Margaritaville Grand Cayman // Hotel Review

I just got back from my second trip to Grand Cayman, where we stayed at the Margaritaville Beach Resort for the second time. This hotel is the root of so many great, happy memories in my life. I am so happy we chose to stay here not once, but twice. When I was researching hotels before our first trip to Grand Cayman, I had a hard time finding any information on this hotel because it was so new. This resort was previously the Treasure Island Resort until the Margaritaville franchise bought it.  They started their huge remodel over two years ago and are still working on it in 2018.

The property includes 3 pools, a swim up bar, a huge gift shop, and three onsite restaurants (with more coming soon!). We love the Margaritaville restaurants and I’ve stayed at a few different Margaritaville resorts in the United States. I always have great experiences, so that’s why I decided to stay at Margaritaville Resort in Grand Cayman. I’m going to walk you through a little “resort tour”and let you know what I loved and didn’t love about staying here.

The hotel is located on West Bay Road, right on Seven Mile Beach. There are tons of restaurants and beach access points within walking distance. We loved to walk along the beach towards the busier parts of 7 Mile Beach to snorkel and swim. A smoothie place, Burger Shack, Pepper’s Bar and Grill, and a liquor store are all within walking distance of the hotel. It’s a short drive to Camana Bay shopping center and the downtown cruise port. We walked downtown to Hard Rock Cafe a few times and it’s about a 40 minute walk each way.

Here’s the lobby. I am obsessed with the layout and the decor. It is super open with tons of places to sit. There’s a little place to get breakfast in the lobby and a bar. I love the open air layout and the laid back vibe. There’s tons of comfy seating too. We spent a few nights down in the lobby playing Uno before bed! The hotel also hosted live music in the lobby one night when we were there and it was so fun!

I forgot to take a picture of our hotel room before we made a huge mess out of it, so above is a picture of the room directly from the hotel’s website. Both times we stayed, we had two queen beds. The beds and pillows are super comfy. The rooms included a safe, a mini fridge, and a balcony. They have k-cups (coffee and tea) and paper to-go coffee cups with a Keurig that I used every morning. They also give you a mini water bottle for each guest during each day of your stay. This is super nice because bottled water is really expensive there!

This hotel has THREE pools! One of the pools even includes a swim up bar. They’re super warm and clean. They have plenty of chairs and tables by the pool to sit in. This year, they had added cabanas to the mix! The cabanas are free to use. It’s like a huge comfy mattress with some pillows and a top that shades you from the burning hot sun. It’s so easy to spend a day in one of these! The hot tub is like burn-your-skin hot which is great when you aren’t sunburned.

The beach area has the pristine white sand that the Cayman Islands are known for. There is a semi-circle of big rocks a little ways out that form a swimming area. This makes is very kid-friendly and keeps out any potential big waves. There is some cool snorkeling over by the rocks. One year we saw a huge lobster at the bottom! We also took some really cool pictures jumping off the rocks. It was probably super frowned upon, but we had to do it for the Instagram. There are tons of nice beach chairs and umbrellas on the beach that are free for guests to use. They also have free towel rentals available so you don’t have to pack one in your suitcase!

Since we are picky eaters, we only ate at the restaurant by the pool bar. I got a cheeseburger and my mom got a quesadilla that I tried. Both were really yummy. It wasn’t super overpriced. Most of the food was comparable to the prices of restaurants that weren’t on the resort. Of course, all of the bars on the property have amazing tropical fruity drinks. The resort has tons of other restaurants on site though. Some of them are not quite open yet. Right now, they have the License to Chill Bar, It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar + Grill, and Yara Steakhouse, with Spread Bistro coming soon.

This resort falls into a middle price category. It’s not super expensive like the Ritz, but it’s also not the cheapest hotel available. In my opinion, both of my stays were absolutely worth the money. I think we paid around $250 a night both times we were there. I think there was a resort fee of around $35 every day too. You can charge food and drinks to the room which would obviously increase the price, but we never had any surprise charges.

Overall, I love Margaritaville Resort Grand Cayman and I will definitely be staying there again. If you are planning a trip to Grand Cayman soon, check out this resort. There’s so much to do without even leaving the resort. There’s a bunch of pools and a beautiful ocean swimming area. The staff are so friendly and go out of their way to make your stay amazing. The rooms and lobby/pool areas are all very clean. The island-themed decor throughout the entire resort makes me so happy. It really feels like you are in paradise when you stay here. There’s plenty of places to park your rental car (for free), which we loved. We rented a car both times and were able to park within 30 seconds of the hotel lobby.

I have very few complaints about this resort. Hopefully by the time they are completely done renovating, they will have all the kinks worked out. The main complaint is that we had to walk almost 10 minutes just to get to an ice machine. Since we had a keg of beer in our room, we had to make trips to the ice machine almost every day. It was kind of annoying that there wasn’t one on our floor. The view during this second stay sucked. Out the front of the room, we had a pool view, which was nice. However, on the balcony, we had a view of a parking lot. We couldn’t even see the ocean. I’m sure they have rooms with amazing ocean views, but ours wasn’t one of them.

You should definitely check out Margaritaville Beach Resort next time you find yourself booking a trip to the Cayman Islands. You won’t regret it!