We wanted to like Westgate’s River Ranch… and we did! But yet, it’s also easy to see why others would have issues and be less than satisfied.
Our first experience with River Ranch actually came several days before we checked in when we called the property to verify that there are indeed washers & dryers in the timeshare units (by the way, washers and dryers are in the two bedroom units). We were trying to pack as little as possible to avoid airline fees. We called the main number about 10pm and the person answering the phone told us she didn’t know. I suggested maybe she check with someone else and she told me she was the only person there. Being a frequent traveler I found this hard to believe… what hotel only has one employee on duty at 10pm? I asked for the manager on duty, someone in maintenance, someone in housekeeping… anybody! Over the phone I couldn’t believe I couldn’t get an answer to such a basic question. After visiting in person, I now totally understand.
River Ranch provides a unique vacation experience to those who have a sense of adventure, are flexible and also patient. What River Ranch does NOT provide is a luxury vacation experience with upscale amenities and services that are often found (and expected) at most other timeshare resort properties.
Timeshare guests immediately realize this is not the normal timeshare resort when they drive through the entrance past the crumbled foundation remains of what used to be a security guard shack. A small pond is there surrounded by a ring of stones with weeds and grass poking through between the individual rocks. A lone alligator resides in the pond that helps to frame three slightly crooked flagpoles. All of this is in front of a backdrop of several large hedge bushes that obviously are not accustomed to being perfectly coiffed.
On the other side of the road was a gleaming white split-rail fence holding a small herd of grazing buffalo. A clump of very nice-looking brown cottages were next, followed by a green horse pasture with giant moss-covered oak trees.
This is the story of River Ranch… there’s the old and unmaintained… and the new and impressive.
River Ranch went through several owners over the years. Westgate bought it roughly seven years ago but apparently doesn’t know what to do with it. It should be noted that various owners opened the property to different business ventures. Westgate inherited an RV (as in trailer) park, a scattering of permanent condos, and a 60’s era motel (think roadside motel along route 66 or a mom & pop run motel at the beach). The hotel brings in the guests on weekends. It sits almost totally empty during the week.
It actually became quite troublesome as the week went on to look at the property and see the lost potential.
River Ranch is a hidden gem. It could turn into a dynamite, much sought-after, destination. But here lies the basic question: What comes first, the resort, or the guests? The resort cannot offer continuous activities without a higher number of guests. But guests are not going to come without the promise of more activities and amenities.
The timeshare units themselves are beautiful cottages (they call them cabins) near the entrance to the resort between the horse and buffalo pastures. There are 16… a mix between studio, one, two and three bedroom units. The cabins are spectacular… they are huge inside. Our two-bedroom unit (second bedroom was a lock-off) was fittingly furnished with a bit of cowboy motif (without going overboard). A murphy bed was cleverly hidden in a wall unit in the dining area. Sofa foldout beds were in the living area and in the second bedroom. A queen size bed was in the second bedroom. A king was in the master. Very high-end tile work covered all THREE full bathrooms (master, second bedroom and in living room). If they would replace the bulky tube TV’s with HDTV models and add Marriott or Westin-style sheets, these units would top any timeshare we’ve ever stayed in!!! We had two minor annoyances during the week. The oven light never turned off (provided a nice night light) … and we never could figure out how to turn on the fake fireplace.
Arrival on Friday night: checked in after driving from Orlando International Airport. Drove 30-minutes north to Lake Wales Wal-mart for groceries. Rain canceled hayride.
Saturday: Watched DVD’s of “Gunsmoke” in the unit. Kids activities (bounce house, potato sack race, hoola hoops, egg throws) were held in a grassy park area in front of the “motel.”. Went to stables to arrange horse back riding later in the week. We had planned to attend the cookout dinner and hayride but did not make reservations since it looked like rain. It did rain. We found out the dinner was still held but the “complimentary” hayride was canceled. We heard explanations to several guests that they actually paid for the dinner (which they got) and the cancelled hayride was “complimentary” and there would be no make-up for the lost hayride. We ate our dinner using groceries from Wal-mart in the unit. It stopped raining by 7:00pm. Rodeo in the rodeo arena that evening ($15 adults). Rodeo was quite entertaining/interesting. Perfect amount of time… not too short… not too long. Street party in front of the “Saloon” after rodeo, but obviously with kids, we could not go inside the saloon.
