Margaritaville Beach Cottage Resort - Panama City Beach — Hotel in Panama City Beach

My family of 5 visited here for Spring Break the first week of March, 2024. This was obviously on the early end of Spring Break, but overall was a good experience. We picked this rental because it seemed to be a nice blend of the spaciousness and convenience of an Airbnb or VRBO home rental with some of the cool amenities that you would find on a resort. It seemed like the best combination of the two.

First, the positives. The homes are fantastic! We stayed in one of the "waterside retreats," which are larger homes directly across the street from the beach. The homes are very spacious and nicely appointed with all of the home amenities you would expect in a vacation rental. The hot tub on our back porch was a fun addition, and staff cleaned it daily. When we travel, we cook many of our meals in our rental, and this kitchen had all of the cookware and utensils you need. I was a little disappointed that the waterside retreats did not have an outdoor grill... but the beach front villas appeared to have these if that is important to you.

One of the best highlights of this resort is obviously the pool! Its huge, beautiful, and clean. There is plenty of room to spread out, unlike most resort pools in these types of vacation towns. When the waterslides were on, the kids loved them! The bar was nice, and the bartender working was great. The resort's beach is beautiful and very "quiet" since it is a "private" beach and between other private beaches. You have plenty of space to spread out and won't be fighting for space like you do on the public beaches.

Just a few notes of caution... not everything is open at the resort yet. The bar and poolside "snack" shack are, but these are not places you will be able to get much of a meal. It looks like when everything is done in 2025... the restaurant, coffee shop and arcade will be amazing... but they are just starting construction on those. When I booked the house last summer, I got a fantastic deal, presumably because I was taking the risk of amenities not being open. But now the prices are much higher than when I booked, and still you really just have a pool, bar and snack shack as amenities (though you still have the beautiful house!). The other downside (and this may be due to us traveling in early March) is that the waterslides were turned off and the bar was closed 2 of the 3 afternoons we wanted to use them (at like 3 pm). I can understand the decision to reduce staffing as there did not appear to be very many people at the resort the whole week I was there... but I was still disappointed as these were some of the amenities we were most looking forward to. The one day we did get to use them, they were great... so we were bummed when they weren't open the other days.

Also, the day I arrived, they started charging for "chair and umbrella service" on the beach at $65/day (2 chairs and an umbrella), but the rules also clearly state you cannot bring your own chairs down... so this is an upcharge you should plan on (full disclosure: when I booked my trip, the website advertised beach service as being "included," so the resort was willing to comp my chairs and umbrella for my stay). I'm not sure what they are charging for paddleboards and kayaks, but they no longer appear to be included.

Overall, this was a lovely place to stay. If you are willing to pay more, then this does have some nice amenities you will miss out on at a regular vacation home rental. I would just caution anyone traveling in the next year to temper their expectations with what is available at the resort as they still get everything built and fully...

We accidentally arrived two hours early prior to check in. I pulled up to the unit and saw the cleaning crew packing things up getting ready to leave. I asked one of them if they knew if we would be able to check in before 4 PM, she didn’t speak clear English and said 10 minutes but she would call her supervisor, and that I could wait in my vehicle. I obliged, and a few minutes later a blonde woman about 60 years old approached my vehicle and asked what I was doing. I told her the same thing I’ve already written and her reply was “No, you absolutely can’t check in before 4PM and you can’t wait right here”. Her response isn’t the issue because 4PM was already the arrangement, it was how she said it. Her tone was extremely rude and disrespectful. She prompted us to go to the office to fill out paperwork and get that out of the way. We obliged again. My wife walked in and was greeted by “Derrick”. Derick was a stoic computer of a person who also did not comprehend being in the hospitality business; and argued with my wife about handling paperwork and checking in before 4 PM even though we were just following what the previous lady told us to do.

Fast forward several hours and we are on the porch about 8:30 PM enjoying our time. I kill 5 roaches. I tell my wife I’ll talk to maintenance and that it’s normal this time of year and they are only outside. We go inside, and I kill three more roaches. That’s the first night.

Day 2 I go to the front office around 11AM and talk to the king of hospitality, Derrick. I tell him of our roach problem and that I wanted to be discreet and give them a chance to make up for it. He looked at me like I had a banana growing from my forehead and uttered that he would call pest control. We called back three different times that day to ask, and Derrick said someone was coming. No one did. I killed four more roaches that night, one outside, three inside.

Day 3-No one is coming to save us from the roaches and we’ve accepted it. I kill two more roaches outside and one inside, except this time the one that’s inside is in our second floor closet, crawling in our clothes on the shelf.

Day 4 (our last day)- I kill four or five roaches on the porch during a night swim, and scared off at least five more. My wife and kids don’t even want to come outside at nighttime at this point. I come inside and eat dinner and see another one, and promptly dispose of it. We pack our things up to leave in the morning and go to our respective bedrooms. As my wife and I are watching a movie she alerts me that a roach is directly above us on the ceiling. I use a towel and wounded it but it outmaneuvered me and went underneath the bed, so we both went to my daughter’s room.

Aesthetically the place is beautiful. Super close to the beach and great amenities. But the customer service and the roach infestation was disgusting and a major turn off. We will not be staying here again, especially when the price increases.

If you plan on staying here, bring RAID, and expect to deal with Karen...

We rented one of the beach houses last week. Overall, our experience was fine - but I would not stay here again, and here's why.

First, the good. The people we interacted with here were extremely friendly and helpful! The house itself was lovely and in a great (but noisy) location, but...... Now the bad. There were a number of issues we had that negatively impacted our vacation.

First - there were a few spots on the private pool that we initially thought was rust - however, as you can see from the photo taken on our last day, it had spread significantly. We think it was some kind of algae or mold.

We also had a case in one of the bathrooms of microscopic bugs in the shower curtain/shower/tub (yes, I know this is Florida and these are common, but having stayed in Florida multiple times over the past 5 years, this was my first experience having them in the home we rented). The staff came and sprayed (twice) and ended up changing out the shower curtain and cleaning the bathroom - but it freaked everyone out.

There was no shower outside to get sand off. Not even a hose. We ended up using the mop bucket to put water in to rinse feet and still had a TON of sand that we dragged up onto the deck and into the pool and house.

There were minimal kitchen items - so for a house that could sleep 12+ people, it wasn't set up to actually cook. For example, no strainer. I had to rinse a pre-bagged salad in the bag itself. No mixer. One mixing bowl, only one medium, and one small frying pan, no tupperware, etc.

The bar wasn't really set up for home drinks either. One plastic cup off the pool. No shot glass. No pitcher.

They provide high chairs and/or portable cribs (1 per house - though we were told two...and they ended up giving us two after several discussions), but no gates for stairs, so be careful with small children. We had to use suitcases to create a barrier.

The condition of the outdoor chair cushions was terrible, as you can see in the pictures.

All in all, the cost to stay here was comparable to what we spent on a luxury 7bedroom 8 bathroom private home last year in PCB that also had a private pool/hot tub and was on the beach with more amenities. If the large pool/slides in the main resort area are important to you, it may be worth it. Otherwise, I would definitely say there are more luxurious and well appointed options...