# Grand Seas Daytona Beach questions



## Timeshare_nut (Jun 10, 2010)

So I have floating weeks at Grand Seas in both 1BR and 2BR units.  I am looking for advice on locations/units.  Are there certain areas at the resort that are more desirable than others?  I see there is a South side and a North side, is one better than the others, newer, more upgraded, etc?  Which section is closer to the pool and activities?

Also, if anyone owns here and can shed any light on how easy it is to secure reservations and anything else to expect or ask for as a new owner?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

MJ


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## Cheryl20772 (Aug 9, 2010)

Timeshare_nut said:


> So I have floating weeks at Grand Seas in both 1BR and 2BR units.  I am looking for advice on locations/units.  Are there certain areas at the resort that are more desirable than others?  I see there is a South side and a North side, is one better than the others, newer, more upgraded, etc?  Which section is closer to the pool and activities?
> 
> Also, if anyone owns here and can shed any light on how easy it is to secure reservations and anything else to expect or ask for as a new owner?
> 
> ...


Hi, We've owned and stayed at Grand Seas for many years now.  The bottom floor ocean view rooms are all what they call courtyard rooms with a door opening onto a shaded patio and then to (on the North end) either the mini golf or the pool deck.  In the past there was a real problem with pigeon poop on the patios and it's much nicer since they installed awnings.  All other floors have no deck...only a floor to ceiling window with ocean view.  There is also a wing streetside of 2 story apartment type units.  These have no ocean view at all, but are spacious and comfortable.

One bad thing about Grand Seas is that the chairs make a horrid scraping noise on the tile floors.  To avoid hearing that, you want to get a room on the top floor.  Unfortunately, then you will need to depend on the very slow and often out of service elevators!  The resort is being updated very slowly.  There are some rooms with updated kitchens and some with flat screen TV's in the living room.  On our stay there June 2010, we were in unit 4054 and the only updates we noted were a nice flat screen TV in the living room and beautiful lamps in the living room and bedroom.  If you can figure out which rooms have been updated, you might enjoy your stay more.  We took a tour and the model units have glass top stove, chrome refrigerator, chrome microwave, new dishwasher, corelle dishes and upgraded furniture.

We have certainly paid our MF over the years and expected to see the improvements come a bit faster.

There are some problems there to keep an eye on.  We were contacted by a woman in the lobby. She wanted to discuss with us the relationship between Grand Seas and Club Navigo asince they have filed bankruptcy.  We inferred from the way it was presented to us, that Club Navigo had declaired bankruptcy.  This notion was reinforced by the salesman we ended up sitting with when he eventually offered to change our Club Navigo points back to straight Grand Seas ownership for an additional payment of $20,990.  He wanted us to buy our week again for full price (to free us from that bankrupt Club Navigo)!  We could not get out of there fast enough.

After our "discussion" with them, we went to the internet and did some reseach.  It seems that it's not Club Navigo in trouble, but Grand Seas.  According to reports I found: 



> "The managing general partner of the Grand Seas Resort filed for bankruptcy this week.
> 
> Marsha Madorsky , president of Grand Seas M Inc., filed for Chapter 11 protection with the bankruptcy court in the Southern District of Florida on behalf of Grand Seas Resort Partners."



So, the GS people boldly lied to us about that and tried to take more of our money.  Of course they do desperately need more money.

If you, or any one else, can find out more about that mess, I, for one, would love to know more.

We have never had trouble getting reservations, but usually I book close to a year in advance.  Before we converted to Club Navigo, we just called GS and got our requested time with no trouble right away.  Now we have to call Club Navigo first and then they call GS and find out if what we want is available and if we have paid our MF and then CN calls us back a few days later to let us know we got our week.  Apparently CN has no access to GS's databases.

Parking is the worst problem at GS resort.  They can only allow one car per unit - even if you have a 2BR.  If you go out at night in your car, expect to have trouble finding a space when you get back.  There may be parking in the street, but may or may not be parking in the Belair Shopping lot across the street. Some years they forbid resort parking there.  Club Navigo used to have an office in the shopping center and things were friendly then, but CN has closed that now.  There's a lot at the end of the South building and usually we can get in there, when all others are full.

