Devil's Den Prehistoric Spring and Campground — Attraction in Newberry

The ONLY reason I give this a 3 is because of the unfriendly, unhelpful staff & the for-profit business side of the whole experience. Unlike most of our glorious springs & natural wonders which are owned by the State, County or National Park Service, this place is privately owned & operated & their customer service definitely reflects the negative side of small businesses. They know they have a goldmine on their hands & don't care about your experience as long as they get your money, but I'll come back to that.

The Devils Den itself is very interesting! It gets VERY crowded because they allow too many people at a time (more concerned about quantity over quality). I'm a certified diver, but I didn't have a buddy the day I went & it's only 20-45 ft deep, so I figured as long as I got the first appointment of the day (before the bottom got all churned up & ruined the visibility) I'd be good. Well, not so much, but DEFINITELY better than going later in the day!! Unless you're an inexperienced swimmer, I would HIGHLY recommend foregoing the fins!!! There's too many people & they just got in my way. I suppose I could've left them on the platform, but I probably would've gotten yelled at based on my other staff interactions thus far. You are ONLY allowed to bring your snorkel/dive gear down, nothing else, no towels, water, etc. As far as what you see, IF I had the place to myself, it would've been glorious!!! It's definitely something to experience ONCE to check it off your Bucket List, as I did, but to me, Floridian who has been blessed to visit almost all of our Springs & State Parks, the water & what was underneath it didn't live up to the hype. It's murky, beige (no color) rock formations, VERY, VERY few fish (maybe 20ish & nothing colorful or unusual) & no coral (for those that don't realize coral only grows in the ocean & might expect to see it here). There's a few cool tunnels you can swim through if you're diving it vs. snorkeling it, but the scenery in there doesn't change either. I'm definitely glad I went, the underground cave with a prehistoric spring that you can look up & see the sky from inside, satisfied my sense of adventure & was very cool to see. There weren't ANY souvenirs to speak of, which surprised me for a small business clearly working for profit & not the promotion of nature & the environment! They only had sweatshirts (in Florida, seriously?), stickers & patches. Oh, there was PLENTY of those things people tend to forget that they can profit from selling, like waterproof phone cases, snacks, drinks, masks, snorkels, etc. They do rent scuba gear on-site also. I also wouldn't bother bringing any fancy underwater camera that would be in your way & prevent you from living in the moment. There's nothing much impressive down there. I say that because I was struggling with my cellphone in a waterproof bag, trying to take pictures & was CONSTANTLY being bumped into, kicked by fins, etc., but my cellphone was sufficient for capturing the experience. Happy Trails!

Well since Devils Den responded to my review, but left me unable to reply to their question, I guess I'm editing my original review to add this.

A friendly staff would've enhanced my experience!!!!!! One that seemed to give a damn if I enjoyed my experience. The kinda heavy set guy with dark hair was nice, but the older lady was downright rude & uncalled for!!! I had occasion to deal with her over multiple things while I was there for several hours & not ONE time did she crack a smile, laugh, make me feel welcome or seem to care as I was desperately trying to buy a souvenir!! I REALLY wanted the only shot glass you had left that was glued down to a dusty old plastic shelf. I'd already been told by the nice guy that you are having problems getting a new supplier for souvenirs, but I LITERALLY asked her to name her price for the last, dusty old shot glass & she insisted she couldn't sell it because it was stuck to the shelf. I EVEN offered to buy the plastic shelf it was stuck to, to go on Amazon & find a replacement shelf (EVERYTHING...

