What is Cottontail Lounge?
The W Scottsdale is a hotel built around a party, and Cottontail Lounge is where it takes place. The lounge sits on the W’s second-floor rooftop pool level, at the edge of the WET Deck, the pool that turned Scottsdale pool parties into a genre. The two venues share a phone line, a VIP team and a crowd.
What it offers depends on the hour. In the afternoon, Cottontail is the bar side of the pool deck: shaded seating, pool views, cocktails and light bites, with sunset over Old Town. After dark, it runs as a nightlife lounge with live DJs, craft cocktails and VIP bottle service, open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. Its own tagline is “Poolside. After dark. Somewhere in between.”
The house leans into the theme: the venue calls itself “the rabbit hole inside W Scottsdale,” and its event calendar runs from day-club pool parties to costume nights.
It is a rooftop bar first and a club second. Come early and it is one of the easier sunset drinks in Old Town; come late on a spring weekend and you are at a party.
Sunset, after dark and the VIP math
Choose your time slot. Weeknight early evenings are the low-key version: a cocktail on the pool level as the light goes. Weekends after dark, and almost any day in spring, it is a DJ-driven lounge. Marriott lists the lounge as 21 and over on weekends.
Book the table if you are a group. Bottle service comes with a dedicated host and a minimum spend; cabanas and daybeds belong to the WET Deck side by day. The lounge markets bachelor and bachelorette packages directly, and it is a staple of the Scottsdale bachelor-party weekend. Calling or texting is the fastest way to book.
Mind the calendar. Spring is the peak: spring training, spring break and the WM Phoenix Open fill the pool level. WET Deck events are open to the public, so a W room does not by itself get you a cabana; book it.
Pair it with dinner downstairs. Sexy Roman, the hotel’s Italian restaurant, is the obvious first stop, and Shiv is a block east. The entertainment district bars are a short walk south. For more options at altitude, see Scottsdale’s rooftop bars and sunset patios.
The pool deck that became an Old Town institution
When the W opened in 2008, its pitch was that nightlife could be a hotel amenity. The WET Deck, an elevated pool with DJs and cabanas, made it work, and Scottsdale’s pool-party culture largely follows its template. A lounge on the same level was the natural second half: a place for the pool crowd to stay after sunset without leaving the building.
Cottontail fills that role. It is less a standalone destination than the evening shift of the W’s pool level, and its own marketing treats the two as “two worlds, one address.”
The hotel around it has changed in the 2020s. Sushi Roku, the W’s restaurant from 2008, closed in 2023, and in 2025 Sexy Roman opened in its place. With Shiv also arriving on this block of Camelback in 2025, this stretch has become the upscale end of Old Town nightlife, where the evening runs from a dinner reservation to a rooftop table.
The honest assessment: Cottontail is a hotel lounge built for bachelorettes, spring breakers and event weekends, priced to match, and on a Saturday night it is loud by design. But for a weeknight sunset drink above Camelback Road, it is a pleasant rooftop that is easy to overlook.