Sunday: Attended nice church service at the resort chapel. Was told during the busy winter season, the church is packed with 300+ people. On this Memorial Day weekend, there were probably about 75. Very nice and warm pastor and his wife talked to us. Sunday afternoon: kids rodeo in the arena ($5). A heavy rain dampened the atmosphere and the rodeo grounds but that didn’t stop the kids from chasing calves to grab the ribbons off their backs. (This was exactly the kind of family event video cameras were made for!) Explored the property and walked several trails. Since it was Memorial Day, an additional hayride was offered at dusk (a few dollars per person)… with Ray Duncan who runs the stable operations and announces the rodeo each Saturday. His narration was VERY informative and entertaining. Hayride ended near the RV park… I’d never been in an RV park before and saw some VERY expensive vehicles and some very cheap ones as well.
Monday: Went horseback riding ($25)… a one-hour ride through pastures, trees, around the river and ponds. Jamie and Vanessa escorted us and were terrific at showing us the proper ways to ride like cowboys. Shot bows and arrows (about $4) using large hay bales with painted on targets. We ran into a tiny “issue” here. I asked about charging the bow to our cabin and was discouraged. This turned out to be the case throughout the entire week. They really are not set up to do room charges easily. I tried to use my American Express card but it was rejected twice. The head of security was the man operating the cash register. My Visa seemed to work. While my boys shot the bow and arrow, I called American Express to make sure my card was working and was told my card was fine and there was no record of a merchant even trying to run the charge through. We watched a large family shoot skeet (very interesting). Area was large—full of broken pavement, overgrown grass, some skeet towers missing paint). Went on an airboat ride ($25) and saw the wild cattle that we heard about on the hayride the night before. Airboat rides leave from marina where resort restaurant is located. At the risk of sounding like a snob, the marina and restaurant look shabby, un-kept and generally rundown. For example, a pontoon boat was tied up to the dock area and was in such a state of disrepair and covered by leaves, I doubt it’s been touched in years. This is not the Kodak moment that you want plastered all over the internet.
Went drove back to Lake Wales to Publix to restock our kitchen since there are really no food options at the resort except for the weekend-only restaurant and a small snack bar in the “General Store.” A new Pizza Hut was in the parking lot at the Publix shopping center so we took advantage of the $10/any pizza special and took it back to the timeshare.
Tuesday: Drove to Disney World for a change of pace. Easy one-hour and ten-minute drive. River Ranch is not the place if you are planning on doing theme parks on multiple days, but going once during the week is totally fine. The new Legoland Florida will be about 40-minutes away from River Ranch. Vero Beach would be just over an hour. I understand some drive to the Kennedy Space Center. We ran into a small “issue” Tuesday night (actually Wednesday morning by the time we arrived back from Disney World). Our card key would not work! We had awakened our boys in the car to go into the cabin… and then had shoo them in an almost sleep-walking stage to get back in the car and drove to the lobby. We found the lobby building locked. I knocked on the door several times thinking somebody would be inside. Just as I started thinking, “what am I going to do…” …here comes a speeding golf cart with an excited security guard asking in a very strong voice, “can I help you.” His gruffness disappeared when we explained our card key would not work. We went into the lobby and checked the records and he found that we were indeed registered. Turns out someone had programmed our original card key wrong.
Wednesday: Slept late to recover from late night at Disney World. We thought about visiting Bok Tower in Lake Wales but were not sure our two young boys would appreciate the gardens and estate in the Florida heat. Went on a Swamp Buggy ride with Ben, the same man who took us on the airboat. He was much more talkative this time (it’s hard to have a conversation on a loud airboat with headphones on). He told us more about the ranch and the wildlife as our giant –jacked up dune buggy went though some of the swamp land. Visited with the horses in the pasture and hiked in the afternoon. We drove to the motel/front lobby parking area. My wife took the laptop to the lobby for wi-fi. The boys noticed the inflatable that had been in the grassy area since the weekend was blown up. There was not another person anywhere in sight so I took a rare opportunity to get in with the boys and jump too. We had “bounced” for about five minutes and then two maintenance men approached and asked us what we were doing in there and told us to get out. (Without going into details, these two men have no business ever coming into contact with any guest.) I got the impression we were doing something wrong, so I babbled and smiled and said we saw it blown up and assumed it was there for guests to enjoy. One of them mumbled that they blew it up to dry it out because of the afternoon thunderstorms. We crawled out and as we sat on the inflatable edge to put our shoes back on, they pulled the plug. Gee. It was then I noticed another Westgate employee, whom we had met earlier in the week and remember because of his amazing lack of personality, standing not too far away on the porch of the closed saloon. He turned away when I looked over. I had a real sneaking suspicion that he was the one who spotted us and called the maintenance men over. I was a little taken aback at the lack of customer service. It would have been nice if someone who normally deals with guests would have simply come up to us and apologized for the confusion of having the inflatable up, and explained they were drying it out and there could be a liability issue for guests to be in it without an activities associate present. Or—considering the fact the resort was deserted and we were the only ones out there—would there have been any harm in the associate offering to let us jump on it at some point? The truth is it was hot, and we wouldn’t have lasted long in the bounce house anyway. So as we continued to wait for my wife to return from the internet room, we walked around the empty motel. We spotted a grand total of two cars parked at the motel. The motel pool was a basic apartment-complex style rectangle—no fancy waterfalls, slides or fountains at modern resorts. I peeked in a few motel windows and the rooms looked fine (two double beds covered with old-fashioned bedspreads, a min-refrigerator and bathroom). While I had fond memories of motels like this growing up, let’s just say most vacationers probably expect something different these days.
