Hilton Vacation Club Daytona Beach Regency — Attraction in Daytona Beach

Get your coffee and get comfy. This is gonna take a while....||||I've been staying at this "hotel" - it is NOT a resort in MY definition - for the last 18 years in March for Bike Week (my cousin has a deeded week). Don't' know that we've ever had a big problem; had some bugs after a hurricane one year, but they took care of it. ||||I live in Ohio, and the winter has been 99 years long this year. I decided to take my hubby and grandson in April while the grandson was on spring break. Drove from central Ohio over two days, arrived in DB on Sunday, April 13.||||From day one, the toilet was acting up. Had to hold the dang handle down to flush. Annoying - tolerable.||||Wednesday afternoon, Concierge invites us to a (sales) meeting/breakfast for 9 a.m. Thursday. Sure, done it before, not buying. But we'll go because we would either get 60k points OR 8 nights/7 days plus $125. ||||On Wednesday evening hubby tells me the toilet is clogged. He called front desk, two dudes come to fix it (I was already in bed). They soon left.||||Next morning, grandson tells hubby it's about to overflow. Hubby calls again, and whoever it was that came up .... left a plunger there so if it happened again, WE could take care of it. ||||What? I don't THINK so! I'm on vacation and I'm PAYING you to take care of s* like that.||||SO....||||Get thru the day, hubby and grandson are asleep. I'm finishing a puzzle on my tablet. Now, I need to mention here that I use a CPAP machine - continuous positive air pressure - when I sleep SO I DON'T DIE. ||||I finish my puzzle, lay down, and after about five minutes, my CPAP stops and the mask "sucks" to my face. Okay, I'm awake! ||||I check the machine; it won't turn on. I tried the lamp on the night table, and it won't come on either. Hmmm. I tried the tv, nope. I checked my phone charger; phone is not charging. ||||I call the front desk. A lovely young lady - I think her name is Chantall and I know NONE of this is her fault - immediately says "I'm so sorry Ms. Ansel." Well - why? What's going on?||||Turns out - this was a PLANNED ELECTRICAL OUTAGE. ||||Wait ...... WHAT??||||I told her I use a cpap, so what the hell am I supposed to do?? It's like midnight, I'm tired, I have to go to a "meeting" at 9 a.m. to get my freebies.... I am FURIOUS.||||She said power would be back on anywhere from 20 minutes to 3-4 HOURS. (pick your chin up off the floor....you're drooling.)||||I told her to make sure the Concierge KNOWS we won't be at this 9 a.m. meeting Thursday morning because if I don't get to sleep until 3-4 a.m. or later, I am NOT dragging myself to a morning event. ||||I took my crossword puzzle book, sat at the dining table with my phone flashlight and did some puzzles and WAITED. Power went off just before midnight, and it came back on around 1:10. Okay, it was only an hour-ish, BUT, I'm so wound up now - how long is it going to take me to go to sleep?||||Last I checked my phone it was 2:15 a.m. I think I went to sleep shortly after that. ||||Thursday morning - I go to the concierge desk in the lobby. Two ladies were there; neither is the one I spoke with Wednesday morning. One of them summoned a manager to speak with me.||||I waited maybe five minutes and met with Tracy. We sat right there in the lobby. There were people all over the place because they were coming down from being at the 9 a.m. meeting upstairs! It's LOUD. At one point, there were two people sitting next to me on my right, and two more people came over and stood on my left and BEGAN TALKING RIGHT OVER TOP OF ME to the people on my right WHILE I'm talking to Tracy. Talk about friggin RUDE. I looked at the woman and loudly said "HEY! HEY! I'M HAVING A CONVERSATION HERE." She was like, oh, sorry. Yeh, take yourdamnself AWAY, Bee. I think Tracy was as shocked as that rude woman was, but I am DONE at this point! (There was a private concierge office RIGHT BEHIND where I was sitting. We could have gone in there; it would have been a LOT better.)||||I told Tracy about the toilet, the plunger, the power going off, and missing the meeting. She immediately said she'd give me the 60k points (I haven't checked my account yet; it's been two weeks; she said to give it three weeks to show up.) ||||By the time I spoke with Tracy, I had checked my text messages, my voice mail, my missed call log, and the room phone messages, and I received ABSOLUTELY NO NOTICE of a planned electrical outage. Hilton has EVERY kind of communication information to reach me, and they did NOTHING. THIS is the part that makes me the most furious. ||||Tracy said she would relate all of this to John Betros, the manager. She said he would probably call me the following week. She was wrong. I haven't heard a peep. John? You there, John??!||||At this point, I think Hilton DB Regency owes me the 8 nights/7 days with $125 AND 60k points. That's what I SHOULD have, at the very least!||||Now, I'll be there again next March for bike week. I don't pay to stay because my cousin has the week. But I won't stay there again otherwise. ||||And I'm going to start staying at Marriott hotels. Hampton Inns (stayed at two, one going down, one coming home) have gone downhill over the last few years; TIRED of staff NOT paying attention to the details. You hear me, Hilton?? Get with it - DO BETTER. You hear me Marriott?? Make me happy or I'll go to IHG or Hyatt or Omni - I expect my stay with you to be Exemplary, NOT "eh."||||Funny - I never received one of those email surveys for my "stay at the DB Regency." Maybe they don't want to know how my stay was??.....||||So, there it is. Ball is in your court, Hilton Daytona...

We stayed here as a family of 3 in January 2023 just as it was transitioning to Hilton and really enjoyed our stay. The pool temp at the time was super cold because the heater was evidently broken (the whole area was still recovering from two hurricanes, so we were understanding), but other than that, great value for the location. We had a one bedroom suite with a nice big bathroom attached to the bedroom and also accessible through the kitchen area.

