Balmoral Resort Private Pool Homes & Townhomes in Haines City, FL

My son and his future bride found Balmoral Resort searching for a place that our families could stay close together for their wedding in February 2020. We rented two 6 bedroom, 6.5 bath, waterview pool homes. My stay was for 3 nights. Balmoral is 30 minutes north of Bok Towers in Lake Wales, FL, the wedding venue location. No problems with traffic on US27 for the rehearsal and ceremony. Each home was clean and spacious with plenty of room for everyone. The kitchen was well stocked with the basic essentials of silverware, cookware, dishes and glasses. Each bedroom has its own bathroom and TV. Shopping for groceries at Publix was literally 5 minutes from our rented homes. Very convenient. Although my home was close to the waterpark we could not enjoy it because the weather was cold and windy. Another time hopefully. Staff at the front desk were friendly and available until 11:00pm to answer questions and assist with any issues. We encountered none. Rates were fair and reasonable for the accomodations. My family is looking forward to stay at Balmoral again in the future.

The resort and home we stayed in were lovely! Had a few small maintenance issues at check in, but they had someone come down the same day to fix the items. The reason I'm giving this only 2 stars is because of the customer service. The woman that checked us in was very helpful, but because of COVID-19 we had to check out 2 days early. We were in a 4 bedroom home. When we were checking out I asked the front desk women about getting a possible refund for the two days considering the circumstances. She was quick to say that's not her department. She'd have someone call me. Then I asked her if she knew of any post offices near by that were open- she just shrugged her shoulders and said "Nope. I wouldn't know anything about that". Not helpful at all! We actually did get a voicemail the following day from the resort regarding the refund and it went something like this, " We received your request for a refund for your early check out. We are not going to be doing that. Have a nice day" We have a very large extended family and at the beginning of the week we were so excited about this resort that we had decided to book quite a few of these homes for our family Christmas. We have since decided to spend our holidays somewhere else. This resort needs training on customer service.

We had a club house for two weeks, which was great, spacious and very clean. Housekeeping came three times during our stay, although we cancelled one because we had only been there two days and really didn't need them. Good amenities and positioned well to go to theme parks, and places of interest. The staff were helpful and and we had a laugh with the people on reception. Would definitely recommend and will go back ourselves.

We booked a home here for our stay during the Haines City Ironman event. Due to COVID19, this event has been cancelled. My husband tried to cancel our reservation but since we were within the 30-day check-in window, his request to cancel without recourse was denied. The agent offered him a solution of deferring the stay to next year’s Ironman event. My husband reluctantly agreed to this. (It was NOT in our plans to do this event in 2021.) I am disgusted that during a national…actually worldwide emergency, this company would not refund our booking. What I am more disgusted with is that in order to defer our booking to next year (which we didn’t really want to do in the first place), we were charged IN FULL. I understand they have policy in place for those who cancel; however, this was out of our control. Regardless of Ironman happening or not, there is NO WAY for this property to ensure that their homes are 100% free of the COVID19 virus. I am currently self-isolating with my family in my home with no plans to travel in the near future. Their current cancellation policy is not appropriate considering there is currently a pandemic. As a business owner, I am trying to do the right thing for my customers—even in these uncertain times. I am hoping Balmoral will make things right for theirs.

So we flew down from Canada before the COVID-19 thing started and then Canada basically said that all residents should get home immediately, so we spent our second day at Balmoral on the phone with rental car companies, canceling flights, etc. We dropped our current rental off as Dollar would not permit international travel and picked up a car from Alamo, to drive home and avoid the airports. We checked out of Balmoral on the second day of a seven day trip and both families drove home through the night (27 hours). The resort was fine for the day we were there. Facilities were on the small side but seemed to accommodate the people present. The kids had fun at the water park. The gym was small but functional enough for vacation workouts with some creative adaptations of equipment. The grounds were well kept and our pool house was nice. We could do without the carpet in the bedrooms as it was already showing signs of other people's dirt and in the middle of the Coronavirus nonesense we were trying to sanitize and isolate as much as possible. Wifi wasn't working at the house and the grill wasn't there when we arrived but after requesting these were promptly addressed. The pool lighting was not working and although we requested it be fixed, it was not fixed before we left. So overall, I think it's a decent place and having the house for two families was great. Would we go back? At this point I'd say no and here's why: After all the challenges people faced with the Coronavirus, we received 100% credit from Air Canada for cancelling our flight, with no change fees. We received a credit from Dollar for the rest of the week's rental vehicle that was returned early. Alamo upgraded us to a full size premium SUV for the drive home that was literally brand new and they only charged half price to help us out. Rogers didn't charge roaming fees, so we were able to keep in touch wtih people and use GPS to get home, and then there was Balmoral - they took it all! They charged the whole amount, with no refund. The best we could convince them to do was to turn off the pool heat (premium charge) and credit the heat cost for the rest of the week. I suggested they at least credit us for the grill (premium charge) as it was not being used and they could rent it to someone else, but they said it was a weekly charge and there was nothing they could do. I get it - contractually they probably had the right to keep it all, but how I feel about it is Air Canada made a customer for life; Alamo made a customer for life; Rogers made a customer for life and Balmoral got a one-shot deal at taking our money. I think it was an opportunity missed by them - I told them that as well but nobody bothered responding even. So it's a nice enough place but make sure that no world pandemic is going to happen when you travel or you'll be stuck paying fully for a vacation not realized and probably a little bitter at Balmoral for not at least offering some sort of credit to try and entice you back. P.S. we left over $700 of fresh, unopened groceries in the fridge and suggested that the staff make use of them, as we couldn't bring them home (food for 7 for a week). That didn't change anyone's mind about a credit though - they just took it all.