Now at Wyndham Bay Club II in Miramar Beach Sandestin Resort area

[jp10558]

My review:

The Units inside are very nice. Possibly some of the fanciest fixtures I've seen yet along with a nice living space with wooden chairs and table, large sectional and decent kitchen. The bedrooms have attached bathrooms, big bed in master, 2 queens in second room. The second room has a dresser easily converted into a workspace for a laptop if a chair is borrowed from the dining area, with one caveat - no easy power plug. Laptops work OK with well planned charging breaks.

The sleeping setup has a clock you can unplug to power things like charging your phone or a CPAP. Though why most of the outlets are nowhere near where someone would use them remains a mystery to me in this and the last resort I was in (Coral Reef HHI).

Now the negatives: Check in is a couple miles away at a different resort. You have to pay attention to your e-mail confirming the reservation. As a Wyndham owner, no credit card was asked for, and no resort fees, parking fees, or deposit was required. This was a nice change of pace over RCI checkins.

As expected concierge was a bit of a pain, it took about 10 minutes of saying NO, I don't need an explanation meeting on my new ownership OR a person to convert / sign me up for Vacasa or out of the club Wyndham booking site, to get the wristbands. The check in person kind of warned me there might be push at the wristband site.

The actual resort location is kind of built on top of a parking lot like a garage, all concrete. The walkways between the units is not enclosed but does have a roof - it's still outside temps. Kind of weird and again feels a lot like a parking garage.

The temp is also an issue with the room - the climate control is kind of off - it doesn't seem to heat the whole unit the same, or even close. Some areas will be very warm to hot, others will be uncomfortably cold.

Location wise, it's by the bay. Walking looks like it'll get you access to some areas where we saw birds and other wildlife, and there's supposed to be a shuttle every 30ish minutes to the beach and shopping district.

I'll add more if I find out more while I'm here.

 

[jp10558]

Update: Local food options are many, but I would avoid "Bistrology". I know it has good reviews but I found it pretty bad and quite expensive.

1) They don't have printed menus - instead they say: use a QR code to read the menu. This was a problem for me because I recently got a new phone, and I somehow used up my fast data for the first time in like forever - so I couldn't get the menu to load. Luckily I was informed of the details to get on their wifi without also needing to use their QR code.

2) The menus state no customization. Odd, but OK - I found out why later on to my sadness. The issue here is the menu is to me somewhat eclectic. So many things sounded good but had *one* thing that I just can't stand. Avacado, or arugula, or blue cheese or something. Usually "hold the one thing" is no problem at a restaurant.

3) Language barrier - Between us and the server and apparently between the server and the kitchen. It was noticeably difficult, even pointing to the written menu on my phone, to get the server to understand what we were ordering. He was inputting on a handheld device - so why no order direct on your phone IDK. We went so far to phone only menus already. Here's where I hope it was communication issues:

4) Just about anything he gave us a choice on the delivered meals were wrong. Order well done burger - comes out rare. Order Iced Latte with almond milk (allergy) - and make it a point to say ALMOD milk multiple times, comes out with regular milk. Order parmigiana and garlic fries - comes out the other option. Also, the scrambled eggs were just oddly sweet.

5) We finally hail the waiter again and complain, and he takes everything away even though we said we had a time limit and needed to get going. They re-made 2 of the 3 meals, and put them in to go boxes. At least these were right, but...

6) They still charged $75 for 3 brunch meals, and then took forever to take payment. NO TIP that's for sure. Honestly I would have preferred getting 2 of the meals free and getting out of there. Needless to say, given all the rave reviews - I might just be spectacularly unlucky or maybe the review sites are "managed", but I put up my one star on google, tripadvisor and yelp FWIW. The one good thing was the ambiance and the presentation of the food were both top notch.

 

[jp10558]

Update - we found a charging plug by moving the dresser a little and now that works well for running a laptop. However, the Internet access is the slowest and least reliable of any resort I've stayed in before. Which makes doing work a bit of a pain. It is possible, but not as easy as elsewhere. As this is the Resort2 network service, I hope this isn't the case for more Wyndham locations. I don't recall Smuggs being this annoying for instance.

 

[weems637]

We enjoy our stays here during the summer. We take the short drives to either Grayton State Park or Henderson State Park and make a day of it, since the beach at the Sandestin Resort is typically way over crowded. There are lots of local restaurants, too many to mention. The beaches are sugar white sand, and the water is clear. The waves crashing on the beach will lull you into a long nap. Looking forward to our two trips there this summer!