The reason I started to go to the Caribbean is because I want to feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere on an island paradise. I don't go to the Caribbean for a trip to Disney World. It just seems bizarre that someone would waste their money to go to the Caribbean to sit around in such a manufactured experience. But, to each his own, of course.

The multi-colored shacks going up at Orient were disparaged, and rightly so, by many on here, for the same reason. We don't want the island turning into a sanitized tourist destination. The shacks actually aren't that bad, but even they seem to be a harbinger of negative changes to the island. Time will tell.