First, two nights at the Secrets Wild Orchid Resort (a Hyatt property) in Montego Bay and then the rest of the week at Royalton Negril (a Marriott property).
Our non-stop flight from Denver to the Sangster International airport in Montego Bay left on Saturday morning at 9:40 am. Currently United offers one non-stop flight on Saturdays from Denver to Jamaica.
We left the house at 7 am, dropping off a few things on the way. We parked at Pikes Peak parking lot and waited for a shuttle to pick us up. Two full shuttles passed us by without stopping. Chris called the info line for the shuttle and told them we were waiting along with a number of people and could they please send a shuttle since two buses were just waiting by the entrance to the lot.
The lady that answered said that the shuttles were on a schedule and would basically get there when they got there. The second time Chris called after being passed over again, the lady wasn’t any more helpful and hung up on him.
We FINALLY got on the shuttle and made it to the airport to check in. The airport was in a mess since the luggage system wasn’t working and all luggage had to be transported by cart to the planes. We waited long enough to make sure all of our luggage made it on a cart and then went to stand in line for security.
That was slow too but we finally made it to the A terminal and stopped for a few minutes in the lounge and enjoyed a little breakfast. They even had scrambled egg whites next to the regular scrambled eggs. Yay me!
We headed to our boarding gate as they were just about to board the flight.
One of Chris’ co-workers and his wife (Patrick and Ryan) were also on this flight heading to Jamaica to the Royalton Negril. Just random that they were going to the same place.
One of Chris’ flight hacks includes booking the window seat and the aisle seat with the hope that no one would choose to sit between us. We lucked out and enjoyed a little extra space in our row. The flight was busy but definitely not full.
We arrived in Jamaica five hours later. Chris had booked a service through Mobay Jamaica to take us on a fast track through immigration and customs. The airport was just getting busy, but we moved past everyone at immigration and then customs and were through in less than 10 minutes.
Some people report waiting in lines for hours.
We stopped for a few minutes in the Mobay exit lounge. We could have had free drinks and a few snacks. We got some Diet Coke but opted to get a taxi to our hotel about 20 minutes away.
FYI the taxi was $40, Chris talked them down to $35.
We arrived and were taken to the Preferred Member section of the property (because of Chris' status with Hyatt) where we checked in to room 1217. It was a little early for dinner yet (two hours ahead of our Denver time).
We walked around the property to check it out, took some pictures and watched the sunset.
The nice thing about this hotel was the app that allowed you to check the variety of different restaurants on site as well as the menus. If you didn’t have the “butler service” then you had to go and stand in line and wait for the dinner. We didn’t have the butler service.
We went for dinner at 7 pm at the Jamaican restaurant and had to wait for about a half an hour. The food was so so. Chris order snapper and it came as a full fish and had to be deboned. There were lots of bones!