While Point Beach Lodge Resort, Queens County, Nova Scotia

My family annually spends two or three days of ‘quality time’ together at White Point Beach Resort. We enjoy escaping the city/suburb routine for the casual (but professional-host) tone, and the variety of recreation we wouldn’t otherwise find time to experience together. There seems to be a little something for all ages. The staff are very customer-oriented, with an efficient front desk and check-in, and well-organized daily activity schedules, especially for children.

What's there?
Apart from the spectacular ocean-front beach and woodland setting, amenities include: attractive indoor and outdoor pools, buffet and a la carte dining, bar with week-end live entertainment, conference/event facilities, massage/spa services, nine-hole golf course, recreational & small boat equipment, playgrounds, family-friendly activities, periodic special theme-weekends for ‘grown-ups’ and always lots of neighborly bunny rabbits hopping around the grounds. I’d describe the resort as: human-scale, well-run & attentive, laid-back for guests, unpretentious, clean with a unique atmosphere, definitely not glitzy but comfortable, seamlessly connected to spectacular natural beauty and the sea, ‘good for the soul’, historically interesting and fun.

Ambiance:
Imagine if your family had a very, very large waterfront vacation home for generations, with fairly traditional structures and style, well-maintained with lots of open spaces indoors and out, and featuring the ‘old-favorites’ that had brought kids, parents, and grandparents back to spend time around each other every year. Now, add aspects that are strictly modern, but not so many that you forget you are definitely ‘out-of-the-rat-race’. A large projection screen shows nightly movies. Find free internet in the common area by the massive stone fireplace where the little kids get bedtime stories and cookies after the outdoor marshmallow roast. In the later evening, the luxury of the pool and hot-tub is reserved for adults-only. The grounds are well-maintained, but still quite natural so as to fit easily into the local environment. If you’re heavily into night life and urban glamour, this is not your kind of place. If you like a little pampering, you can find it here, but it’s sometimes subtle and people-oriented (like general staff attentiveness, or a professional massage session) rather than technical (I didn’t notice any multi-head showers). If you like sand, sea, trees, lawns you are expected to walk on, rustic furniture, fireplaces with real kindling & logs you burn, playgrounds and spots for games, and a beach you can walk forever, you won’t be disappointed.

Recreation:
The resort is focused on its dramatic seacoast setting. We try to make use of the indoor and outdoor recreational spaces and equipment. We are not normally what you’d call ‘outdoors’ types, but this is a place that makes it easy to sample fresh air without really ‘roughing it’. Recreation comes in all shapes: on a small sheltered lake barely separated from the ocean we use complimentary canoes, paddle boats. The same boat house loans other sporting equipment, such as racquets & balls for the tennis courts, and gear for shuffleboard, basketball, croquet, etc. We like to keep handy the complimentary packets of rabbit food when out for a stroll, to entice the resident friendly bunny rabbits to eat from our hands. My husband & young son usually try the resort’s nine hole golf course (fees apply). Horseback riding is also available as an ‘extra’, but not on site. In season, a particularly exciting option available onsite for an extra charge is the ocean surfing course you can experience in the ‘breakers’ right on the hotel beach. Our son got confidence from the professional instructors and was supplied all required gear (including wetsuit).

The outdoor pool is child-sized. In summer families relax there when not braving the chillier ocean waves rolling ashore only yards away. The nearby large and airy indoor pool /hot-tub area is bright and cheerful, with two long walls of magnificent windows overlooking the ocean. When we’ve visited in winter, sitting back in the hot-tub and looking at the seascape, it was easy to imagine we were in the sunny south!

In the main building, just downstairs from the dining room and lounge, and adjacent to the pool and a multipurpose room, there’s a battered-but-homey games room with a mixture of old and new: video games, ping-pong, pool table, a piano, shuffle-board. Our kids always made a few stops there to round out their day, but it never held enough appeal to consume them like gaming normaly would: that seemed good balance to me. The adults exercise equipment room is in the same area, but I didn’t have the resolve to try it myself :>)

Rooms:
Accommodation at the resort varies a lot. We usually prefer the added seclusion of a one or two bed-room cabin with fireplace, sometimes oceanfront to hear the waves, sometimes in the woods a short walk from the main lodge. A room in one of the lodges is usually cheaper, sometimes more well-appointed, sometimes the opposite. Some areas of the hotel have older rooms, and most of the spaces won’t win modern decorating awards. This is a resort where guests often don’t plan to spend much time in their rooms anyway, unless its around the fireplace in a cabin.

Food:
None of the accommodation allow cooking, not even barbeques. For our family, the cost of always eating on-site is a problem. The dining room should be experienced, though. Food is nicely served in a great setting, and is of very good quality. We usually go to the nearby town for sight-seeing and a pizza at least once, but the hotel supper buffet is great. Planked Nova Scotia salmon is just one of the seafood specialities you can enjoy, and treats with local fruits and berries, as well as chocolate and other delights, are standards on the desert table. A last-call visit to the generous and tasty breakfast buffet usually gives us a ‘Sunday brunch’ effect that carries us well into the afternoon. It might be worth asking about the cost of the 'meal plan' package'if it is in effect.

Other:
Rates vary by season, and the While Point experience is not cheap (although specials can be good, and short notice bookings with flexibility on room type have helped us too). Current efforts to market nearby vacation home/time-share properties (don’t confuse these with the resort accommodation itself) got us a good price for our family’s regular resort visit last summer.