North and South units are assigned according to whether you check in or Saturday or Sunday.  There are pools and gates to the beach on both ends; so either is really fine.  The tot playground is on the South end and the mini golf and fire ring is on the North end.

We like this resort... we have enjoyed our weeks spent there and brought friends there.  The pools and beach are wonderful.  It's now got a new manager.  We don't know why they recently lost Rick Rinear (who was manager there for years).  Seems there are some management problems and things will be changing (for the good or bad?).  

One new change is the $3 per day resort fee!  When I asked, "Why this new fee?", the clerk told me all the resorts have fees now... it's for the free wireless internet (which isn't so good) and the coffee in the lobby, and other stuff.  Do the math on that one.  If they only had 100 units, this fee would bring in $15600 per year and I'm pretty sure there are more than 100 units there.  This is the only resort we have been to which charges a "resort fee".

Don't miss the all-you-can-eat meals at Gilligan's on property.  The Friday fish fry is the best.  We always look forward to that.


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## Maketime2LLL (Oct 6, 2012)

*Grand Seas - Daytona Beach, conversion to Points*

Thank you Cheryl20772 for all your writings about "our" property.  We are owners (every other year) and have not been happy with the escalating MF and having to pay for those that are not paying, "because of the economic times". Just today we were visited by a gentlement contracted to explain our options with some changes at GS - in a nutshell, conversion to points. We're sort of familiar with the system and we were told our 1 week (#41) was woth 45,000 points, cost $2995 (oh yeah, plus $250 for the addendum to the deed). We weren't happy but are convinced this is a way that properties have designed to extract money from owners. We're contemplating canceling the contract because, honestly we don't stay at the GS, it appears to us to be run down and we always trade our week and have been happy.

Just wondering what have others done out there (converted and enjoying it, hate it, no change) because the maintenance fee never goes away and if the property continues to be mismanaged (don't know how they will really recover out of Ch 11 & what if they go completely bust - then what good is a deed?).

We're not looking to sell or buy, just curious what others experienced.  We listened to and passed on the Club Naviho.  BTW, is Interval International a part of this?  Are Mariott and Disney properties part of the "circle" we would be buying into with the points?

Anyway, any and all experiences are welcome.

Thanks everyone - don't take work too seriously, make time for RR.
To learn from one's mistakes is knowledge. To learn from other's mistakes is WISDOM.


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## Cheryl20772 (Oct 6, 2012)

Maketime2LLL said:


> Thank you Cheryl20772 for all your writings about "our" property.  We are owners (every other year) and have not been happy with the escalating MF and having to pay for those that are not paying, "because of the economic times".


I'm sitting in room 6016 at Grand Seas as I type this.  Yes, we had to pay that awful special assessment.  I'm not sure if that was a result of poor management or just hard times reality.  It really didn't surprise us that it happened.  They wanted us to attend a meeting to find out more about the "changes" at the resort and with II.  I'm unaware of any changes with II and don't really want to attend a meeting.



> Just today we were visited by a gentlement contracted to explain our options with some changes at GS - in a nutshell, conversion to points. We're sort of familiar with the system and we were told our 1 week (#41) was woth 45,000 points, cost $2995 (oh yeah, plus $250 for the addendum to the deed). We weren't happy but are convinced this is a way that properties have designed to extract money from owners. We're contemplating canceling the contract because, honestly we don't stay at the GS, it appears to us to be run down and we always trade our week and have been happy.


We did do the Club Navigo conversion and have regretted it to this day.  We usually do use Grand Seas and only once ever deposited our week to II for an exchange.  Club Navigo only complicates our ownership for us.  The price of what you mention seems to be about the same as we paid, but the number of points is different.  What is the points program they are using now?



