We just finished a one-week wonderful stay at this resort. Here is my mini trip report. This is my first trip report, so please be gentle with your comments. And if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.
Hotel: Beautiful
The hotel was tucked in the Tucson Mountain Park, and its Terrace has a terrific view for sunrise in the morning and skylights at night. The hotel has three pools, all were kept at 84 degrees. We first thought the lazy river pool was closed, but it turned it was open up till 4pm during the week we were in. We did not see this until 10 minutes to 4pm, the lady was ready to lock it up, but she was nice enough to let us float one round.
Parking: Far
The hotel has 6 buildings, and the parking is attached conference room area. If your room is still Building 1 as ours, it is a long walk as cjw2001 indicated in his post as you need to walk through Buildings 6, 5, 4, Aki Bridge, 3, front desk, finally to 2&1. The sign to Guest Self Parking is bit tricky. When you drive uphill towards front entrance, you will see the sign of "Deliveries" on this side. When you leave front entrance, and drive downhill, you will see "Guest Self Parking". So, it has different markings on either side.
Staff: Fabulous
Every staff that we talked to, bumped into was courteous, professional, and all has a positive attitude. The Concierge desk was closed during Christmas, so the front desk staff handled all those questions as well. The answers, directions, instructions we got were all precise and accurate, and all with a smile. And regardless of what we asked, everyone was able to give us the answer right away. There was no 'check with the manager' moment, it looks like they are all well-trained. This is probably the most professional group of staff I have ever seen in all US Marriott hotels.
Room: Average
We got one of our rooms upgraded to the Hospitality Suites, which actually has two room numbers, one for the living room and the other for the bedroom, you actually have to use two different keycards to enter either side of the room. The other two King rooms were average. It has flat screen TV, but we could not change its input source to view the camcorder videos. And you can only use up and down button to change TV channels, the number keys do not work. My biggest complaint (sort of) is that the TV monitor does not have access to room charges. Since we have one week stay there, and our room comes with breakfast, I want to make sure the breakfast was not accidentally charged, nor was any mini-bar charge. With that lack of functionality, I had to ask the front desk to print out the bill the night before to review since we had an early check-out. This is probably my only complaint during the entire stay. On the other hand, I found the internet speed was very fast, I got 20Mbs for download and 3Mbs for upload, which is almost the same as that at home.
Restaurant: Expensive
It has three restaurants, two on site, and one off site. Primo is the fine dining restaurant, it has lamb pasta for $37, you get the idea. Signature Grill is less expensive, but still on the high side. Our room has $50 credit, so we had dinner once in Signature Grill. Paella ($29) and Short Ribs ($28) were very good. The breakfast buffet was $24 for full buffet and $15 for continental buffet. Kids under 12 was $5.99. Platinum members do not get complimentary breakfast. I asked when I checked in, the manager came out and confirmed that it started about 1.5 years ago. The hotel also has a bar and Starbucks there, the coffee there was about $0.80 to $1.00 more expensive than average Starbucks. But it is convenient to have a quick breakfast if your room rate does not include breakfast and you don't want to spend $50 for the entire family on the breakfast. The only off site restaurant is the Catalina BBQ, the food portion is very generous. Two people can definitely share one entree, and the waiter had no problem doing that. And what was nice for them is that they serve the food already split onto two plates.
Resort Fee: Opt-Out
I had questions earlier that if all of my three rooms were charged with $25 resort fee every day, that would be $75 a day. So, when I asked them if it could be reduced for the other two rooms, the check-in agent was actually generous enough to opt-out the resort fee for all of my three rooms. If you are not a elite member, you might still want to keep that, as it includes parking, internet, water, and now $10 credit in Starbucks every day.
Hiking: Be Aware
The hotel is connected to two trails: Lorraine Lee Hidden Canyon Trail and Bowen Trail. You can start out either one, and come back on the other one. When you go out of the hotel entrance, you can make a right, then you will start from the Lorraine Lee Hidden Canyon Trail for 1.2 miles, then make a left to Bowen Trail for 0.3 mile, then another left onto Starr Pass road back to hotel. Well, be aware that there is no markings throughout the trail, and it turns out the Lorraine Lee Hidden Canyon Trail does have some parts HIDDEN because we got lost mid-way. Eventually we managed to climb up to a high ground and were able to see the trail in a distance and made our way back onto the trail. The getting lost part actually made the entire hiking experience more interesting and exciting.
Attractions: Plenty
I recommend you get Tucson Passports before you go to any of the attractions, it has 2-for-1 offers for many of them. The passport itself costs $18, but you can get it back after visiting 1 or 2 places. We visited Pima Air & Space Museum, BioSphere 2 and Desert Museum. We also went to Houston Horseback Riding, which was very good, highly recommend it.