Riviera Beach Resort — Hotel in Yarmouth

My family and I stayed for a week in July. We opted for the Beach front room. Was a hefty price per night, but being that we could walk onto a balcony and then into the sand it made sense... or so I thought. The rooms have been updated since last time we stayed, however it all started with the sliding door leading out to the balcony. What a joke! The screen was completely off the track so that couldnt be used and the door itself was just about impossible to open and close. Litterally why we paid extra was for the easy access to the beach. Anyway, we just dealt with that. The balcony here are all attached with a small wood divider that doesn't do a whole lot, but it makes sense to be done that way. Anyway our neighbors in the room next to us were chain smoking on their balcony. Now if it was just me and the wife I wouldnt have cared at all, but that wasnt the case. My youngest child has bad Asthma, and this kept triggering it. There are dedicated smoking areas on site and signs everywhere stating no smoking in the rooms or balcony. I finally said something to the front desk as we litterally could not use our balcony. They assured me something would be said and would be taken care of. Well that never happened. The smoke was so bad that we just didn't use the balcony the rest of our time there. (You know the thing we paid more for) and we even had to shut the HVAC off, as it was sucking the cigarette smoke into the room and filling our room with smoke. Also at night you can hear everything. The walls are paper thin. The pool is a cool setup, but it was pretty gross. Had an odd green tinge to it and left our clothes with a rancid smell. Not chlorine, just a really terrible smell. We only used the pool once because of that. As for their process on cleaning the rooms. I dont need my room cleaned every day. However, we're on the beach and my kids are young and we did our best to clean them off before entering the room, but sand still got in the room. By day 3 no one had come to refresh the room at all. I called the front desk and asked, as we were gone for the entire day. We returned to fresh towels. That was Litterally it!!! Beds had the same pillows and sheets, and still had sand in the beds. The floor was covered in sand, trash in the cans, no restock on TP, so on. Again I just said whatever and just dealt with it like everything else. Then on the final day we went to leave. Make our 6 hour drive home and there was a large box truck blocking the parking lot. Along with a golf cart and several employees standing around. All of which saw me waiting to leave. Zero and I mean ZERO sense of urgency to move anything to let me out. I got out of my vehicle, moved their golf cart and then went around the box truck with my vehicle clipping a potted plant on my way out. Just about left skid marks out of this place!!! Mind you we were vacationers here two years ago before the "refresh" and weren't all that impressed, but the location is great and figured we'd give it another shot. Well that was a giant mistake. Never again will we ever be back. Just be aware of what you're getting into. Sorry for the long winded review, but wanted to be detailed. Just go somewhere else. There are so many nicer spots to spend a couple thousand dollars to stay for a week. I gave two stars as the beach and location is nice. Wasn't for that, this would be...

I’ll start with the good parts about the resort: if you want to go to the Cape it’s got a lot of what you want: close access to a good beach, beach staff who set up umbrellas, chairs, and towels for you for no charge. There’s a beach bar very close by. It’s very family-oriented with a kids club in the mornings so that parents can get away on their own for ages 5-12. The pool is well-suited for kids.

The newly renovated rooms are done very tastefully and overall I had no problem with them. However, the positives end there.

The amount of cleaning service you get on a daily basis isn’t enough. For a beach resort there should be daily floor cleaning to keep the sand at bay. Our room was sandy when we checked in so it wasn’t properly cleaned from the last customer, and it never really felt clean.

I think that something about their air conditioner units do a poor job of keeping moisture out of the room. Perhaps more modern equipment would help out there.

When I compare this vacation stay to alternatives, I’ve paid about $2,530 including a daily parking fee and resort fee for peak season for 5 nights.

As a point of comparison, I paid $2,800 last year for a Walt Disney World Resort package at a moderate resort which included 5 days of park hopper tickets for two adults.

Maybe this isn’t a fair comparison, because maybe the Cape is just a very expensive place to be, but I know which experience I enjoyed a lot better. I don’t want to get too close to reviewing Cape Cod itself (spoiler alert: it’s probably overrated and only worth it if you live nearby).

Cape Cod itself doesn’t really have the best food, entertainment, or things for kids to do - mostly cheap thrills like run-down go karts and mini golf. It’s got too many mediocre seafood restaurants that frustratingly don’t take reservations. At Disney World I ate better food, I was more entertained, all the pools were better, the room was bigger, better, (and cleaned better), etc.

Even the money-hungry Disney corporation didn’t charge for parking at their resort or theme park for resort guests, while this place has the gall to charge a daily parking rate for a surface parking lot. That practice is just a way to make their rates look lower on Kayak/Expedia/Google.

Maybe it’s silly for me to make a comparison to Disney World but I think it’s important because it shows just how far removed from being competitive this offering turned out to be in the end. If you started comparing this to the Caribbean or Mexico it would look really bad.

Some more things I didn’t love about the resort:

The beach towels are old and very unpleasant

The choice of the thermoelectric beverage cooler instead of a traditional mini fridge is insane and actually costs the hotel a ton of money in extra electricity bills along with being a refrigerator that can’t be used for perishable food.

If you want to use amenities at Red Jacket Resort it’s a significant drive down the road and not walkable

There are only two washer and dryers in the laundry room and they are unreliable

Pool is unheated and colder than the ocean

On-site dining is weak and poor value

Hotel bars don’t stay open anywhere close to late

Overall “motel” vibes for...

The marketing for the company is top notch, however when you arrive you quickly realize your experience will be a different story. This is a motel with beach access, definitely not a resort. The rooms are clean which I think is the bare minimum for accommodations. The sink in the room however did not drain which was a bit disgusting - we ended up brushing our teeth in the tub to avoid this. The entrance to the rooms are extremely dated with rotten decks and extremely unsafe railings. The balconies are extremely unsafe especially with kids, they are rotting throughout and you can see to the first floor, the railings on the balcony are much safer and seem to be updated. The resort fee is extremely high for zero resort amenities there were never any towels in ANY of the pool areas, the umbrellas for the beach were all falling apart if you were lucky enough to get a worker on the beach to look up from their phones. Every single pool was falling apart pieces of title and grout in and around the pools everywhere not a small amount. The indoor pool had the pool light hanging underwater with all the wire exposed and we let them know and they acted like they know about it - both indoor pool are decorated on both walls and ceiling will black mold spores, I can’t imagine how the rooms above them are. The “restaurants” and more like quick service premade gas station sandwiches and they add 20% service fee to every single purchase on the property. I paid $50 for a premade sandwich that I removed from a refrigerator myself, 2 - 20oz sodas and 1 can of soda, that includes the “service fee”. There were multiple soda vending machines throughout out the property that remained “sold out” they entire stay we were there. Jonahs pizza grotto visit was $125 for a 10 inch cheese pizza and 13 inch Hawaiian that were most definitely freezer pizzas (which is fine but the $$$) and 3 fountain sodas, which of course included the 20% service fee. It was also $25/day to park which I understand is typical but seemed wild for they type of motel it is also with no assigned spots, it can make arriving and departing pretty hectic. The staff was all extremely friendly and very helpful although I did try to order my kids door dash one night and the door dash driver said they kicked him out of the parking lot so my husband had to walk to get out food, which was odd because the front desk told us it was no problem. The beach bars were fine but only open 12-5 so even for a soda or water, which was odd I felt like if they wanted to limit alcohol sales fine but maybe have soda or nonalcoholic drink sales longer - especially because there is no where else on property to get a water or soda and they apparently don’t allow deliveries...