Reviewers Rating: 
Good
We stayed at the Papillon for 6 nights. Overall the resort was pretty good. All meals and drinks/cocktails are included. Here are the details. Rooms. We spent half our stay in a standard room and the other half in a superior room. Standard rooms have extremely small stall-type showers with no virtually no water pressure, the outlets cannot handle hair dryers (and there are none included in the room), have A/C, no television, are fairly large with good closet space, a porch or terrace, and poor views. Superior rooms have "normal" bathrooms, hair dryer built in, cable TV (with many American cable channels including HBO and Cinemax), A/C, nice views depending on the room, a large porch, and are larger than standard rooms. Some have high (10-12') vaulted ceilings. We found the superior room to be very nice and the standard room to be unacceptable because of the shower and hair dryer situation.
Water Sports. Included free are: Sailing, Hobie catamaran sailboats and kayaking. Inexpensive lessons are available. The following motorized water sports are available: Waterskiing, wakeboarding, kneeboarding, banana boat rides, tube rides (lots of fun!), parasailing. The fees for these are surpisingly inexpensive (e.g., $12 for a few waterskiing laps of the interior bay) and inexpensive lessons are also available. Jet skiis can be rented on the beach privately for US $20/15 minutes. Overall this was the best part of the resort. Daily scuba demonstrations for non-certified divers by St. Lucia Scuba. Must pass the demonstration to go on their Resort Dive, which includes some training, safety videos, transfers via boat to and from dive site, lunch, and a 30-40 minute dive in 10-30 feet of water for $95 (well worth it!!).
Beach. On the best beach in St. Lucia, relatively uncrowded and waves are generally gentle enough to allow for water recreation (less than 1 foot high). However, the last 2 days the waves were 5-7 feet high, when combined with the undertoe, closed down all water recreation at the Papillon and all the other hotels on the beach. Beach is quite small but very nice.
Food. All meals are included and are buffet style. Breakfast food was often not very good (e.g., they can't make acceptable pancakes) and generally consisted of the same thing every day. Included machine juice, cereal, fruits, eggs, potatoes and an omlette station which was excellent. Lunch and dinner are often very similar and repetitive. Always included local fish which was excellent, and usually chicken and pork and/or some other meat. Always included vegetarian dishes and vegetables. Deserts were not good at all and sometimes one could not tell what the dish was supposed to be. The food was very flavorful, especially the meats and fish, though it was often simple. Bar is open from 11 AM till past midnight with unlimited drinks available, and a snack bar with fast-food quality food from 11 AM - 6PM. You never pay for anything you want to drink or eat.
Service. The staff are very friendly and helpful despite the fact that I never saw anyone ever receive a tip. The service during the meals was often better than that at American restaurants. Service was excellent but you need to be sure you're clear about what you want because of misunderstandings that can occur because of the differences in accents :)
Grounds/Facilities. Grounds could have been more neatly kept. Some trash around though generally clean. Plastic furniture abundant. Pool is 25% gated off into very shallow areas for kids (less than 2 feet) and is fairly small (though always empty). Freshwater jacuzzi is large and very pleasant. Workout center has 5-6 cybex machines and a large range of dumbells.
Activities. There are various fun activities going on at the Papillon such as beach olympics, sand castle building contests, etc. Almost always evening entertaining ranging from shows to live bands and dancing to Karoke. Did not see many kids and unless they love watersports am not quite sure what they would do there.
Other resorts. On the same beach are the Rex St. Lucian, Rex Royal St. Lucian, and Hyatt (further down towards Pigeon island). These resorts are much nicer than the Papillon and are more like what one traditionally expects from in large tropical resorts but in our opinion the additional cost of these resorts is not worth it unless you have a lot money with nothing else to spend it on. Note that the beach in front of the Papillon is relatively small but far less crowded than the beaches on these other resorts.
(This review was orginally posted on March 10, 2001)
Josh Sacco
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