Nagel Family Website

We’re back from vacation in Williamsburg, where we stayed at the Wyndham Kingsgate. We exchanged our week in Orange Lake in January to go here; through RCI, we’ve stayed in CT, New Orleans, and Hershey. Now that we own 2 weeks, we’re sure to go elsewhere.

However, our time at Kingsgate was depressing for an RCI-affiliated resort. I took the time to write a review for RCI, and thought I’d post it here, too

We just got home from our trip to Williamsburg, and let’s just say we’re glad to be home. The Williamsburg area itself is beautiful, and there’s something for everyone – historic Williamsburg, Busch Gardens, shopping, Jamestown, and plenty of family-friendly restaurants. But the time we spent at this resort was by far the downside to our vacation.

At check-in, was not notified of phones not working (they didn’t work all week). While this prevented the sales guys from calling us all week, it also prevented us from calling maintenance (and we had to a few times). Luckily, we had our cell phones with us.

The $5 / day activities fee was hard to justify; we played golf, went to the arcade, and did a craft with the kids, but wasn’t worth $35. At golf, kids were running all over the course, unsupervised, even though signs stated if you were 14 or under, you were to be accompanied by an adult. It was mayhem, and we were glad when our round of mini-golf was over.

The golf area, pool, and activities center was crammed into the center of the resort complex. The pool is a salt-water pool, which I hear is a new fad, but the kids weren’t fond of getting a mouthful of salt water while swimming. A couple of times we were at the pool during scorching hot days, but the poolside bar was closed both times. I never saw it open at all.

We were arriving late, so we called ahead. Woman on phone was friendly; we requested a first floor room, since there are no elevators and we have 3 small children. Requested one again at check-in, but none were available. We should’ve requested a top-floor room.

The master bath above us leaked through the fan above our tub, so we didn’t get to use our master bath. While maintenance informed the occupants above us of this problem, that didn’t stop them from using theirs.

In addition, you could hear every movement made by the occupants above us; it wasn’t so bad, until Friday night when a new family was moving in for the week, and kept us awake until midnight.

When we arrived, as usual, we took a quick look around to make sure everything was in order, before settling in. Immediately we noticed the sliding glass door heading out to the balcony wouldn’t close; it was when we tried to call maintenance that we realized the phones were out of order. Using our cell phones, we got though and, to their credit, maintenance arrived and fixed the problem within 20 minutes or so. I’d say that was the highlight of our stay at the resort. The two times we called them (sliding door & leaking tub), they arrived quickly and were extremely pleasant to work with.

With the kids, we like cooking and eating at our unit (it’s just easier for us). Cooking utensils were scarce (not a single baking sheet) and we had to improvise to get through dinners.

The bed (complete with rust-stains on the bed sheets) was nothing spectacular. I don’t know if it was the bed, or the trampling above us and the constant drip-drip-drip of the upstairs bath leaking into ours that made for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.

The RCI description mentions “tanning bed, … and on-site masseuse”, which I didn’t see at all while there. The resort itself is easy to get to, and close to all of the area attractions. I believe our exchange sheet said there was a $4 / day activities charge, which we paid $5 / day. Not a big deal, but it’s time to update the description.

In closing, while I’d recommend the Williamsburg area for a nice, slow-paced family vacation, I would not recommend staying at this particular resort.

Looking forward to Disney in ‘08!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.