Mandalay State Beach

Couple hickups checking in but Deena made us feel at home. Hidden gem

It’s always a nice stay.

The hotel is nice, and I really liked the shady grounds around the hot tub and swimming pool. The room was very clean but seemed like it hadn’t been updated in years. However, what really knocked the rating down was that the room’s alarm clock, which gave no indication that it had been set and in fact just looked like a charging station (I.e., there was no display with current time), went off at 6AM and then kept going off several times after that. So much for a relaxing overnight for me, my husband, and our toddler! It took ages to get our two-year-old, who had been sleeping soundly and typically sleeps till 8:30 or 9am, back to sleep for a couple more hours which got us off to a later start for the rest of our day than intended. When I brought this up to the front desk upon checkout, they urgently said our room number into some walkie talkies and said they would fix it, but we were leaving so that didn’t help us at all. When I mentioned that, the guy just repeated that it should have been reprogrammed and they were sorry. But it totally ruined our sleep! They didn’t offer to make up for it with a discount for this stay or a future stay, or anything else. Even a token offering would have felt better than paying a lot for a room that we couldn’t even get a good night’s sleep in and make our morning stressful.