My Negative Review of ROR

[christenew]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmhein Sorry you were disappointed with your experience Christine! Your pictures look beautiful though and I hope you do have a lot of happy memories to look back on! Just wondering - have they changed the restaurant reservation policy? We were able to get reservations to the Japanese, Chinese, etc, by just phoning from our room? I never stood in any lines...?

Oh no you had to stand in line. The table opened at 9am. I was down one morning at 8:15 and was 5th in line. I didn't get out of there until close to 10am and didn't get the reservation I wanted for 4 people. It was a joke. My dad actually called one of the ladies "Miss "$%@$ING congeniality" to her face because she wouldn't cancel his dinner reservation. The manager came up to him and he explained the situation. The manager apologized on how rude the staff member had been. My dad encouraged them to recommend further customer service to their staff.

[jmhein]

Quote:

Originally Posted by christenew Oh no you had to stand in line. The table opened at 9am. I was down one morning at 8:15 and was 5th in line. I didn't get out of there until close to 10am and didn't get the reservation I wanted for 4 people. It was a joke. My dad actually called one of the ladies "Miss "$%@$ING congeniality" to her face because she wouldn't cancel his dinner reservation. The manager came up to him and he explained the situation. The manager apologized on how rude the staff member had been. My dad encouraged them to recommend further customer service to their staff.

Wow. That SUCKS. I wonder why they would have changed their policy, this one seems so much more cumbersome and NOT guest-friendly. We were all able to make reservations by phoning from our room in the morning. Granted, sometimes the line was busy, but if we kept trying for a while we eventually got through. So dumb that they changed it. Maybe a few complaints on tripadvisor and emails to management might get them to change it back to the way it was.....

[BachataBride]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmhein Wow. That SUCKS. I wonder why they would have changed their policy, this one seems so much more cumbersome and NOT guest-friendly. We were all able to make reservations by phoning from our room in the morning. Granted, sometimes the line was busy, but if we kept trying for a while we eventually got through. So dumb that they changed it. Maybe a few complaints on tripadvisor and emails to management might get them to change it back to the way it was.....

All RIUs are like this. We just got back from RIU Bachata in DR & it was the same thing. I can't say anything good or bad about it since the only a la carte we attended was our wedding dinner & that was already pre-booked with our WC. My other guests didn't seem to have a problem though. Too bad you had such a shitty experience with it Christene.

[Scott-Pierre]

Even though u had some bad moments, it seems like overall your wedding went great! Your pics look wonderful! Did Chandlyn ever give a reason as to why they would not reimburse you your money for the reception since they basically didn't even give u one? If I were u, I would send a letter to management about that.

[jmb0902]

Wow I am so sorry to hear any of that... ALL of that! I can't wait to see your pro pics though!

[geology_rocks]

I'm sorry your big day (or trip) didn't turn out as expected. I know how disapointing that can be. Chandlyn treated us pretty horribly actually. She pawned us off on her (at the time) new assistant who didn't know anything. She told us the wrong restaurant for dinner! My flowers too were brown and wilted when they were delivered just minutes before the ceremony and Chandlyn never came to get us in the room as we had arranged at our meeting! We just wandered down on our own because I didn't want to be late for my own wedding! And speaking of weddings, we also ordered the civil ceremony but didn't write our own vows. Be happy you did because our ceremony was ladden with religion and neither of us are religious, it felt awkward really. The biggest snub though, was when Nikki ran past us at our reception saying she had to go to a rehearsal but would be back shortly to talk to us and then we didn't see her the rest of the night! The servers at the restaurant knew nothing about our cake or champagne. Luckily my husband's brother went a little best-manzilla and found us cake and champagne but that was something the wedding coordinator definitely should have had under control. I was also disapointed because we didn't get an upgrade or see any of the surprise gifts that other brides talk about. And like you, our guests got better rooms and flowers and towel animals and we got ants. I did insist they switch us from our original room though because it over looked the show stage and was really darn noisy all night, but even that was a hassle!

 

All in all, we did enjoy our trip though. Luckily we werent' expecting perfection with a destination wedding. The way I see it, it's still better than anything we could have put together at home! I think every resort will have it's quirks but it sounds like you really got the short end of the stick. It sounds like the service at ROR has been really inconsistent. Sorry!

[Betsy]

I'm sorry it went so horribly wrong! I'm glad you at least found some bright spots - such as the bingo! Did you win anything good? Thanks for your honest review.

[christenew]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott-Pierre Even though u had some bad moments, it seems like overall your wedding went great! Your pics look wonderful! Did Chandlyn ever give a reason as to why they would not reimburse you your money for the reception since they basically didn't even give u one? If I were u, I would send a letter to management about that.

I honestly don't think Chandlyn could care less. I think she is too busy to. I went to her office the day after the wedding to speak to her. She said she knew we weren't there until 10pm as our dinner was late and said she would look into a refund and get back to us. She didn't before we left. My dad stayed until Monday. He went to her office, she told him the same thing. She never got back to him. So we went to her manager. I think it is ridiculous that I should pay for a reception that I never got (at the fault of the resort). The manager told my dad to speak to Chandlyn. He told the manager that Chandlyn hasn't fulfilled her commitment to get back to either one of us so now the manager gets to deal with it. My dad is since home. He says he will give them a couple more days and work up the food chain.

What makes me even madder is that I never received an apology.

[christenew]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geology_rocks I'm sorry your big day (or trip) didn't turn out as expected. I know how disapointing that can be. Chandlyn treated us pretty horribly actually. She pawned us off on her (at the time) new assistant who didn't know anything. She told us the wrong restaurant for dinner! My flowers too were brown and wilted when they were delivered just minutes before the ceremony and Chandlyn never came to get us in the room as we had arranged at our meeting! We just wandered down on our own because I didn't want to be late for my own wedding! And speaking of weddings, we also ordered the civil ceremony but didn't write our own vows. Be happy you did because our ceremony was ladden with religion and neither of us are religious, it felt awkward really. The biggest snub though, was when Nikki ran past us at our reception saying she had to go to a rehearsal but would be back shortly to talk to us and then we didn't see her the rest of the night! The servers at the restaurant knew nothing about our cake or champagne. Luckily my husband's brother went a little best-manzilla and found us cake and champagne but that was something the wedding coordinator definitely should have had under control. I was also disapointed because we didn't get an upgrade or see any of the surprise gifts that other brides talk about. And like you, our guests got better rooms and flowers and towel animals and we got ants. I did insist they switch us from our original room though because it over looked the show stage and was really darn noisy all night, but even that was a hassle! All in all, we did enjoy our trip though. Luckily we werent' expecting perfection with a destination wedding. The way I see it, it's still better than anything we could have put together at home! I think every resort will have it's quirks but it sounds like you really got the short end of the stick. It sounds like the service at ROR has been really inconsistent. Sorry!

That sounds exactly like what happens to us. You are right I wasn't expecting perfection. I didn't expect to pay for things I didn't get. I did expect dinner to run long. I did expect my flowers not to be exactly what I wanted. I didn't think they would be 3 days old and brown. My travel agent even spoke to Riu about how we were a group and try and put our group together, except for my husband and I. We were actually quite lucky because my MOH and her husband were headboard to headboard with us. LOL. His parents were on the other side of the wall, which would have made for a very unhappy bride. I agree from the reviews I read the ROR is inconsistent.

[misskaytee]

Thanks for the post, this was very informative- and I'm so sorry about your disasterous day. Even the most magical of moments can be spoiled by one party pooper...