Guest User
January 6, 2024
This Christmas trip to Sands of Islamorada was unexpectedly cut short. We rented the only ocean front suite at the Sands for the long weekend of Christmas - Friday through Tuesday morning. The only reason we chose to stay here rather than our normal go-to in Tavernier is because it is pet-friendly. Be careful on the pet fees, because the confirmation email states $20 per pet, per day and the final bill charged $45 per pet, per day. After some emails back-and-forth, I was refunded the $200.00 over-charge. As for the accommodation, it is pretty bare-bones. Obviously, you are steps away from the ocean. So they have that going for them! At first blush, the suite was clean and fresh. You walk into a very small kitchen, a small but large enough living and dining area and then a nice size bedroom. It smelled fresh and clean and it looked fresh and clean. The show-stopper is the balcony for ocean-front suite 19! You have a beautiful and amazing view....until you sit down in any of the chairs. Then, because of the position of the top rail of the balcony, your view of the horizon is completely blocked. There was no way for my husband nor myself to sit to have a good view of the ocean. And, even more problematic for anyone with pets staying at this pet-friendly hotel, the spindles/pickets for the deck railing are not up to code, even though it seemed to be fairly new construction. I have a 35 pound lab-mix and a Dachshund and they both fit right through the spindles of the deck railing. So, if a toddler is staying in this unit, it will be very unsafe and dangerous. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen! Nonetheless, my dogs and I had a very nice time enjoying the ocean breeze for hours! I even did some yoga and stretching on the balcony; it was great! The suite overall was not bad. The things that got on my nerves most were the deck railing I mentioned and the tiny sink in the kitchen. The room is a suite with a kitchen for a reason, yet the sink is too small to even wash the dishes needed for a suite. We were planning to prepare and eat our Christmas dinner in this kitchen. We brought the food from home and were going to grill out on the beach using the gas grills and heat everything up in the kitchen. But after trying to feed 2 dogs for 3 days and clean up their dishes in the bar sink, it was annoying. It turned out to be extremely windy the last day before we left early on Christmas morning to drive back home. There was no way we were going to be able to grill out on the beach with the wind. And, on Christmas morning, a roach crawled out from under one of our grocery bags we had lying on the kitchen counter and that was it. I was no longer comfortable staying there; we left on Christmas morning. I tried to get the last day refunded because of the bug issue, but we were denied. I really give an honest and thorough review of my experience and I believe I have done that here. My husband said not to be too hard on them, but I cannot NOT tell about the dec