The St. Regis Deer Valley

How quickly things can change. I am very disappointed to have to write this review. I visited back in December 2024 and had a lovely stay, short of a few issues with staffing shortages. I had such a great time I booked another stay for January 2025 and it was the complete opposite experience. I went home incredibly frustrated, disappointed and stressed. Not what you expect when going on a 5-star vacation. This St. Regis is not like the St. Regis resorts from back in the day. Once Marriott took over the St. Regis brand, there was a noticeable decline in customer service/guest experience. They hardly personalize anything anymore and rarely go above and beyond to help their guests or anticipate guest needs. Guests have to ask for everything and often those requests are not met. A lot of the staff is young and lacking the experience to know how to take care for guests at this level. My disappointing experience started right at check in. I checked in early but with Titanium Elite status (thanks to a dear friend), therefore my room was supposed to be ready. It was not. That's ok. But I didn't under estimate how inconvenient this would be to not be able to check in upon arrival. I needed to do a quick turnaround to get down to Deer Valley Resort for a ski lesson. I was sent up to the gym to use their bathroom to change. It was uncomfortable. It was a small little room and gym goers kept trying to come in on me. Next I stashed by bags with the front desk, and they told me I would get a text when my room was ready. I gave them my cell to ensure the text would go to the correct number. I never received a text that day. When I came back to the front desk later on to retrieve my bags they informed me I had a $50/day breakfast credit with the Titanium Elite Status. Which was great...Grateful for that. Lo and behold this was only for dining in the restaurant and not for room service. I was not informed of this. When I called and questioned the breakfast charges after check out, explaining I was unaware that this didn't include room service, the front desk manager basically said tough luck. The day I checked out I noticed a shirt of mine was missing. I believed I had left it in the bathroom at the gym. I called the butler service to inquire about it, and they said they did find my shirt and that they would leave it at the front desk. I told them I had to leave for the airport in 10 minutes (promptly!) and would be down in the lobby to grab it then, to which they said no problem. 15 minutes later I stop at the front desk to retrieve my shirt, the front desk had no idea what I was talking about and did not have the shirt. They had to call someone, then informed me that they would have to find someone to go find the shirt. What's more, I didn't receive my emailed guest folio upon check out. I had to call three times to try to retrieve it. The first front desk person sent me a blank folio. The second time I called they told me to email their accounting team, then provided me with an invalid email address. What a mess. For the prices that are paid to stay at this property, the guest experience falls short. Anyone who regularly travels at this level knows, it's the little details that matter the most. This place is constantly flubbing up the little details. Lastly, their heavy-handed cancellation policies are just another example of their inability to truly care for and serve their guests like they claim to. Prior to my check in, we received an email stating that if I canceled my reservation for any reason, I would be charged $4300 for a 2-night stay.

