Stayed here with the family and parents for 4 nights over July 4 weekend as HH Silver. King Jr. Suite MVP rate = $207/nt base, $253/nt a/i including $18/day resort charge. King Grande Water View MVP rate = $223/nt base, $271/nt a/i.
Overall:
A nice mid-tier property with a real resort feel and a good location on the South end of Key Largo, providing convenient access to both Key Largo, Tavernier, and Islamorada. Beach and pools were nice, restaurant generally very good, staff friendly. Cell service and wifi very spotty and some issues with room cleanliness. Overall, we enjoyed our stay.
Details:
1) Rate: Have wanted to stay here many times in the past but was always deterred by the rate. Either my tastes have changed or I got a good rate.
Considering the generally high prices in Key Largo, I felt this was a pretty good value overall.
2) Location: Approx. 1h30m south of MIA airport, depending on traffic, especially on the 1-lane portion of Route 1. This is about 15 min further south on Key Largo than we have usually stayed (Holiday Inn Key Largo) and made it convenient to dive with operations launching from both Key Largo and Islamorada.
3) Rooms: All of the King Jr. Suites face the parking lot while all of the King Grande Water View rooms face the beach and Gulf. As others have noted, rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors will have unobstructed views above the treeline. The rooms are actually about the same size (hence the Jr. Suite is cheaper than the King Grande Water View). Jr. Suite opens up into living room with sofabed, hallway with bathroom off it, bedroom, then balcony overlooking parking lot (good for drying dive gear!). Grande Water View has a larger bathroom with a separate sink/vanity area, separated by a partial wall from the bedroom, sitting area, and balcony.
The South wing overlooks the trees and small Hammock Beach and is across the parking lot from the pool (we had no noise problems). The North wing overlooks the main North Beach and I would expect it to be a bit noisier. Note that these were REVERSED in the OLCI map, but I was able to figure things out from the floorplan and satellite view on Google Maps - South wing has a small courtyard in the middle.
The South wing is above ground level, so you either have to climb a flight of steps from the parking lot to get to the elevator, or use the handicapped accessible lift nearby, or roll your luggage all the way from the main entrance at the central building, where there is a ramp. A bit of a pain one way or another - consider using a bellhop.
4) Cleanliness: We've unfortunately had bedbugs once in the past
and are now very, very careful to check the beds when we travel. The main mattress appeared to be new, but when we checked the sofabed (where Lil' Miss dstan was to sleep), we saw a few
possible signs of bedbugs, including clear telltale dark spots on the mattress protector.
Manager came up to check bed and admitted that the stains were unacceptable, but said that some of what we saw was rust (Mrs. dstan had made the mistake of already bundling up the sheets where she thought she saw a casing, making it impossible to find.) He also said rooms are fumigated every 2 weeks (that doesn't touch bedbugs, though).
In any case, the hotel was booked full for the holiday weekend and they refused to reassign someone else to our room so that we could swap. They did, however, replace the sofabed with a rollaway bed (which also had a couple stains on the mattress cover, but not bedbug-related) and waived our resort charges. Not really having any other option on a holiday weekend, we resolved to check for bites and to sterilize all of our luggage when we got home (which cost me $300 as Mrs. dstan ordered a new ZappBug oven to await us upon arrival.) In the end, we saw no further signs and have not had any problems at home, knock on wood.
5) Restaurants: The main Treetops restaurant is open for breakfast and dinner (no lunch). Breakfast was $19 for a full buffet complete with omelette bar, which was excellent. Kids free. Be sure to check your bill because sometimes 18% gratuity is included and sometimes it's not - I thought it was based on party size, but later there seemed to be no pattern. We had dinner there once, which was good, although our server was pretty clueless.
The Splashes Pool Bar has limited offerings for lunch, but the Mahi tacos were a hit. There are three tables in the covered area along with the bar. Be sure to guard your beer if you lounge by the pool - some overzealous staff member took my almost-full one when I was in the water, but the bartender kindly gave me another.
The Waves Beach Bar has a bit more to offer for lunch (but not much), with some shaded tables under the trees. We were a bit hotter there than at the pool, and only ate here once.
Of course, you can charge everything to your room to get the HHonors points.
6) Amenities: There is an adults only pool that gets the morning sun, a family pool that gets the afternoon sun, and a hottub. The family pool goes from 3 ft at the flat shallow end down to 6 ft at the deep end by the bar. There is also a cool waterfall feature in the middle that you can go under. Lil' Miss dstan LOVED the pool (for the first time) and so we spent every afternoon here. Towel station closes at 5pm (as does the bar), but they leave a stack of towels out. You are supposed to sign them out, but after they close there is no way to sign them back in. Eh, we took ours back to our room with no problems.
We didn't spend much time at the beach - there is some sand but also a rocky berm. Many took their lounge chairs down into the water, which looked cool, although in the direct sun.
We didn't have time to take advantage of the water sports, but saw people using the jetskis, paddle boards, and hobie cat. Not sure if there are addl charges beyond the resort fee.
Oh, and adults are given wristbands at check-in to provide access to all of the above amenities. Mrs. dstan did it right - she made hers lose enough to take off and reuse. I did not and went thru 3 of them.
Cell service is very spotty because of the location that a bit in the middle of nowhere. There is free wifi, but I could only get a half-baked signal by our front door.
7) Diving: We've dove off Key Largo with Ocean Divers for many years, but decided to try something new this year and did private charters for our group of 5 with Islamorada Dive Center in Isla and Rainbow Reef Dive Center in Key Largo. Both excellent operations although RRDC was quite hectic on this holiday weekend - we were very glad to walk past the 3 fully-booked Newtons ("you've packed us in like sardines!" one diver complained) get on our private 30' Island Hopper. As a result, we got to do several sites that we have never done before (USCGC Bibb, Conch Wall, Eagle), and got an hour surface interval between our 2 x 45-60min dives (as opposed to 1 deep wreck followed immediately by 1 crappy shallow dive on Ocean Divers). Double dipping the USS Spiegel Grove was fantastic, with an exciting penetration down to the well deck and forward through the superstructure. We see Key Largo diving in a whole new light now and are excited to return!
Hope this is helpful!
dstanhotelreport