Casa Del Mar Beach Resort on Longboat Key — Hotel in Longboat Key

This is our third visit to Casa del Mar Beach Resort and my family has been visiting Longboat Key since the 80's. We really like this place but the condition of the units have been getting worse and worse over the years. It's a good value and staff are nice, but you have to be willing to accept things might be broken during your stay.

1. Location: you can't beat the location of this complex. Oceanfront, many units have gorgeous ocean views. Close to restaurants and shopping.

2. Units: We always stay in a 2 bedroom unit that accommodates 6 guests and utilize the pullout sofa. We've actually stayed in the same unit 10E all 3 times. Each time we've stayed, something major has been broken and this time, it really got us down because it again affected our trip.

First time several years ago, the dryer was broken. We had a 10 day stay that time and my littes were only 2 & 4, so it was awful not being able to do laundry. It took several days, but it was finally fixed towards the end of our stay.

Second time, the A/C was broken. We normally come in July and it was hot hot hot. I had cranky miserable kids and after 3 days of suffering with no air, they finally moved us to another unit with a working AC

This last visit, our dryer was again broken. We arrived Saturday, notified them Monday; someone came to fix it Thursday. For the entire week I had to haul our laundry back and forth from our unit to the office for drying, but had to be done by 5pm because they close at that time. Needless to say, it sucked because we usually do laundry in the evenings so we had to rearrange our schedule daily. The day the dryer repair person came, we planned to be out of the unit and I was looking forward to doing all of our laundry before we had to leave the following morning, only to find that it hadn't been fixed. No one from the office told me it hadn't been repaired, so when I called to check the status around 3:30pm, they inormed me I had to rush all of my laundry down to the office to dry it before they closed at 5pm.

Also, during this last visit, several other things were in disrepair including broken bedside lamp in master, ceiling fan in kitchen that looked like it was going to fall out of the ceiling (it also "hits" the kitchen cabinet when opened); power outlets not working in kitchen (luckily I brought extension cords); bathtub faucet so hard to turn, I had to have my husband do it for me each time), washing machine smells awful like mildew (stunk up the whole house), and probably the grossest was the bedding in the master suite.... Not only was it the same exact quilt from our first visit nearly 8 years ago, but the pillow shams SMELLED like they had never been washed. Sheets were clean, but the shams that matched the quilts smelled like dirty head/hair. I had to call the office and get them swapped out. You'd think that after all the extra cleaning standards with C19, all bedding would be washed between guests.

Also there was pool equipment i don't remember being just outside our units on the previous visits that was so loud all night, we couldn't open our windows.

We plan to visit LBK again this summer and I'm hoping management takes my review as good constructive criticism to address these ongoing...

I have been coming to Casa Del Mar since 1989 and love the place, which we is why I have visited so many times. However on this trip we had booked Unit C11 for the last two weeks of our four week stay having spent the first two weeks in B11. After receiving confirmation for our stay in C11 we were contacted by CDM some weeks later and told that we had been moved to C12 as the owners now required C11. I looked on the website and wasn’t totally happy with the pictures of C12. I checked availability for other units. But due to the memorial week they were fully booked. On arrival in C12 my first impression was that it needed a facelift and was dated, even though some of the furniture was new. ||We checked around the unit and found the following faults: The cable socket in the master bedroom had been pulled from the wall and was hanging by the cable, The flooring bar between master bedroom and en-suite was loose and dangerous, The handle for the recliner chair was broken and sticking out at an angle of 45 degrees and was dangerous and around the top windows in the living room there was black around two of the windows, either dirt or mould or both. We also found that the sliding patio doors would not lock, but this was easily fixed with a spray of WD40. All of these issues should have been found and fixed before our occupation, surely CDM should not rely on the occupants to report the faults! Also the internet in this unit is terrible. Each unit should have its own internet, but with a common password for the every unit. Not a good idea!. We were unable to connect the smart tv to the internet as it wouldn’t find our unit and had to rely on using another units internet. It was the same with our iPads and phones, some days it would find C12 but wouldn’t accept the password and if you were able to connect it was so slow. All these issues were reported and fixed apart from the internet which is still the same.|Then to continue the theme and the reason for this review is that on Friday night I sat on the bottom of one of the single beds and the bed collapsed causing me to fall off, luckily no serious injury. On checking underneath I found that the bed leg had become detached from its fixing, just another sign of an refurb/update being seriously required.||C11 looks like a beautiful modernised unit and C12 is the opposite, so is it right that you should have to pay the same price when you take into account the standard of the various units? I think not and I would not want to stay in C12 again until it had been modernised.||Casa Del Mar is still a wonderful place and I will continue to stay here in the future, but in a unit of my request and not one that I was...

Loved the people, beach, grill area, and pool. Kitchen was also nice and had updated appliances and all of the utensils a family would need. Only thing wrong was one of the cupboards hardware fell out (located above the stove) and a couple of the drawers didn't shut all of the way without some additional force. Bathrooms were small but updated. However, paint was never touched up afterwards. Bother bedrooms needed to be updated and repainted.

Pictures posted on-line for A6 don't tell the full story about this unit and make it look better than it really is. First of all staying in a place with cockroaches wasn't relaxing. Only had two days where we didn't see one. Bathroom cupboards had cockroach droppings in them which were also on the towels. So did areas in the kitchen. We also found one on the spare bedroom matress which I was unable to kill (only stunned it before it slipped away into a hole in the trim underneath of the bed. Smell was horrible (musky) which took 4 days before it finally got better as a result of having the slider and front door windows open. Beds were extremely uncomfortable. Master bed was rock hard, headboard on one of the twins was off, other twin bed slanted because of the frame not being set up right. None of these issues should be blamed on on the cleaners. Slider door in spare bedroom didn't shut. Weird paintings were also hung which were not in the original pictures (owners art projects?) One wasn't hung properly next to the twin bed in the second bedroom (stupid place for a large picture in the first place) and it fell and hit my wife when she rolled over while she was sleeping. Light switch locations and lights in general didn't make sense. Had floodlights in the master bedroom (similar fixture that you would have outside of your garage or patio). Light above the dining room table seemed more like an extension cord. Slider screen didn't work and would fall off of the tracks. Internet router needed to be reset multiple times in order to stay connected.

Talking with other people, it seemed as though many had an emotional connection to Casa Del Mar and spent many years coming here as a family. For my family, we will never come back. Maybe we just had a bad experience with this particular unit, but we aren't willing to take...