Rock Reef Resort — Hotel in Key Largo

We booked what was supposed to be our last relaxing vacation before having a baby. The room was very dated, with an overly strong smell of cleaning products that hit you as soon as you walked in and air conditioning that honestly didn't work all that well, but I was more than willing to overlook that as we started our exciting vacation in the Keys!

Then the toilet backed up, and not in a "dumb tourists clogged the toilet and it overflowed" kind of way. When we flushed the toilet, water soaked the floor from the base of the toilet and bubbled up through the shower drain along with pulverized bits of brown... material. Ruined my husband's pants and brand new shoes, but again, willing to overlook this for the sake of having one last nice vacation.

We packed all of our stuff up, since between the "no vacancy" sign out front and the seemingly serious plumbing issues it seemed inevitable that we would have to leave. Notified the desk and spent three hours in the car waiting, as the manager had to be called before they started working on the plumbing. It was extremely hot but thankfully the air conditioning in the car worked better than that in the room anyway. They got the plumbing issue fixed and cleaned the room. Sweet!

Except when we got back to the room, we noticed that after the room had been cleaned, there were brown smears on the floor beside the toilet and a particularly obvious one right on the towel hanging above the toilet. There is absolutely no way that this shouldn't have been noticed when the room was being cleaned. We had used all of the towels previously when the floor was covered in water, so these were brand new towels that had either been put out with a preexisting brown smear or someone had wiped their hand on the towel after cleaning up sewage.

I can make excuses for a smelly room, or plumbing issues, or whatever, for the sake of just moving on and enjoying my vacation. But I can't handle a supposedly freshly cleaned bathroom having what appears to be feces smeared on the towels that I'm supposed to use. Or smeared all over the floor to be tracked elsewhere and eventually into the bed I'm sleeping in. As a nurse I'm just thinking about all the various diseases I could be exposing myself and my baby to if I don't get out of here.

After the experience sitting in the car for three hours I didn't have high hopes for Rock Reef Resort's customer service, so I contacted Expedia just to see what my options were. This was a non-refundable booking, but surely this was an extenuating circumstance? The Expedia agent contacted the hotel and told them I wanted to check out early, so at that point we pretty much had to leave. I requested a refund for one night but it would be at the hotel manager's discretion. After leaving this review we did...

I am an experienced traveler who has stayed in thousands of hotels around the world.|I have over 80,000 views on Tripadvisor and I am a VIP customer on Expedia.||Here is my review which is intended as constructive criticism and an opportunity for the owner to improve the customer experience.|||”Rock Reef Resort” is a basic motel with an average standard. Due to its location it has an expensive price - that is not in relation to the standard.||We stayed here as a couple for one night in a Comfort Suite and this is what we liked:|The proximity to the sea is wonderful. Small sandy beach. Opportunities to sit on the pier and observe the wildlife|Good apartment with a kitchen.Quick check in.||What we didn't like:|Before arrival we received two emails with rules we had to abide by at the accommodation. The feeling was that we as the customers should meet the accommodation's needs ,and not the other way around.||”If you are staying more than one night, please note that we are not providing daily housekeeping services. We are providing a bin that is located in the closet of your room which will be picked up daily from outside your room in the morning between 9 am to 1 pm for your items that you wish to have replaced and we would ask you to place closed and tighten bags with trash outside the door of your room for collection at the same time. All other supplies are located in the office”||The resort practicallly ask the guest to do the housekeeper’s job.|It might be appropriate at a cheap hostel, but not at this accommodation which is quite highly priced.||The pool area was closed.(June-25) However, this small detail was not mentioned in either of the two emails.|As I prefer the pool over the sea, this was a big disappointment for me. I had not chosen this resort if I knew that the pool was closed.||No cushions on a single chair which contributed to poor comfort.|No sun loungers. These were piled up and broken.||Only two out of four hotplates were usable in the kitchen. Made it hard for us to prepare the meal we had planned.|The beds were very soft and sagging. On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is the maximum hardness, the beds are a 2.|Stains all over the mattresses|Bedlamp cord broken. ||This accommodation gets an average rating from me. Will choose another accommodation next time in Key Largo.|I rate value for money (240 dollars/night) as low.||Good to know: |This resort is in my opinion not recommended for families. |Best cottages are number 9 and 10. The only ones with a sea view.|It is heavy traffic near the resort, so make sure you don’t pick a room by the street if you like...

My husband and I stayed at this hotel for one night, 09/27/2023. Upon arrival, it looked nice, but we very soon after started spotting cockroaches. In the span of just one evening, we saw baby cockroaches and large cockroaches in the bathroom, on the ground, on the table, on the dining chairs, under the mini fridge, near the Welcome Booklet, etc. I would have mentioned it to the front office, but when we first got checked in, we just unloaded our stuff and got ready for dinner, and although we saw cockroaches, we didn't realize how bad it was until we got back from dinner, and by that time, the front office was closed. I put everything on the second bed except our shoes, which I kept on the ground, and a beach towel that I hung on a chair to dry. In the morning, I shook out the beach towel and three cockroaches fell out of it. My flip flops had one cockroach on it, and I even found one inside one of my husband's shoes. A couple cockroaches were hiding under the bath towels provided by the hotel. So, so gross. We stayed at Rock Reef Resort that night since the office was closed at 8:00 pm and we were too tired to find another place last minute, but it was hard to sleep knowing how many cockroaches were crawling around the room. I would have let the front office know before we left, but we wanted to get out of there as soon as we could. I can't believe this is not mentioned in more reviews, because this was a major infestation. We wanted to use the kayaks in the morning before checking out but we didn't want to stay at that hotel any longer than necessary. I managed to get pictures of some of them, but we saw...