> Just wondering what have others done out there (converted and enjoying it, hate it, no change) because the maintenance fee never goes away and if the property continues to be mismanaged (don't know how they will really recover out of Ch 11 & what if they go completely bust - then what good is a deed?).
> 
> We're not looking to sell or buy, just curious what others experienced.  We listened to and passed on the Club Naviho.  BTW, is Interval International a part of this?  Are Mariott and Disney properties part of the "circle" we would be buying into with the points?
> 
> Anyway, any and all experiences are welcome.


Disney is affiliated with RCI; not II.  I don't know about Mariott.  There should be a catalog available if you did the points conversion.  It would show you where you can use the points.  I totally agree with you that anything they come up with will be just another way to suck dollars out of your wallet.  In my opinion there are too many stray weeks looking for a home to justify them continuing to sell them at retail prices.  They just need people to adopt them free and pay the maintenance fees; so the place can be kept up to  standards.  

There does seem to be work going on around here.  The indoor pool is being worked on and isn't available to us.  They have made the exercise work out room available 24 hours with a door combination code.  The wireless internet works well and they have discontinued the daily resort fee.  Little things make us happy 


> Thanks everyone - don't take work too seriously, make time for RR.
> To learn from one's mistakes is knowledge. To learn from other's mistakes is WISDOM.


There's a Board meeting here the day after we check out.  I wish I could be there, but we have to hit the road.  It's the meeting when they approve the next year's budget that gets sent to us in the annual meeting notice.  You should have gotten a letter in the mail.  I sure hope it's not going to go up again.  There's a note on the letter that we got a tax discount last year that's not going to be on the next bill; so taxes will be higher.


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## Maketime2LLL (Oct 10, 2012)

*Grand Seas Conversation to Points*

Reconsidered our decision to pay GS $3000 to convert to points and cancelled contract.  Will have to see how that turns out.  Somehow I just don't like the idea that they extort money from us again to cover their mismanagement of funds.  I'm curious as to how this will play out and if they can eventually force folks to go to points.

Maybe all of us should plan to be at the GS for their next annual meeting.  I certainly intend to follow things more closely.

Thanks Cheryl20772 for your info and reply. Hope your stay was a good one.


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## Cheryl20772 (Oct 10, 2012)

The main advantage for us to having the points rather than the straight week is the ability to use a partial week and we don't do that; so it's pretty useless as points for us.

I'm not sure what the points plan is that they are selling now.  I haven't attended their spiel meeting, but have gathered it's a "Vacation Club".  That seems to be the popular thing around here as there were people on the beach trying to coral some bodies to attend Vacation Club meetings for a different vacation club yesterday.  

I did some research online and discovered that Internal International now seems connected with Shell Vacations Club.  The amount of money you had to pay does not represent the other one I found associated with GSR.  So is Shell the club they sold you?

The other one I found has at least one very disgruntled owner here http://advantage-travel.pissedconsu...el-club-stealing-my-money-20120131293347.html

I see in that page that she paid $5500 to join that one and I'm not sure it has a points conversion.  I found the web site for Great Escapes Travel Club here https://www.greatescapesonline.com/Login/Welcome.aspx but it doesn't provide much in the line of details costwise (of course they want a high pressure sales person to do that).

I think that after reading about that lady's experience (and yours) I will continue to stay clear of the sales people at all the resorts.  They wanted to pay us $100 to go to the meeting yesterday and I yelled over my shoulder that nothing's free as I kept on walking.


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## Maketime2LLL (Oct 11, 2012)

The contract was to convert to II (Club Gold) and would have been a different membership than we already have.  As a matter of fact in the cancellation paragraph is says to send the letter to "Club, GSR...."
We'll see if we start to have difficulty getting use of our current week.  The approach they took to sell the conversion is that the resorts participating virtually all sell only points and although they still honor the "weeks" system the "points" and "weeks" pools are kept separate and can not be interchanged.  So as more and more people convert there will be less and less "weeks" available to exchange.  I took the salesman's explanation to the extreme and asked him, so you're telling me that when the last hold out for conversion is out there, say in 3-5 years that only he and I will be able to exchange weeks with each other?  He said yes.  Maybe so, but I just don't believe everyone will convert or that it will get any more expensive to do so.


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