This stay was a very unpleasant and regrettable experience for many reasons. I would strongly advise travelers against staying here. Here are the unfortunate details:
- We reached out the day before and the morning of our arrival in Florida asking for information about how to access the unit. We were troubled to find that upon our flight landing that we still had not heard back from the owner, and then that the address displayed on the listing was incorrect. We had an infant and luggage with us, nowhere to stay and every reason to believe we were fully scammed. It wasn’t until the evening, hours after our arrival in Florida and after our check-in time, that Ricardo finally messaged back with information on the correct address and unit number. No apology, and inexplicably refusing to speak with us live.
- This building is not as advertised! Most disturbing is the elevator situation. Waits for the elevator were minimum 20-40 minutes and often more than an hour (no exaggeration!). This was in part due to scheduled maintenance on one of the elevator cars (which the owner could easily have warned about), however we heard from many other guests and hotel staff that this is a constant issue at this building. We saw families of 5 going up and down as many as 25 flights of stairs. The situation was not only extremely uncomfortable but also clearly unsafe.
- The condo itself is not as advertised and not well maintained. Dirty, uncomfortable and unpleasant.
- When we finally accessed the unit we found that it had no supplies - no toilet paper, paper towels or garbage bags. Ricardo was apparently surprised to hear that we expected otherwise.
- The pool area suffers from the same problem as the elevators - the building is far too populated to accommodate the capacity. Wildly overcrowded, and not at all worth the 45 minute (!!) wait for an elevator to travel down from our floor.
- After countless messages to Ricardo we scarcely heard back, and not once received a live call despite many requests for the courtesy of a conversation. The check-in issue and the elevator situation each alone would warrant some kind of refund, but our requests for a reasonable compromise went completely ignored.
- To add insult to injury, there’s a daily hotel surcharge that’s not covered in the Airbnb rate and buried in the fine print on the listing.
There are many options in this area on Airbnb and elsewhere. I would strongly urge anyone to avoid this property at all costs and stay elsewhere!