Sandcastles 1770 Motel & Resort

This is our second year staying at Sandcastles and once again we really loved it. Location is excellent with a short walk into town and a quick walk on the track to the beach. We stayed in the beach villas - ours was two bedrooms 2 bathrooms. The kitchen was incredibly well appointed; outdoor table and chairs only; bbq and a couple of sun lounges. We really wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Sandcastles, the staff are excellent and incredibly helpful in trying to find the best option for your stay. 5 stars all the way.

We had a beach unit, no 13. While being nice, if you value privacy the beach units definitely are NOT for you. While we can appreciate the indoor outdoor flow, there's a few things that will really annoy you. The plantation shutters don't have any glass behind them, so the only thing that separates the outside noise from inside, is the shutters. So you can hear everything, from inside to out, and outside to in. If you have kids, the neighbours will hear everything. I could hear a daughter crying from the pool gate. The balcony is next to the shutters for the next unit, so if you're on your deck, there's no way they would be able to sleep unless you super quiet. The indoor rooms have shutters as well, so if someone is in the kitchen, you won't be able to sleep if you're sensitive to noise. If someone is in the toilet, you'll hear them too. The only glass in the place is the sliding doors off the kitchen....which really should be the only place in the house without glass....weird. You have to make sure all you food is locked away, the bugs will literally walk away with your left over cake... If you're not good with stairs, be aware to have to park under the building and have 2 flights of stairs you have to walk up with all your gear. Some recommendations: You NEED to do some basic maintenance on the units and pool. The glass table in the unit.....what a terrible idea. Especially if you have a toddler, young ones or short kids. The corners aren't rounded well and a few heads were smacked on the edge. Maybe some bumpers would help considering it's a family unit. The unit wasn't clean at all. The floors were filthy, and the bathroom had alot of soap scum build up in the shower. By no means are we prissy about dirt, but we cleaned before we used it as we felt it really needed it. So did the other family we travelled with. One of the AC units in the outside bedrooms worked when it wanted to, it was hit and miss. You have a rat problem on the deck area. Needs some bait. The floor mat in the living room needs to go in the bin or to the laundromat. It's nasty. Guys, replace the delaminating toilet seat, they're like 10 bucks. The 5 minute spa timer is dumb, set it to 10 at least. Aside from the above, the unit has plenty of space for the 7 of us. We never felt cramped and the kids had plenty of space to play and run around. Kitchen and BBQ utensils are supplied. Washing machine are dryer also worked there. Short walk to the beach and to town which is nice. We walked to the tavern from here also...about 10 mins, worth a trip. We spent alot of time sitting out on the deck talking and drinking, you can clearly hear the waves from there which is nice, and it always has a nice breeze. The staff are friendly and the kids can happily run around the grounds, as the neighbours are all really nice as well. The grounds are well kept too. Overall it was a good stay, but the unit needs a THOROUGH clean, a bit of maintenance and bait station for the rats. Because if that, we wouldn't go back for the price. The bugs you really can't do anything about. The place could be so much better with a good clean and fixing the obvious broken and worn items, I'm not going to tell you them all. What was 'fixed' was proper half arsed and made the place look cheap, find a new handyman.

I booked an overnight stay through Wotif and was genuinely excited about my trip, but I was quite disappointed upon arrival. The fridge and microwave were in a disgusting state, and the room itself felt stuffy and uncomfortable. On top of that, the lighting in the room was very poor — definitely not suitable if you needed to study or use a computer at night. Out of four small lights, one wasn’t working, which made the room even dimmer. The price for the "studio" is nearly the same as the Garden View Studio, which is absolutely ridiculous. They call it "budget-friendly," yet charge $200 per night — for that amount, I expected much better accommodation. I'm sure the response I’ll receive here will be similar to what I already heard from the admin team — they went on about how they supposedly differentiate between the various room types and the beachfront views, etc., which simply isn't true. I found their explanation dismissive and unhelpful.