The family went to the tiny Fitness Center late in the day. There is a small area that almost looks like a miniature western town at the resort. It contains individual buildings linked together by a wooden boardwalk (think Dodge City on Gunsmoke but smaller). One building is the General Store, A western-wear store (only open weekends), an arcade, a Fitness Center, and a Post office (to service the RV park). This area could really be neat—but the landscaping is so overgrown, the paint is peeling and the wood on the buildings is splitting. This is not a quaint-rustic look, this is pure lack of maintenance. The Fitness Center is tiny, but seems to be enough to serve the need right now. Normally we take turns working out but since the Fitness Center is so far away from the timeshares and requires a car, we took the boys. Since there were only four machines and no one else was using the place, our boys were content to watch the tv and ride the exercise bike. Hiked nature trial.
Thursday: It was HOT. We had a 1:00pm appointment to ride horses again. This time with Ray Duncan, the man who oversees the stables and rodeo for Westgate. Just as we saddled up and headed off… storm clouds came up and we turned around. The horses know what was coming because suddenly they broke into a gallop in an effort to get back to the barn (that was FUN!!). We ended up sitting under a shelter and talking to Ray for about an hour while the storm passed. We saddled up again and resumed our ride. Ray is the one who told us about the small alligator in the entrance pond, so we drove to see it after our horse ride. Then we stopped and took some great pictures of the buffalo. We went back to the cabin and picked up the laptop and dropped my wife at the lobby for internet access. Because it was so hot, the boys and circled around several times and took some pictures. By the time we made our third pass… a security guard in a golf cart came zooming up to us again to check us out. I didn’t mind… I guess I was more amused than anything.
Our first experience with River Ranch actually came several days before we checked in when we called the property to verify that there are indeed washers & dryers in the timeshare units (by the way, washers and dryers are in the two bedroom units). We were trying to pack as little as possible to avoid airline fees. We called the main number about 10pm and the person answering the phone told us she didn’t know. I suggested maybe she check with someone else and she told me she was the only person there. Being a frequent traveler I found this hard to believe… what hotel only has one employee on duty at 10pm? I asked for the manager on duty, someone in maintenance, someone in housekeeping… anybody! Over the phone I couldn’t believe I couldn’t get an answer to such a basic question. After visiting in person, I now totally understand.
River Ranch provides a unique vacation experience to those who have a sense of adventure, are flexible and also patient. What River Ranch does NOT provide is a luxury vacation experience with upscale amenities and services that are often found (and expected) at most other timeshare resort properties.
Timeshare guests immediately realize this is not the normal timeshare resort when they drive through the entrance past the crumbled foundation remains of what used to be a security guard shack. A small pond is there surrounded by a ring of stones with weeds and grass poking through between the individual rocks. A lone alligator resides in the pond that helps to frame three slightly crooked flagpoles. All of this is in front of a backdrop of several large hedge bushes that obviously are not accustomed to being perfectly coiffed.
On the other side of the road was a gleaming white split-rail fence holding a small herd of grazing buffalo. A clump of very nice-looking brown cottages were next, followed by a green horse pasture with giant moss-covered oak trees.
This is the story of River Ranch… there’s the old and unmaintained… and the new and impressive.
River Ranch went through several owners over the years. Westgate bought it roughly seven years ago but apparently doesn’t know what to do with it. It should be noted that various owners opened the property to different business ventures. Westgate inherited an RV (as in trailer) park, a scattering of permanent condos, and a 60’s era motel (think roadside motel along route 66 or a mom & pop run motel at the beach). The hotel brings in the guests on weekends. It sits almost totally empty during the week.
It actually became quite troublesome as the week went on to look at the property and see the lost potential.
River Ranch is a hidden gem. It could turn into a dynamite, much sought-after, destination. But here lies the basic question: What comes first, the resort, or the guests? The resort cannot offer continuous activities without a higher number of guests. But guests are not going to come without the promise of more activities and amenities.
