Phoenix West II Vacation Rental Condominiums — Local services in Orange Beach

Returned from a trip to Orange Beach with another family in late July. I had previously stayed at the neighboring Phoenix West along with other Phoenix properties, so I had high hopes. I will address the pros/cons below:

The condo itself was large, spacious and came with everything we needed. Decor was nice, furniture and all beds comfortable. The only issue with the condo itself was the sliding door to the balcony was broke. At times it took 2 adults to open the door. Maintenance came day 3 and provided a "temporary" fix, but by the time we left, the door was about the same as before.

If you book a room here, I would suggest floors 1-8, as they all have parking garage access. Any other floor will cause nightmares at check in/check out. We were on floor 5, and the day we checked in we witnessed a guy stand over an hour with all his luggage just waiting for an elevator. We literally unloaded 2 vehicles, got everything unpacked and was ready to head to the beach before he even caught an elevator. Elevators are also hard to catch during prime times of the day.....the morning beach rush and late afternoon rush. Outside of these times they worked fine.

Loved the pool and lazy river, take your own float to lazy river as they are hard to come by. It can be hard to get a chair together if you have a large family/group, but we managed. The beach was nice. It does have a rather steep incline leading to the ocean, makes it a hard for little ones. Beach was very crowded, very few people rent from the actual beach service and set up in front of the resort chairs like most condos. They could easily remove several rows of beach service which would result in a less crowded situation. We also had to get up and set up BEFORE 5am every morning just to get a decent spot. By 7am the beach area is almost completely full.

Cell service was a nightmare. No service at all in the condo itself. Service very spotty at pool and beach. Ironically, the best signal we could find to call/text out was the parking garage.

Finally, I would like to address the "short term storage" area at the pool. In a perfect world, this short term storage area works great. Keep all your beach items in one place all week without fighting elevators and spreading sand everywhere. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and people are cruel. Day 1 we lost a boogie board. No biggie, chalk it up to a small kid not knowing any better. Day 2, two more boogie boards gone. Again, not the end of the world. Next to last day we go down to find everything gone. The beach wagon, chairs, kids toys, beach umbrella, balls, crab nets, EVERYTHING gone. Shame on the person at the pool who showed up with ALL of it the next day, and swore it was not taken from the short term storage. I hope our items helped make your kids' vacation a little extra special while ours were more than just a little disappointed. If you can afford a week at Phoenix West 2, you can afford to purchase your own beach items. This is not the fault of Phoenix West 2, I just want everyone to be careful when leaving your personal items.

Overall, this condo complex has wonderful amenities, great location on Orange Beach, and spacious and clean rooms. Maybe just a little too big for our liking. Will return to Orange Beach, but probably in one of the other...

We stayed at the Phoenix West II the week of June 17-23, 2023. When I booked earlier this year, I was drawn in by the amenities (good size rooms, nice pools, lazy river) and I chose to ignore the bad reviews about the extraordinarily long elevators wait times. I feel like I owe an apology to the prior guests that tried to warn us about the elevator wait times. I can’t speak for non-peak season but the elevator wait time situation is horrible during the summer. There are 358 units of 3-4 bedroom units. If you conservatively estimate the # of guests per room (up to 10 in 3 bedroom units) at 5 guests per room, that’s 1,790 guests. There are 6 elevators for use by guests, so that’s one elevator for every 300 guests. 2 of the elevators were NOT working the week we were here so that’s one elevator serving 450 guests. During peak times it was not unusual to wait 1-1.5 hrs for an elevator. When we arrived on June 17 it took an hour to get an elevator around 6 pm. On June 22 we came up from the beach around 5 pm, waited an hour at the pool for the elevator line to shorten and still waited 45 mins for an elevator when we got in line. We tried calling both the Phoenix West II and Brett Robinson to ask about the repair ETA on 1/3 of the elevators not working but could never reach a live person. We did text as well but got a canned answer of “we’ll report your feedback to management”. I never once rode the elevator when guests weren’t complaining about the wait. This is not an easy situation to fix. You must engineer and architect new banks of elevators and that is likely a problem that costs millions of $$$ to fix. If it’s during the non-peak season I’m sure it’s not as big a problem. Carefully scrutinize the reviews claiming the elevator situation is not bad during peak summer hours.

The rooms are nice. The amenities are nice. But in my estimation not worth the hours you’ll waste on your trip fighting for an elevator. Again might be fine during Fall/Winter/Spring months but would advise families to avoid the hassles and frustrations with an untenable situation with completely unreasonable elevator wait times during peak summer months. We’ve been coming to Orange Beach for 20+ yrs and have stayed at Phoenix properties and rented through Brett Robinson almost exclusively. This one experience has soured us on the Phoenix properties and Brett Robinson due to their lack of attention and timeliness in addressing the broken elevators. Inaction on elevator repairs during one of the busiest weeks in the summer peak months speaks volumes on a company’s real views on customer service and service recovery.

Enjoy your time in...

The beach wasn't our first choice but we didn't want to go on a vacation to drop a couple thousand to have "rules" on our face (s). My wife had friends here and we had never been so why not. The place is pretty cool. We were very happy with the wide parking spaces in the covered garage. We loved every room had a full bath and a hall bath, 3 bedroom, 4 full bathroom. The room(s) were nice and we had all kitchen things to cook with or use if we wanted. We had a problem with the guests below us who were all smoking like freight trains on their balcony and we are not. I checked the website and it clearly says NO Smoking in the rooms or balconies. I called the desk to point out my observations and clarification of the website. The desk said they would inform the room of the policy. We come back after a few hours on the beach and they are smoking again. Not only can't my wife and family enjoy our balcony we have to shut our door because our condo is smelling of cigarettes. I call the front desk again and I was told they checked on the condo below but they promised they weren't smokers because that is what they said. Little did the condo below realize I took a picture of their Marbol Lights and cigarettes case on their balcony table. Even though they aren't smokers. I told the front desk I'm entitled to breathe clean ocean air and enjoy the sounds of the ocean for the price we paid. (there is designated smoking areas) I was out on the balcony and noticed security was standing on the walk looking up at my area. I could smell the smoke again. I went to the beach and back. Security came to our condo and said he witnessed the floor below us smoking, went and talked with them, and the next time is a 250.00 dollar fine. We never smelled smoke again or saw them smoking below us. Top Notch response from security. We had a great time and will be back. The ocean and sands were beautiful. If we weren't in the ocean we were in a pool inside or outside....