Marriott’s Cypress Harbour Villas Timeshare

This hotel presents itself as a luxury resort but stays far from its proposed concept.

It is a vacation condo for families with (lots of) children.

The employees are poorly trained and follow standard scripts, getting very confused when asked about basic info.

There is no proper restaurant with table service, just a mini market and a fast food window with pizza and burguers. If you need a proper meal you will have to leave the hotel or prepare it yourself in the well equiped kitchens.

Upon arrival, there was no doorbell services to assist with luggage and orientation. Concierge limits on making money: selling packages to the city attractions.

Rooms proximity with lakes will bring lots of biting bugs and mosquitoes to your room if you leave the door opened for more then a few seconds.

If you don’t like children, stay away from this place (and from Orlando), they’re everywhere screaming and crying with unpolite permissive spoiling parents.

For being a Marriot property I got very frustrated by the service level and facilities offer, they’re mostly focused for children, for example there is no proper restaurants, no steam sauna just a 100sq feet (9m2) dry sauna.

In the other positive side, the property is beautiful, very clean and organized, good location and the apartments are very well equipped and clean!

I’ve tried to review this property several other times since our stay several months ago, but it always “pends.” We’ll see if this works.

We arrived early to get an early check in and, although assured we would get our room early, we were given our key not one minute early. We hung out at the pool all day without an ability to nap after our all night flight.

Our room had bugs that came out on the nightstands at night and at one point we had a roach.

Stairwells has several webs and bugs and could’ve used a good cleaning. Maintenance came in to do some work and when we returned my husbands toothbrush was on the bathroom floor.

Food is underwhelming, pools are small without splash pads, slides or other things for kids to do.

It seemed programs for children were not nearly as plentiful as other Marriott properties.

That being said, for a Marriott property, we were disappointed and wouldn’t return.

We checked in to Cypress Harbour clutching an email receipt which showed not only a booking for eight nights, but that the rate charged was advance rate pre paid in full.

On check in (for reasons never explained to me or apologised for) we were only checked in for one night. Luckily I noticed this quickly and went back to the front desk who (without apology or explanation) checked us in for our 8 nights. The receptionist then stated, quite bluntly, that Marriott had not received payment for two of the nights.

We had had along day, and a ten hour flight. I was feeling bruised from the cursory check but was really angry to be spoken to in that way.

After all I am the one with a receipt from Marriott saying it was paid in full. Somehow then it became our responsibility to prove we had paid, not Marriott’s to prove we hadn’t. I am not sure how the burden of proof was so passed to us.

We spent a day and a night of our holiday worrying about this and trying to find bank statements to prove the payment … at which point a full day had passed and our key cards for our room were blocked because we had only been checked in for one night. Another trip to reception. At this point, and with the first 36 hours of of holiday effectively spent worrying and trying to appease Marriott, we gave up.

We realised we could only have a holiday if we took on the responsibility to pay the extra money, regardless of what Marriott’s own documents said.

Day three and we went to order some lunch from the galley grill. We were refused because we had not left a credit card with the reception on check-in. Oh yes we had. Two in fact. We felt utterly humiliated. Another trip to reception, where we were offered a $50 credit by way of apology. Doubtful that we would ever get things right this trip, we never tried to charge anything to our room again, although I note, on check out that the credit card swiped on check in, clearly worked.

We were upset and frustrated.

We are residential customers of Marriott owning five of their Vacation Weeks. I left a message with reception asking that the GM call us. He didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t get the message, perhaps he chose not to. We shall never know.

We have been to this resort perhaps 10 times, and were already looking to book for next year. Based on this experience, we have revised our exchange request to go to a resort in Europe instead.

The resort is in good shape.

The rooms are nice and spacious and, at this time of year, the pools are quiet.

The gym is a lovely asset to the resort. What’s missing is some customer service.

I doubt we will go back.

There are plenty of other resorts to choose from.

Somewhat of a disappointment. 2 bedroom villa was a bit on the old side. Whirlpool tub was straight out of the Jetsons.

Many maintenance issues.

Mould in the bathroom. Grout lines where dirty.

And hard to believe, but the kitchen cabinets were a laminate that was coming off. In fact, my wife got cut on one .

Screen patio was on the small side and just barely big enough for 4 people.

Furnishing were a bit dated and not what we were used to seeing in past Marriott timeshares.

AND WORST OF ALL, NO RESTAURANT facility just a window service.

Check in staff was not that knowledgeable about the property.

Only positive were the 2 nice pools…