So many amazing things about the hotel (and one GIGANTIC flaw, unless you're a shark who has always dreamt of living in a fish cannery.) Now let's start with the good! Is this place absolutely magical during the holidays? Will your children get to pose with live reindeer? Yes, your Christmas cards are gonna be lit! Will they get to live out their Hansel and Gretel dreams with a full sized gingerbread house full of endless delectable meringues shaped like Santa hats, decorated sugar cookies, and freshly spun cotton candy? Yes! Will they fight in the lobby with their newly created balloon swords while you exclaim and cry globs of tears over the hilarious caricatures of them created by the hotel's artist in the lobby? Yes! Do you get to do this with the glass of Moet they just sabored? Yes! Is the ski valet absolutely amazing and so accommodating, down to the nicest man running the lift tickets print out? Yes! Is housekeeping amazing, is the room spotless? Yes! So... It's amazing, but why, you might ask, did you give only 3 stars??? Funny thing you might ask!!!! We've done the good, now let's hit the food! Do you ever feel like you're in the TV show The Good Place? Everything looks amazing and perfect, but then a tiny million things go wrong. At first, you're like, it's ok, no worries, no big deal and after the ten thousandth time the entire container of salt pours out when you're trying to season your food, you're like, wait, this is the bad place. (If I spoiled the show, sorry, but it's been like YEARS guys.) Well, folks, it felt like they had a pre-service in the kitchen as they saw me heading into the hotel to prep their million different ways to break my patient spirit because it felt like I was being tested any time I tried to get near food in this hotel. You're probably exhausted of me so I'll try and keep it short. (As I proceed to not keep it short.) Do you love the smell of rotting shrimp? Do you want it to pervade the smell of your room and send you spiraling into a small mental breakdown as they gaslight you? If so, this is the perfect hotel for you! I assume you must be an orca looking to book a ski vacation, so read on, as we journey together! I'd like to preface this by: I have very calm and reasonable young children, who love to patiently wait for their food (sense the sarcasm?) After a number of failed meals at the hotel restaurant where my patience was heavily tested and food took over an hour to arrive (once possibly because the server forgot to put it in, or because the kitchen lost the ticket as the server claimed - it's a secret I'll never know), I decided we would try room service so at least my kids could watch TV while we waited. It's ok, I tell myself - I figured out the hack for eating and I'm prepared for this, fool me once, fool me twice - you get it. Well well, jokes on me! So I order some food - a mushroom truffle pasta that I had previously that honestly truly was heavenly, a pasta with shrimp for my son and a quesadilla for my daughter. Expecting an hour wait, I turn on Disney and start packing because we have an early flight in the morning. I'm Mom of the year, I've got this, I'm firmly patting myself on the back. Yeah, I don't got this. The food arrives in an hour later and immediately, I know something is wrong. There's a smell that immediately hits the room. Well, it's ok, I tell myself, I'm sure it's fine, just ignore it. It's the St. Regis, I bet it's just in my head, I'm being crazy. I sign for the bill, and I open the tray covers. Mushroom pasta, looks fine, quesadilla, looks great too, pasta with shr...? The smell hits my face, as if I'm downwind from a cove full of seals. Like the combination of a garbage dump and rotting fish carcasses, inside a formaldehyde factory. I poke at the shrimp and lift one up to my face. Are shrimp supposed to be grey after they're cooked? The parts of my brain are actively fighting now - there's the rational part that knows the shrimp is way past rotting and the delulu part of my brain that is trying to manage the fact that I'm now physically blocking my hungry children who have immediately tried to descend upon the food. Well, my brain reaches a compromise - I'll just take a bite to make sure. I'm sure it'll be ok, the delulu side of my brain confidently declares. I take a bite and immediately the rational side of my brain starts screaming expletives as I run to the garbage and start violently spitting the food out, as visions of me in United economy the next morning, puking my guts out from food poisoning, swim in my head. It's ok, I tell myself, as I calmly call the front desk. At this point, I cannot consider the idea of eating, so I tell them to just take the shrimp pasta off and we will share what we have left. I hang up. My son starts weeping at the prospect of eating pasta with mushrooms. Normally, I can handle this like a normal parent and use this as a teachable moment. But, in this moment, I am only consumed by the fact that my mouth tastes like I have just licked the liquid that pools at the bottom of a garbage can when you take the full bag out. I cannot handle life currently and I attempt to take the easy way out and I call the front desk back and beg them to make a pasta, but plain, please, with no shrimp anywhere near it. The children eat the quesadilla and we wait for the plain pasta to arrive. I have brushed and flossed and gargled with every ounce of mouthwash I have found. Unfortunately, it's taking a while, and wooden cabinet in which the garbage can (where I threw in the shrimp) is no match for the smell. The smell is actively now leaching out, and marinating the room. This of course, makes me more patient, and rational. It's been about an hour and the children are now way past their bedtime (I've fed them all the snacks I brought from home and they're wired), the room smells like the inside of a diaper pail, and the pasta still has not arrived. I just need to get the kids to bed. I call the front desk to tell them to cancel the pasta, they put me on hold for about 5 minutes, and then I suddenly hear a knock on the door. It's the pasta and a server who looks like she wants to be here in this moment as much as I do. At this point, I'm truly about to lose it (remember, I still have to get the kids to bed, pack, and it's been two hours since I originally ordered dinner and I have two young children). I am still on the phone with the front desk and I am simultaneously telling them and the server that I need to send the pasta back because we actually do not have time to eat it. I am being convinced by both sides to accept the food and I just want it all to go away, so I just tell the server to leave the pasta on the table. Ok, she says, but... I'm going to need you to sign the bill because um, you have to pay for the replacement pasta. Anywayyyyyyyy, soooooo, I definitely don't start sobbing at this moment. I take a look at the bill (I think it's like 25 dollars or something cray) and I immediately start blubbering about how I just need her to leave with the pasta ASAP. She then begins to ask me what was wrong with the shrimp, which elicits what feels like the longest stare from me. I respond, "Can you not smell it?" To which she responds that her manager was asking her lots of questions about how we knew it was spoiled. Wait... am I being gaslit by the St. Regis? Anyway, she does leave with the pasta, along with my pride and sanity and I manage to get the kids into bed. As my sanity returns, I tie off the garbage bag with the shrimp and leave it on the room service cart in the hallway, telling myself the room will just air out in a few minutes. I try and shower the smell off and I get into bed, resigning myself to a lifetime of smelling like a tuna cannery. As I'm drifting off to sleep, I'm awoken by my husband standing at the foot of the bed, having just come back from dinner and drinks with work colleagues. "What the (BLEEP) is this smell? What died in here?!" I feel vindicated. I'm not crazy! I then, as a sane person might, immediately start bawling. Through my sobs, I tell him what happened. It's ok though, I tell him, because my coat already has a base smell of ketchup, so this is just achieving a perfect layered eau! Oh, did I forget to mention that they spilled a container of ketchup on my coat when I was in the bathroom at lunch one day and told me they had no idea how it happened and I had to use baby wipes I had in my bag to clean it up? (I mean, it's not fur, it's a ski coat, I just machine washed it at home a few days later, but still.) My husband leaves to go to the front desk where they offer to send someone to clean the room, if we wake up the kids (LOL) and they pass along his number to the food services manager. The manager does comp the room service bill, so I will give that to them... But, St. Regis, if you read this, please please fix your restaurant service before high season. And if someone put you guys up to testing my patience to see how far it would go, please... Let me know who that was, I definitely want to know because I have some words for them! I promise you, they're great words! 😂

