We have stayed here before- 5 years ago; not much has changed, despite the remodelling!

Our reasons for returning were the weather- UK has been s**te for the last 12 months, and we needed to relax and that last time, it wasn too bad!

You can relax during the week, but Thursday pm through Sunday pm, dont even dream of peace and quiet- it is a resort and families do make the most of it!

And dont make the mistake of thinking that when its busy, the resort might open the advertised water park earlier- it seems to be down to the "discretion" of the staff, which is random to say the least.

Anyway, to be objective:

Check in- was swift, but failed to identify or provide the appropriate vouchers for breakfast (identified as an issue on many reviews), and gave out of date "value" pack, which was worthless

Room- no different from 5 years ago, although in the main block this time; Dusting is obviously a long forgotten art here, as is recognition of Diamond HH status- no benefit at all at this hotel

River ranch- facilities good, but maintenance and consistency (water butts/cups etc,) hit and miss; Slim Pickens bar- "you need it more than me budd!" when leaving only $1 after having walked the length of the park, had a single beer poured and charged £5.50 for it! I Dont get the tipping thing when the guy/gal has done F all for it!!

Breakfast- eventually having managed to get our entitled vouchers, we began to regret it!

Food at the Lantana is a complete lucky dip, which fits perfectly with the service!

Dont even worry about the time, just dont think about what is going to turn up- you order white toast, guaranteed its brown; scrambled eggs and bacon appeared as poached and sausages!

One day, not even given a plate- "I thought I'd just put yours on your husbands!"

Another day, seated at a table with no waiter at all taking responsibility for it! Had to coerce a guy to help us to get served!

Lunch- DONT GO to the Hole in the Wall! Food crap, overpriced and thats even before they try to rook you later by adding 50%, which takes days to fight! keep your receipts! Seems that the Cowboys are still around, now just outlaws!

Dinner- didnt take the chance- too risky!


Positives:

The weather is great, the pools are well maintained, and most of the staff are friendly, if not necessarily professional.

Housekeeping staff are patient and thorough, except for dusting! and the Tocasierra gym was excellent, with helpful staff and good facilities.

Cabs- obviously the hotel has a kick back from the cab company they use- its impossible to get a sedan, always an SUV at 10% more, but also more thn the cabs from the Ritz (from Hilton to Biltmore- $25, from Ritz at Biltmore to Hilton- $18!! Dont bother booking- 5 years ago, booked, failed to turn up; Same this time!

Recomendations-

Shop at Basha and enjoy balcony snacks, supported by happy hour snacks from Lantina grill; Go to Elements at the Sanctuary for a good meal- a little pricey but the service and quality dwarf anything near Squaw Peak .

Manager of Lantina- have buffet guests in one area- they need little assistance other than drinks top ups, and have continental breakfast set up so that one person can supervise (if you are that untrusting), but for goodness sake, make sure that people are served within 30 minutes of seating and get the order right!!

Or employ people that like their work!

Sounds like a harsh review! Would we come back- probably not due to the complete lack of understandng of customer service and value, but maybe, because there were a few that made it worthwhile- Felipe, the gardener at the top pool, Sam at front desk, and Patti our housekeeper, the gym staff, and some others whose names we didnt catch- the manager at the water ranch, the guy who checked us in, and our waitress on our first and last days.

Your money, your choice, but for unbeatable sun in Sept, its a no brainer; just get out of the hotel at the weekend when the invasion occurs!!

We just enjoyed a long weekend at the Squaw Peak Resort.
We choose this resort as we were traveling with our daughter, son-in-law and small granddaughter and by the reviews written by others, this property seemed to be a good choice for kids.

The property has recently been renovated and I enjoyed the warm colors of the resort's exteriors as well as the suite's colors & furniture.

We had adjoining rooms; our's with a king bed and the other with 2 queens. After reading someone else's review I also requested suites in the South building (where the main lobby is) and this turned out to be great as the bedrooms didn't have the hot afternoon sun, but rather nice shady balconies. Our suites were just a short walk across the parking lot to the River Ranch.
The beds were extremely comfortable..great Serta perfect sleeper mattresses, comfy pillows and soft sheets. The bathrooms were sparkling clean and nice idea to put the shower and toilet in one room and separate dressing room. The bath towels were very good quality, new and fluffy.

The swimming pool area (by our suites & main lobby) was nice, with very comfortable lounge chair cushions. One complaint would be that the towels here & at River Ranch could use upgrading as they were really thin, small and not of the quality they should be for a Hilton resort and compared to the quality of the bath towels in the suites.

The River Ranch was great. Plenty of lounge chairs throughout the area. The lazy river was fun and again plenty of tubes available. We rented a locker to store our personal items although we felt like the area was pretty safe when leaving sandals & coverups, etc. on the lounge chairs.Bring your own lock if you have one for the locker but we were able to purchase one for $5.

The one area of the resort that did not meet our expectations were the on-site restaurants. We were warned of this on other's reviews but did try 3 restaurants for ourselves and were also disappointed. While the Slim Pickens grill in River Ranch makes excellent smoothies, they didn't seem to care at all that they never processed the burger part of the order. In fact the young man there was rather flip about his error when my husband asked for our money back.

We also tried the Hole in the Wall restaurant for lunch. We were one of only 2 tables in the restaurant and the meal took which we considered borderline too long considering the order consisted of one sandwhich & fish and chips (Friday Fish Fry special).
It was just ok. The waitress never came by the table to let us know of the meal's progress. There were several servers all walking around and talking to each other but it would have been nice to have gotten some attention ourselves.

