I just got back from spending a week at Gypsy Villa with four other families, and we had a great…read moretime. This is a classic mid-century Wisconsin cabin experience. If you're looking for luxury, or a contemporary resort experience, this is definitely not your place.
Service:
I would describe the service we received as very competent. It's a family run business, and they've been doing it for decades. The phone was answered when we needed it to be answered. The reservations were fulfilled without any issues. Dean, the manager, only has one additional person on staff, but he knows how to make it all work. It's a little eccentric, when compared to a more corporate resort experience, but that's how a family run hospitality business can be.
Location:
Staying on an island was really fun. No cars or roads obviously, and not even many foot trails. A lot of peace and quiet. A bit of planning is needed to get everything and everyone out to the island, but we saw it as an adventure.
Our group is all about being on the water, so for us being on the Eagle River chain of lakes was amazing. We brought two wake/surf boats, and also rented two pontoon boats from Gypsy Villa. The pontoons were old, rudimentary, and noisy, but they always got us where we needed to go. The chain of lakes is bigger than our group could ever see in a week. We spent the majority of our days on Cranberry Lake busy with watersports, and took the pontoons out to dinner three times. It was great having dining options available by boat ride.
Facilities:
The cabins are all 50 to 60 years old, including the décor. They were clean and fully functional. Most in our group were fine with their beds, some weren't. We all had hot water. The kitchen appliances were dated, but they worked fine. I had hot coffee every morning. Plenty of cookware and utensils. The TVs are old, but we never turned them on anyway. Overall, we all enjoyed the funky cabins.
We stayed in the Executive Cabin, and it was generally good. It has a big screen porch that we were able to seat 17 people in for dinner one rainy evening. An odd characteristic of the cabin was that the vaulted ceiling is open between the two downstairs bedrooms, with the wall only going up to 8 feet. My wife and I were in one room, and our teenage son was in the other. Weird.
The only real complaint from our group about the facility was that there isn't a fire pit at every cabin. That really should be changed. Having a well designed fire pit next to the water at each cabin should not be too great of a risk to manage.
The game room is a total time warp, with all the "video games" being from the 1980's. The pool table worked fine. Everything takes quarters. The kids hung out there when it rained a couple times, but it's not a destination.
We used the tennis/basketball court every day for pickleball (we brought our own equipment).
Overall:
"Up North" resorts with cabins on the shoreline of a Wisconsin lake are from a bygone time. They're like the lodging version of a vintage supper club. It's an experience that's not for everyone, or even most people today. With fewer and fewer people spending their vacation time in places like this, these resorts are disappearing. What this means from a quality stand point is that they've typically not been updated in years, and won't stand up to contemporary resort expectations. But, it has a rustic charm that my friends and I grew up with, and we're really very happy we can still find it, and share it with our kids. Gypsy Villa has rustic charm in spades. At the end of the week everyone wanted to start planning our return next summer.
