My husband and I went to the Ocean reef resort for our honeymoon in December 2005. Our goal was to dive as much as possible. We selected this resort because there is a dive shop on the resort.
The diving experience was great! We thought the diving crew was wonderful and they made a great effort to bring us in different dive sites as much as possible (we were there 2 weeks). Melinda was awesome, she gave me some very strong medication for sea sickness since dramamine wasn't helping me this time on the boat( I have terrile sea sickness)! The corals were overall good (not as great as Cozumel but we expected that). The wrecks dive and the sharks dives were awesome. The only negative I would say is that the dive shop was not doing any night dive...
We had a 1 bedroom and a great kitchen. I loved our patio and we were on the ground level just in front of a BBQ grill. We ate steaks and burgers often and we loved it! We ate in our hotel room about 2/3 of the nights. The best thing about the room was the kitchen, very handy. I think it would be a great plus with kids! The grocery is expensive but the restaurants are even more so! The furniture and decorations of the room is pretty basic, nothing luxurious but fine...Also the view is not great. We saw a canal with some boats, nothing exciting... An other thing to know is that there is no maid service unless you pay a supplement. I didn't think it would bother us but it did a little bit. After coming back from snorkeling, we would always have sand stuck under our sandals and shoes so the floors were always messy...
The staff is great and they were always very friendly. I didn't like their presentation for the timeshare, they were harrassing us. We told them at least 3-4 times that we were not interrested in buying a timeshare with them but they kept on pushing... Otherwise, there was no problems with the staff. The trips organised by the resort were great, especially the shopping trip. You absolutely have to go to the candle factory and the liquor store!
On the down side, I will have to say that I do not recommend this resort if you like the beach because it's kind of far! We are not beach people but we walked there quite a few times to do some snorkeling and it was a good 15 minutes walk. With our fins, masks, etc, it was a little bit of a hassle! The shuttle to go to the beach is at an inconvenient time (They leave at 10:30 am and come back at 3 pm I think...) Also, there is only one restaurant at the resort and it's a small grill, nothing fancy. It is far to walk to Port Lacuya (about 30 minutes walk), you are better off taking a cab. The cab rides were cheap but I still consider taking a cab to be inconvenient when we were going out...
Port Lacuya was fun and the restaurants were good in general. We both thought that there is not much to do on the Grand bahamas island. A hurricane had destroyed the International Bazar so there was only Port Lacuya. The shops were ok but eventually they all look the same to us...
Overall, we loved the diving at the resort but we would not go back to the Ocean Reef for 2 main reasons.
First, there is nothing to do on or around the resort. You always have to walk or take a cab.
Second, the island is kind of boring, there is not much to do...
I hope this review will help someone. If you are a diver, I think it's a great place, if you are a beach person, stay away!






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