We recently came down for a short fall break beach trip. The house was a great fit for our family of 4 plus my mom and uncle. I really liked that two of the three bedrooms had 2 beds which permitted a variety of sleeping arrangements. The main room of the house is spacious and opens onto the deck, and we spent most of our time at the house split between the deck and living/dining room. In the mornings the kids would go down and play in the little sand "yard" that is visible from the deck, before we all went down to the beach.
There is a short walk past 2 other houses to the beach, maybe 50 yards or so. Short enough that we made the trip several times a day. The beach is private and so you don't have to be as paranoid about leaving things if you want to go back inside for meals. This was nice for us as our only previous trip to the gulf was Destin, Florida, which is much more crowded. That said, those 2 houses do obstruct a majority of the direct view of the beach from the house; this wasn't a big issue for us.
There is a LOT of sea life in the water here. That combined with the cooler temperatures of early October meant that we did not swim per se, more like heavily involved wading. There were a decent number of dead moon jellyfish on the shore and tumbling in the shallow surf, but manageable. The kids played in the surf just fine and no one got stung. We also saw many varieties of fish and a few small sharks.
We cooked almost all of our meals in the kitchen, having brought a decent amount of food with us in a cooler, and picking up a few odds and ends at the island's "Ship and Shore" mini mart. Everyone told us "there's nothing on the island so come prepared" but honestly I found this not to be the case, we went looking for Worchester sauce at the store and found it, so, there you have it. The kitchen in the house is EXTREMELY well stocked with everything you need to make all your meals, not just dishes and basic pans - lots of bakeware, small appliances like a waffle iron and a hot plate, mixing bowls, etc.
We really enjoyed everything about this trip and will definitely return to Dauphin Island. We liked it much, much better than Destin!