TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin 2 weeks at Divi

Arrived at Divi on March 29 after a nice flight from Philadelphia on American. Down the Jetway(!) and into my Unity rental car in a half hour. The property was beautiful with plenty of beach chairs and umbrellas. The weather didn’t cooperate with high winds and some intermittent showers. It did not deter us from enjoying beach and big pool.
Food highlights
Best meal Sale e Pepe, I had chicken Parmesan wife had short ribs pasta.
Roma was a close second with veal Parmesan and veal manicotti.
Divi food ranged from excellent to okay. The pizza at Slice was delicious. Several meals at Gizmos were very good. Great French fries!
We did two buffets at Pure Ocean. Italian was pretty goood. The deserts were amazing. Would rather have my meals served to me but small point. On prime rib night the prime rib was cooked to order and sides were good. Seabreeze was just okay.
Other notables meals were at Aziana, stirred fried beef and vegetables.
One hilarious/annoying incident. Leaving church on Sunday morning my wife noticed a sandwich board advertising breakfast at Big Wood. This was at 10am. We sat down and ordered coffee.
After we had our order taken Waiter came back and said coffee machine was broken. Ugh. Time passed and no food. I asked a server when we were getting our food and she said soon they just have to flip my waffle(?).20 minutes later apparently no one had flipped my waffle. My wife and I got up and drove to Chesterfields for a delicious breakfast
Tai Savannh at Star casino was a wonderful Thai meal.
My only complaint about Divi is one I’ve had since Covid- they don’t come and throw out your garbage. Has anyone stayed at a resort that expected you to throw out the garbage?

Surprised at your food rating at Divi. First time I've heard them get an excellent.

They clean the rooms, but don't take out the garbage? That's odd.

Is Aziana at Divi? Hadn't heard of it before.

Where is Big Wood so I can avoid it?

We spent 2 weeks at Divi starting in late February and they did take out our trash when they did the midweek visit to clean. They did not come into the unit any other day during the week for garbage pick up, but they did provide some extra bags, so we took ours out another day when it got full.

Aziana is not at Divi but by Bobby's Marina, not too far from the Greenhouse in Philipsburg.
https://www.aziana.sx

Big Wood looks like it's about in the middle on the Philipsburg boardwalk. https://stmaartenboardwalk.com/listing/bigwood/

If you take out your own garbage where do you ut it? Are there bins nearby? Are there cats still roaming about? There were many when were there I ask because couldn' t cats get into the garbage?

If I was staying there I'd contact board of health or whatever it is called on SXM. That is NOT sanitary.

No cats at Divi anymore. The rocks along the Great Bay side where they hung out are now home to a bunch of iguanas. Several signs around the resort urging people not to feed them.

I think we just put our smaller bag into the trash containers that are located around the resort.

Even when housekeeping was taking out the trash daily they were often just leaving the bags outside for someone else to come along and take. When I take it out I just leave the bag next to the stairs. Never had a problem with animals getting in to it.

We had the trash taken out on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But yeah, if you generate a lot of trash (like wine bottles) it is rather a pain. You CAN just put the trash out and they will come and take it. I do miss the days where they came in and at least took the trash.
I don't need a fresh towel everyday but trash removal is nice. And no, there are no more cats at Divi.
I am also utterly shocked to hear that the food at Divi was excellent.
I do know that when we were there in December the food and beverage manager was trying another re-do of the food. So, maybe they got it right?
When we were there in December I had chicken picatta with canned green beans. NOT good.

So, I take it Divi doesn't recycle, since it was mentioned trash fills up quickly with wine bottles.

That is a good question. We put our wine bottles into a box in the hopes that they do recycle.