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Don't Let These Images Entice You to go to the Bahamas. The resorts all look wonderful. Take travel warnings to the Bahamas seriously. HEED the warnings

Is it safe to travel to the bahamas?

What are the dangers in travel to the bahamas?

Think Twice Before Going to the Bahamas and Especially Freeport


Beware of Sales Practices at Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort

Retoration Book Promotion Site for Jacobs 2 1982 Restoration
Original Small Low Bandwidth Restoration site
World Famous Instrument Makers(my sister)
My old Home City Site

US Government Warnings

What are the various time share traps?

How do timeshares trap you?

Timeshare Traps We Have Seen, Two Styles

All of the rest of this site is from our personal experience. My wife and I had these experiences in 2014 and these are my after thoughts. Again Note, Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort experiences are from 2014. Yet our RCI experiences lasted for several years until we quit trying to use our membership.

We actually bypassed the Wyndham sales pitch and bought a basic membership point level. If used carefully they are actually good. Pros and cons below.

How Does Wyndham Resorts Timeshares Entice You

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts

Like many timeshare pitches, Club Wyndham sales a home site and then a point system. The home system has various features which were free to use as much as one can. Then, the points can be used at any of their many high end resorts. The snare, is that the more permanent points you have, the more time you can get all over their member resorts. In our experience, the resorts were mostly first in class with lots of ocean resorts with rooms available with ocean views. Many of them can handle 4-8 people if you have upgrade points!

So far it sounds pretty good right? Well that depends. You pay yearly maintenance on the number of points you have. They give you extra one-time points when you sign up to get you used to more stays with more upgrades. Their trap is to upgrade to more permanent points. Implementation is with a required meeting when you get to each stay where they push by glamorizing where you could be if you moved to the next level. Little publicized is the ability to buy 1-2 year point upgrades. The fee is not real bad considering resort costs and these points, like the initial extra signup bonus points, do not change your yearly maintenance fees.

In all honesty, I do not remember how you get out as they want you to think that you are doing this for your kids as a long term travel investment. Anyways, if your home base is accessible, like ours was, this can be a good way to have a local resort for frequent on-stay visits and a chance to taste, what was in our experience, high-end resorts all over.

In our case, we avoided the trap. Staying at our base level we could have a really nice vacation in many places and just had to worry travel costs. Maintenance was around $850/year. Our home was just 45 minutes away in the Wisconsin Dells. Timber Ridge Lodge has inside and outside waterparks and many restaurants. We could and did use it often in both winter and summer. This made the whole system work quite well usually with once a year ocean side stays in Myrtle Beach SC. We managed to avoid the extra permanent point pitches with each stay.

How did Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resorts Entice You

Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort, Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

I Repeat: All of the rest of this site is from our personal experience. My wife and I had these experiences in 2014 and these are my after thoughts. Again Note, Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort experiences are from 2014. Yet our RCI experiences lasted for several years until we quit trying to use our membership.

10 years, and a divorce later, She got the Wymdham, and I got the timeshare (one week and 10 years maintenance at Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort) (and the T shirt). I got the one she "had to have". Anyways, she had me pick a vacation spot in the Bahamas and this was where we landed. At that time they honored Wyndham points or I would not have chosen it.

The Mandatory Pitch

5 hours of our first day in the Bahamas was consumed by a relentless sales pitch. They touted an entirely different travel club, RCI, and for $$, we could have a week a year at their resort, and a large point membership in RCI. We could not escape as they continued to show us these gorgeous resorts over and over. I mean they were extremely enticing. One after another, they kept pulling them out. Finally, my ex caved. I said are you sure? And after 5 hours and $$, we escaped out to the resort. Trapped by the spider.

The Resort Experience

For now I will skip what we later experienced about RCI and how the "Pitch" went. When we got there with our rental car (Thank goodness we had a car), Our unit was absoulutely filthy. There was some sort of white dust (thick) all over every surface. Well, they did fix that. Upon walking along the boat slips, we discovered they were doing construction under our balcony and had scary looking temporary support structures in place. Luckily it did not fall while we were there and once we got over the scare, we did enjoy using the balcony. We were in the large main building. It was disappointing that there were no views of the ocean. No walking path to a beach. It seems if you traveled by boat, it might be an ok resort. There was certainly nothing special abouit the place. The food was good and the pools well maintained. That was about all there was. The resort building was aged and in OK condition but anything from even a two star stay. They used paint alot to hide the age.

Well, we did want to see beaches and ocean while there. After all, it is tose white sandy beaches which are the draw. So our first thought was to use the free kayaks to go out the channel to the ocean. It was hard to say what that distance is without a motor as we never got there. For one thing, we had a head wind. That is not that bad in a kayak generally. However, Not only were the back rests broken offering no support, but the paddles where JUNK. The best paddle had only 1/2 a blade on one end. The other was totally missing the blade on one end. Well, we tried. There after we used the car to explore the island. Considering all the US Government warnings now, I would not even think ablout leaving the resort. That is pretty much what we experienced in 2014. I just don't know, in todays more troubled times in the Bahamas, that I would go anywhere but an ocean side resort with all the things I went to the Bahamas for. That is just me.......

RCI Resorts

After planning a number of vacations to use our Great RCI membership and finding them all very lack luster. The ones we ended up at were old, ok maintained, but lacking in anything special outside of whatever location we ended up traveling to. They were certainly vary far from what we expected after the high preasure sales tactics in the 5 hour meeting at Ocean Reef Yacht Club and Resort.

So after playing games with finding a nice RCI experience, I quit paying the 100$/year for nothing special. I have eagerly awaited my 10 year termination of this disaster for us/me.

I finally figured out they could show such fine sites within RCI. Two search types will show nice sites.