Reviewers Rating: 
Great
We stayed for 5 nights in November 2002 at this Marriott. I found prices on-line at Marriott.com for as little as $149 per night for a gardenview room....but since I'm a Priceline fanatic, I tried Priceline to see if I could get the room for even less than that. I won the room on Priceline with a $86 per night bid. Priceline rooms are often in the bowels of the property (usually the cheapest rooms). We were pleasantly surprised when we found our room not only had a balcony that overlooked a landscaped area and gazebo, but also had a perfect view of the ocean beyond the garden. It would definitely have qualified as an oceanview room. We chose this resort and this island because we are divers and Curacao is supposed to have particularly good shore diving. There was an on-site dive shop, Carib Sea Sports, that was very accommodating. **See separate review of dive facility** In addition to renting water-fun equipment (snorkels, water skis, etc) they offered daily dive trips. We learned that there were only a few divers staying at the resort that week, so we had several private dives with Carib Sea Sports. We did a one-tank afternoon boat dive. The only other patrons on the boat were two snorkelers, so we had the dive master to ourselves. The next day we signed up for a morning two-tank dive, but it was canceled due to inclement weather preventing them from taking the boat out. So a dive master drove us in her truck with all the necessary equipment to a wonderful shore-diving spot and we were still able to make 2 dives at that reef location. Our last dive was on our own on the Marriott house reef, which was a wonderful reef just a few strokes from the beach.
I think it was considered off season while we were there, because there were hardly any resort activities offered. This is not a priority for me, but it's nice to have a few planned activities on the nights we stayed around the resort. Off season meant that the on-site restaurants were not open for every meal either. One of the restaurants, The Palm Cafe, was serving breakfast only and was closed for other meals, which reduced our on-site meal options. We did eat at the resort for most of the trip. Voila is an open-aire restaurant in the lobby. Eats included salads, sandwiches, take-out items, etc. We ate lunch there several times - the Brie sandwich with arugula and English raisin chutney was to die for. We had dinner one night at the Italian restaurant, Portofino. Excellent service and yummy entrees. Average prices of $16-$23, which is typical for a 'nicer' restaurant. We ate indoors, but there was also a lovely outdoor patio with tropical plants with white lights that overlooked the illuminated pool area at night. Quite pretty. Another dinner was at the Seabreeze Bar deck. The Seabreeze bar itself offered casual fare at lunchtime and their deck offered something a little nicer (overlooking the waves hitting the beach) after 6pm. The deck restaurant didn't have its own kitchen, but shared the kitchen facilities of the breakfast only restaurant, The Palm Cafe. Food at the Seabreeze Deck was average and the prices a little high, so we only ate there one time. We did, however, visit the Seabreeze bar (including swim-up access) daily for their Happy Hour from 4pm-6pm. Drinks were significantly reduced ($3.25 USD for fru fru drinks and $2.25 for canned beer). Significantly cheaper than the hotel mini bar prices of $4.50 for an 8 oz. can of Amstel Light!
I mentioned that we often ate at the resort, and that was because we hadn't rented a car and it was expensive to get into town via taxi. The Marriott does offer two free shuttle trips daily to town...one departing the hotel at 9AM with a 12PM pickup and an afternoon trip out at 2PM and back by 6pm. We took advantage of the free shuttle a few times, but the shuttle never went into town at meal times (probably smart of the hotel management....a way to get guests to eat at the hotel!). We did go into town on our own via taxi one evening for dinner, but it was $10 each way...so it wasn't something you could do every meal.
Lastly, I'll mention the casino. Not crowded at all and not too smoky. We played slots for a couple hours total one night and one afternoon. A glass of Amstel on draught were $1 USD in the casino! Great slots: all of them were 5, 10 or 25 cent machines. Lots of nickel machines, which are usually rare. Even some 1 cent Keno games. We didn't play any table games. They even had some $1 Florin (local currency equivalent to 60 cents US) machines, so we got rid of a little bit of local currency at those slots while waiting for our taxi to the airport.
Overall, a great resort. We would definitely stay there again. The only things I'd do differently would be (1) rent a car to get to town for meals and also to get to several of the locations around the island where the shore diving (and snorkeling) was supposedly really good....and (2) I'd visit the Centrum Supermarket about 5 miles from the hotel and stock up on sandwich fixings and beer. A fellow guest told us that the housekeeping staff would empty out the room's minibar for a one-time only $25 fee so that it could be used as a fridge. We racked up quite a mini-bar tab, and it would have been great to have stocked up on groceries at the beginning of the week.
Christine Brandt
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