Scottsdale

Scottsdale is what you book when the group has done Vegas twice and wants something that still feels like an adventure but ends at a reasonable hour. Rent a house with a pool in North Scottsdale, play TPC or Grayhawk in the morning, sit by the water until six, then take one van into Old Town. Nobody gets lost, everyone plays golf, and the whole thing costs less than Vegas.

It is wrong for a group that does not golf. Strip out the tee times and Scottsdale is a nice suburb with good Mexican food and expensive bars. It is also wrong in summer. Scottsdale in July is 112 degrees, the pool is a warm bath by 2pm, and you will not leave the house.

The house with a pool is the right call, and it is why it is the first recommendation above. What nobody mentions is that the pool comes cold.

Heating is a separate add-on at most Scottsdale rentals, charged by the day rather than by the stay. The range runs about $25 to $100 a day and $75 is common. If nobody asks for it, nobody turns it on.

This matters more here than anywhere else on this site, because of when you are going. Barrett-Jackson is January. The WM Phoenix Open is February. Spring training runs February into March. Those are the three reasons to come, and all three land in the months when Scottsdale nights drop into the high thirties and low forties.

An 85 degree afternoon does not produce 85 degree water. Most people find 75 degree water cold, and 85 is roughly the floor for pleasant. A February pool nobody paid to heat is a decorative rectangle.

Get it in writing before you pay the deposit, not in a message from the airport.

A gas heater warms a cold pool in hours rather than in days, which sounds fine until you work out that somebody has to have switched it on before you land. Hosts who charge by the day usually run it from the morning of check in, but only if it was arranged.

Split eight ways, $75 a day is about nine dollars a head. That is the cheapest line item on the whole trip, and it is the difference between a pool and a water feature.

Also worth doing

You need two SUVs or one twelve seat van. Sky Harbor to North Scottsdale is 30 to 40 minutes, courses are spread across twenty miles, and Old Town is a rideshare either way. Rent the van, split it eight ways, and stop doing math at every trailhead.