Big Bear Cool Cabins — Attraction in Big Bear Lake

I usually give 4-5 star reviews and it would have been a 5 star review if it was only related to the Cool Cabins staff. The staff was great, check in easy, very nice people overall. The cabin itself was a 1 star. I added a star for the staff but we stayed at the cabin and it was awful so can’t give a good review. Don’t want any other poor person to end up at this dirty cabin. Love Big Bear. Have stayed before at the local lodge by village and loved it. This time wanted cabin experience and heard wonderful things about Cool Cabins to decided to book one. Was a last minute booking and not much available so maybe that was the problem, maybe the good ones taken. Wanted to love it because we enjoy Big Bear. First I will list the pros. Nice neighborhood. Good proximity / close drive to marinas and village. Can tell it used to have a nice view of lake (not main part, but smaller inlet of lake) but California in drought right now and the water in front of cabin is all dried up and all you see is view of docks sitting on dry grass and weedy land. I realize this is not their fault and this is not why the bad review. I think once lake has more water this cabin will have a nice view. Size of cabin good. Large space. Liked the large windows and sliding doors to upper desk and also off lower bedroom. Pool table ok size although most large cabins have similar pool table. Lots of bathrooms through cabin. It’s really more of a house than a cabin. The place may have been very pleasant at one time and could be again if someone cleaned it! And fixed a few things! The negatives: dirty, ant infested and smells really bad. Nothing works properly. I will get to that later. The upstairs part of the cabin with hard flooring smells fine once windows opened a while but the downstairs where master bedroom located smells like combination of rotten animal urine and some air freshener perfume. Also smelled damp and musty. Downstairs carpet full of awful stains that appear to be the cause of the smell. No amount of open windows helped. It’s a pet friendly cabin hut that’s no excuse. I just stayed in a pet friendly cabin in sequoia and it was clean with no bad smells. Paid $200.00 cleaning fee for one night over and above the cabin itself for a total of just over $600.00 for one night all in. Why a cleaning fee if it’s not clean? The bed sheets were clean but bedspreads so dirty we didn’t even want to sit on them. Looked under the two queen beds to check for any issue since dog kept looking under. Big mistake. Full of junk that was being stored under beds and full of dust and cobwebs. Yuck. Pulled curtain aside to open window in upstairs bedroom and got face full of dust. Third bedroom with small beds not used by us so mostly stayed out, only used them to set the dirty bedspreads and pillows. Looked dirty also though. Only spent one night and could not wait to get out of there due to filthy bedrooms and smell of the place. In fairness, the kitchen counters, sink and and cupboards not dusty, seemed passable but not super clean either. Bathrooms were ok. Toilets and sinks fine. Not filthy like bedrooms but bathtub not super clean either. Opted for shower so didn’t need to touch anything. The outdoors was also not maintained. Yard full of dead grass and rodent holes. Patio not like photos. Patio furniture has no cushions as pictured, run down wood is pealing and uninviting unless you want splinters in your behind. Bbq seemed ok. Hot tub covered with locked chain and we didn’t use although key was provided. Didn’t use because lower level of yard was so ugly we didn’t want to sit there. Yard was a small chain linked fence with gopher holes or some other creature. Dog liked it! Was also concerned about ant hills in yard. Set dog food down in kitchen and within about 20 minutes it was crawling with ants. They were coming in droves out of a hole in the stone by a fireplace. Found can of bug spray under kitchen sink and had to treat the swarm. Other issue is that nothing worked and the onus fell on us to wait for repair tech. Was a July 2022 visit and weather very hot. The AC didn’t work. Wall control was locked. Called for help and was told we would need to wait for a tech to come help. We only had one night in Big Bear so didn’t have time to waste to wait for tech to come. The WiFi password also didn’t work. The upstairs TV in living room didn’t work but the downstairs TV worked. The office staff was polite and offered to send someone out to fix these issues but were not able to do this without us waiting at cabin and missing our day in Big Bear. So we rented a boat, enjoyed the town and avoided the cabin as much as possible. If we had planned more than one night we would have driven over to office and asked for different cabin. Or gone to...

