Riviera Beach & Shores Resort

The Ugly Sister

We visited this “resort” as part of the sampler package, which we purchased from Diamond Resorts as an opportunity to “date us before you marry us.”

Using this analogy, the Riviera Shores is the ugly sister of the person we thought we were dating.

This location feels like a hotel, not a condo. Rooms are just ok, the kitchen is functional but not great.

The room felt dated but during the required timeshare presentation we learned that ours is actually one of the newly upgraded rooms. Balcony overlooks an extremely busy highway and train tracks which are used by commuter trains during the day and even noisier freight trains at night. The parking lot across the street is full of old campers running on generators 24/7 which adds to the noise.

Beach is accessible by the footbridge which was fine, but the beach was too rocky for swimming.

You do hear the soothing sound of running water… every time the people above you flush their toilet.

You have to drive EVERYWHERE and pay to park unless you can find free street parking.

The pools are fine, the fitness centre is decent, the bed is good, free bikes are nice but bikes are very old and wobbly. We were told a new fleet of bikes had been ordered but not yet arrived.

There is no bar at this location as I would expect at a resort. We are here for a week and after day 2 we seriously considered leaving.

We decided to stick it out and now have only 2 more days. The description of this location is very misleading, it’s expensive (cost more than half of our sampler points) and very noisy. Front desk staff, including management, is more interested in having personal conversations and phone calls than helping guests. Not relaxing at all and I wish we had never come here.

Obviously, we will never be back.