New rule about buying a bottle of wine to get a restaurant reservation?

Yes to second what Kyle said, this is basically a group thing. If you are trying to get one of the large more private tables (6-12), they hit you with buying a few bottles of wine. If you can make a regular reservation for 2-4 people, and this will not come up.

It isn't really that bad if you have a group of 10, and some of them drink wine anyway. We did it the one night and got the table in sea flirt. Sorry to anyone that had to be in there that night, as I believe we were a little rowdy. (It's hard not to be when you have 10 excited people together celebrating a 30th, and 36th birthday). I ended up paying for the wine at check-out, after a little struggle to get my member discount, but for like 100 bucks or something, getting the reservation and having our own table at the time we wanted, was well worth it. I am sure the other couples probably just threw me a $20 or something at dinner.

The funnier part to me is when you order something special like a bottle of wine or champagne, we ordered one night at the sports bar so we could get a premium reserved table to watch the Conor Mcgregor fight, they make it special with how upscale they try to serve it. But I just laugh cause it's like: We don't care about smelling the wine or tasting it for approval, just leave the bottles. We are at Temptation and slightly sad we even have to be dressed...and someone is probably about to chug that bottle or drip it between their breast.

 

Over Halloween (the resort was sold out) and we had multiple dinners with groups of 10 at Seaflirt and Italian with no bottle requirement. Maybe because we were all members it wasn't a problem... in any case it's BS if they are making this a prerequisite to reserving

 

They did this at xmas this past year. It totally pissed a lot of people off. We just went to the buffet and it was not too bad! My hubby doesn't drink wine so why would we pay a $60 plus for a bottle of wine only I would drink. Not sure how many fell for it.

 

How did you guys deal with it?
Edit: Sorry. I didn't read your answer properly the first time. Did you have to go to the buffet on Xmas day only or for a few days on your trip?

 

I really understand the resort wanting to make more money. I understand them wanting to make products outside of the all inclusive available to those who want it, and the fact that they need to figure out how to move that merchandise when it isn't selling fast enough. What I don't understand is telling people an option that they advertised as being included in the booking, ie all of their restaurants, is not available on certain nights unless a purchase is made. It's not an honest business practice.

I estimate about 10% of reviewers really like She and others don't care for it or don't try it based on negative reviews, or not wanting to eat a set menu. If the resort really wants another revenue stream they could charge for that restaurant only, and have expensive but truly fine foods on the menu (comparable to some of the finer restaurants in the area). Do the wine pairing they are currently doing but offer a few fine options in addition to the table d'hote. And keep all the other restaurants as good as they are, and always available with extras available but never required.

If you got that far, thanks for following my musings. Oh how easy it is to be the peanut gallery, I admit.

 

Even the wine pairing seems to be a money grab...charge me but give me some good wines! Saw a review where they were served a Mexican Sweet wine with their desert... uh... not at 55$ pp for wine pairing

 

First of all, there aren't any reservations except at She unless you want a large group, so that would not make sense. There is a lot of made up crap in Trip Advisor reviews!

 

When we went last May we had a large group of us at the Italian Restaurant in the back room and we were required to buy a few bottles that night. As mentioned before, I believe it is if you want large groups to dine together. The dinner took about 4 hours to accommodate our large group, so that needs to be taken into account.

 

It was for xmas eve actually and they were doing it for NYE too but we left on Dec. 28.

I tried to get a straight answer about it from the front desk, the guys pushing the wine and champagne sales and the concierge. I never got a straight answer and after talking to several others about it, we just decided to go have dinner at the buffet that night and not get stressed out about it. I can honestly say the buffet had a great food! It was dimly lit with a turkey, prime rib, made to order prawns etc and lots of shrimp etc on the buffet. The desserts were gorgeous too. We had a nice dinner and that was lingerie night so we wanted to get dressed for that and to Bash early so we didn't mind a quick dinner at the buffet anyway! Some folks said that they walked into the restaurant without previously purchasing a bottle of wine and they didn't refuse them. We were more annoyed at how they made us believe we HAD to pre purchase a bottle of something in order to eat anywhere but the buffet. Kinda BS considering we all paid to be there and it's supposed to be AI.

 

I hope that bottle of wine comes with a big tube of KY, there going to need it when I tell them where to stick it.

T