The Vanderbilt Beach Resort — Hotel in Bonita Springs

We stayed at the condo location. It was a huge disappointment. Our unit needed a major facelift. The main bathroom was old and absolutely disgusting. There is a 3-building, massive construction project feet away so you will not be sleeping after 7AM from the steel hammering and drilling all day. The balcony was useless because of the never-ending noise. Forget naps. This beach is SEVERELY eroded!! At times there is no beach depending on the tide. Beach chairs rest on a slope and it gets very crowded and smushed. My friend kept slipping down the chair since what is left of the sand is on a deep slope. There are videos on YouTube showing the erosion of this beach. We wish WE knew because we would not have wasted a tremendous amount of money on this place. Forget walking the beach because you will be dodging people the whole way. The public beach is directly to the left and is packed on the weekend and over flows past the motel section with boom boxes for your listening pleasure. People in larger groups staying here pretty much take over, especially the small pool area. It can get very noisy and crowded. The pool is small. The chairs are so worn out and uncomfortable it is weird. If they sprang for new towels and chairs from Walmart, that would be a huge improvement. We quickly came to the conclusion that this place is all about their “famed” restaurant, not about the room guests. Parking a Rolls Royce or Ferrari in front is supposed to make you think this is where the “in crowd” hangs and you’re lucky to among them. We were scratching our heads about the popularity because it certainly is not the food. The water view is the only attraction. The negative reviews are accurate. Go to Playa down the road. We...

This is not a resort. It is a motel on the beach with a condo building across the street. The main two story motel rooms are nice but the air conditioner is super loud creating sleepless nights. The pool is small and gets very crowded, especially when large groups rent rooms. The clientle ranges from sloppy to conservative. There is a very busy/expensive restaurant underneath many of the rooms. The kitchen prep is loud and goes from 7am- 11 pm. One side of the motel outside of the rooms is storage for dining chairs, wait staff activity and other commotion, so if you rent on that side that is what you are looking at and listening to. This visit we decided to stay at the condos willing to pay more for quiet and a private balcony. We opened the door to our condo overlooking the bay and a MASSIVE, active construction site of a seven story building was in our face just feet away. The immediate disappointment was huge. Steel being cut all day with metal being hammered all day concrete machines working and crew yelling. The balcony was useless but we did wake up at 7am sharp reporting for duty with the workers. It is obvious management withheld this tidbit, but if they had acknowledged this, apologized and offered some level of compensation, it would have made a tremendous difference. We made the best of what we were stuck with. A crappy move to pull on people expecting "resort" like atomosphere for their vacation spending a lot...

Stayed 3 days at the resort in the condos across the street. The condo was plenty big for the 2 of us. It was clean and comfortable. The pool is small but adequate. The beach was quite frankly disappointing. The beach at Vanderbilt beach is no more than 20 yards wide. Due to the beach being overbuilt, there are cheap lounge chairs laid out as far as you can see. The sand gets washed away every year with each hurricane and replaced with “fresh sand”. Walking the beach while, possible, is difficult due to the narrow strip of hard sand between the water and the soft sand. The hotels and condos are right on top of each other making it very crowded and unappealing. While, the sand was clean the water was stirred up and not appealing. There was red tide just to the north at barefoot beach (low on their scale). This is usually a summer phenomenon when the water is much warmer and polluted with agriculture and sewage runoff. Before visiting the area please call the parks department and get the most recent red tide information. It’s really a shame what this part of the Gulf of Mexico has become. I know the The resort has little to do with beach and water conditions, but that’s what I go to these resorts for. It’s just too crowded and the beach has been ruined by overdevelopment and lack of the states investment in proper infrastructure to address the pollution...