HGVC McAlpin-Ocean Plaza Miami Beach Florida - not great building in a great location

[jp10558]

Here's a bit of an abridged version of my review from TUG2. This one I do find the rating again hard to do because of some contradictory parts of the legend.

6.5/10.

I think people giving it a 9 and higher are 95% scoring on the location. I'm bumping 1.5 points from a 5 for the location and staff - the building and units are a 5 for sure.

I'm in Ocean Plaza. The resort building is dated, though they kind of play that up as being part of a historic register. The staff is really attentive and responsive to requests. They offer a mid week tidy at no extra charge.

Negatives:

• I do not like the sliding doors to close off the bedrooms - they do not latch well, and provide very little privacy.
• There is very weak sound deadening - you'll hear people moving about both in your unit and the hallway and neighboring units.
• The kitchen "table" is a small island with 4 chairs, but 3 people at it felt crowded.
• The floors have what feels like "weak spots" where it dips and gives a bit if you happen to step there - one is on the way to a bathroom so I step on it a lot.
• The bathroom doesn't have separate fan and light controls, so if you want to let the fan run to take out the humidity from a shower, the light has to be on too.
• The toilet in the second bathroom is set away from the wall, so you're twisting back quite a bit to reach the toilet paper holder. IDK why it's not on a stand or they didn't design the counter to come out 3 feet more - there's room in the bathroom.
• The hot tub isn't working in Ocean Plaza, we have to go over to McAplin and use theirs. Per the sign, the hot tub heater in Ocean Plaza hasn't been working for a month - IDK how long it ought to take to fix, but that seems to be going on the long side to me.
• There is no parking or valet at the location - you have to go to a different hotel or public lot to park and haul everything ~2 blocks to the place. The valet location has 0 unloading space either, so you better be set up to grab everything in one go, or you get to go, unload, call the car out again to unload again and drop off again. There are no luggage carts till you get to the timeshare, at which point you're going up an elevator.
• There's very little activities outside the one working hot tub.
• The internet is 4/10 - it sometimes works, but if you need Zoom for work, better do cell data hotspot as a back-up.

Positives:

• Location. You're right next to the park that gets to the beach
• you're in the middle of a mass of restaurants
• reasonable walking to a bunch more as well as CVS and Walgreens.

Conclusion - this is another one where the scale is a bit difficult - the only reason to come here is to be in the Art Deco quarter in Miami Beach / South Beach. There's also good service from the staff. Outside of that, it's probably in the bottom 3 places I've stayed. It has a little too much in common with Villa Roma in terms of the building itself, and that's not a good thing.

 

[dazzlingheart]

Thank you for the review. It doesn't look great from the photos, and I saw someone on YouTube talk about the parking situation. I do like the proximity to the beach, and with the walkable restaurants, maybe you don't need a car?

 

[jp10558]

One update I should make here is ON CHECKOUT we were informed they do have a luggage handler who made getting our stuff back to the car a breeze (I did a $10 tip). IDK how exactly that would work on check-in however - the valet is still a nightmare on a busy check in day cause there's literally no where to unload before the Valet takes the car for parking.

You don't need a car while there, and driving is a nightmare of traffic anyway.

 

[SmithOp]

I've stayed there without a car, took an Uber from the airport. It's a good location for taking a cruise from the port of Miami.

There is a hop on hop off bus that boards a couple blocks away. We got off in the old Havana district and visited a car museum.