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Marriott Surf Club versus the Ocean Club (by Lev A.):

Interesting to see some of these message a year after. Here is our 5 cents for a relatively recent stay.

We visited Aruba on labor day of 2008 and stayed at Surf Club. While I can agree that rooms are nice (though having stayed at a number of hotels and resorts around the country and the world - nothing spectacular that people are raving about) but the service is borderlining levels of bad. Don't take me wrong - noone was rude or anything but getting actually anything accomplished takes 2-3 requests. You only are paid attention until you register for timeshare presentation. Paying for a set of chairs and table with umbrella on the beach (or as others said waking up at 5 am to register for free one) considering over 40k we paid for our timeshare week is simply ridiculous. Noone would come to us on the beach to take an order for a drink for 3 days and after we complained - maybe once someone would walk through. The worst of course happened on day 4 when some strong winds (I guess remnants from a hurricaine in neighboring areas) came through - a lot of debree and junk was thrown on the beach. Guess what Marriott did - they took a bulldozer and went from direction of Hotel/Casino through Ocean club and dumped EVERYTHING on the beach at Surf Club. Beach was unuseable for the rest of vacation - water was very dirty and very large pile of dirt was just taking over half of the Surf Club beach area. I can't blame Marriott in weather conditions but they could have done a better job not treating Surf Club residents as lower class people - considering how nice and clean was the beach next morning after at Ocean Club and Hotel (those who've been there know it's basically the same strip of sand for all 3 hotels) they could have either completed cleaning the rest or at least did not kick people out from the Ocean Club beach area which is exactly what they did (they distinguished people by the color of towels provided by each resort). Also, pool side restaurant - takes at least 40 minutes to get burger and french fries but what the worst - the were washing all dirt from the floor and bar area right into the lazy river while people were still swimming in it. Totally agree that lazy river is very nice but extremely over-crowded. Ocean Club and Hotel were both significantly quieter and much more polite and attentive personnel. BTW, if you are staying at one of these three properties - have a dinner at the restaurant on the beach (forgot the name) at the Hotel/Casino. Table are literally 10 feet from the water and atmosphere (sunset, stars in the sky, cool breeze) is VERY romantic, food was great and same was service.

Anyway - my wife, kids and I do love the island itself and coming 2 days after staying at Marriott in Hawaii I can say that I'll be going back to Aruba more often (4 hours vs 16 hour travel makes a big difference and it has better selection of area restaurants and entertainment so unless you are a surf fanatic - Aruba is the way). We did book a stay in the Ocean Club for this coming summer - I"ll do my best whatever I can not to go back to Surf Club (and wish the same to you).