Prices went up quite a bit for 2024 after the full transition to Hilton, but we decided to stay here again last week because the location was so good and we liked the bedroom setup (we would now be traveling as a family of 4). When we arrived, however, the room was not the same layout as before. What we expected to be a spacious bathroom with a nice tub was a small space with a shower with sloppily epoxy-ed tile, and not connected to the bedroom. It also had some hair and gunk in the drain (conditioner? Epoxy? I didn’t touch it to find out!) and every shower I took was quick because that grossed me out. Before we unpacked (an ordeal with two super young kids), my husband went to ask if there were any rooms with a tub like the one we had last year, and was told all the tubs had been removed in the hotel - although I see a review from just two weeks ago had a photo of the exact kind of bathroom we were expecting/hoping for. 🤔

Right as we were almost done unpacking, I noticed our one-year-old daughter was chewing on something and rushed to grab it out of her mouth - it was a piece of a balloon that had been on the floor! I’m so thankful I happened to look down in that moment to stop her from eating/choking on it! There was also a chopped onion on our kitchen floor but we were so tired after a long day and then unpacking that we didn’t feel like putting up a fight about it. We were so tired and the bed seemed clean so we just went to bed - but the place had obviously not been cleaned very thoroughly before we got there. Early the next morning I spent some time in the hot tub and noticed some pond scum-esque green floaters in there 🤢

Overall, location is still amazing. Pool is great and beach access is super convenient (even better than 2023, when many of the stairs were still destroyed post-hurricanes). Staff was generally nice, although some were so pushy about the “vacation club” (aka timeshare) presentation upstairs. We actually got a call on our second day asking if we needed anything and we had just run out of shampoo so we requested more in that call… after that, the lady on the other end asked again if we were interested in a presentation (we had refused at check-in) and I again said no. The shampoo never showed up so we had to ask at the front desk later (and to be fair, it was delivered quickly after that).

And a detail - I also could just never get over how badly the shower in our bathroom had been redone. We had our own shower epoxy-ed at home and I would’ve been so mad if it ended up looking the way this one did. I hope it was just in such bad shape before that it’s a temporary fix and they’re planning a total renovation, because surely that can’t be what Hilton considers an upgrade!

Just overall disappointing for prices to have nearly doubled and for standards to have gotten lower with Hilton. The furniture and decorations were more “modern”, I suppose, but I would take older-styled furniture any day if that meant cleaning standards back up to what we experienced in 2023! The pushing for attending a presentation also needs to chill. If it had been a rainy day, we might have gone for the incentive, but we had to make it clear multiple times that we didn’t want to spend our vacation time that way. We already had the experience in 2023 and managed to make it out without committing! No means no, dude!

After two years here in a row, we are hoping to make our Orlando/Daytona trip an annual one as the kids get older… I hate to say it, but in our experience this lovely place went downhill with Hilton in charge and we will be looking at other options...

This past weekend was my second trip to a Diamond Resort, and will be our family's last trip. To start off approximately 3 years ago myself my husband and our two eight year olds at the time they were 5 stayed at the Daytona Beach Regency. We had the most amazing stay, beautiful room, amazing amenities, and can say nothing but good things about that entire trip. My husband and myself are hard-working individuals that had to save for several months to have a family vacation. When deciding where we would want to go we decided we wanted to go back because we had such a good time 3 years ago, which by the way was our last family vacation if that tells you how often we get the opportunity to go. Unfortunately upon our arrival we found our room to not be the same room that we booked 3 years ago nor anything like it. We booked a one bedroom suite my husband and not myself have a room and the kids share the pull out in the living room. The first week we had 3 years ago was very spacious had a huge bathroom, tub, etc. Upon getting in our new room this year we see that there is only a shower, no tub for our two children, the space is a lot smaller than the original room we had, the smell in the entire room was awful smelled musty and old, and by the way had a door to an attached room for our neighbors I guess? And there's a space under the door or you can hear and see everything from their attached room. We went down to the front desk prior to bringing all of our stuff in and ask to be moved to a room that had a tub, since we have children. We were told no rooms were available with tubs and the manager was gone for the day but she could contact us in the morning. I said that would be helpful if she could contact us as soon as possible because we do not want to move our things in the room and have to move them again tomorrow, but I understand and thank you for having her call us tomorrow. Now as we continue our stay after moving all of our things then, going grocery shopping bringing our groceries in, we decide to give the kids a bath, oh wait there is a shower only to find the water pressure is so hard that it feels like rocks are being thrown at you. In addition the shower or bathroom sink are draining properly so when you are taking a shower you have to stand in ankle-deep water and see your toothpaste floating in the sink. Once again complain to the front desk they said they would send maintenance up and have the manager call us in the morning. At 4:45 a.m. are wonderful partying Neighbors decided to start screaming yelling and beating on the door in between our room and their room yelling about how messed up they're going to get, yes I use the appropriate language that was not used with my eight year olds. So at 7 a.m. once they still have not stopped I went down to the front desk only to find that the manager still was not in, which I found kind of strange when the manager wasn't in at 4 p.m. the day before I guess I assumed most people work 8-hour days (with lunch breaks, would be 7-4??)? I was told that she would not be in until 9 a.m. and that hopefully they could accommodate us by moving it to another room. With that being said the manager did contact us and we had a new room by 11 a.m. which was better than the room we were given however still was not the original room I thought we were getting with a reservation we made. After spending close to $900 just to have a room at this Resort the first 24 hours was absolutely awful not to mention that we had to unpack all of our things pack it back up to move it to another room. This kind of makes family vacation not worth it. In the past I have recommended this Resort too many friends, but I will no longer be recommending...