#310 Sunny Isles Ocean Reserve with FREE Parking include

This apartment was in a nice resort but getting into it was very complicated, admittedly not helped by having just done a 10 hour drive. You have to leave your car out the front and you have 15 minutes to unload your luggage before moving the car. The valet guy barked at us and mounted our keys in case he needed to move the car whilst we were unloading and I get this, but he could have explained this and asked for them a bit nicer. We had problems getting into the apartment, it's a key code and you have to press the blank plate on the door to make the numbers appear. We didn't know this and we're just looking at the door wondering where do you key in the numbers, it also wasn't clear that you have to press the tick symbol before keying in the code. Finding the car park was tricky and it was dark so that didn't help. Once we had worked all of this out. It was fine. The location is great. The free parking is great and communication with the host was very good. she was on the end of the phone and responding to messages instantly.

The apartment was not as expected. Firstly, it's advertised as 2 bathrooms and that's why we booked it but it's only one full bathroom and then a separate toilet so we could not have a bathroom each. After using the toilet in the bathroom for the first time, the flush wouldn't work the second time of using it. We discovered that the cistern had drained of water and did not refill so we had to carry pots of water through to refill it - not what you want to do when you're on holiday. The bedroom has no lights apart from one free standing lamp. The windows are covered in a blue film that makes it look like a building site and made the room dark. The room was also furnished quite sparsely - no bedside tables for instance to put a glass of water or your phone. The balcony doors were also covered in bits of blue film as were parts of the balcony. Despite the fact the balcony was filthy, we wanted to go and sit out there to enjoy the weather but the lock on the door was broken so we couldn't open it. The photos in the advert which shows the furniture out on the balcony is not what you get. The balcony furniture was in the lounge area. The price wasn't cheap and in addition we paid $175 cleaning fee. There would've been very little to clean after our two nights stay. For what we paid in total I would have expected what was advertised and not something that looked like a building site with facilities that didn't work. When we left, we had to leave the key fobs on the side in the kitchen but if you do that you can't then get into the car park to retrieve your car and I couldn't go back into the apartment block without a key fob to get in so was trapped. I had to find someone in the coffee shop to open the gate for me. We would not stay here again for the price we paid. I would rather stay in a hotel.