The biggest disappointment was the Lantana Grille for Saturday buffet breakfast. Our server took much too long to come to our table after we were seated, finally brought us OJ, but never stopped by again to ask us for a re-fill or anything else for that matter. The buffet was sub-par, with pastries that looked like they were packaged grocery store type, bagels were never replentished, lox never had tongs on plate, chaffing dishes were either empty or almost empty of hot items most of the time, eggs were over-cooked and dry. The cook in the special order (waffles, omelettes,etc.) area was incompetent....couldn't keep orders straight. Definitely needed help. What was amazing is that there didn't seem to be anyone overseeing the buffet at all. $16.95 per person for very poor quality buffet. Don't waste your money here!

We found the staff around the whole resort very friendly. We had a little problem with something sticking out of the floor door frame in the area between our suites that cut my son-in-laws foot. I called housekeeping and someone showed up at our door within 5 minutes to fix the problem, so we were impressed with that.

There is free Wi-Fi in the lobby area but if you want it in your room, it's $11.95 for 24 hours. It would be nice if this was complimentary but this is the way it still is in many hotels.

My husband used the fitness center and said the equipment there was very good.

It was a very nice stay & we would stay here again...maybe next time we will try one of the casitas.

The suites at the hotel are of a very good standard. Our children loved the lazy river and slides at the hotel. We stayed at the pool until closing time at 7pm. However, I would suggest you put on some insect repellent as we were quite badly bitten in the evening by the pool. We tried the on site restaurant. The food was terrible. My son had the fish and fries and it was seriously overcooked, almost dark brown batter. My older son had steak with broccoli. The steak was overcooked and the broccolli was so undercooked it flew acroos the room like a bullet when he cut into it. The hotel was full of noisy, small, children so I expect if you're not a family this is not the place to be. We didn't mind this as our children soon made friends. Overall the rooms were of a very good standard, but I would say don't bother eating here.

Upon check in there was a line out the door, they only had two people checking everyone in, when it was our turn it was a quick process, we got our keys and headed to our room. There are no inside corridors so that was a pain, but we were able to park right outside our building. The Luggage carts were chained to a fence so we had to call the front desk so they could send someone over to unlock them for us, very tacky as it was 100 + out and we just wanted to get into our room.

We got to our "smoke free" room - finally...and it looked like it was recently remodeled, nice large rooms, and a bonus to have a separate bedroom from the living area. The room however smelled of old cigarette smoke (which I am highly allergic to), my guess is that at one time it was a smoking room. So thank goodness we brought Fabreeze with us and sprayed the entire room down, including the curtains (we had called the front desk and it sounded like that's all housekeeping would be able to do for us as well)

The first morning we were there, we were awakened at 8:30 am by the front desk saying our credit card had been declined (how come we weren't notified upon check in), I knew this to be an error as I had PLENTY of room on my card...I told them I would call my bank and find out what was going on....upon talking with the credit card company the hotel had placed 5 authorizations on my credit card in the following amounts....$1183.00, $1183.00, $800.00, $600.00, and $500.00. They couldn't get my card to go through...NO WONDER, they froze up over $4,500.00 on my credit card, and anyone who knows anything about credit cards ( I worked in the banking industry for almost 10 years), when a company does an "authorization" it puts a hold on those funds for 5 -6 business days!!! until the charges are processed.

So they maxed out my credit card. I called the front desk and they said that was impossible that that could not have happened, I told them, the $$$ amounts that the credit card company had told me they placed. I told them there is no way I would know the $$$ amounts if the money wasn't being held by them.

To make a very very long story short, it took 4 hours that day to get it somewhat sorted out, my CC company told me I needed the Hilton to call them and remove all of the authorizations from my card, the front desk said they were not authorizations that my CC had been rejected those 5 times.

It took 5 DAYS to get the messed cleared up and sorted out (funny how they had called my CC company and had those authorizations removed - but declined that that could happened),

The hotel tried to tell us that our card was rejected at check in....I don't know about you but if it was rejected at the time of check in...
1. Why would you give us keys?
2. Notify us at check in that there was a problem with our card.
3. Ask if we wanted to put our room on another card.

If our credit card was "rejected" the above should never have happened and we should not have spent our whole 5 days dealing with getting their "authorizations" removed from our CC so we could continue our vacation.

We demanded that they compensate us for all the time and frustration they caused us and ruining our vacation and they offered us a free lunch (we paid for breakfast in our package deal but did not get breakfast that first day because of dealing with this so they offered us lunch instead) and $40.00 additional, we told them that wasn't good enough, that we felt at least one nights stay (we stayed 5 nights) was more acceptable, finally after arguing in the lobby they offered us an additional $50.00.

Upon check out, on our final bill that is slipped under the door, there was a $75.00 charge for dinner (which we did not make) and there was only a $40.00 credit. OK can you say EXTREMELY UPSET at the unprofessionalism of this staff. It took another HOURS to get the $75.00 removed that we DID NOT CHARGE for dinner and to get the additional $50.00 that they told us would be credited to us.

WE WILL NEVER EVER STAY HERE AGAIN...we are telling everyone that this was the worst customer service we have ever received. We did a 5 week road trip across the United States and stayed at some of the nicest hotels with the best services and this was our last hotel before heading home, and it was the worst!