After damage from 3 hurricanes, Sanibel/Captiva near normal as Mucky Duck reopens

Last updated on March 14th, 2026 at 04:32 pm

Almost four years after Category 4 Hurricane Ian slammed Sanibel in September 2022, the beaches, the sea shells, the birds and the wildlife — all the natural stuff — have been back for years. Progress slowed when two more hurricanes hit in 2024.

Finally, many, but not all, buildings and institutions are open again and one of the last prominent favorites, the Mucky Duck, reopened this week.

The Mucky Duck is a beloved icon with a memorable on-the-sand beach location. Another long-time Captiva favorite, the Bubble Room, reopened last July.

This winter the New York Times picked Sanibel and Captive from all the places around the globe as one of the 52 places go in to 2026.

You can see Sanibel’s comback before you even get to the island. The Sanibel Causeway, which washed away in Ian’s storm surge, is again a beautiful entranceway to the island. The three islands on the causeway are open to visitors with beaches and 800 spaces of free parking.

“It’s our front porch, our driveway to Sanibel, our most welcoming opportunity to visitors,” says John Lai, president of the SanCap Chamber of Commerce.

Permanent restrooms will come along with trees and paddlecraft launching areas this year.

The majority of hotels and short-term rentals are back

On the island itself, the rebuilding, cleaning, painting and planting exceeded the half-way mark in 2025. Facilities reopened, including two major resorts, Sanibel Inn and Sundial. Shalimar Beach Resort reopened September, 2025, and is the first newly constructed hotel on Sanibel in more than four decades.

Taking a lesson from the Florida Keys’ recovery from Hurricane Irma in 2017, Chamber President Lai says once an area exceeds that 50 percent room occupancy, there are enough visitors to sustain the commercial spaces like restaurants and shops, and the rebuilding momentum grows.

The Chamber of Commerce reports that more than 70 percent of rooms are back.

The beaches and natural places are back and beautiful

Almost from the beginning, Sanibel’s beaches were as spectacular as ever, full of shells and birds, with dramatic sunsets.

One of the most photographed places on Sanibel — Lighthouse Beach — has been nourished with 400,000 tons of trucked-in sand and the city has completed planting 32,000 dune plants in the area. If you didn’t know there had been historic buildings around the base of the lighthouse, all irreparably damaged in the hurricane and now gone, you’d think it looks fine.

Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge’s popular Wildlife Drive is open for bicyclists and motorists as is the kayak outfitter in the preserve and the hiking trails on the Bailey Tract. (Go here for updates from the refuge.)

The 25-mile network of bike paths that makes Sanibel such a cyclist’s haven is intact and it’s still a pleasure to pedal around the island. (The scenery is changed, however, with less tree canopy.)

In 2026, the foliage and lush landscaping we always loved on Sanibel may not have grown back completely.

More from Florida Rambler: Biking Sanibel Island: Bicycle trails take you to all the best spots

Hotels are back, but prices are higher

The Sanibel Visitor Center lists several dozen places to stay on Sanibel and Captiva, plus vacation rental agencies. In addition to Sanibel Inn and Sundial, recent additions to places to stay include: Casa Ybel Resort, Sanibel Sandalfoot Beachfront Condominiums, Sanibel Arms West Condominium, Sanibel Moorings, Sanibel Siesta on the Beach Inn, Pelican Roost Condominiums, Loggerhead Key, Signal Inn, Blind Pass Condominiums, Shalimar Beach Resort and Jensen’s on the Gulf.

On our first post-storm visit to Sanibel, we stayed at the Sanibel Island Beach Resort, 1231 Middle Gulf Drive, which was among the first hotels to reopen. With all the post-Ian renovations, it felt like a brand-new hotel, with beautiful décor, a new well-designed bathroom and excellent amenities. Its pool was newly renovated.

Our experience is typical Sanibel accommodations, says the Chamber’s Lai. While rates on Sanibel are higher than the past, they are higher everywhere in Florida.

“The difference is here, almost everything is brand new. The newer product matches the higher price, where elsewhere in Florida, it’s the same product at a higher price,” Lai says.

An example of a post-hurricane upgrade: South Seas Plantation, the large resort complex on the tip of Captiva, in December 2025 opened Captiva Landing, a 2.5-acre water park with six waterslides and a lazy river. The new attraction is available only to registered South Seas guests and Club Captiva owners.

You’ll find plenty of places to eat

People who love Sanibel tend to return and thus they develop favorite places to dine. Some of those places are back; some aren’t. The good news: There are lots of places to eat.

Near the lighthouse, one of our favorite spots to have breakfast on Sanibel, the Lighthouse Café, was destroyed. But it has been rebuit in a new location at 1020 Periwinkle Way and reopened in 2024. See daily specials and updates here. (Our family’s tradition was always to order the Granola Nut Whole Wheat Hot Cakes.)

Many people have fond memories of two icons on Captiva: the Mucky Duck and the Bubble Room.

Finally, the fun and funky Bubble Room opened July 14, 2025. (A small coffee and dessert café operated by the Bubble Room called Boops, had been open for more than a year.) The Bubble Room didn’t get permanent power to its building until the end of January, 2025, 854 days after Hurricane Ian!

After Ian, we dubbed the Mucky Duck the Lucky Duck because the storm never permeated inside the restaurant and it was among the first places to reopen. But then the luck ran out with Helene and Milton. Waves pushed sand inside and the restaurant was filled with sand up to its windows. The Duck is undergoing a major repair job and reopened in March 2026.

