We stayed at the Caribe for 8 nights.
We use to stay at Saphire Beach, but Ivan took it out, we have RV'd in the area for the last several years but due to fuel prices, we wanted to try the caribe.
We stayed in unit C915, a ninth floor unit with three bedrooms and a media room that can sleep two additional people with fold out chairs.
Upon arrival after a 14 hour drive, we arrived at 8:30pm and found our 3 keys did not open the unit door. Guest services was closed so we had to have security let us in with their master key.
Kind of a bad start... Went to guest services the next morning and they recoded the keys. Still found the locks hit and miss, kind of a frustrating thing !
The unit was partially cleaned, floors were dirty, counters not wiped. Called the Spectrum vacations office and she promptly handled the issue.
The fridge had no working lights either.
The unit was furnished well, had most things you needed, but lacked things like paper/pencil, large skillet/griddle, tiny TV's in the 2 of three bedrooms, Master and living room and media room had nice 42in LCd's though.
The unit itself was very nice and what you would expect from a million dollar condo, but it looked like they skimped to save a few dollars here and there on the furnishings.
I am not trying to be picky, but at $2600 for 8 nights, the things mentioned above were annoying.
The media room chairs were about useless for teens sleeping, very thin matress on them, we had brought a blow up bed and they used that.
Beach access: If you want to walk out the door and hop on the beach, this place is not the place to stay !!!!!
A shuttle runs on demand until 5pm, it drives under the bridge and drops you off at a state park board walk. Be prepared for some major walking from there, especially if you want chairs, cooler, etc. A real PITA.
We found it much faster to drive under the bridge, take the outer road back up to the main road and turn right and go 100 yards and park at the other state park entrance.
A lot less walking, but still work dragging coolers, chairs, etc.
Now, after all this complaining, I still give this place top honors.. The resort itself and the view from our unit was totally awesome as it faced the gulf and you could see the inland waterways from the balcony. The master bedroom, 2nd bedroom and living room had spectacilar views as well as the balcony. We watched dolphin play in the gulf each morning !
The grounds were super clean as well as the buildings, multiple pools/water slides/hottubs !!
Minus the few nagging issues, if you don't mind some effort getting on the beach, this place deserves a look... We would stay here again for sure.
Also, they resort offers a game room. What they don't tell you is they want $10 a day per kid to use it.
Let's see, 10 days, 6 kids, that would have been $600 for our stay ! Are they crazy ? They should look at maybe issuing an arm band and maybe paying $10 per kids per stay or something !!
