We've been traveling to Santa Rosa Island for over 25 years. This is one house we won't be rebooking.
Nice, quiet neighborhood and close proximity to pool was great. The view of the sound was amazing! We saw a pod of dolphins multiple times from the main floor deck. Access to the sound was great, especially with our family (4 under 3 yrs).
If you have kids, you MUST bring baby gates. One was provided. We brought multiple knowing that we would be dealing with lots of stairs.
You could tell that the house had been cleaned and picked up before we arrived but we quickly noticed dirtiness everywhere. There was food splatter all over the kitchen. Some were directly in front of my face when I was making coffee. We had to call maintenance for a broom because the only one there was 2 ft tall and had seen much better days. There was not a vaccuum.
Configuration of the house is strange. It's almost too big. There is NO GARAGE. The garage has been built out into the "bunk room/game room/kitchenette". This area was rarely used unless we were using the bathroom, doing laundry, or grabbing something from the fridge. Two of the bunk mattresses had to be folded up on a corner because the bed frame was built around one of the piers. Mattresses on main floor seemed cheap. We ended up using these rooms for our pack and plays. Mattresses on other floors were decent.
Front door doesn't lock from inside. Our 2 1/2-year-old was easily able to open door without any problem. That's a little terrifying. Downstairs sliding door lock was broken. No stick to use but we called Maintenance and they brought one to us quickly.
We towed a 4x8 Uhaul from Oklahoma because we have so many large children items we had to pack. Thinking we would store the Uhaul in the garage the week we'd be there and not worry about it. We didn't realize there was no garage until we pulled up. We unhooked the Uhaul after unloading and pulled it close to the house. Unaware the HOA does not allow trailers of any kind, we were told we had to move it immediately. Well, with four small children, we told them we couldn't unless there was some way to secure it without our car attached. Anyway, they never came with a ball lock for the trailer and we left two days later.
The second night we were there, management came by to ask if we dumped shrimp and fish guts. We had no idea what they were talking about but by the end of our trip, we knew the HOA did not like having this house as a rental property.