Devils den Devil’s den is a three hour trip from where I live in Melbourne Southwest of Gainesville Northwest of Ocala once you head off the 75 freeway you’re driving through horse country some of the most beautiful horse farm properties you’ll see. When you drive into devils den property, there’s a one-way split about 500 feet. You’ll drive to the right and right after the split you’ll turn left If you’re doing any tent camping. the tent camping is under a canopy of these beautiful trees and sits next to the best way I could describe it is a man-made lagoon that you can swim in with a hammock island in the middle, a volleyball net, next to the hammock island and a beach sand area to lie in and tan. There is plenty of picnic tables, a walking path around this lagoon that you can get your steps in when walking in the morning or evening. Everything is well maintained, and you have beautiful little corners of flowers a Koi fish pond, and a fountain in the to listen to. right after the lagoon is a unloading scuba tank area where you can park for 10 minutes unload your scuba gear and then park in the main parking that is 100 feet further to the left. When going to the devil‘s den you have to check in at the main office building and then walk back check at the scuba gift shop to get your directions on what to do. There are no lockers so that’s one of the downfalls of this facility. I was not impressed with that. You have to actually put your gear off to the side on a picnic table walk with no shoes and walk down into the covered area that looks like it’s a gate opening straight out from the gift/ scuba shop. when you walk down into the den proceed with caution, it can be slippery hold onto the railing. The water is really cold so it shocks you but once you get in the water after you have your fins and snorkel on your body gets used to it when you’re swimming around. walking in and down into the devil’s den is beautiful. the walls of the cave or ornate, the falling ceiling of vines coming down into the den was surreal however, snorkeling is nothing more than looking down at the bottom of the water. There’s no colorful reefs. it is just rock and sand. There is a rock shelf that the participants are not supposed to climb onto the rock. However, there is no sign that says don’t climb onto the rock. There’s just a person that comes down every once in a while to yell at you and tell you, you can’t climb onto the rock this place is not monitored by a lifeguard. It’s not monitored by any employees of the Devil’s den establishment there’s about 4 to 5 teenagers that work the whole thing and show little caring. Two of the things I was not put off by was the filthy bathrooms, and unstocked bathrooms when I informed one of the employees they just brushed it off all we cleaned that at the end of the day. My opinion is if you’re in a business to the public, you have to have clean manicure facility all the time, this should be held at the highest of standard. There was only one shower near the Devils den area and 2 toilets. The bathrooms ceiling needed to be cleaned thoroughly along with the rest of the place. After going down into the devil’s den and experiencing the snorkeling, I went back to the car and took video and picture of the den opening off to the left. You can go down the boardwalk and see the chimney from the ground down which is pretty cool. The devil‘s den area has a lot of little Surprises like a trail that leads down to a non-swimming pool area that has three tears of waterfalls off to the backside of the man-made lagoon it also has a nice trail around the cabin tent area that is fenced off for safety. All in all I enjoyed my stay. tent camping at the end of May. It was still cool at night and in...

TLDR: essentially a cash grab for a natural beauty. May be worth the drive and pictures, but don’t waste your money. Only reason for three stars is in the end I had fun and got some good pictures.

I originally found this place on TikTok when looking for things to do for my summer vacation in Florida. The reviews were raving about how cool and serene looking the place was, so I told my mom about it and we added it to our list of things to do in Florida.

We made our reservation for 3:30 on Friday, one of the last days of our vacation. When we arrived, there were hoards of people. It felt like everywhere you turned, there was someone bumping into you.

At this establishment (because that’s what it is at this point), you can only snorkel or dive. No regular swimming. Reservations are about $50/person, but this is not an exact number as I was not the one to book or pay for the reservation. You are able to bring your own snorkeling gear or your own diving gear. However, if you don’t have any, you are REQUIRED to rent gear from the private owner. The gear was subpar. No variety of masks to fit different sized faces and they all felt well worn and cheap. They were also incredibly foggy. The snorkels kept allowing water in my mouth as well.

At around 4pm, as it does in Florida, thunderstorms started to roll in. Of course, you can’t predict the weather. But, my group spent the first 30 mins of our time there sorting out gear and what not. Before I could even swim, the employees were calling down saying we needed to get out. Okay, that’s fine. Safety and insurance is a thing that people need to be on top of, especially when running a business. My group spent maybe 5 minutes in the water, which didn’t justify the almost $300 my mom paid for this excursion. When we went up to the owner, who went by the name of Kevin I believe, he was adamant about the fact that they “don’t do refunds.” However, if someone has paid for a service and that service is not provided, is a refund not due?

There was no telling how long the lightning would stick around. And after Kevin was adamant about not issuing a refund and saying MAYBE he could reschedule us for another day, we were left with two options: wait around and see if we can get back in, or be at a loss of $300. We couldn’t reschedule for another day, since we would be leaving Florida to return to Maryland soon after. So, we waited.

Eventually, the storm passed and we were able to get back in. However, the experience was overall lackluster. There were too many people in the pool at one time, making it nearly impossible to properly swim. The equipment we were required to have barely worked and only got in our way. There were a couple of cool fish and turtles, but overall not worth the entire experience.

It’s sad that a natural beauty such as this has been capitalized by a private owner. As a natural Floridian, he knows what the weather is like. And he knows tourists will pay for what seems like a commodity. This area is nothing but a business to the owner, and unfortunately my family and I fell...