My family is on our last night here. I noticed in the forum rules that "negative" posts may be removed "without prior notice", which might explain the lack of current and accurate posts about this resort. Since
some of my comments are going to be negative, maybe it will be deleted by the forum hostess, but I hope not.
The Positive:
The units are nice sized and we always found parking right in front of our room (the resort appears to be full, so this is good), there is a Murphy bed in the living room which gave us some extra room when our teenagers decided they wanted separate sleeping arrangements. The pool is small, but clean despite heavy usage by small children. The ping-pong table is by far the nicest we have seen at any Worldmark or RCI resort. It is solid, and not broken (well, the net is patched together, but it works!) The weight room is nice, but I did cut my finger adjusting one piece of equipment. If you can handle tennis in the heat, there are free tennis courts at an adjacent resort (strange that the staff had to call and find this out - you'd think they would be trained about all the amenities available for guests).
The Negative:
I would describe our experience as "mediocre" compared to our visits at other Worldmark or RCI resorts. I suspect the management of this resort is new or lacks sufficient resources to improve the experience of guests. If I had to guess, it is lack of experience since there are areas that are not resource dependent where we were disappointed. This lack of leadership and standards can be described by way of a few examples:
When we arrived, there were "tokens" for sale in the lobby. Since we were early and our room wasn't ready, I looked around for the game room while my wife registered. Several doors were open or unmarked. One room that was open was the room where employees have their lockers. The room was disgracefully messy, not a sign of the high standards that a "Five Star II Rating" resort manager would enforce, even in areas that should be kept closed, and also not something that would take substantial resources to improve. Other office area rooms were also messy and disorganized, like sales signs blocking access to the "discount coupons" and other materials that assist in planning activities.
The grounds were not properly maintained. As you can see from this image [img]
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/tsRiiXJNKZOSVpQzf-bQD4taxLdw9qPkVGM--tngPVM?feat=directlink[/img] , there is over 12 inches or several months of overgrowth blocking the pathways. These branches kept poking us in the face, so my daughter started breaking them off hoping that somebody would take notice and trim them, no such luck. Other than the ones trimmed by her, the overgrowth is still there and is noticeable everywhere at the resort.
The unit came with one roll of toilet paper in each bathroom. Even though they brought us more when we called and asked, this is not the sort of thing you want to call and ask for, as when you find out you are out, it is an uncomfortable moment. A good manager would have a checklist and quality control to ensure a good guest experience.
The next negative is more of an indictment of a policy that has become antiquated. This "5 Star" resort and allegedly now
all Worldmark Resorts charges for WIFI despite the fact that even places like YOUKNOWWHO Inn have free WiFi (not wanting to violate advertising rules here). You can see other places that offer free WiFi at wififreespot dot com. Why would the owners (me!!!) want to pay ourselves extra for something that has become more of a utility like internet access? Why not get great high speed service at every resort and just include it in our dues? The biggest irritation is that this new policy of charging for WiFi was only explained to owners at the "owner's orientation" meetings, which of course we skipped because they use them to sell more credits to us. Even more incredulous, we paid $50 for the internet access, only to find out that the internet service comes on a cable rather than a 99.99% up-time T-1. This wouldn't be a problem, but they did not tell us when they collected the $50 that they were expecting "intermittent" disruptions in our service due to maintenance. Intermittent turned out to be the entire Friday evening during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Now we have plenty of things to do on vacation, and this would not even be a complaint, except I was required to pay for it, and the "disruption" was planned in advance. They charged me knowing it wasn't going to work... That is not nice. When it did work, it was not fast enough to watch movies online. A huge resort sharing a single cable modem? Charging every guest $XX... Can't you afford a redundant, high bandwidth system?
We still had fun on our vacation, especially the "Bottoms Up - Narrows" in Zions Park, and these annoyances are minor, but are not typical of our prior experiences at Worldmark or RCI resorts. I don't think we will return to St. George's Worldmark.
Hope this helps those looking for an accurate description of the resort in 2012.
Angstmaniac.