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
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.
