Silverthorn Resort

This place is terrible! My friends and I rented a houseboat from Silverthorn for a buddy's bachelor party and while the weekend on the boat with my friends was amazing, our experience with Silverthorn was far from it.



To make a long story short, here's a list of all the things that Silverthorn totally dropped the ball on: our boat wasn't ready when we got there; the hot tub was dirty and non-functioning; the gangplank fell off the first time we tried mooring the boat; they failed to tell us in orientation that the generator only needed to be running for 5-6 hours per day - we ran it for about 68 hours straight, resulting in about $400 worth of fuel being consumed; we were required to clean the boat prior to returning it but were not provided any kind of cleaning supplies (oh, but we could buy them at 400% markup from Silverthorn's market); we also rented a ski boat for wakeboarding and were only given a child's life jacket which we had to exchange - out of the 12 guys on our boat only one of us was under 200lbs.; we were apparently given a wakeboard that only supports a max of 150lbs. which we also had to switch out after no one could get up on it; Silverthorn charged us $50 for a broken glove compartment on the ski boat that was broken when we got it; they charged us $125 for a tear in one of the bindings on the wakeboard that was also there when we got it; they required us to have the houseboat turned in by 9am on checkout day but they made us wait until nearly 11 before they inspected the boat and we were allowed to leave.



If Silverthorn knew how to provide any kind of competent customer service, they would have given us a discount to make up for all of the inconveniences, but instead they charged us extra for damages that we did not cause. The weekend was a blast and we've decided to make a houseboating weekend at Shasta an annual event. Will we go through Silverthorn for our future trips? Absolutely not. I would not recommend Silverthorn to my most hated enemy. Shasta's a huge lake and there's plenty of competition. I'd recommend going with any other business in the houseboat renting game and you're all but guaranteed a better experience. Thanks for nothing, Silverthorn. Hope you enjoy watching my friends and I give our money to the guy on the other side of the lake.

When we made our reservation , by phone, they said that we could check in the morning. When we got all of the papers for the houseboat it said 4 days and check in time was 3 pm Monday and check out was Friday morning at 9:00 am. This looks like 4 nights not 4 days to me. When we called to veryfy the said the we could check in at 12:00 pm but may not get the boat until 3:00 om. When we got there we went to the check in desk at 2:30 pm they said that they weren't done cleaning it. They said that the boat doesen't even have to be ready till 5 pm. Our reservation papers said that we can board the boat at 3 pm. We had many problems on this boat. These are some of the main problems. One, they didn't pump all of the gray water out (this is the drain water from the sink and the shower). This made the showers flood and made the houseboat smell awful. Second, the Swamp cooler broke before we even got out of the harbor. Third, when we tried to move, after swimming in the middle of the lake, the throddle shut down and we could not move the boat. Fourth, when you put the generator on, all of the lights on the control panel would start flickering. It looked like the generator was breaking. Finally, we tried to tell the service manager about the problems we had, that were mechanical, so the next family did not have the same problems. He did not seem to really care if they were fixed.



If you compare this resort with Bridge Bay Resort, Bridge Bay Resort is extremely better. Cheaper isn't always better.