I requested 2 quotes for the same studio cabin through the HomeAway app. Both quotes were for a 3 night stay but for different dates of arrival. The second quote was much higher than the first- but my travel is during the holiday so I figured it was the typical price gouging (which is expected and really nbd). I was still curious about the difference so I emailed Big Bear Cool Cabins to ask what the nightly rates were for each quote. It took them a few emails to directly answer my question which was odd, but they finally replied with a screen shot of the nightly rates. Well those numbers didn't add up to the rent fee I was quoted. The rent fee on the quote was almost $70 more than the nightly rate total. The quote did include additional charges but I was concerned with why the nightly rate/rent fee was higher than what it should be. When no one would answer my questions via email about this mysterious $70, Joseph finally called in a feeble and unenthused attempt to explain the price difference. He first told me the changes could be because rates were raised within the last hour, but then he changed his explanation to say the $70 is additional charges that are not disclosed with the other fees provided on the quote. He says this is because I booked through a 3rd party and they don't give them full access to all of their additional charges. However, he said, if I booked through their website, I would see a full breakdown of what the extra $70 was for and the rent fee would match the nightly rate total. So that's what I did, and sure enough their website gave me the exact same breakdown. The rent fee was higher than the nightly rate and the breakdown did not include additional fees to explain where the $70 rent fee increase came from. So I called Joseph back who changed his story again. He went on to tell me that they actually can't disclose those additional fees they tack on to the nighty rate when reservations are booked; they only disclose the rent fee, reservation fee, taxes, and house keeping gratuity when booking. This is apparently why they do not tell you a true "nightly rate" because it includes additional fees which they "are not allowed" to disclose. So had I not been so persistent to receive the nightly rate, which I'm sure someone got in trouble for sending me, I would have no idea I was paying an extra $70 for? If it truly is a legitimate extra fee, why not just give an honest break down? Or at least make an extra column for "cabin fees" on their quotes instead of just creating a rent fee that only they know what's included. I mean, it's my hard earned money, so I think it's only fair to understand what I'm paying for. But I'd imagine a $70 non disclosed charge per reservation adds up quickly in their bank or whenever it goes. It's a creative form of disguised robbery, but a shameful business tactic that is shown poor customer feedback based on their Yelp ratings. So heads up when booking cabins and caution when trying to understand...

WARNING: Do NOT book with Cool Cabins!!!!

Let's just say that my experience with "cool cabins" was anything BUT cool. I planned what I thought would be a super fun New Year's getaway with my mom and 88-year-old grandmother. We get all the way to the Cool Cabins office around 8:30 pm to check in, tired and hungry from travelling there, and then we head to the cabin only to find that SOMEONE ELSE TOOK OUR UNIT and refuses to leave. Can you say double booked nightmare???

When I saw this man in our cabin, I was shocked because I had just checked in and the office was going to close at 9 pm! I called the office immediately, and they said it was probably the housekeeping people prepping for our stay. WHO CLEANS AT 9 PM?? Doesn't make sense because it should've been cleaned hours ago. THEN the man yells at me saying "get off his property", which again is strange because it's not his property and he barely spoke english. He's being super scary and aggressive so I call the office and they said they would send a "maintenance guy" ASAP to straighten things out. Not a manager...but a maintenance guy. lol It gets worse!

It's now around 10 p.m. and my 88-year-old grandmother needs to use the restroom and can't because we have nowhere to go...everything is closed that late. When the maintenance guy finally shows up he's telling the crazy man that my paperwork states that we reserved it. Of course, he had no paperwork to show his reservation, so the crazy man then says..."the OWNER said I can stay there".

ALERT!!!!!! Apparently the owner of Cool Cabins oftentimes lets his friends stay at the unit but doesn't communicate with Cool Cabins. As you can see, him doing this leads to double booking which is really unfortunate when you're out there late and have very few options. Their manager admitted to me that this has happened on more than one occasion so BEWARE.

I'm giving them one star because they were able to get us into a decent cabin that night... but not for the remainder of our stay which was supposed to be 3 nights (leaving New Year's Day). The manager and staff did not remove the crazy man from the unit and had a slight attitude with me when talking with them about the situation. They only offered part of my refund and a few extra dollars for my troubles. Since they could not, however, get us into anything suitable for the remainder of our stay...

we were FORCED TO DRIVE ALL THE WAY BACK HOME THE NEXT DAY, cutting our family trip short and ruining the memories we were trying to build with each other during this disaster of a year.

SO...YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!! There's no way to trouble shoot something like this either (NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU EMAIL OR CALL TO CHECK) so if you book with Cool Cabins, you are taking a huge risk and if I'm really being honest.... making a...