Tidewater Beach Resort — Hotel in Panama City Beach

The elevators alone are enough reason to avoid this place. Half the elevators are "down for maintenance," and reading through some of these reviews, it's clear to see that they'd rather just put an "out of order" sign up for over a year rather than fix the issues. The elevators that are actually working are not programmed correctly, and have "employees" riding on them who informed me that they have to do tricks with the buttons to get them to operate correctly and go to the correct floors. No exaggeration, you will spend 4-5 hours of a week-long vacation simply standing there waiting on the elevator to come. Sometimes we waited 15-20 minutes only for the call button to reset, and for the elevator to just never show up. You will have to deal with this elevator situation while hauling your luggage in the parking lot across the street, and also in the main "resort." Do not let the staff replies on these reviews gaslight you into believing that the elevators are being actively worked on. If this was true, the same signs would not be up for over a year.

The microwave was broken upon arrival, but we did not realize it until the next day. The door was stuck open due to someone mishandling it previously, and thus it would not cook. We contacted maintenance and were told someone would call us back shortly with a time that they would come and replace it, however no one followed up. We had to flag down an on-site employee to get help with this, so we were out of a microwave for 2 days out of our 7 day trip. The garbage disposal was also completely clogged upon arrival, but we let this issue go for the sake of peace.

The ceilings in the 2 bedroom condo we chose were perplexingly thinner than even my old college apartment's ceiling. For the majority of our trip it legitimately sounded like someone was dropping bowling balls for hours at a time. I could also personally hear someone's full and clear phone conversation from the unit above from the condo's bathroom. Noise from the street and beach was expected, but it's very uncomfortable to be constantly woken up by the drunk "neighbors" at 4am-6am during vacation.

These issues may have been acceptable if this was a spring break trip, but it was supposed to be our first family vacation in 7 years, and it was made miserable by cheap infrastructure and a very obvious lack of maintenance/inspection prior to our arrival, when we booked 6 months in advance.

High speed internet was advertised, and while a speed test showed 200 mbps, the internet cut in and out every few minutes. It's odd that the bedrooms were outfitted with Roku TVs, yet we were unable to stream anything at all due to the internet constantly disconnecting. This was not user error, as it happened on every device my family and I attempted to use.

Edit: Forgot to mention the security. On the night of June 26, around midnight, there were drunk people on the beach shooting fireworks AT THE CONDOS. This was reported, and I literally stood on my balcony and watched security drive up to these people.. and do absolutely nothing. The people were actually shooting the fireworks while security was standing there talking to them, and continued to shoot them as security drove away maybe 5 minutes later. Every single night I was there, there were also multiple people on balconies with huge obnoxious strobelights "spotlighting" people who were trying to relax on the beach, and harassing them. After I personally experienced this my first night there, I never went back to the beach after dark. I understand it's difficult to enforce random drunk people, but I watched security trucks and beach buggies ride by multiple times every night and simply ignore these issues.

The view was great, and the staff - all of them - was extra friendly and welcoming, but it's still not enough to ever recommend this place to anyone at all. Please spend your...

