This was a disappointing stay in some ways for us, though it's hard to feel disappointed for long with such an amazing view...
Pros:
- Incredible view from the lanai--gorgeous--and it's even a great spot to watch surfing and if you're lucky like we were, sea turtles.
- Convenient to beaches and good restaurants within walking distance
- Felt fairly clean (see below)
- For us, master bed and twin beds were very comfortable.
- Near end of building and fourth floor - prime spot.
- Very quiet building, at least that's what we experienced
- Plenty of free parking spaces - parking was very easy, despite it being a busy area
- Washer and dryer in our place was fast and convenient and there was dishwashing and laundry soap provided
- Dishwasher worked (although you need to flip a switch on the wall, too - it's not very clear, but we figured it out)
- Elevator, if you want one (we preferred to walk the breezy three flights of stairs though)
Cons:
- If you are used to owners taking great pride in their lodging, this is a big corporation that owns (I believe the agent I called said) 36,000 properties. There's a 24/7 hotline you can call with a nice person on the other end, but that person will know nothing about your place or situation and likely will just listen and not solve anything. Then there's a local management group, but the problem there... (see below)
- Check-in is no earlier than 4:00 PM...which is when their local office closes. So if you arrive and there are any problems, you don't have anyone local until the next business day starts. And then, very little follow-through. For us, arriving the day before Christmas Eve, that meant we never heard from anyone at all. We called the Vacasa main number and they listened and said they'd contact the local mgmt group. We never heard from anyone. We got an automated text checking in with us the next day from Vacasa. I explained some of the problems and thought someone would get back to me. No one ever replied--from Vacasa or local management. I eventually called the local office after the holidays and then weekend. The lady told me - Well, i wish you'd told someone! haha We certainly tried. But we didn't want to spend our stay getting all the problems solved.
- Though smoking isn't allowed on the lanais, we had a smoker below us (at least 3X over our 6 nights). That is kind of a non-negotiable for us. What a shame. We couldn't get any response on that from Vacasa, though they said it "isn't allowed." I mean, they were thousands of miles away.
- Looked clean, but a couple of problems: the floor (and this is within a couple of hours of our arrival after taking off our socks) looked clean, but was so dirty that our feet got black and we had to wash our feet every night. Also, some dirty dishes put away in the cabinet - things like coffee mugs that weren't quite clean. But overall, the place looked clean and felt pretty good. (Bathrooms were very clean).
- Line of little ants that we were fighting in the kitchen. if you've spent time in the islands, you know that it's a continual struggle to keep critters out of things and so we were extremely careful. No crumbs left on the counter, etc. You have to clean up after eating and go to bed with a kitchen 100% clean. So that's what we did. But this line of little ants found their way into one of our cereal boxes that was closed tightly - they got into the cardboard and plastic bag. We just put all our cereal in the fridge after that. And they were sometimes active and sometimes gone. It really wasn't that bad.
- Serious wifi issues - if we used wifi for an hour, it would drop 1-2X during that hour and sometimes you had to wait several minutes for it to come up again. This wasn't our tech failings. We unplugged and reset the router about 4-5 times over our 6-day stay. It's just got problems. We weren't going to stay in and online all the time, but if you were working there it could be problematic, or at night, it would also affect streaming while we were watching stuff.
- Futon bed was quite uncomfortable for our teenager.
- Swimming pool is small and kind of sad, but we'd rather be on the beaches anyway.
- It's a pretty densely-populated part of the coast, compared to other places we stayed. We didn't like that over the busy holidays. However, as I said, this building is pretty quiet. And if you like a more hopping area, this felt like that.
- If you like having a kitchen that's filled with a lot of the basics (olive oil, for example), this did not have anything but salt, pepper, and cinnamon. So we spent a lot more on incidentals/groceries at this place than the other two lodgings we stayed at before it on Hawaii where they had a lot of basics in their kitchens. But there was toilet paper, one roll of paper towels, travel-sized shampoo/conditioner/lotion, etc.
- Overall, this unit with the luxury view felt very budget, though we didn't pay budget prices. The soap dispensers were diluted with water to make them last longer, there was one-ply toilet paper, etc. It's a shame because it's such a great unit and someone should take more pride in ownership.