Westgate South Beach Oceanfront Resort
I can’t believe it’s this bad…shame on Westgate South Beach
I normally don’t believe ratings of one star because i know people have unrealistic expectations… But believe me when i tell you, this resort is absolutely TERRIBLE
Here are the pros of this resort: it’s on the beach, it has new TV’s, strong wifi, the activities director is nice as is the pool bartender and it has a new full-size refrigerator. They had a free ice cream sundae bar on Sunday and a cheap hamburger cookout on Monday.
The cons:
1. The hot water system does not provide enough hot water to fill the whirlpool tub above the jets to ever turn it on. The amount of hot water resembled a level of a bird bath. We had NO hot water on the day that we arrived and complained to maintenance. They finally came up hours later and flipped the circuit breaker and opened a valve under the tub and told me it was good. We then tried to take a shower and the temperature fluctuated warm to cool and back the whole week. Plus we threw a breaker again. I just flipped it back on rather than calling maintenance again.
2. There is a heavy timeshare sales presence here. The sales folks are lining the very narrow walkway from the front desk to the pool. I felt like raw meat being paraded in front of a barracuda every time we walked to the pool. Please congregate somewhere else!
3. There is absolutely nowhere to park. You MUST use the $25/day valet if you have a car and the valet lot if 4 blocks away and takes forever for the single valet to retrieve your car. You can’t even pull into the driveway…you must park on the street and attempt to unload/load there. Plus there are no real ramps to roll up your luggage…it’s all stairs. I sought a luggage cart and they had to go searching the property to find the lone luggage cart. Sigh.
4. The walls/floors are very thin. It reminded me of a ghetto apartment that I had in college. Yes, I was here in mid-March and yes, there were some spring break folks there. I was there on spring break with my family, so I didn’t expect everything to be real quiet…but there was music blaring out of 3 or 4 rooms on the 2nd floor every night. The folks on the 3rd floor were cussing, yelling, running and moving furniture around until after 4am. I attempted to call the front desk and NO ONE was there. Apparently there is NO ONE at the front desk after a certain time. This was not an isolated incident, it happened three different nights…Also, don’t plan for anyone to sleep in the sofa bed. It’s old and squeaky with a thin mattress. They gave us an inflatable mattress to use instead and it went mostly flat after the first night.
5. The property is generally in poor condition. Yes, it has a fresh coat of paint and some new furnishings here and there. But, the elevator is old and crusty. The trim around the doors are all beat up and not properly fitting (as if it was put together cheaply originally). The light fixtures are old, the shelves in the bathroom are not level and wobbly. You get the picture.
6. The dishes in the kitchen were dirty when we arrived. There was a paring knife in the knife block that had dried food on it as did some glasses, a bowl with fried mac and cheese and a pan with unknown substances on it. Yuck. Some other guests at the pool told me that they had a live cockroach in their cabinet. Yuck. The dishwasher sounds like a jet engine when it runs and it didn’t get the dishes clean…I had to wash them by hand. Maybe a function of not enough hot water? Also, there’s no salt and pepper in the kitchen? Uggh.
7. The housekeeping it spotty/questionable. We were told that we got fresh towels and trash emptied daily and they’d vacuum and do a full suite clean in the middle of our stay…and could get fresh sheets any day that we requested. We asked for fresh sheets and never got them. We left and spent a night in Key West during our week…when we returned the next evening, we had some fresh towels thrown on the kitchen table along with a 4th roll of extra toilet paper and emptied trash…and that’s it. Seriously?
8. The on-site sundry store looks like it belongs in a 3rd world country. The front was mostly open air, there were people smoking in the store, some stuff not priced, strange groceries in different languages.
9. The public beach that the resort sits on is pretty, but you must bring your own chairs/umbrellas/etc. or rent them for a $10+ each. The water was freezing in March. Not sure if that’s normal, but it was certainly disappointing.
We made the mistake of paying for a week of “vacation traveller” for a 2 bedroom Westgate Resort for $1700 after choosing not to buy a timeshare immediately back in 2014 when we visited a Westgate Resort in Orlando. There’s a small number of 2 bedroom suites in this very small property and I could NEVER EVER get access to one. IF I had been a regular owner, I could’ve gotten one with about two months advance notice (like cockroach people that I mentioned earlier). Shoot, I could’ve gotten a 2 bedroom here off the internet in that same time frame. I NEVER could get one using the “vacation traveller” program. I had to settle for a 1 bedroom and I could only do that by booking 11 months in advance. If this trip was meant for me to sample Westgate again in hope of me buying the longer term timeshare, then let me be clear. I will never go to Westgate resort again and I pity those who have bought in already. They have a great sales department, but the actual hotel operations fail miserably.