Grand Beach By Diamond Resorts

Area, cleanliness and staff were great!

N/a

Value and size of rooms.

Dates furnishings

A lucky choice.

We were lucky. We were given a three-bedroom apartment on Block #1 as an upgrade for a single room reservation without having to go through any sales pitch. It may not happen to everyone. This is not a hotel. They do not call it “Time Sharing” anymore, they call it The Club, but it’s all the same, they will try to sell you the membership. Just turn any TV set on and you will watch the resort presentation first. Not a big deal. Everything was spotless. The $20 resort fee was no surprise to us; it was disclosed during the reservation. The staff was friendly and the property is well maintained in a fantastic location with a lake view and a sandy beach with everything nearby.

The 3 bedroom rooms were spacious enough for a family of 8. It had 3 full bathrooms as well. There are patio areas off the living room where you can get outside and relax since there is a screen to keep the flying bugs away. The resort is close enough to all the local attractions. You can be at Disney in 10 minutes, but still feel secluded and away from the crowded roads. The two pools were nice, and the tennis and basketball courts were well maintained. They added new outdoor exercise equipment and a new kids play area. They have a lot of daily activities for kids if you want to spend the day relaxing at the resort around the pools. They always seem to be working hard at maintaining the property.

The internet was free, but too slow to be useful. They use a wireless service from a company called Windstream. I've traveled all over the world and stayed in just about every type of hotel. This by far was the worst internet. I couldn't download work attachments and the kids couldn't stream their Netflix movies or play their internet games. We tried multiple devices (Galaxy Tab, iPhone, laptop computer, etc...). Called the Windstream tech support, thinking they may need to reset a router, but they said that the internet was working fine and that we shared the bandwidth with the other guest. I told him I've never experienced internet this slow, except for dialup. His response was that "it was faster than dialup." Unless they ditch this internet service provider and get something faster, don't expect to use the internet for anything other than email or reading the news. This could be a serious deal breaker if you need to accomplish business while on vacation. The room was visibly clean and well maintained; however, the carpet and tile in our room hadn't been steam cleaned in a long time. Just minutes after our kids took their shoes off at the door, their socks/feet were extremely dirty.