Review of The Ritz-Carlton, Aruba 5*

The location is wonderful. The beach being right there is phenomenal and gorgeous. However, while celebrating our honeymoon, the service is quite underwhelming from the staff unless you very clearly are loaded — which respectfully and understandably, many guests are. 3 days in a row on the beach we were ignored and bypassed by servers for whatever reason, while they tended to larger groups. Today (Sunday June 12th) we waited an entire hour for someone to roll up to us on their Segway asking if we needed anything. Mind you, this was after they kicked us over to their secondary beach and said they’d send someone over to set us up (which never happened, we had to walk around flagging someone else down until someone finally set us up after 20 minutes of waiting). And this was one day after we waited 45 minutes to close out on our modest, 3 item bill (we are not big drinkers). Furthermore, the spa, which the massage therapists were absolutely wonderful, had very snobby employees who made the pre-massage experience very uncomfortable for us. They saved it a little bit by surprising us a with chocolate covered strawberries, champagne, and a congratulations showcase — THAT was very nice. That was one manager at the spa — the hotel itself did nothing for us for our honeymoon. Very disappointing service overall. I will give 2 out of 5 stars because a lot of staff there truly is very nice and wonderful. But too many just passed over us, were rude or snobby, etc. Island is incredible, but we will never stay at this Ritz again. A complete ripoff, and unless you’re clearly very wealthy (we do pretty well but don’t flaunt it) you will not get the attention that the prices you’ll pay will dictate.