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I see a lot of 5 star reviews so I imagine not everyone's experience is the same as ours, but ours was not great. While the marina is nice in many respects, there are same major issues that could probably be handled differently and would have made our stay much better. The doc master when we arrived was very nice and helpful, but he was very busy. He told us someone would be to our slip to provide us our key cards and to give us a ride to the main office/pool/shower area. There is a south dock system and a north. The south dock system is out in nowhere land and is at least 1/2 mile from showers etc. As a 1 night transient, it would seem prudent to put us in the north docks area. Especially given I reserved the spot 2 weeks in advance. We waited at least 45 minutes and no one came. So I called the office and asked for the shuttle and said we would come get our key cards in person. The shuttle driver said they were understaffed, said he was docking a boat, and said he would be 5 minutes. After 20 minutes of waiting, we started to make the walk. As we hit land coming off our south docks, we saw the shuttle driver drive by with a load of what looked to be pool hoses. He yelled at us and said he would be right back. Given what the experience with his time estimates had been, we decided to walk the rest of the way. We got to the office and asked for our cards. The 20 something girl working the desk was not overly friendly, said technically that we were supposed to go to the fuel dock to get our passes but that she would do us the favor and make two up for us. I guess she was upset because we caught her in the middle of her lunch. The shuttle driver was sitting next to her and quipped that he yelled at us and honked on his way back to try to pick us up. I am not sure how he expected us to know that given we were on the sidewalk on the other side of the buildings from the road. We had no idea it was him honking for us. Besides we were within 100 yards of the office by that time. The pool was nice. The showers were decent, albeit, a very long walk from our boat. We did not bother to try to get the shuttle. We did however take the shuttle back to the boat since Leo happened to be in the office when we left.
Long shuttle waits seem to be the norm and many people told us they do not bother, they just walk. Normally that would not be a problem for us as we like walking, but since we were only there for one night and wanted to see Stuart a bit, we did not have 1.5 hours to wait for someone to come get us keycards and a ride to the office.
Here is my take on this location. If you are going to have a marina with one section a VERY LONG DISTANCE from everything, you need to staff appropriately to make sure people are not waiting for long periods. Firstly, better planning to get transient folks on the north Dock would be a huge step in solving this. People that keep their boats here full time know what slip they are going into and have the right to not accept a slip if it is out in no man's land. Sticking someone that has a one night transient stay out there knowing they are going to want to take a shower is a little rude, especially since we did not know this ahead of time. I estimate there are 300+ slips. Given a conservative estimate of $100 per day per slip, that is $30k revenue PER DAY. Hiring enough staff should not put a dent in the bottom line. I am finding that these big companies swallowing up all the marinas are more focused on money than experience.