Opinion about Ocean Echo Inn & Beach Cottages

[imcurious]

And what about those two motels across the street from Sunny Cove (one on 16th, and the other one closer to Star Bene). Did you eat at Star Bene? If so, how was the food?

[ElectroPlumber]

Originally Posted by imcurious

I wish you would give details out of curiosity, but respect your wishes not to . . .where did you end up eating and hanging out? Did you have good weather? Did you check out the general beach areas?

The Rio Sands Motel in Rio Del Mar (Aptos, CA), used to be a decent place to stay (have no idea now), but the area it is in (Sea Cliff) doesn't have as much to do - the only other good place to stay that I can think of would be the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. What are the other good hotels? I would like to know so to recommend to out-of-town guests.

The Venetian Court in Capitola is right on the beach - kind of funky, but where the action is in Capitola . . .

I would say that the reviews on Yelp pretty much also addresses our impression of Ocean Echo. The review by "Sarah J" is almost exactly the same experience we had. I wish now that I had heeded those reviews rather than paying more attention to the Priceline reviews. We actually left a day early, even though we had paid in advance because of the place. We just were not enjoying the experience. We have stayed at great beach hotels and beach houses in Texas and North Carolina that were a lot nicer and cheaper, but again, I know that this is California and it seems like the "on the beach places" are going to be out of our budget range.

We only ate out at two places while we were there: Chili's at the mall and Los Pinos. The Chili's was no better or worse than any other one that I have eaten at. We were really hungry the first day, so we just stopped in to the Chili's because it was close.

Los Pinos was fantastic! It is sort of a hole-in-the-wall place, but everything about the food was great. Best salsa, rice and beans I've had at a Mexican restaurant in a long time and my cheese enchiladas were great too.

The rest of the time we ate breakfast and sandwiches in the room. We hung out mostly on the beach. My wife took one of our sons over to the boardwalk in the morning (which they enjoyed) while my other son and I hung out at the beach.

We walked in to Star Bene the second afternoon, but as luck would have it he was going to close in 4 minutes so we chatted with the guy for a minute (nice guy) and decided we would come back the next day, but didn't make it back. We instead went to Lulu Carpenter's which was ok. We also enjoyed visiting a comic book store that was in the same area.

We did not have a chance to check out Sunny Cove, but is that actually on the beach? I couldn't tell from the map.

If anyone has any other suggestions for clean inexpensive places to stay on the beach, please pass them along. We'd still like to find a family place we could go back to every year.

[imcurious]

I don't know why you would go to the mall to eat, but to each their own. Where is Los Pinos? Sounds awesome.

I wish you had had a better experience and could have explored more local haunts (foodwise, at least). There are so many fun places in Santa Cruz.

I thought Sunny Cove was right in front of Ocean Echo . . .I can see where it would be dismal compared to some really amazing hotels in other areas.

Santa Cruz is not known for fantastic hotel accommodations - but if you like the area enough I would go on VRBO and rent a beach house. That would be the way to go . . .
Thank you for providing the update. So sorry your accommodations were so miserable that you had to leave early. That's pretty bad!

You should write a Yelp or other review to inspire them to get their acts together!