Our Stay in a Crystal Cove Beach Cottage: Arrival & Check-in Tips

Photo of view from the porch of Crystal Cove California State Park beach cottage.

In the summer of 2024, we were fortunate (and wildly persistent) enough to stay in a beach cottage at Crystal Cove State Park in Orange County, California. Crystal Cove and its historic district have a fascinating history. We encourage you to visit the Crystal Cove Conservancy website and the Crystal Cove State Park website to learn about it. We are not affiliated with either organization.

While we cannot offer definitive information about policies and procedures, we do want to share our personal experience and tips for future visitors. we loved our stay in a Crystal Cove State Park beach cottage, and we are excited to share it with you.

Making a Crystal Cove Beach Cottage Reservation

First, we booked our stay six months in advance through the Reserve California website. It took many tries before we were quick and lucky enough to nab a reservation. Once we did, well, we wanted to shout about it and alert everyone we knew. It felt like we had won an incredible prize! That feeling persisted throughout our stay. (We have compiled a step-by-step guide based on that booking experience and posted it here.) It was hard waiting six months, but the day finally arrived with bright sun and blue skies.

Pre-Arrival

Official check-in time for our cottage was 4:00pm on the first day of our reservation. We called before our visit and verified that we could begin the process early and enjoy the beach while our cottage was being prepared, so we arrived at Crystal Cove State Park a little after noon. We told the attendant at the parking kiosk that we were staying in the historic district. He gave us detailed directions to the fifteen-minute parking outside the check-in cottage. We did not pay any additional fee for parking: two vehicles were included in the price of our reservation.

Checking-in at the Office

Check-in involved showing ID matching the name on the reservation (reservations cannot be modified or changed to another name: these are a hot commodity!) and paying some additional taxes that were not collected by Reserve California at the time of our reservation. We left a cellphone number with the kind and helpful man who conducted the check-in. Then, we split-up: some of us went to enjoy the beach while one of us headed to the Trader Joe’s grocery store just over a mile south on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). We were allowed in and out privileges with our vehicle and directed to use the fifteen minute parking until our cottage was ready: we were assured that it was okay to stay there longer than fifteen minutes.

Waiting for Our Crystal Cove Beach Cottage

The beach was the ideal place to spend our afternoon before we had access to our cottage (sure beats a hotel bar or lobby). There were public bathrooms—but no working showers—and food options. If we wanted to get out of the sun, we had access to several exhibit areas plus a visitor center and gift shop. We chose to spend our time on the beach. This is a very popular beach, and most people there were day visitors and not overnight guests from the cottages. Some people had also walked over from nearby campsites.

Moving In!

When our cottage was ready, we received a phone call. We do want to warn you that our cellphone reception in the Historic District of Crystal Cove was spotty at best (like going back in time!), but fortunately, we did receive this very important call, and our cottage was ready a bit early! Those of us on the beach walked over to our cottage and waited on the porch while our grocery shopper went to the check-in cottage for our keys and provided flashlight.

From there, he was got a ride down to the cottage in a fairly large golf cart. This was great, because he was able to load our groceries and luggage onto the cart and not have to navigate a steep staircase with all of our supplies. Our particular cottage was a fair distance from the check-in cottage (especially when you account for all of the cliffside stairs), so we tried to make sure that we brought everything we needed when we had access to the golf cart. After our car was unloaded, we put a parking pass on the dashboard and moved the car across the Pacific Coast Highway and into the Los Trancos Parking Lot.

The loaded golf cart traveled along the wooden boardwalk that separated our cottage from the sand of the beach, and our front door and porch were a few steps up from the boardwalk. We carried our supplies into the cottage and took a look around. It was beautiful. As much as we were looking forward to this visit, cottage #8, Rustic Retreat, was even better than we anticipated.

Our Crystal Cove Beach Cottage

Exterior

The outside of the cottage was bright and welcoming with light wood shingles and red trim. The covered front porch was probably the highlight of the cottage: with cushioned seating protected from the sun, we spent a lot of our visit right there. Around the back of the cottage, we found a small stand for a gas grill that we could also access from a side door off of the main room. We understand that these grills stands are standard for the cottages. The cottage

Interior

The front door took us from the porch straight into the living area. The main room had two sleeper sofas, a desk and chair and a dining table with very sturdy wood chairs. There was also some extra seating and small tables along with some charming decorative details. The main room was not particularly large, but it was more than ample for six people (the capacity for this particular cottage). The show-stopping feature of the main room was the large window central window. It opened to our front porch and looked-out on the ocean. The interior had dark wood walls accented by colorful painted beams.

We had two small bedrooms with a twin bed each. Both of these bedrooms had windows facing the surf as well! The rest of the cottage consisted of a cheerful yellow kitchen and a small tiled bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. There was not much to the bathroom, but it felt like a luxury to us: we had a private place to rinse off that was just steps from the sand!

