Miraval Arizona Resort & Spa

Given Miraval Arizona's price point and reputation, this stay was deeply disappointing. The food offered at the resort was overall poor, bland, and far below what you would expect from a luxury wellness destination. There is little variation in food at lunch. Many of the food items were stale (bread, cookies, tortilla chips). The "hors d'oeuvres" were stale tortilla chips, crudite, and various dips. My sister had a prenatal massage, and the provider smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, which is completely inappropriate and was very uncomfortable for her. My own 50-minute Sacred Sounds massage was disappointing. The session started 5-6 minutes late, but still ended on time. It was advertised as including breath work, but there was no breath work component. The advertisement does not make it clear that the sound bowl portion dominates the treatment, leaving me with maybe 15 minutes total time for a full body massage. This felt misleading and not what I paid top tier pricing for. It was difficult to find the location of a couple activities, which led to us missing them. One was the stretch class, which is supposed to be at the Body Mindfulness Center. Once we arrived to the BMC, there were no signs directing us where to go. There are several rooms off the main gym, but none had a sign indicating which one the stretch class was in. The 2-hour archery class included at least a full hour of talking and information before you even get to try the activity. Checkout was unnecessarily complicated for us and another group of women. This caused our airport shuttle to leave late. The shuttle took longer than we were told, which led to us getting to the airport only 45 min before our flight took off. Miraval had been a bucket list experience for my sister and I for years. To say that we were wildly disappointed is an understatement. While our room was beautiful, we found ourselves looking at other luxury wellness resorts to try in the future. Miraval charges top tier pricing and is routinely on many travel publications' lists for must-do wellness experiences. It certainly did not live up to that reputation.

Everything at Miraval was great from my experience! I enjoyed my stay there soooo much but what made it even better were people like Tyler from the Equine Experience and Jean who teaches tennis lessons. If you have the pleasure of going, sign up for these and see if they’re teaching because you’d be in for a treat. Tyler is truly a delight and cares deeply about making sure you get the full experience during the equine therapy and I left raving about it!! My only feedback would be that they aren’t great with answering the phones before or during your stay and that their portal sucks.

I don't know what has happened to Miraval now but the customer service is non-existent. An important part of Miraval is being able to book the spa and activities in advance with ease and my emails and calls to Miraval to try to make arrangements for my reservation are continually ignored. If you call Miraval you always get sent to voicemail and then no one calls you back. If you email you don't get a response. There's an online booking system but if there are two people staying in one room then you need an additional booking number for the second person so they can book activities too and that requires getting a number from people that don't respond to you...so the online booking system doesn't resolve this.

This is my second time at Miraval and I just spent 4 blissful days there. There such special energy from some of the healers/instructors. I especially love Rae Jessie! You won’t run out of things to do! The spa is undergoing renovations currently, but they still offer the same amazing services. There was some loud construction noises by the pool but it didn’t bother me too much. While everything was lovely from the activities to the food, the areas of improvement are the rooms. My bed was really uncomfortable and the bed/pillows were too soft. I felt like I was sinking in the middle of my bed. Also, I didn’t like how reservations are required for dinner at their main restaurant. I forgot to make it one evening and was turned away and was told I had to go to the bar area for dinner, which I didn’t appreciate. Despite those experiences, Miraval has a special place in my heart and I will be back someday!

1. The grounds are absolutely stunning. Whoever designed them is an absolute genius. 2. The staff are super helpful and kind. 3. The rooms are just kind of meh. I paid $1200 a night for the equivalent of a $150 a night Marriott room anywhere else. And the resort is on the outskirts of the Tucson metro area and backs up to rows of retirement communities, as compared to being on a beach in Hawaii so not sure why the price is so high. 4. The food is kind of lackluster. The chef has good vision but the execution was poor. I'm not a food snob by any means and I grabbed Dairy Queen on the way in to the retreat. There were healthy options but not as many as you'd expect, they snuck pork into a lot of things for no discernible reason, and a lot of the food was mysteriously both undercooked and overcooked at the same time. For an all-inclusive resort that is $1200 a night, I'd expect better food quality. 5. Most of the drinks are really great, but they are extra and not cheap. Most start at $20. 6. Again, at $1200 a night you expect more to be included but most things were extra costs and not only that the prices were out of control. An hour guided meditation was $180, for example. There were very few options that were no additional cost so it's easy to spend an additional $400-600 a day doing a few activities. 7. It's supposed to be a digital device free zone but we didn't see a single space where someone wasn't sneaking a text message or on their Kindle reader. I totally don't care but I think it speaks to whether the resort actually encourages you to check out and relax. The pricing of activities prices a lot of people out of doing things and the grounds are gorgeous but you're in the desert so it's too hot to walk around most of the year and you're really just confined to the resort grounds unless you want to walk down the asphalt road in 100 degree heat to hang out in a retirement community . In summary, the grounds are great and the staff are great but the rest is blah. It actually feels really disrespectful and like they're taking advantage of people with the prices they charge and what you get in return. I bet this was a completely different and magical place before Hyatt took over.