The timeshare units themselves are beautiful cottages (they call them cabins) near the entrance to the resort between the horse and buffalo pastures. There are 16… a mix between studio, one, two and three bedroom units. The cabins are spectacular… they are huge inside. Our two-bedroom unit (second bedroom was a lock-off) was fittingly furnished with a bit of cowboy motif (without going overboard). A murphy bed was cleverly hidden in a wall unit in the dining area. Sofa foldout beds were in the living area and in the second bedroom. A queen size bed was in the second bedroom. A king was in the master. Very high-end tile work covered all THREE full bathrooms (master, second bedroom and in living room). If they would replace the bulky tube TV’s with HDTV models and add Marriott or Westin-style sheets, these units would top any timeshare we’ve ever stayed in!!! We had two minor annoyances during the week. The oven light never turned off (provided a nice night light) … and we never could figure out how to turn on the fake fireplace.
Arrival on Friday night: checked in after driving from Orlando International Airport. Drove 30-minutes north to Lake Wales Wal-mart for groceries. Rain canceled hayride.
Saturday: Watched DVD’s of “Gunsmoke” in the unit. Kids activities (bounce house, potato sack race, hoola hoops, egg throws) were held in a grassy park area in front of the “motel.”. Went to stables to arrange horse back riding later in the week. We had planned to attend the cookout dinner and hayride but did not make reservations since it looked like rain. It did rain. We found out the dinner was still held but the “complimentary” hayride was canceled. We heard explanations to several guests that they actually paid for the dinner (which they got) and the cancelled hayride was “complimentary” and there would be no make-up for the lost hayride. We ate our dinner using groceries from Wal-mart in the unit. It stopped raining by 7:00pm. Rodeo in the rodeo arena that evening ($15 adults). Rodeo was quite entertaining/interesting. Perfect amount of time… not too short… not too long. Street party in front of the “Saloon” after rodeo, but obviously with kids, we could not go inside the saloon.
Sunday: Attended nice church service at the resort chapel. Was told during the busy winter season, the church is packed with 300+ people. On this Memorial Day weekend, there were probably about 75. Very nice and warm pastor and his wife talked to us. Sunday afternoon: kids rodeo in the arena ($5). A heavy rain dampened the atmosphere and the rodeo grounds but that didn’t stop the kids from chasing calves to grab the ribbons off their backs. (This was exactly the kind of family event video cameras were made for!) Explored the property and walked several trails. Since it was Memorial Day, an additional hayride was offered at dusk (a few dollars per person)… with Ray Duncan who runs the stable operations and announces the rodeo each Saturday. His narration was VERY informative and entertaining. Hayride ended near the RV park… I’d never been in an RV park before and saw some VERY expensive vehicles and some very cheap ones as well.
Monday: Went horseback riding ($25)… a one-hour ride through pastures, trees, around the river and ponds. Jamie and Vanessa escorted us and were terrific at showing us the proper ways to ride like cowboys. Shot bows and arrows (about $4) using large hay bales with painted on targets. We ran into a tiny “issue” here. I asked about charging the bow to our cabin and was discouraged. This turned out to be the case throughout the entire week. They really are not set up to do room charges easily. I tried to use my American Express card but it was rejected twice. The head of security was the man operating the cash register. My Visa seemed to work. While my boys shot the bow and arrow, I called American Express to make sure my card was working and was told my card was fine and there was no record of a merchant even trying to run the charge through. We watched a large family shoot skeet (very interesting). Area was large—full of broken pavement, overgrown grass, some skeet towers missing paint). Went on an airboat ride ($25) and saw the wild cattle that we heard about on the hayride the night before. Airboat rides leave from marina where resort restaurant is located. At the risk of sounding like a snob, the marina and restaurant look shabby, un-kept and generally rundown. For example, a pontoon boat was tied up to the dock area and was in such a state of disrepair and covered by leaves, I doubt it’s been touched in years. This is not the Kodak moment that you want plastered all over the internet.
Went drove back to Lake Wales to Publix to restock our kitchen since there are really no food options at the resort except for the weekend-only restaurant and a small snack bar in the “General Store.” A new Pizza Hut was in the parking lot at the Publix shopping center so we took advantage of the $10/any pizza special and took it back to the timeshare.
