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Aruba Hotel, Resort & Villa Reviews
Bucuti Beach Resort 09/22/2003
Reviewers Rating:  Excellent
What a wonderful location and beach! This hotel is small and peaceful. There are no "childrens' clubs" or water sports. It is for those who want a beach getaway.
There is plenty of shade on the beach from palm trees and thatched huts. Fortunately these are scattered randomly and NOT aligned in rows like at the high rise end of Aruba. Your nearest neighbor is 25-30 feet away. They give you red flags to plant in the sand when you want lunch or drink service on the beach. Happy hour 4-6 PM (two drinks for the price of one) is accompanied by live steel drum music.
The one negative is the construction of suites that is going on. In the future there will be a 4-5 story building blocking the view from one side of the hotel.
Be careful when booking "deluxe" rooms. The hotel has some rooms that do not face the beach directly which they've designated as "deluxe" because they have two queen sized beds. Be sure to ask for rooms facing the beach. When we arrived we were disappointed in the room on the side facing the construction and complained. The office manager worked it out so that we had rooms on the front for our week. Even though it meant two moves during the week it was worth it to us. The hotel staff made the move easy with minimal inconvenience.
The rooms have a microwave, minibar and freezer/fridge as well as coffee makers and tea. They restock the minibar daily. We chose to go to the supermarket and buy our own beer, sodas and snacks instead of using the minibar....lots cheaper that way.
I wouldn't bother with the meal plan (which you can purchase when you check in) unless you eat huge meals. They have a "dine around" meal plan which lets you go to several different restaurants for dinner, but all the breakfasts (including champagne) are at the hotel in the Pirates' Nest Restaurant on the beach. You can get the breakfasts individually rather than buying the meal plan which requires a miniumum of 3 days on the plan. Dinners include appetizer, entree, desert and coffee. Some restaurants will charge you extra if you have tea instead of coffee on their meal plan (Ex: Old Cunucu House charged us $3.00 extra for one hot tea and one iced tea even though we had no coffee and only one dessert for two people on the dinner plan.)
The staff at Bucuti is friendly and efficient. It's a great place to go if you want to feel like you've a home on a beautiful beach.If you like lots of action go to the high rise end.
Be warned that Aug.-Oct. is their hottest season. Hurricane Isabel drew the Trade Winds away from the island for a couple of days. I heard that it reached 39 degrees C (102F) on one day and there was no breeze. Hot, hot, hot! The winds returned and things were much better. However in Sept. I found it to be hotter on Aruba than when I've been there in Feb. and April.
Carol
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