We are frequent visitors to the panhandle area! Panama City, Destin, and Miramar are frequent places for us! We’ve learned the rules and restrictions very well are different everywhere. I will start the review stating most issues and problems are with tidewater themselves not the unit or owners. Some of these are also just personal preference but felt the need to disclose to others maybe wondering the same thing. #1 is the pool/resort bands, yes normally you wear a band at the resort to ensure your staying there no big deal but these are RF bands and you have to literally use them non stop to navigate through every single door, pass point, anything. It’s extremely frustrating when your hands are full and dealing with kids. The hallway to the rooms have rf readers, the beach gates, the garage, the pool then have to navigate a second gate to pool. It felt non stop. And you have to physically press and hold it on there can’t just swipe it quickly. Then you have separate door codes to manually enter for room, weight room, and garage so three separate codes to remember. My phone died once with all the codes so I couldn’t even get back into my room and had to go to desk to call owners(then remembered to write it down and keep with me in waterproof pouch). The pools were absolutely freezing. It was almost 90 degrees one day and to get in the pool was literally uncomfortable they were so cold. My youngest was shaking cold so didn’t want to swim. Never encountered this before with how cold they were. The third and biggest for us was the security/hoa for this resort. It is insane the harassment you get staying here!! First 5 minutes down to an already jam packed beach we set up a beach tent and umbrella in front of the beach chair/umbrella rentals from the resort(we weren’t rude and know the rules with this other places) we made sure we were near nobody using them they were all empty and plenty far Enough in front as literally the same as an unbelievable amount of people. Security from the resort comes up and says we’re in violation of resort and have to be in front of a red stick they shoved in the sand. The red stick was 3 foot under water and several were not in front of it. The people they continued to confront were furious and had 4 families yelling at them right in front of us as well. The amount of money you pay to be here for 7days and to be harrassed this way is ridiculous. However, we did move kindly without incident and 20 minutes later here comes another one and said they got a call on us for a beach violation and we said “what for now?” He said because your beach umbrella is leaning 🙄 it has to be strait up! We literally laughed at them. You cannot be serious for almost 3 grand and you’re gonna come get on to us because our umbrella is tilted? We’ve never been harrassed so much in our life anywhere else but here. We watched security harass people on the beach and pools decks from sun up to sun down all week long. They come to the pool decks saying you can’t have your drink on the edge of the pool but if u Scoot it literally four tiles away you can? Like what what does it matter if your allowing them poolside or to drink in pool?! It was literally constant harassment. They stood under an umbrella on the decking of the resort and one after another all day long continue to go down to beach and harass people. The layout is horrid. And just read the rest of the reviews regarding the horrid elevator situation. They had broken down elevators again this week the entire stay. People were waiting 30 plus minutes for an elevator ride. Tidewater is by far the worst resort we’ve stayed at in PCB. Word of mouth and reviews go a long way. They will continue to...

We stayed on the 9th floor our room was awesome every signal thing about the inside of the condo was great! However the wait on the elevator is ridiculous. My 7 month pregnant daughter had to wait on an elevator for over an hour!!! She finally had to call someone to come get her. We missed dinner reservations with friends another night because we waited 45 min on an elevator!!! I have bad knees we had to go up and down the stairs half the time we because if we didn't we were stuck! We got on once and went from the ninth floor stopping and going to the to the 27th to the Ground floor (where we wanted off) only for the doors to not open but to take us back up stopping and going at floors till we got to the 30th then back down stopping and going. We checked out in the morning and after a very very long process of getting on the elevator to get carts, get cart (big line for carts too) and then waiting to get back up on the elevator, we were all packed up only to then have to wait another 45 min for the elevator and it only came because my husband walk down the stairs and got a someone to come get us and that person was rude! We wasted so much of our beach vacation time as a family waiting on the elevator and huffing with bad knees up and down the stairs. My pregnant daughter didn't get to go to the beach or pool as much as the rest of us because of the elevator and her being afraid she could get back to our room fast enough (low blood sugar needed to be able to go up and down to the room faster than 45min. The fastest it ever came while we stayed there was 5 mins. It got to be a joke of timing them. We also had to station people at different elevators on opposite ends of the halls just hoping to get one sooner!

The people that rent the chairs in front of the condo were rude I was going to rent chairs from them I was there at 8 when they opened and for $70 a day we were going to be on the back row of four rows of chairs, so I said no thank you and went and got my own chairs. I brought them down put the in line on the beach with the other chairs I did not put up the umbrella because it hard so I was waiting till my husband woke up to come put it up and I didn't want it it blowing around. When they did come down the chair people said we couldn't have one because we didn't put it up that morning with our chairs in the wet sand. The next day we put it up in the morning in wet sand with our chairs in line with everyone else's and when we came back about and hour later they made us move just the "umbrella" which meant we had to move everything to be back in shade, how far do you think we had to move??? About 10 foot steps more or less because we were no longer in wet sand. I said that the day before the man said if I put the out in wet sand in the morning we were good he all but called me a liar!!! He then explained as the water moved down we had to also move the umbrella??? The water moves in and out that a lot of moving things in one day!

Parking was a nightmare as well the parking lot is full to the max we had to wait for some one to move to find a spot final on night and if you don't park on the 2 floor you may as well get ready to take some stairs to it or wait on the elevator just like at the condo side.

These three things added up because of the stress mental and physical it put on us during our vacation! I paid a lot to stay in your establishment plus the other expenses of a nice vacation, but it was far from relaxing not mention the time lost with family and friends waiting on elevators !!! It isn't fair or right for as simple as elevator and chair location to be such a huge part in messing up our...