Villatel at Harbor Island Beach Club — Hotel in Palm Bay

My family and extended family enjoyed a 7-day family vacation with Villatel at Harbor Island Beach Club. We had an amazing time, and the area was beautiful and quiet. The home was beautiful and plenty of space for the 12 of us ranging in age from 5-86 years old. Even though it seems like there were A LOT of hiccups in my details below (and there was), we really did have an amazing stay and that is why I rated this stay as a 4-star. There are going to be hiccups and it should be expected, but not as many as we had.

Items that were perfect: location of the home was only a 5-minute walk to the community pool and a 5–10-minute walk to the private beach access. The length to the beach varied amongst who was walking with us and items we had to travel with. Days that we wanted to have more of a private swim, we had our own private pool and a grill to cook out. Majority of the bedrooms had a king size bed, and all bedrooms had its own access to a bathroom right off of the bedroom. Lastly, the theater/game room was amazing and perfect for kids! Even the husbands and dads were in there playing the games.

Items that were NOT perfect and could use improvement: Our house could sleep 16 people which usually requires 3 vehicles. Unfortunately, you can only park two vehicles in the driveway. Overflow parking is available, but not guaranteed. We did not have any issues with the overflow parking, but I do think this could be an issue once the beach club becomes more populated. Parking should be guaranteed to accommodate enough vehicles to transport how many are staying in the house. Do not arrive early...you cannot get in with the door code. A family member arrived before us at 3:20pm and was not able to get in until 4pm because the lock is on a timer. Most people are going to arrive about 30-60 minutes early because of being excited. I know check-in isn't until 4pm and that is made known at the beginning, but something should be noted that early arrival is not available due to door locks being on a timer. We barely had enough linens to cover the amount of people staying in the house. Every person had one wash cloth, one towel, one bathmat, and two hand towels for the entire length of our trip. I called and asked for extra wash cloths so the women could use them to remove make-up or sunscreen off the kids face and never received the extra linens. The furniture was stained, and the outdoor furniture looked dated. The furniture also sits low so if you have an elderly person with you, it is not good sitting furniture for their age. Three out of the six bathrooms were all clogged up upon our arrival. I had to call for maintenance to come out to unclog those toilets because we could not find a plunger anywhere in the house. This is something housekeeping should have noticed before we arrived. One of the toilets could not be unclogged and maintenance had to call someone else to come out to snake the drain and a stuffed tissue was found. Since the toilet was clogged when we got there, I knew we didn't do it. I then had to make another call to inform them of this, so we were not charged for this special trip. Instructions conflict regarding trash. Once instruction says trash is picked up Wednesdays/Fridays and then other instructions say it is picked up daily. Our trash was not picked up two days in a row it was full. I had to place another call in to question trash pick-up and was told it was daily and that it should have been picked up. The next day it was removed. Lastly, the kitchen. There were no kitchen linens and barely any sizeable pan to cook in. Again, if the house sleeps 16, there should be enough pots/pans to cook for that many. There were two small frying pans, 1 small pot, 1 deep pot, two backing pans, one small strainer, and a couple of serving bowls. I had to purchase an aluminum pan from the store to cook our evening meal in one evening. The ice maker on the refrigerator barely produced any ice. This had to be a known issue because 2 large bags of ice were in the freezer for us to use upon...

My family of 16 stayed in the Rhythmic Retreat for 5 days. The house was amazing! The game room and theater room were a huge hit with the kids, as well as, the pirate themed room with bunk beds. There was plenty of room in the house for 8 adults and 8 kids. The location was within a 5 minute walking distance to the beach and community pool which was nice. There was also a publix grocery store and a few restaurants within a 5 minute drive.

The only reason I rated it 4 stars instead of 5 is because of the parking situation. A few days before check in I received an email notifying me that only 2 cars could be parked in the driveway and there was no street parking or your car would be towed. No where in the online description of the property does it state this. When you are traveling with a big family and listing a house that accommodates 16 people there is no way everyone is going to be able to fit in 2 cars. When I called Villatel's customer service the only other parking option they gave me was 9 miles away! I ended up calling the Harbor Island Beach Club sales office to get more information about possible areas to park and they informed me that there was street parking on the left side of the street coming into the community. Villatel did not mention this at all. The parking ended up working out, but Villatel should list this information when you book the house as it added unnecessary stress to try and figure out where we would be able to park 2 cars the day before we left for out trip. They also should have a better option other than directing people to a parking lot 9 miles away.

All in all it was...

the property is perfect for large families with tons for kids. plenty of space, nice pool, great decor, comfortable beds and plenty of activities. movie room was a hit with our young kids. the gaming machines were hits with the older kids. location was walkable to beautiful and very peaceful beach. community pool and activities were nice as well. staff at community pool was working hard to drive engagement and doing a nice job. would have been 5 stars, but for problem we had with our fridge. it did not work for two days and we had to throw out $150 worth of food. support from host was very responsive, but maintenance came twice and was unable to fix the issue and no service appt over holiday. host brought us portable ice maker to help out which was a nice gesture. we called GE tech support three times and finally they helped us with a reset procedure that got the fridge working on day 3. however, the freezer and ice make did not work until late on day 5 after we would reset the unit every single morning. house as great tv's, lovely pool and jacuzzi, spacious rooms and all the kitchen items you could need. only minor things they can improve on are parking and wifi connections. villas for 12 people need more space than for 2 cars. and the wifi was very good, but the sign on procedure requires a pop-up form like at the airport to be completed instead of just a username and password, which is fairly challenging to do on a roku stick, fire stick or other non computer/phone device. overall, we loved it. we will definitely come back and definitely consider other villatel...