What no one mentioned about Harborside...

...is that when you check in, they want to put a hold on your credit card. For 3 of us, they wanted to put a $1050 hold on my credit card for resort charges. Because of the circumstances, I didn't even have a credit card on me with that much available. My friends were paying my meals for the trip in exchange for use of the timeshare. I had a couple hundred on a card and a hundred in cash for my own incidentals. The lady at the desk looked at me like I was crazy for only having that much money for a week's trip at Atlantis.

She didn't know how cheap 3 old friends can be! We bought very little at the resort and paid cash or used credit cards at other places. I ended up getting $50 back from the resort on my card, and my friends reimbursed me almost $150 to pay back on my card. In the meantime, I had to withdraw cash from ScotiaBank because all the credit on my card was being held by the resort! I'd planned to use the card shopping in Nassau.

It worked out fine, but it was annoying to have the hold on the card. Usually a hotel or resort will just take the card number, not necessarily hold a certain amount of funds!

That's a pretty significant hold for a CC IMO. Assuming you were only there 7 nights that's $150/night. I've heard of some hotels putting that sort of a hold on a CC but they're pretty much upscale hotels and charging $150/day for meals and other incidentals wouldn't be that difficult. When we were at a Marriott hotel in Ireland my hotel bill for 7 nights came to something like $750 and that was almost exclusively meals taken at the hotels restaurants and about 6 pints of beer between the two of us. The room had been pre-paid using Marriott Rewards points. If we'd have charged a couple of rounds of golf to the room I could see where at that location we'd have hit that $150/day range pretty easily.

Disney puts a $1500 hold on your CC. To say I was surprised the first time is an under statement. I was just lucky I had brought a CC that allowed that sort of hold! I wonder if they would put on less if you requested to do so?

And now I rather like the ability to just use my room key for all charges rather than using the regular CC.

When I stayed at Disney Vero Beach a few years back they put a $1,000 hold on my card, and I was there by myself! I think I ended up with a grand total of about $50 in charges that week. Since then I'm now more aware of this practice and so will ask if staying at an upscale ts or hotel as to the amount. Typically I give them my Amex card for the hold since it has the highest limit, but then pay with another card at checkout (to earn FF miles).

Its not as uncommon as you would think, especially if the timeshare is attached to a hotel, or is offering many amenities. $1,500 is on the higher side, but, I always assume that at least a $100.00 a day, is going to be held for charges. Many of the timeshares that I have stayed at, have done this. I usually ask what they are holding, at check-in.