CALL TOLL FREE: 1-800-671-8962
In May of 2002, my wife and I exchanged through RCI into Inverness by the Sea, Galveston, Texas for a week. Galveston is the main city of Galveston Island, one of several barrier islands along the Texas Gulf Coast. It is about 45 miles from Houston and is an interesting and a fun place to visit.
Inverness is a property of maybe about fifty condo units, all two bedroom, built on Seawall Boulevard. The neighborhood is largely developed and is convenient to stores, restaurants, and tourist venues. It is definitely part of the Galveston urban community. This is worth knowing, as some Island resorts are more isolated.
Seawall Boulevard parallels the Gulf beaches, but in most of the in-town area there are no resorts directly on the beach; rather, they front on the boulevard and are but a walk across the street from the Gulf of Mexico. The seawall beaches are not the type of beach most people think of, the beach is a sheer drop of several feet and with huge stone blocks on the beach, so this area is not suitable for usual beach activities. Many miles of Island beaches, however (those away from the city) offer lovely and appealing beachfront and water activities. The property itself has a rec room, a nice outdoor pool and Jacuzzi, tennis and volleyball courts, and a barbecue-picnic area. Parking is adequate; much of it covered.
We chose Inverness for several reasons. First, we had exchanged there before and enjoyed it. We both like Galveston, even if it is so close to home! Also, the week we used for the exchange was a one bedroom week we own in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, and it expired this fall, so we had to use a week fast. You get into that in timeshare, if you don’t plan ahead! We love the exchange part of timesharing, but we’re both thrifty, and we really hate to see a week go to waste! In 75 to 80 weeks of use, we’ve never lost a week, but sometimes we’ve had to scramble!
Our Inverness week was Saturday to Saturday, and check-in was smooth. There was a small problem when we got to the unit—the smoke detector was screaming like a banshee. A call to the front desk quickly fixed this, and we went ahead to pour ourselves a welcome drink and watch the surf from our balcony.
All the units have oceanfront balconies or patios; that’s one of the delights of the place. We spent a lot of time out there. The sight and sound of the surf is lovely to behold, but Seawall Boulevard is one of Galveston’s busiest streets, and during rush hours you can still see the surf, but you hear the traffic noises and not the wave noises. No problem with sound inside the unit, though.
The property, and our unit, were clean and attractive, but don’t expect the shine and appeal of new construction, because new Inverness is not. I would imagine it passed its 20th birthday some time ago, but newness is of course not everything, and nice room sizes and location help offset age.
Early in our stay we received a phone call from a lady in the resort office asking for an appointment to advise us of ownership opportunities at the resort. We’ve been through many presentations at many resorts, and we like to know what’s going on, so we set an appointment with her. We met with her for a good while—maybe two to three hours. This seems time enough to discuss the matter thoroughly, and indeed we did, for it turned out there was more to talk about than one would have thought!
Apparently, the resort’s Property Owners’ Association (POA) owns a sizable number of weeks. We don’t know how they got them (would like to!), but likely a good number were due to defaults on payment of maintenance assessments. Anyway, the POA was offering these weeks for sale’ Straightforward so far, but then came the “wrinkle.”
The lady advised that the resort had elected to participate in the RCI “points” program, and that the real reason we should buy weeks at this resort was to immediately convert the week(s) into “RCI points.” “Points” is a relatively new and complex part of timesharing, and we will discuss it in detail at a future time. RCI points is even more so. The thing to report to you now is that the marketing of weeks at this resort was being made both to owners there, and to those exchanging in, based upon the conversion of the weeks to points -- of course at considerable cost. Good or bad? We’ll look at that in future articles.
For those of you unfamiliar with Galveston, it is one of the older cities of Texas and was once the state’s greatest seaport. It was a great center of shipping, banking, cotton, and trade. This era began to end, however, with the opening early in the 20th Century of the 50 mile long Houston Ship Channel, which made Houston a major port and caused Galveston to be largely by-passed. For a number of years, the city was best known for cotton compressing, tourism, and illegal gambling.
A crackdown by a Texas attorney general in the 1950’s ended the gambling, and cotton is no longer King. Galveston has remade itself into a major tourist area, with a major University of Texas medical facility as well. There are several very prominent seasonal celebrations, such as Mardi Gras and the very popular “Dickens on the Strand” pre-Christmas event highlighting Victorian England.
The old heart of Downtown, known as “The Strand” has been reinvented into an array of architectural gems of buildings, very popular restaurants, some upscale hotels, and very eclectic shopping. There are also many tourist attractions, such as the remarkable Moody Gardens, 19th Century sailing ship Elissa, and a waterfront museum made from an actual offshore drilling platform. There’s also deep sea fishing, Seawolf Park, and much more, including recent establishment of Galveston as a cruise line departure port.
With about 30 miles of beach front, from the eastern end of the island to its far western tip at San Luis Pass, “the Beach” remains, as it has long been, the biggest allure of the Island for the biggest number of people.
Copyright ©2002-2003 George Wagner