Tuesday: Drove to Disney World for a change of pace. Easy one-hour and ten-minute drive. River Ranch is not the place if you are planning on doing theme parks on multiple days, but going once during the week is totally fine. The new Legoland Florida will be about 40-minutes away from River Ranch. Vero Beach would be just over an hour. I understand some drive to the Kennedy Space Center. We ran into a small “issue” Tuesday night (actually Wednesday morning by the time we arrived back from Disney World). Our card key would not work! We had awakened our boys in the car to go into the cabin… and then had shoo them in an almost sleep-walking stage to get back in the car and drove to the lobby. We found the lobby building locked. I knocked on the door several times thinking somebody would be inside. Just as I started thinking, “what am I going to do…” …here comes a speeding golf cart with an excited security guard asking in a very strong voice, “can I help you.” His gruffness disappeared when we explained our card key would not work. We went into the lobby and checked the records and he found that we were indeed registered. Turns out someone had programmed our original card key wrong.
Wednesday: Slept late to recover from late night at Disney World. We thought about visiting Bok Tower in Lake Wales but were not sure our two young boys would appreciate the gardens and estate in the Florida heat. Went on a Swamp Buggy ride with Ben, the same man who took us on the airboat. He was much more talkative this time (it’s hard to have a conversation on a loud airboat with headphones on). He told us more about the ranch and the wildlife as our giant –jacked up dune buggy went though some of the swamp land. Visited with the horses in the pasture and hiked in the afternoon. We drove to the motel/front lobby parking area. My wife took the laptop to the lobby for wi-fi. The boys noticed the inflatable that had been in the grassy area since the weekend was blown up. There was not another person anywhere in sight so I took a rare opportunity to get in with the boys and jump too. We had “bounced” for about five minutes and then two maintenance men approached and asked us what we were doing in there and told us to get out. (Without going into details, these two men have no business ever coming into contact with any guest.) I got the impression we were doing something wrong, so I babbled and smiled and said we saw it blown up and assumed it was there for guests to enjoy. One of them mumbled that they blew it up to dry it out because of the afternoon thunderstorms. We crawled out and as we sat on the inflatable edge to put our shoes back on, they pulled the plug. Gee. It was then I noticed another Westgate employee, whom we had met earlier in the week and remember because of his amazing lack of personality, standing not too far away on the porch of the closed saloon. He turned away when I looked over. I had a real sneaking suspicion that he was the one who spotted us and called the maintenance men over. I was a little taken aback at the lack of customer service. It would have been nice if someone who normally deals with guests would have simply come up to us and apologized for the confusion of having the inflatable up, and explained they were drying it out and there could be a liability issue for guests to be in it without an activities associate present. Or—considering the fact the resort was deserted and we were the only ones out there—would there have been any harm in the associate offering to let us jump on it at some point? The truth is it was hot, and we wouldn’t have lasted long in the bounce house anyway. So as we continued to wait for my wife to return from the internet room, we walked around the empty motel. We spotted a grand total of two cars parked at the motel. The motel pool was a basic apartment-complex style rectangle—no fancy waterfalls, slides or fountains at modern resorts. I peeked in a few motel windows and the rooms looked fine (two double beds covered with old-fashioned bedspreads, a min-refrigerator and bathroom). While I had fond memories of motels like this growing up, let’s just say most vacationers probably expect something different these days.
The family went to the tiny Fitness Center late in the day. There is a small area that almost looks like a miniature western town at the resort. It contains individual buildings linked together by a wooden boardwalk (think Dodge City on Gunsmoke but smaller). One building is the General Store, A western-wear store (only open weekends), an arcade, a Fitness Center, and a Post office (to service the RV park). This area could really be neat—but the landscaping is so overgrown, the paint is peeling and the wood on the buildings is splitting. This is not a quaint-rustic look, this is pure lack of maintenance. The Fitness Center is tiny, but seems to be enough to serve the need right now. Normally we take turns working out but since the Fitness Center is so far away from the timeshares and requires a car, we took the boys. Since there were only four machines and no one else was using the place, our boys were content to watch the tv and ride the exercise bike. Hiked nature trial.
Thursday: It was HOT. We had a 1:00pm appointment to ride horses again. This time with Ray Duncan, the man who oversees the stables and rodeo for Westgate. Just as we saddled up and headed off… storm clouds came up and we turned around. The horses know what was coming because suddenly they broke into a gallop in an effort to get back to the barn (that was FUN!!). We ended up sitting under a shelter and talking to Ray for about an hour while the storm passed. We saddled up again and resumed our ride. Ray is the one who told us about the small alligator in the entrance pond, so we drove to see it after our horse ride. Then we stopped and took some great pictures of the buffalo. We went back to the cabin and picked up the laptop and dropped my wife at the lobby for internet access. Because it was so hot, the boys and circled around several times and took some pictures. By the time we made our third pass… a security guard in a golf cart came zooming up to us again to check us out. I didn’t mind… I guess I was more amused than anything.
