As we get ready to move out after two years here at River Park, I'd say our experiences here ranged from great to not so good. Our overall experience was solid at best, with more good than bad for the most part. Many of the complaints you've probably read in other reviews are true for the most part. The office staff are rather smug and bitter (other than Debbie who is absolutely great), there is only one compactor for the entire complex, but it's big and I've rarely seen it overflowing like other complexes, maintenance is fantastic compared to some of the other places I've lived. They're able to assess a problem and if they can't handle it, they've had an outside contractor in to fix it that same day, even on a weekend. Sadly, for our particular apartment this has been the case three times as our shoddy plumbing has needed work repeatedly.

That being said, the overall condition of the apartments is decent, but like many have mentioned the appliances, particularly the air conditoners are horrendously old and inefficient. Our conservative air conditoner usage which usually leaves us with a $75-100 electric bill everywhere else we have lived has left us with a $150 average with it being as high as $190 during the summer months. Even in the winter when we keep our windows open almost all the time, it's difficult to get the power bill below $100 a month in our one bedroom apartment, and this is after we installed halogen bulbs in the entire place.

Hurricane season did a number on many of the apartments, but the management had contractors out within the week of the hurricane to begin clean up and reroofing. As a result a good deal of the apartments have had work done, the entire complex has been reroofed and repainted. The downside of this was that all of the construction took almost an entire year to do so, and this isn't a huge complex by any means.

Parking for the most part is pretty bad, I only voted it average seeing as how we live in the back near the actual guest parking. Driving through the complex late at night or early in the morning, you can see how bad the parking situation is as people are parking on yellow curbs and tow away zones.

The amenities are quite good, with the free canoes, indoor raquetball courts and two pretty well maintained pools. My only complaint is the fitness center which has solid aerobic equipment (but not enough of it) but looks to have hopped in a time machine to find their weight machines from 1970, most of which are visibly rusting.

The reason we're moving out, and honestly is something we were concerned about when we moved in was our rent increase. River Park offers a max of a 1 year lease, with 7 and 9 months available as well. They do this since it is mostly students and so that they can waive all of your premiums come renewal time. With all of our initial premiums that been waived (water, free cable, and a few other fees), plus the basic rate increase that they give you, our rent managed to shoot up from $749 to $815 for a reasonably large one bedroom come renewal time, and this was only the first year. We didn't even see what they wanted to charge us to renew for a third year.

All in all, our time at River Park was pretty good. We moved here mainly for the easy access to Jay Blanchard Park and we got that in spades. The compex has its faults, but what apartment complex doesn't, particularly in the UCF area.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/03/2007
This response does a good job touching on the good parts of RP. It leaves out most of the negatives. HIGH CRIME AREA. When it was brought up with the office staff, they shrugged it off and said "oh yeah, it's common here...but it's common everywhere." It is common there and it ISN'T common everywhere. It was a pitiful response, I thought.

Your thoughts? Post a response to this review. Display my response: with my username anonymously Responses appear below reviews and one response per user is permitted.

   Free estimates on moving trucks      Find apartment share/roommates