and relax in. That shower had a raised ledge along the floor where the doors came together - so no water could get out. But in our overwater bungalow (where I had heard on another message board that there were problems with the shower) there was no raised ledge or anything on the floor. The entire bathroom floor was on one even level and the shower was in the corner with glass doors (kind of like french doors) that shut together - though they don't lock together or anything. So water comes down from the shower head, most of it drains into the drain - but some drains right off under the shower doors and onto the bathroom floor. It was very weird - we couldn't figure out how the people constructing it didn't figure it out in the overwater bungalows even though they had in the garden ones...Anyways, it really wasn't a problem at all - we keep the bathmat down on the floor by the shower doors - and it worked fine soaking up any water that drained out. The maid service removed the wet bathmat eveyday and left a new bathmat along with towels every evening. There was never any water collecting in the bathroom area or anything. We didn't think twice about it really - except to laugh at the strangeness of it.

I had my honeymoon in March in Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea. We stayed in the Beachcomber in Tahiti and I agree with a previous comment--just stay there as a stopover as it does not have the same feel as the other islands. On Moorea, we were originally supposed to stay at the Beachcomber, but they were renovating the OW bungalows and sent us to the Sheraton. We didn't have any problems with the showers and it was, by far, the most advanced of the island hotels. They had A/C, CD player, etc. in each bungalow. We visited the Beachcomber for the Dolphin Quest and also noticed that their OW bungalows weren't truly OW like the Sheraton's. We found Moorea in general to have more bugs, so bring bug spray. In Bora Bora, we stayed at the Beachcomber and absolutely loved it! The service was great and it wasn't too crowded. It was our favorite stop by far even though the OW bungalows didn't have A/C, so I definitely recommend spending most of your time there. All of our bunglows were OW and very clean, so don't be concerned with that.

thanks for all the info! We just booked our honeymoon tonight for 5 nights in Moorea at the Sheraton in a beach bungalow and 4 nights in Bora Bora at the Pearl Beach Resort OWB. We are very excited, but concerned about the cost of food and everything else on the islands. So far, our honeymoon is costing us more than we had anticipated and we aren't even there yet!! YIKES! <BR> <BR>Any suggestions on cutting costs for meals and excursions? Any excursions not worth the cost?? Please let us know. Thanks!

Make sure to do a text search on the islands individually as I think there was lots of good discussion here last year. I doubt if much changes in FP!We loved BB. I would have been happy to stay there the whole week! Our OWB WAS over water in Moorea (ParkRoyalBC).It was clean (a bit outdated though..) I guess we were lucky!Tahiti was not a place we especially enjoyed. We were not really there that long though. Don't miss the shark feeding trip. Petting the Manta Rays was great too. We really enjoyed lunch on the motu after the shark feedeing excursion. I thoughtthe 4-wheel to the waterfall was (painful) and boring (greasy stream of water). I really loved our driver though. She introduced us to her children. Remember gifts for the children! It's expensive to get things from the mainland so they are very appreciative.we really didn't spend that much on food. Just go to the market and get supplies. Breakfast is usually your best bet as far as getting your money's worth on food.There is a Soiree (show and meal) on the beach that is quite incredible... all you can eat. It was pretty expensive, I enjoyed the setting more than the meal and show. It was worth it to eat on the beach though. Come prepared to spend for that one though!It was on Moorea at the Park Royal.

Jackie,<BR><BR>We were at the Sheraton on Moorea for 7 days, and we found a couple ways to cut costs...We went to the supermarket (the only one on the island - just south of the ferry terminal). We bought some french bread, a couple kinds of cheeses, soda, and other snacks (room service breakfast was costing us almost $20 a person - and all we really wanted was a bagel!) We also bought lots of bottled water and Hinano beer (the bottled water was costing over $3 at the bar or gift shop - the beers about $4). <BR><BR>Also, a couple of restaurants near the Sheraton pick you up for free, have much quicker service than at the hotel restaurant, are really terrific - and cost less than the hotel restaurant(we usually spent about $40 to $95 on dinner for the both of us - depending on alcohol). We ate at Alfredo's (really loved their shrimp scampi), Te Hono Iti (food was great - we spent only $35 total after the exchange rate on our credit card - for the very best shrimp curry and mahi mahi ever - no alcohol), and Caprice de Ilse (sorry, I know my spelling is way off). We never got to eat at a roulette (little road side stand) we never saw one - but heard those are great places to eat and very affordable (compared to everything else).<BR><BR>Our favorite excursion was the circle island tour (by boat) with a motu picnic, snorkeling and string ray feeding. We didn't go - but we heard from many people that the food at the Tiki Village Show was not good - and to just see the show - not go for dinner as well. We didn't take any tours that included being driven around the island to stop at all the tourist stops. We had a great time doing that by ourselves - we went to all the different sites the guidebooks mentioned - plus a few of our own - by renting a little air conditioned Panda Fiat (I think it was) for $70 for 24 hours (a four hour tour would have cost us more than that and only did about half the things we did). Going around the island with no stops only takes you about an hour - so 24 hours was plenty for us. We spent the day seeing all the sites there was to see - and the next morning we went shopping at the little villages/shopping areas we had spotted the day before, to buy our gifts for everyone.<BR><BR>Oh yeah, we also brought a bottle of rum with us in our carry-on (lots of great juices you can mix with). We thought it would just be nice to have in our room - but we wished we had brought more alcohol. Besides mixed drinks at the Sheraton costing about $8 or more - they weren't good! No one seemed to know how to make a good Pina Colada, Vodka and Tonic or anything else. We were glad we could make a couple of our own drinks in our room - and at the bar we just always ordered beers...<BR><BR>Hope some of this helps, it was great remembering our honeymoon again for a couple of minutes while I wrote this. We had an incredible time - just don't let the costs bother you too much and end up affecting your trip. It's expensive there - but not anymore than any big city.<BR><BR>p.s. when we were staying at the Sheraton (June 3-11) their exchange rate was 127 CFP to the US$. We charged almost everything to our credit cards and the exchange rate ended up being 139 CFP to the $1.