I was in shock. On the second night of my stay, St. Regis gifted me with a large, loud outdoor wedding reception below my window. You know the type of reception—a few hundred people having a great loud time, a very loud band, etc. Most hotels would limit the festivities to a large ballroom or other place where the other paying guests wouldn’t be disturbed. Not St. Regis. The whole mess was outside, right under my decks and windows. So much for my peaceful evening in the mountains. I would have expected some kind of warning when booking (none), warning when checking in (none), or even an offer at check in to move to a room on the quieter, downgraded side of the building. Zilch. St. Regis really wanted me to hear the party. The following morning, I asked the ghoul at the reception desk about the chaos and whether I could expect more of the same. The response was a glare and “the HOA allows this.” As a nightly guest, I don’t know anything about their bloody HOA, nor do I care. I just wanted a peaceful retreat to the mountains. A subsequent query via their app got something closer to an apology, and a reminder of all of their amenities at my disposal. The only amenity not on offer was peace and quiet, To put it bluntly, it seems like St. Regis doesn’t care about their guests, and disturbing paying guests is no problem if they can get even more money from an extravagant wedding. Just another money-grubbing Marriott chain with no true interest in the guest experience. And don’t get me started on that silly funicular and the dysfunctional parking. What a mess!

First time staying at the St.Regis in Deer Valley and will be hard to not stay anywhere else when I am back. The rooms were large, clean, and the overall location was great. What made the stay best was the incredible staff, especially Tino and Carol at reception. They truly took care of anything I needed and made me feel welcomed.

Amazing accommodations. Plenty of things to do in the surrounding area. Hiking trails right out the back of the report. Great restaurant choices. Cleanliness at every corner and a staff that was always at the ready to assist with anything your needed.