I will never go back.
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 01/15/07
I had the dubious privilege of staying in a junior suite at The Sands, booked by a friend who was staying there also. If I had made the reservations myself, I may not have known what we were getting either. The photos on the Ocean Shores website for the hotel are misleading at best. The photos for the junior suite make the room out to be at least twice its actual size, unless you know what you're looking at.
This place is more like a roadside motel that has never been upgraded. The balcony and stairs to the upstairs rooms are rickity; the furnishings in the whole room, kitchen included, are all relics from the 70's with no recent upgrades. The complimentary duraflame log went unused because the heat in the room was such that we needed to open the balcony door in order to cool off. When I burn something in the fireplace in my own apartment, there is no need to crack a window, so their suggestion leads me to believe that their chimneys arent cleaned regularly and so even with the damper fully open the smoke probably wafts out into the hotel room to set off fire alarms and the hotel staff is sick of that particular problem.
We didn't make use of the hot tubs or pool since that's not why we were in Ocean Shores, and the Continental Breakfast is only out for 2 hours between 8 and 10, closing much too early for my vacation habits. Being January, I didn't exactly want to go wandering outside in my pajamas, so I would have needed to get up, shower, and get dressed before going to find the separate building with the breakfast.
Speaking of showers, shall we just say the bathroom left a lot to be desired? Matchbox-sized bathroom with two doors; the door from the kitchen was a broken pocket door that didn't slide and didn't close, mostly because the door and frame aren't square and the door CANNOT close. The window and vinyl shades are moldy and rusty from the close proximity to the shower. Oh, I didn't mention they're IN the shower. Tiles were missing and broken, and there was no hair dryer. When I pack to go on vacation in a hotel, I don't even pack a hair dryer any more because EVERY hotel has one in the bathroom! Well, every one but The Sands.
Since there are several other hotels in the area, I seriously considered checking out early on Saturday and staying in one of the other hotels, but with The Sands 48 cancellation policy, combined with the fact that they charged us upfront for the whole weekend upon check-in, they probably would not have refunded us our money if we left early.
On the up-side, the best part of the hotel room was that it was at least warm and out of the wind.
I won't even justify their self-styled "resort" with the title. This place is just an overpriced (due to location) albeit clean roach motel.