TRAVEL: Princess Grand Jamaica

MILES FROM CHARLOTTE: 1,166 miles

TRAVEL TIME: 3 hours, 8 minutes

NONSTOP SERVICE ON: American Airlines

The Kids Club’s doors slide open. Just inside, smiling behind a bright-yellow desk, is Davia Grant-Morris, informally known as “Queen D.” Her formal title is Kids Club manager, but, she explains, this is her castle. She is a most benevolent queen, and she has a royal sense of humor, too. When parents first drop their kids off here, they fill out a registration form, and they use a password to sign their kids in and out each time afterward. “If you don’t have a password,” Queen D says with a wry grin, “those kids are ours.”

The queen’s lair is the most obviously kid-friendly piece of what Princess Hotels & Resorts, the Spanish tourist hotel chain, opened at the western tip of Jamaica in late 2024. It’s a massive complex planted on what was virgin mangrove forest near the resort town of Negril.

The company built separate resorts on the 75-acre property: the oddly named, adults-only  , constructed around a half-moon-shaped cove at the north end; and, to the south, family-friendly Princess Grand Jamaica, where the Kids Club is. Princess Senses The Mangrove guests can use the amenities at Princess Grand Jamaica, but Grand guests aren’t allowed on the adults-only side. The more luxurious Senses hotel allows guests “to fully relax and enjoy a kid-free experience.”

But adult Grand guests who want (or desperately need) a more abbreviated kid-free experience have a friend in Queen D. The Kids Club represents the kind of high-end hotel day care that luxury resorts especially have embraced in recent years. It’s not just a one-room play area with a few toys and a flatscreen with game controllers. It’s a carefully conceived and executed warren of rooms, with a trained staff and enough amusements to occupy kids’ attention while their parents engage in more grown-up activities like, oh, snorkeling.

Among the highlights, all in separate rooms: a TV-equipped theater with beanbag and plush chairs; a kitchen—where snacks and lunch are served, and the only room where food is allowed—with plastic, kid-sized “appliances,” tables, and chairs; an arts-and-crafts room; a small auditorium and stage for presentations and shows; and the game arcade, where kids can play foosball, air hockey, or Pop-A-Shot near egg-shaped pods designed for Xbox and PS4. “This,” Queen D says, “is where the kids go wild.” And kids have direct access from the club to adjoining Wild Princess Water Park, which adults enjoy, too.

The Kids Club is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for ages 3 through 12; parents have to accompany children younger than 3. Getting there is far easier than you’d expect; as of this writing, American Airlines offered daily nonstop flights from Charlotte Douglas International Airport to Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. From there, it’s about a 90-minute drive west to the resort.

STAY

The basics on Princess Grand Jamaica: It has 590 rooms, and all ground-floor suites are swim-outs—a gift from heaven when the setting sun combines with Caribbean humidity to turn you into a baked good. You can pay extra for nanny service and a platinum suite, which comes with assigned butlers and upgraded amenities. One mixed blessing: Corridors run continuously through both resort buildings, so you could walk from the far end of the Grand to the opposite end of Senses—a little more than a quarter-mile. The layout means you reach all rooms and many amenities without going outside, which is great in bad weather. But it also makes for long walks down hallways that seem to never end.

EAT

Choose from seven sit-down options, most clustered where the two hotels meet. Il Palazzo serves Sicilian-inspired dishes like caponata, a stew with eggplant, tomatoes, olives, and other vegetables; El Delirio offers classic Mexican; Jamrock concentrates on Jamaican-Caribbean specialties like jerk chicken and ackee and saltfish, the national dish; Fusion 360’s focus is Asian fusion. If you want to go humbler, MVP Sports Bar serves pub grub until late, and food trucks operate near the beach and pools. Keep an eye out for the seafood buffet at Food Market, a cornucopia of lobster, oysters, mussels, multiple fish dishes, and other edible sea creatures you may not have known were edible.

PLAY

The hotel has tennis, pickleball, and basketball courts, a gym, a spa, yoga, and water sports; guests are welcome to join scheduled activities that include morning powerwalking, beach volleyball, and soca dance lessons. The water park has two swimming pools (with poolside cabanas), a splash pad area, and multiple water slides, and kayaks are available for rent on the beach. Kids can join their parents for all of these. Of course, if you’ve dropped the young ’uns off at the Kids Club for the day, you can sip on rum punch and other island cocktails at any of the resort’s eight bars.

GREG LACOUR is the editor of Charlotte magazine.

For more information: princess-hotels.com/en/jamaica/princess-grand-jamaica