Gina S.
Yelp
My family are regulars to the cabana section of the pool. We've been renting 2-3 cabanas here for special occasions every summer for five summers. Unfortunately our last experience was extremely disappointing.
The positives:
-When you rent a cabana, you have access to a semi private pool area, only open to other cabana guests. This makes it easier to keep an eye on kids and a little more private than swimming in the main pool and it's the primary reason we keep coming back.
-The food is great. The Mediterranean bento box, nachos and chicken fingers are a few family favorites but we've never had anything we didn't like.
-For the most part, the staff is friendly, efficient and accommodating. Denyel in the cabana area is a favorite! She always has a smile on her face and checks back frequently.
Now for the not so good news.
-Based on what we heard from staff at our latest visit, it sounds like there may be new manager(s) who are implementing "new policies".
-For example, we always bring in a few sealed bottles of water. We were most recently there 2 months prior on Memorial Day weekend and this policy was not enforced. However this time, the security staff that checks your bags upon entrance made us throw away all our brand new bottles of sealed water. Stating that it's a new policy and although they don't agree with it, their manager is enforcing it. Both the female and male security guard stated that filtered water is available upon request. The frustrating thing about this new policy is that I had heard some water parks were being stricter about what you can bring in so I actually called the pool twice the day before with no answer and checked the website to see if anything had changed since our last visit. Not a word on the website about this. I had told all of our cabana guests to bring sealed water so in total our group had to throw away over $30 of bottled water that we had just purchased, including water to make formula bottles for my infant and my pregnant sisters water. It was 108 degrees when we arrived at the pool, so it didn't kick off our day in a great way.
-The second disappointing incident came in when my 65 year old dad hid a few seashells in the sand area, which he has done for his grandchildren at least 15 times over 5 years and again did it less than 2 months ago. He draws a circle in the sand and buried the shells and the kids dig them out and they love it! It's a family tradition. He's always so considerate, he checks each shell to make sure it's not sharp and hides it in the circled area as not to disturb any other guests. Mind you this time, no one else was using the beach area because the sand was blazing hot. He buried the shells as he always does and a male security office starts yelling at him in front of the kids and other guests. Yelling. "I'm shutting this beach down. You can't do this! This is a hazard!" I walk over and ask him to lower his voice in front of my children for one it's inappropriate, let's talk this out and 2 you're ruining a birthday party and a surprise tradition my family has had for 5 years. He keeps yelling. Again, I ask him to calm down and stop yelling and he says "Ma'am, it's because of my ear piece, do you have an ear piece?" So I said , well then you need to take out the ear piece and have a conversation or get someone to come over and talk to us that doesn't have an ear piece. He says he called for a manager and he's shutting down the beach. The kids can't dig for shells. So we're standing there upset, the kids are so confused and disappointed wondering why their Papa is being yelled at... we stand there for at least 5 minutes in the blazing heat, no manager. I walk over to the check-in area which is directly facing us and where this is all going down, just a few feet away and there's a man standing there in a polo shirt looking at his phone. I ask, how much longer is it going to be to talk to a manager and he says, I'm a manager and no one told me anyone wanted to speak to me. Lovely. I proceed to explain what happened and he says it's a hazard because the shells may break, so I say, fine let the kids dig the shells out and we'll never do it again. No, no we're shutting the beach down. The whole thing ruined what was supposed to be a fun surprise experience for the kids and birthday boy. He had no interest in hearing us out that this was something we weren't aware of since we've done it at least 15 times. Had no desire in trying to save the experience for us or apologize for the awful behavior of the security guard. Did not care one bit about customer service or our special occasions or the fact that we're regulars to spending so much money on cabanas. This "policy" is not on any sign nor on the website.
Hopefully this is an isolated incident and others will have a better experience. Steer clear of the male security guard and manager. Customer service is non-existent.