Among the earliest to reopen was Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille, 2500 Island Inn Road. Doc Ford’s celebrated its 20^th year in 2023. It was founded by author Randy Wayne White, who worked for a decade as a fishing guide on Sanibel and whose first book “Sanibel Flats” introduced the character of Doc Ford, a marine biologist and former NSA agent. There have been two dozen Doc Ford books since.

Not only does the author still live on Sanibel, he stayed on the island during Hurricane Ian and shot videos of it happening. (He says he’d never do it again.) There are four Doc Ford restaurants on the Gulf Coast now, and despite the owner’s fame, it’s the quality of their food that has made them successes.

Other restaurants that have reopened include:

• Gramma Dots, 634 N Yachtsman Dr, Sanibel, which is inside the Sanibel Marina, reopened in mid-February. It calls itself “a seaside saloon,” but it serves lunch and dinner too.
• Mudbugs, 1473 Periwinkle Way, which specialize in Cajun food in a New Orleans atmosphere.
• Cheeburber Cheeburger, 1975 Periwinkle Way, has reopened, with a refreshed appearance.
• Over Easy Cafe, 630 Tarpon Bay Rd #1, specializes in breakfast food. It’s open for breakfast 7 a.m – 2 p.m. and lunch 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. every day.

Several new restaurants have opened too, including Wickies Lighthouse Restaurant, 362 Periwinkle Way, which opened post-hurricane and is operated by veterans of the Sanibel restaurant scene. It’s now one of the top-rated restaurants on the island.

By the way, if you were a fan of the only franchise restaurant on Sanibel, Dairy Queen, you will be sad to know it won’t reopen. It had been operated by a single family at that location for 52 years. The property sold in 2023 for $1.65 million and will be the site of a new restaurant, which will also serve ice cream, but won’t carry the Dairy Queen branding.

On Captiva, Tween Waters Inn is open, as are several restaurants: Sunshine Seafood Cafe, The Shipyard Cafe and Old Captiva House.

Revisiting Sanibel after the hurricanes

A year after Hurricane Ian, my husband and I spent a few days on Sanibel, a place we loved and have visited at least 20 times over four decades. I’ve been monitoring progress on the island ever since the storm.

Repeat visitors to Sanibel may have the experience we had on our return visit: Disorientation.

As we drove toward Captiva, many familiar scenes were changed. That wide swath of beautiful open beach? What was there?

I turned to Google maps to figure it out. Since Google maps had not updated its street-view photographs at the time, I could see what was once there – the Castaways! This complex of tropically colored cottages right on the beach near Blind Pass had been there for decades, the sort of iconic Old Florida scene that defined Sanibel. It’s gone now, just white sand and “keep out” signs.

The Castaways property is owned by the same company that owns Tween Waters Inn on Captiva, which has reopened. It also owns the sites of West Wind Island Resort and Beachview Cottages, both of which were destroyed in Hurricane Ian. The three sites once were homes to vintage Old Florida resorts. The owners have announced the properties will be redeveloped but for the short-term, they are empty lots.

There is no way new construction will have that Old Florida feel, but as one area resident said to us: Old Florida wasn’t built to hurricane code.

Other favorite spots on Sanibel

We checked out the Sanibel Historical Museum and Village in the center of Sanibel at 950 Dunlop Road, where over the years pioneer homes have been moved and preserved. The living history complex is in good shape. In winter 2025-26, it is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. From Jan. 7 – April 30, 2026, the hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

What’s remarkable about visiting the museum is in reading these stories you realize how much of Sanibel’s early history revolves around recovering from hurricanes. The big one in 1926, it said, brought eight feet of water over the entire island, and changed everything.

The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum and Aquarium reopened its expanded second-floor Great Hall of Shells in late May, after opening the rest of the museum a year earlier. Founded more than 40 years ago, it’s the only accredited museum in the United States devoted to shells and mollusks.

Should you plan a trip to Sanibel now?

Our family has a long-term connection to Sanibel. We’ve been coming here for decades; some of my favorite memories of our daughters as children is of us collecting live shells, sand dollars and hermit crabs in a “lagoon zoo” we dug in the sand. (No animals were harmed in the making of those vacations.)

For us, returning to Sanibel, even if not at 100%, has a nostalgic appeal. We love the place and want to support the hotels and restaurants.

I’ve read many comments online from Sanibel visitors in the last couple years and the majority talked about having a good time and being glad they visited. Yes, some of the Sanibel charm was washed away with the storm. The well-loved inn that was pink may be painted beige; the Dairy Queen is gone. Most people’s comments, however, seemed in line with the chamber of commerce’s slogan: “Not perfect, but still paradise.”

The lasting magic

When I travel on getaways, if I’m lucky, what I feel is delight; delight in what I am seeing, doing and learning. On Sanibel, with its hurricane impact, I worried that delight would be tempered with sadness.

On our final evening of our visit, my husband and I sat outside on the beach as the sun set.

In the distance in the Gulf, I saw the fins of dolphins. Then pelicans dove for fish with huge splashes near them. The sun made everything golden. The tide was at its low point and as I walked on the beach, I found the best shells of this visit. They glowed like gems in the sun. Nearby, a couple was taking pictures of their baby, who was thrilled with her new beach bucket. A bunch of young men were playing soccer on the beach.

It was the happiest scene – pure delight, the sort I’d always found on Sanibel Island.

Things to do near Sanibel Island

• On your way to Sanibel: Six Mile Slough is a wild boardwalk minutes off I-75.
• Fort Myers Beach: Work needed after Ian, but Margaritaville Resort is open.