Normally I try to stay out of commenting on issues in what I consider to be paradise on earth, but this particular one really hurts. We have stayed at Sea Splash for a number of years now. I have seen in in good times and bad, and unfortunately some of the bad times resulted in me and my family staying elsewhere. There are members of that staff the I love like family and I am always concerned about their well being. I have heard their comments and complaints over the years (as much as I care about them, I've yet to hear them have much love for anyone running the place, only various levels of dislike). I have never met the Lawe family, I won't pass any judgement. What I will comment on is the general management of the place. With the exception of last year, everytime we've stayed there it's always been something or other that was simply not handled in a manner that I expected (again, been to Jamaica many times and I fully understand "soon come"). In some cases, it was minor things, in other cases a bit more. I will give two specific examples:
1. We payed for the full suite, and our fridge was not working. Normally I wouldn't really care, but in this case we had our son with us and we would often buy some groceries and things to keep in the room (anytime you've got kids with you and they find out they can get smoothies from the bar and charge it to the room there's going to be trouble...). In this case, for the amount we were paying for the room, I did expect the concern to be addressed. Two days later, and after $75 worth of perishable groceries had more or less spoiled, a guy shows up in my room with a cooler (dubbing himself the "the REAL guy running the joint") and wanted 40 bucks for bringing me a cooler with ice in it. You can imagine how that conversation went.
2. To help emphasize how much I love the place, my wife and I were married there. Anyone who's been to Jamaica knows that slow responses are expected, just a fact of life, I've actually embraced it while there. Naturally, we were stressed about the wedding, trying to coordinate, etc., but deep down we knew whatever was going to happen was going to happen, you have to make the best of it. The wedding went pretty well, couple of little issues but nothing making it short of a perfect day. We payed for everything, dinner, bar tab, wedding cake, the whole deal, and we tipped VERY well. They said they would handle the cleanup and save the remaining food, cake, etc. for us. Imagine our surprise when we went to Norma's for dinner two nights later, only to find our remaining wedding cake being sold by the slice (after I paid for the thing) to customers.

I guess what I'm trying to say (in far too many words) is that I do care about the establishment, but the biggest issue has been lack or good onsite management of the place. That is something that Jim and Ted brought that I had never really seen before, and the results spoke for themselves. The actually cared about the appearance, the patrons, the concerns, and so on. They were available, they walked around and talked to people. They interacted. My biggest fear is that the Lawe brothers will take assume ownership again and the place will go downhill as it has before from lack of onsite management. Regardless of the outcome, Seasplash will always hold a place in my heart, but if things start going back to the way they were I don't know if I'll stay there again, I'd rather remember it as it was during the high times. For those that are staying there in the near future, please keep us posted on how things are there. We have a trip planned in September and I want to make an informed decision about where to stay.