Silverthorn Resort | Houseboats — Attraction in Shasta Lake

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU BOOK!!! We booked our Houseboat more than a year in advance of the 2024 4th of July. We booked a full week (Monday to Monday).

On the day of arrival, Monday, July 1, we arrived at the standard check in time, 3 pm. We were told that the boat was not ready & that there was no eta but that someone would call us. At 5:30 we called to check on the status. They call back & say to send the captain and co-Captain to the boat to meet the mechanic. Apparently, our boat had a problem. It would die every time it reached 30 rpm & you had to steer so they weren’t sure if we were going to make it off the dock that night as we were expecting high winds but we could at least load our stuff & our people. The mechanic tells us the boss went home at about 5:30 & they don’t know what’s wrong and we may not be able to leave. Frustrating! This doesn’t make sense!

It’s now closer to 6:30, and they tell us ok “we think we fixed it and feel comfortable giving you the all clear to get on the way.” Ok, the pilot is out of the marina, and we are told to keep it below 30 rpm just in case. We head out to the cove where we were told would be a decent place (bushy cove?). We died a dozen or more times on our way there. It’s well after 6 pm and the office is closed. No emergency or after hours number. So we dock and tie off and decide to call 1st thing in the morning. Needless to say, they stranded us until late afternoon on July 3rd! They did bring us ice as we ran out, but still we had no ability to go anywhere until July 3rd. On the late afternoon of July 3rd, they finally finish the repair they believe will fix the issue. Apparently the boats all have new engines and they don’t have the software to actually communicate with the engine to figure out the problem so they are throwing mud on the wall to see what sticks.

Morning of July 4th, we make our way to the marina because our grey water tank is now full and in desperate need to drain. Its also my granddaughters 8th birthday. We made our way there, refueled took care of the tanks and headed out again, this time a small spot just across from Allies cove. We die a half dozen times on our way there. So we call again, ok they will send someone out tomorrow to look at it. Everyone is tied up today. Around 5:30 pm we decide we want to actually relocate a few yards away in a nearby cove; except we can’t get the engine to stay on so we are now stranded. We can’t leave our position. We call again and are told there are no mechanics, everyone has gone home, they will send someone out tomorrow to tow us. This is not ideal!!!! A million reasons why…. At 2 am the main reason becomes our nightmare.

My 14 year old son ends up with a bloody nose that we can’t stop. 30 minutes into it he has gone through multiple rolls of toilet paper and we can’t get it to stop, it’s gushing and he is looking pale and feeling lightheaded. We call 911, they tell us they are sending an ambulance to a nearby marina and either sheriff or fire will dispatch a boat to come get our son because we can’t move. Almost an hour later no one has arrived (if our boat was running we would have been at the marina in 20 minutes), we have finally managed to stop the bleeding and get a few bottles of water in him. We call off 911.

This is just a small portion of the entire circus of issues with this boat, besides the fact that it doesn’t even run? Well, the AC is subpar at best. Gas is over $5 a gallon and you have to have the generator running all day and night in this 100 plus degree weather. The freezer takes forever to make anything frozen, the table that turns into a bed is broken (it’s evident they tried to fix it multiple times and failed). And the list just grows.

They really need to put some money back into these boats. AND improve the customer safety!! NEVER leave a boat stranded!

I will update once we speak to them AGAIN in the morning and find out if they are going to be able to give us a solution. We have 4 more days...

Longer review, repeat customer, please be Aware of this:

Used these Houseboats 5 different times, in particularly the 3 story Houseboat. My first 4 experiences were reasonable. Nothing outstanding nothing horrible. The 5th experience was what has led me to leave this transparent review.

Rented a houseboat the weekend after Labor day, arrived on time to pick it up. Waited an hour to get helped, waited another 2 hours for them to clean the boat, waited another 2 hours to get orientation to be able to leave on the boat. 5.5 hours total to be able to start it up and leave, it was night time already so we ended up parking quite near the docks. Not a desirable start to our limited time on the boat, all of this was due to college students that worked there leaving and them not having enough staff, I understand, finding employees can be hard.

The worst part of this is coming next.

The boat was not cleaned sufficiently, counter tops were a bit grimy and worse of all the whole boat was covered in spiderwebs everywhere. Each rail, each corner, each high up spot, under the grill, next to sitting areas there were webs. Once again, whatever, we cleaned them up and continued with our trip. Things were fine until overnight any of us that slept in the main cabin on the 1st story were covered in bug bites that looked identical to bed bug bites. On bare skin that was showing and in clusters, not just 3 bites, but closer to 15. Not good.

After later examination multiple Doctors said it was either fleas or bed bugs. It's been just a few days and I have yet to see evidence that we brought bed bugs back. It could of been fleas from people bringing there animals on the boat but either way the boat was insufficiently cleaned and not prepped for a boat that was reserved months in advance.

Seeing how many spiders that were hidden on the boat and the amount of spider webs that were there gives me the vibe this boat was sitting there for weeks and wasn't prepped in advance until the very last moment.

Hopefully this was able to paint a picture for you on what's expected, generally the service is solid but all it takes is one bad experience to put a bad taste in someones mouth or a whole family's vacation. This mainly was due to being understaffed during a busy time but either way its an experience that I am sure you would like...

Our family spent a smoky week there last week in one of their Queen houseboats. There is so much I would like to say I hardly know where to begin. I will start by saying that their houseboat was anything but how they described it as "Our most luxurious", "Elite of the Fleet" and "Sleeps up to 20". Really? It is luxurious in the same way that an older Motel 6 is luxurious and if that is their "Elite" I would hate to see the others. By the way, I can't imagine how they think 20 people can comfortably sleep on that thing either. We had 12 and it was a tight squeeze, unless perhaps they mean 20 small children who all sleep 2 to a bed and some outside on the top deck. Totally false advertising. The prices they charge for these boats, not to mention the exorbitant prices they also charge at their marina because they have a monopoly, is criminal. They are definitely price gauging and they should be ashamed of themselves. Moving on, we went in on Wednesday as scheduled for our tanks to get pumped and were told that it was completed, so we departed. The next day our toilets stopped working and we were told we could take it into the Jones marina (which was a little closer), which we did. They said that it was overfull and NEITHER tank had been flushed. That was our first waste of a half a day of our time. The only thing we were told when we mentioned this was "sorry, we had our B team on it". The next day the water stopped flowing. We had to take it in AGAIN and waste another half day of our time to get it working again. There was absolutely NO compensation whatsoever offered or given at our request for this loss of pretty much a full day of our week. So basically, we paid top dollar for mediocre accommodations in which we had to provide and make our own food, clean and mop the entire thing thoroughly upon departure or risk not getting our $1000 cleaning deposit back, sleep in cramped uncomfortable camp beds, provide our own gas at around $6 gallon, all for the low, low cost of nearly $6000 for just the boat. Who on this planet would think this is worth it? For the $10,000+ we spent for the week we should have gone to Mexico or something. ...