What I loved about Lagoon Shangri-La was the inviting pond right outside the door, ready for a refreshing dip anytime of day or night, as well as the tide-pools, which provided some of the best snorkelling I've ever experienced. The house was also well-equipped, especially the kitchen. What was less than ideal was how far the house is from everywhere; it was a minimum of 45 minutes of driving to get to almost any site, and usually more than an hour. So we paid for this paradise with many hours in the car just to see other parts of the eastern side of Big Island (e.g. Volcanoes National Park) Also, the house could have been better cleaned and maintained: the hot tub thermostat didn't work so we couldn't use it, the fridge was missing a handle (though there was a penciled apology about that in the kitchen), there were squished mosquitos on the wall of the master bedroom (with blood splotches!), and several house accessories were grimy and dusty, such as the much-needed fans. Given we paid $275 in advance for cleaning, the house should have been spotless. When we called the owner's number about a maintenance problem, we were told to call the maintenance man ourselves. Dennis came twice and was totally delightful and a pleasure to deal with; we had no beef with him, and enjoyed chatting. But we were left with the impression that these were absentee landlords who did a beautiful job of planning, providing and decorating, but do not check up on the house regularly, and it shows.