looking for initial direction to all inclusives on turks and caicos? or saint thomas? the idea is going to where aa has direct flights too, and planting ourselves on a beach for a week...

Neither are great for AI.
Turks has Beaches and Club Med. It's know for it's fantastic restaurants, so AI aren't the most popular, plus very expensive.
St. Thomas has 1 AI that is not on the greatest of beaches.
You may want to look into: Punta Cana, Mexico, and Bahamas, which are know for AIs.

Besides Wyndham Sugar Bay, Bolongo Bay Beach Club is also all-inclusive & the food is good. The resort is not fancy but it's right on the beach.

http://www.bolongobay.com/

We stayed at Beaches Turks & Caicos last year with 2 kids aged 7 and 9 and really enjoyed it. Beach was great - one of the nicest I've been on and safe for kids. Can snorkel & scuba there too.
We visited St Thomas via a cruise earlier in 2005, so didn't stay. Water offshore got deeper more quickly and were generally busier than T&C, but still nice.

We stayed at the Wyndahm Sugar Bay on St. Thomas in May, 2005. We chose the AI package and it was fine. The food at the buffet was good. Didn't care for the ala cart restaurant. Drinks were good and plentiful. The mango daquires were very good. Didn't much care for the lay out of the hotel. It's huge and quite spread out, but it was $200 cheaper than Bolongo Bay. I understand the the Marriot/Morning Star properties are offering some type of meal plan. Those properties get good reviews.

We did not go AI in Turks & Caicos this past May and regretted it. We couldn't do Beaches due to 1.) price and 2.) too many kids for our taste. We debated long and hard on staying at Club Med and decided against it due to all the reviews. It was a mistake for us. We ended up staying at the Sibonne, which was great, but the food/drinks prices were too high IOHO. After that trip, we will not go non-AI anymore unless it's just not offered.

interesting...i was looking into the sibonne, seems nice but expensive. after reading these notes, we are now looking into tortola...even though we'd have to connect. thanks!

We started out looking for AIs on those islands as well, but gave up.

I have nothing to say about T&C that hasn't been said, it's Beaches and Club Med.

As far as St. Thomas, we looked at both the Wyndham Sugar Bay (turned off by the steps and the beach didn't look great) and Bolongo (turned off by negative reviews.)

Look into the Mariott Morning Star / Frenchman's Reef on St. Thomas. They offer an all-inclusive option and it looked like a beautiful property.

otto: does it have to be AI?
Tortola doesn't have any either.
We can recommend a good beach vacation "corona commercial" or if you want AI, other islands that concentrate on AI.

blamona...no, it was just our original thought. now, we are actually looking to do a tortola/jost van dyke camping thing to keep costs down. thank you for all responses!