Casa Del Mar is perfectly situated directly across the street from a wonderful gulf view. Our family has vacationed in Galveston three years straight and have yet to find a better place for family.
Casa Del Mar is furnished with a small kitchen complete with full size fridge, stove, microwave, pots, pans,dishsoap, silverware, towels and anything else you might think you would need for a night of home cooking.
The units have one bedroom with queen size bed. There are a set of bunk beds just outside the bedroom which are great for kids but a bit too cramped for a full grown adult. The living room complete with a TV, stereo and a sofa that folds down into a bed holds all the comforts of home.
Our first year we ended up in a horrible hotel sight unseen on the first night. The first night of our stay was July 4 and we were certain we would end up sleeping in our car. We went in person to Casa Del Mar where the wonderfully friendly staff managed to find us a room that had just been vacated.
We had third floor room in the wings, we thought for sure we would have no view but to our amazement there was an absolutely wonderful unobstructed view!
Yes, you could see the people down below and the traffic but not buildings obstructing our view.
Casa Del Mar's structure is two rows set up at an angle and each angled building has another "wing" curved off the back, sort of like a capital letter "Y". With this setup everyone gets an ocean view! However, I do recommend asking for a garden side view if you are not going to go for the more expensive view as looking at the
garden and the ocean is way better than looking at McDonalds and the ocean!
Covered parking is INCLUDED in the price of the room which seems to be rather rare in seawall hotels.
The beach is right across the road, no need to fret trying to find a parking space on the seawall.
If you are staying for a full week, you can get a discounted room rate.
We got a $99.00 room rate for the weekdays but the weekends and holidays were more. Weekends were somewhere between $119.00 and $149.00.
Our first year I think we paid $725.00 for our first week. Last time we paid around $1000.00 but I don't recall how many days we stayed and that included phone charges. Be sure to ask about the specials or weekly rates.
Pros:
*Clean-We haven't seen one cockroach indoors and we did the "towel test on the
floor where you rub a white towel on floor to see if it comes back tar black or not
*Housekeeping comes in daily unless you put up "do not disturb" sign
*Kitchen-great for families or if you don't want to spend all your money on dining
*Enough beds for the kids-Mom & Dad get their own room!
*Great view
*More reasonably priced if staying for a whole week than most hotels
*Two swimming pools-one heated
*Free covered parking
*Awesome staff-very nice and helpful-they even let us pick our room
*Beach right across the road
*Hotel secuity monitors parking lot and buildings
Drawbacks:
*Local calls are 50 cents each
*Checkout time is 11am (I'm a late sleeper)
*The bed is an old standard hotel bed (but hey at least its a bed)
*The air conditioning is noisy which would be fine if the noise was at least consistent but it goes on and off.
*No continental breakfast - but you have your own kitchen
*Common washers and dryers always seem to be in use and if you get to use them you may have to dry for at least two cycles before your clothes are really dry. Either get up real early for laundry or go to laundry mat instead.
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