Palm Beach Shores Resort and Vacation Villas

I have stayed many times and this resort is wonderful.The ocean is right there and the pool is just perfect.There are so many things to do close by.

Very nice resort and island!

we just spent a week here (Oct 16-23,2010) in unit 411 and loved it!! From what we can tell there are only a few 2BR units per floor but if 1BR will do, it is great. Large bedroom with very large bathroom attached and towel exchange daily (they even come to you!). Kitchen is small with a apt size fridge and d/w, two burner stovetop but no oven. But...I did learn how to make pizza in the microwave/convection oven!

We also had trouble with the internet...it is ethernet cable not wireless, and had to call outside service tech support. Ultimately it was a bad modem which the resort exchanged in a very pleasant manner and the rest of the time the internet ran just fine.

Our unit faced the north outside viewing of the building. we overlooked a park and could easily see the ocean even from our chairs. not a problem at all.

Only one w/d on the entire floor which is not enough if you are needing to do laundry with kids along, but for the two of us i picked a wed eve and it was no problem.

the onsite restaurant had evening specials. we splurged on the 1.5 lb lobster for $19.95 with salad and baked potato!

We did not rent the full set of beach chairs although the first day we were told we have to. The rate was $30/day or $150/wk which we talked down to $100/wk. we offered to rent an umbrella for $10/day ($50/wk) if we could use our own chairs. then we went to Wings across the street and bought two fold up ones for $15 each. later in the week we saw lots of people of with their own chairs as well. Even if that was true for the private beach, the public one is literally steps away. But, we enjoyed our umbrella daily and I enjoy moving my chair to the waters edge so we had a great compromise.

There are daily activities as well onsite. the pool is adequate and very popular. I was surpised how many people were out using the pool chairs by 10am but I am a beach person so not a problem for me. you would have to get there early to get a chair by the pool even though there seems to be plenty. Nice hot tub and kiddie pool as well.

We hope to return.

We spent 4th of July week at this resort. The resort occupies an outstanding (unguarded) beach location on Singer Island, which also has good public beaches with lifeguards (Riviera Beach Municipal Beach, Ocean Reef Park , and John D. MacArthur Beach State Park). It was turtle nesting season and every day we saw new tracks -- both new nests and "false crawls" (a "false crawl" is when a turtle comes out of the water and returns without nesting -- often scared away by humans looking for them with flashlights -- a no-no for anyone who cares about turtles).

The surf was quite strong the first half of the week we were there, with 2 to 4 foot waves. Warning flags flew from the lifeguard towers on the public beach next door (Riviera Beach Municipal Beach), as riptides are a risk when the waves are large. Small children would have required close supervision and all swimmers should know how to react if caught in a riptide. Ask the lifeguards if you don't know. We swam at the public beach most of the time to take advantage of the lifeguards. By the end of the week, the ocean winds had died down and the surf became much less wild. My family (kids 13 and 11) loved the big surf. The water gets deep pretty quickly, with a drop off just a few feet from shore.

We stayed in a 2 bedroom lockout unit with a direct oceanfront side and an ocean view side. The layout was excellent.

The oceanfront side had a king bedroom, spacious bathroom, decent side kitchenette, living room with sofabed, and balcony. The kitchenette had a small full size refrigerator, two burner cooktop (not a full range), combination microwave and oven, and small dishwasher. We found the appliances adequate, but there was not enough cutlery or dishes (although we had pretty much everything on the unit inventory), so we ran the dishwasher frequently. The no stick fry pan was in rough shape, probably because they only had metal utensils to use with it. There were no BBQ facilities and only two pairs of pay laundry machines per floor (bring lots of quarters and a healthy dose of patience for your laundry).

The ocean view side of the lockout had a king bedroom and a full bath. It had a somewhat smaller kitchenette with a mini (half size) refrigerator, sink, and combination microwave and oven.

The beds were comfortable and the bathrooms quite spacious. The housekeeping staff removed the trash and did a towel exchange every day. The unit had a very spacious safe, for which guests are charged $1 per day. Parking is $6 per day and includes complimentary valet parking, but tips are no doubt expected. I only used valet parking once when no self parking was available and tipped $1 to park and later get my car. About half the parking lot is reserved for the valet parking, so there are times when you might have no choice but to use it (it only happened the one time for us).

In summary, this was an excellent timeshare exchange and we would not hesitate to return or recommend it. There were however, a few concerns.

The unit and furnishings show significant wear. Some tiles were damaged, the windows quite dirty (one oceanfront window was almost opaque with dirt), the patio and patio furnishings dirty, and furniture quite chipped. Neither patio door could be fully secured. The locks would open with a little jiggling, which was a concern as only one had a security bar -- and that would not align with the door. The patio door hardware was significantly corroded, which may have contributed to the faulty locks. I expressed these security concerns at checkout (I took my chances that no one would Spider-man to my third floor balcony during my visit).

During our visit, we called maintenance for a toaster, the refrigerator, and the internet connection. The toaster was replaced quickly with a working model. A puddle continually formed in front of the refrigerator and after two service calls, the problem remained unfixed and we stopped asking. The maintenance guy would not help us with the snail slow internet connection at all, referring us instead to the 1-800 number on the network jack to call the internet provider for technical support ourselves. The internet provider had us run a bandwidth test which revealed that the resort ranked a 0.5 out of 5.0 for connection speed, which he said was typical for that facility. It was the worst hotel internet connection I have ever seen in terms of performance.

We agree with other reviews of the resort that the pool area is too small for such a large resort. It was always crowded. Beware of the mandatory 18% gratuity added by the restaurant and bar. I did not notice this immediately and added 15% on top of my first couple of bills. The waiting staff had a good night on me! I don't like mandatory gratuities as they take away the incentive for good service.

Some reviews said guests were not allowed to set up their own chairs or umbrellas on the beach, but instead had to pay $30/day for one of the beach company's setups. That does not seem to be the case anymore. A lot of people, including us, used their own chairs and umbrellas on the resort beach without any hassle of any kind.

The resort indicated they wanted you to raise any concerns with them that might cause you to rate them at less than 5 out of 5. I'm sorry, but as excellent as the location and unit layout is, the state of the units in terms of wear preclude any such rating. We loved our stay and would return, but have trouble rating them higher than a 3 for cleanliness, unit condition, and service (witness the do-it-yourself internet service that only confirmed the inadequacy of the service) and a 4 for amenities and location -- 3.5 rating overall.