I have stayed at Cheeca twice. However, the last time they had no ice machines and when we ordered ice from the desk and room service it NEVER came. Pathetic.
The resort is quite beautiful and when I've been there jam-packed with kids.
Food quality at the restaurant was very good.
All in all the total experience is not worth the high price.

The Cheeca Lodge is quite expensive for lodging, meals and drinks. Although the grounds are nice but small, for the price, you expect a lot more. It seemed a bit dated. You are charged a resort fee whether you use the amenties(kayaks, etc) or not. I didn't think it was worth the price and wouldn't go back.

I agree with a number of the reviews below. During our recent stay, we found the facilities lovely. Our ocean view room was large, newly renovated and beautiful. But what often distinguishes a "luxury" resort is the caliber of service. However, the surly/non-existent/haphazard service fell ridiculously of what one would expect for the price and for the "feel" of the place. Cheeca was simply not worth the prices charged.

The service at the hotel's main restaurant was horrible - the pricey food took forever and was mediocre at best, while the place was nearly empty. You had to chase down staff to get a drink, or towels, or anything for that matter, down by the pool or beach. Our room was sometimes made up, sometimes not (ditto newspaper delivery in the morning - very hit or miss. C'mon - even Holiday Inn can get that right!) The desk staff was grouchy. And EVERYTHING cost extra, to the point where my husband and I were wryly joking that our room would get charged $10 if we took an extra napkin at the bar. That's just not what you should expect at a place that puts itself out as a luxury resort, and that clearly THINKS it is a luxury resort. In fact, it gave Cheeca a cheapened, tacky feel.

The one exception - although the watersports & fishing activities were outrageously priced, the watersports staff was at least very solicitous and friendly.

We spent four nights at Cheeca last month. To sum up: Cheeca Lodge is a beautiful resort and if we were paying about $100 less a night, it would have been great. But for the amount of money we spent, we felt cheated. We expected the service to match the high rates we were paying, but it wasn’t even close. We will not return.

There weren’t any large, glaring issues, but there was a series of annoying small to medium ones that clearly puts Cheeca in the “overpriced” category. Some examples:

--My wife, who is pregnant, went to the spa for a massage. She was very uncomfortable during the massage and it got so painful that she started crying. The masseuse wasn’t able to help make her more comfortable, so she had to cut off the massage early and went to the changing room in tears. The receptionists there were nice and apologized, but didn’t offer her anything to compensate for her horrible experience. Didn’t offer her a nice refreshing drink, didn’t offer use of one of the many empty poolside cabanas by the spa pool for a few minutes so she could relax, and certainly didn’t offer her any money back. What really burned was that tip was included in the massage.

--We couldn’t figure out how to turn off the air conditioning in our room. We called the front desk and they said someone would call back to help. We never got a call back. We tried again, they said someone would come by. No one did.

--We were initially disappointed that breakfast wasn’t included, but it was our fault for not checking. Nonetheless, there was a cold buffet for $11 and a hot buffet for $17. Our waitress kept coming around to check up on us. We thought it was because she was nice. But a few minutes later, she gave the check to the couple next to us, letting them know that she charged them $17 on his breakfast because he took two strips of bacon. Checking up, indeed.

--I stopped in our room late one afternoon and it wasn’t made up. So I called. Someone eventually came by to make it up, but apparently decided it was late enough in the day that they’d go right to turn-down. Another night we were in the room when they came to turn down, so we asked them to come by later. They didn’t. From then on, we had them come in even if we were there—we wanted those chocolates!

--It was $55 to rent one their rarely used sailboats for an hour. We grudgingly paid it because we wanted to sail. While on the water, we spotted a spectacular loggerhead turtle. It wasn’t far from shore and he wasn’t moving swiftly so we raced back in on the sailboat, ran to the watersports shop, bought a waterproof camera, went back out and incredibly, we managed to find the turtle. We took out the camera and it didn’t work. It had expired 2 months prior. They said they’d give us a refund if none of the pictures came out. We brought back the blank negatives and asked for the $16 credit at checkout. She told us to go to the watersports shop. We firmly insisted that she do it because she had our itemized bill right in front of us. She sighed and credited our account.

--We spent one day in Key West. Came back that night around midnight. The place was deserted. Our room key didn’t work, so we had to go to the front desk to get a new one. No one was there. We had to knock on the desk and say “Hello? Anyone there?” to rouse the guy in the back who finally emerged and gave us a new key. It wasn’t 4 AM, it was midnight.

--The first night we ate dinner at the hotel. We were sitting next to a group that was complaining about their food taking too long and that when it came, it was cold. We thought they were being picky. But they were right. They eventually got the manager to come to their table and reduce the price of their meal since the service was so horrendous. Our food took forever and we were both convinced that my wife’s conch chowder was Progresso from a can. It was terrible. My butter lettuce “house” salad was field greens from a bag. After waiting forever for our main courses we tried to cancel our dinner orders but the food was on its way. It was decent, and somewhat redeemed the awful appetizers, but the length of time it took was absurd. Like most things at Cheeca, it wasn’t worth the price.

I know a lot of this sounds like nitpicking. But we’ve never felt so shortchanged. We spent A LOT of money on this trip—our last one before we have our baby this summer, and we had a great time because we always have a great time when we go away together. But didn’t make us feel like they cared whether we had a good time or not. We felt nickel and dimed. They took our money, they provided a nice facility, and that was pretty much it.