Good: number of rooms, variety of spaces available, layout of house, amenities (hot tub, sauna, steam shower, bath tub), location/proximity to lake and dunes, distance from city, quietness of neighborhood, easy check-in and check-out process.
Okay: amount of soft seating in common spaces, especially the two couch rooms. There wasn't enough soft seating for 8 adults, and we rotated who had to sit on the floor. Hot water setup on showers is cool in theory, clunky in practice. The strings that you pull to let the hot water out were broken or didn't seem to work. There were not cleaning or laundry supplies provided, so we went out and bought our own. There was a review that mentioned that some of the house was run down, which was true - it wasn't wild or unusable, but there were sections of the bathroom wall that were unfinished, a radiator with broken vents, etc. There was also some mysterious clanging/banging that happened every night while we were there. I'm not sure if it's the pipes or an HVAC system? But I sleep like the dead, and I still woke up every night around 3-4am (as did the other folks.) As a heads up to folks looking at the property - the sauna is quite small. We fit two adults comfortably.
Bad: This listing is for a Miller Beach Vacation Rentals property - it is a corporation using VRBO as an advertising platform. Miller Beach requires a LOT of personal data to use the space- SSN, photo ID plus a selfie, and more. I've used VRBO and Airbnb numerous times without the same requirements, and frankly, I live in Chicago, and I've rented apartments with less. When asked, however, Miller Beach Vacation Rentals does NOT have their own privacy policy or data protection. After inquiring a few times, I was finally given the privacy policy for VRBO (which they don't even use to communicate with travelers.) This experience completely turned me off from MBVR and any vacation rental companies in general, and I'm now on high alert for fraud and data breaches.
The space DEFINITELY does not sleep 27 people! We had 8 adults, and I wouldn't recommend any more, except maybe 1-2 children. There are cameras around the property and sound monitors inside, and while we weren't throwing a wild party or doing anything beyond watching movies and going in the hot tub, (we were there for our annual relaxing friend reunion), it still put a damper on the weekend and it was hard not to be hyper-conscious of them.
