Nina L.
3/5
My family has been coming to Door County for generations. This is our home away from home. Collectively, we have vacationed in nearly every town on the peninsula and my parents even have a home here now. My sister and I thought it would be fun for our two young families to stay together (8 people total- 4 adults, 4 kids) for a long vacation to Door and give my parents a break from staying with them. We chose “Bayshore Cottage” and were so excited for all it had to offer. Unfortunately, it was a disappointing stay.
I will start with the things we appreciated most about Bayshore Cottage. The view is absolutely breathtaking! The sunsets are spectacular from here. There is a rocky beach on the property and our young kids enjoyed throwing rocks into the lake. The yard has ample room for kids to play and run around in and the fire pit was put to good use during our time here. The house looks very small from outside, but inside it is open, roomy, and updated. Their customer service was top notch! On the first night we stayed, we sat on our bed in one of the rooms and it automatically broke (this was not a highlight- a leg under the bed seemed to have snapped prior and caused the bed to greatly sink when a little bit of weight was applied). But when we called Lundquist the next day, they sent out a maintenance man right away to fix it! We really appreciated their prompt response time to any questions or concerns we had. At the end of the trip, my brother-in-law accidentally left his suitcase in the house and didn’t realize it till they were out of Door Co. They called Lundquist and they picked it up and brought it to their office for them to retrieve. We really appreciated that!
Unfortunately, renting this home was disappointing for a couple of reasons. I want to note that some of these reasons are minor, but for the amount of money it costs to stay here, we truly had higher expectations. First, was cleanliness. We realize that this home is most likely rented out for the majority of the summer and has a quick turn around from renter to renter. However, it definitely appeared that a real thorough cleaning (or check of the house) isn’t taking place from renter to renter. The house is decorated very stylishly with very expensive rugs. These rugs were visibly dirty and worn, especially the ones in the dining room, bathrooms, and living room. The towels had a musty smell to them. There were cobwebs and dead bugs in various corners of the house in plain sight. And the entire home had a slight smell of stale cigarettes (even though the property is smoke-free). For being an updated home, it did not feel clean. Secondly, the listing for the rental states that it has TV, cable, and Wifi. We learned quickly that the TVs in the house were practically useless as we never had a signal to watch TV and the internet was so bad, we could barely Google anything, much less stream a show. This is a modern amenity, but with 4 kids ages 5 months to 10 years, it’s nice to have a TV or internet while on vacation. We did call to ask about the internet and were basically told, “that’s how internet is up here”. We were very frustrated that something that was advertised was so misleading. Finally, there were various things broken in the house (outside of the internet). There was a broken tile in the master bathroom that was covered by a rug, a nob is missing off of a cabinet in the hallway bathroom, and the king bed frame in the non-master suite was broken.
All of the concerns above, we did communicate to the property manager. Some were met with understanding and some seemed to be just noted. For the amount of money it costs to rent this home, we were incredibly disappointed. Having a whole home is nice, but you can get a cleaner space with more amenities at many of the resorts and hotels closer to everything on the peninsula. Unfortunately, we will not be staying with Lundquist properties again.