A Rustic Retreat

The cottage surely embodied its name “Rustic Retreat.” There were ants marching through the cabinets when we arrived, the beds were not particularly comfortable (if you have slept on an average sofa bed, we probably do not have to tell you that), and the space was hot after being closed-up prior to our arrival… but we LOVED it.

We had come to stay at the beach, not hide from it, so we embraced the ants and spent the majority of our waking hours in the water, on the sand or sitting on the porch. The ocean breeze quickly cooled the cottage once the windows were open. The sound of the waves lulled us to sleep before we thought much about the comfort of the mattresses. All of the cottage’s aged materials and handcrafted irregularities thoroughly charmed us. Preserved pictures on the walls and even a faded height record on a door frame connected us to the people who had loved this place before us. The ocean and beach filled our front windows and our hearts. We loved it all.

Tips and Observations:

We are going to close this post with a few tips and observations around our check-in. We encourage you to keep reading through the rest of this series for more information about our experience at Crystal Cove State Park. Once again, if you need some guidance in booking one of these cottages for yourself, check-out this post.

1- Arrive early.

We were pleasantly surprised that our cottage was ready early. Crystal Cove State Park is an extremely popular and beautiful destination. It has restrooms and restaurants, so we would have been happy and comfortable hanging-out there for hours without a cottage (like most people at the beach that day). We were glad that we had arrived in the early afternoon to enjoy our surroundings. We know that early check-in was not a guarantee, and we did call ahead to make sure that we would not be putting an undue burden on the staff by arriving early.

Extra tip: The Beachcomber restaurant is also very popular. If you want to eat there, put in your name early or snag an advance reservation. The Beachcomber also has a to-go outpost next to the main dining area. Crystal Cove Shake Shack on the cliff above the beach is also very popular and does not take reservations.

2- Plan to stay put.

We recommend bring any groceries and supplies with you to check-in and not planning to leave again during your stay. We have two reasons for suggesting this: (1) we cherished the opportunity to be immersed in this setting without interruption, and (2) coming and going was a bit of a pain!

The Los Trancos Parking Lot is a fair walk from the cottages, and that walk is very dark at night. The parking lot also has the potential to fill-up and cause you problems when you are trying to return: this is a very popular spot. Even after dark, The Beachcomber Cafe seemed to draw a lot of people during the evenings of our stay. Plus there seemed to be a series of private events, so there was a constant stream of visitors. Trying to visit the Trader Joe’s in Newport Beach later in the day was also a hassle: much of the parking turned-into valet only. So if you can manage, park your car at check-in and spend the rest of your stay blissfully ensconced in your cottage.

3- Take stock of your kitchen supplies.

Our kitchen was sparsely stocked, and we planned around this. Our kitchen had the following: a full size refrigerator and freezer (nice!), a microwave, a toaster, a sink, and some cabinet and counter space. That’s it. There was a sweet vintage stove, but it was non-functional and there for decoration only. We were also told that we could use a gas powered grill on the designated stand outside the cottage. There were no cooking implements (pots, pans, spatulas) provided and no tableware (forks plates, etc). There was no coffee maker, but coffee and tea was provided at the check-in cottage.

4- Bring your own beach towels.

Linens for the beds and towels for the bathroom were provided. We were warned that they would not be replaced during our stay. Since we did not want to get our only bath towels sandy, we brought our own towels to use on the beach. (We also made good use of the provided sand brush at the front door.) The website does say that towels can be replaced on the fourth day by request.

5- Be prepared to be out of contact.

Our cellphone service was intermittent and WiFi was only very rarely accessible. We had electricity but no television. We really liked the opportunity to “unplug,” but we would advise other visitors to plan for this: do not count on being able to do work from the cottage if you need internet or phone connection, and perhaps notify the people in your life that you will be “off the grid” for the duration of your visit.

6- Get ready for a “rustic retreat.”

You can probably determine from our description of the cottage that it may not be to everyone’s liking, and this is especially true if you dislike camping or “roughing it.” The cottage has electricity and running water, and we did see some small heaters, but this is more like a rustic cabin than a hotel room. Our cottage was one of the most recently renovated cottages. Again, we loved it, but we understood what we had booked and were not expecting luxury.

7- A word on accessible accommodations.

We think our particular cottage would also have been a difficult place for a visitor with mobility issues. Crystal Cove does offer ADA-accessible accommodations, and information about those can be found on the Crystal Cove Conservancy website.

We hope you enjoyed reading about the first day of our stay at a Crystal Cove Beach Cottage, and we hope that you will read the other posts in this series. Thank you for reading!

You can read all of our best tips for scoring your own Crystal Cove Beach Cottage reservation here. And we will continue to share more insights, tips and memories from our stay in future posts. Thanks again for reading!