What is the WET Deck?
Every pool party in Scottsdale is a copy of this one. The WET Deck is the elevated pool on the second floor of the W Scottsdale, at 7277 E Camelback Rd, and when the hotel opened in 2008 it did something no Old Town property had done: it put a DJ, cabanas and bottle service beside a hotel pool and sold the result to people who were not staying there. Las Vegas had been doing it for years. Scottsdale had not, and the cabana economy that now runs from the Valley Ho to the Caesars roof started here.
The hotel itself was the Yari brothers’ anchor for the Entertainment District, a glass-and-steel box of 224 rooms and 27 suites at the north edge of the bar grid. The W Scottsdale is owned by Stockdale Capital Partners today, and its pool is still its most reliable engine. The deck is 21 and over, has 13 private cabanas with flat-screen TVs, serves seasonal light bites and specialty cocktails, and runs weekend DJ parties from noon to 6 in season.
It is not one bar but three. The Cottontail Lounge, built in a $3 million remodel of the second floor finished in April 2021, shares the deck and runs it after dark, to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. Downstairs, The Living Room is the lobby lounge, open from 4 p.m. with live music every Friday and Saturday and a smart-casual dress code; Experience Scottsdale recommends it for people-watching, which is the correct use. And where Sushi Roku stood from 2008 to 2023, Sexy Roman now serves Italian with tableside martinis.
Our verdict: the WET Deck is the original, and still the most reliable, Old Town pool party, with the best location in the city for a night that starts in a swimsuit and ends on Saddlebag Trail. It has also been copied so thoroughly that it is no longer the best deck in town, only the first. Our list of every bar and club in Scottsdale sorts the rest.
Pool by day, lounge by night, lobby in between
Book the deck, not the hotel. Non-guests reach the pool through limited day passes and reserved cabanas, daybeds and VIP tables, booked by phone or text at (602) 405-0099. Pricing moves with the calendar: the W has listed cabanas from about $125 for five on quiet days through ResortPass, and a premium table for ten on an event weekend from $2,345. The deck is open 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, and it is 21 and over throughout. Our resort pool and day pass guide compares it with the Valley Ho and the rest.
Know the season. Weekend pool parties run from noon to 6 from roughly mid-April through October. In 2025 they returned under W Hotels’ Sun Chasers campaign, with events on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July (fireworks the hotel calls the only show in Old Town) and Labor Day. The big weeks are the big weeks everywhere: spring training, the WM Phoenix Open, spring break and fight nights. Sunday afternoons are the mellower, locals-heavier session.
Stay for the Cottontail. The Cottontail Lounge is the night side of the same floor: craft cocktails, DJs, VIP bottle service, 21 and over on weekends, and a “Rabbit Hole Thursdays” extended happy hour that runs to 10 p.m. Scottsdale Spot’s 2026 rooftop ranking put the lounge’s capacity around 55 with a 28-seat marble bar, which tells you to reserve on a Saturday.
Use the Living Room. The lobby lounge is where you meet before dinner or wait out the line. It opens at 4 p.m. every day, closes at midnight Sunday through Thursday and at 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and has live music both weekend nights. Dress smart casual; the hotel means it.
Eat downstairs. Sexy Roman runs a daily happy hour from 3 to 5 with Italian bites and a formal dress code at dinner, so pack accordingly. Beyond the hotel, the Old Town nightlife guide covers the walk to Stetson and Saddlebag, and our bachelorette and bachelor party guides both start their Saturday here.
The deck that built the genre
Before 2008, an Old Town pool was something a motel had. The Hotel Valley Ho had reopened in 2005 with a glamorous one, but the W was the first purpose-built scene hotel in the market, and its formula arrived intact from the brand’s other cities: a pool treated as a venue, with tiers of seating, a DJ and a beverage minimum. The 2000s district the Yaris were assembling needed a daytime anchor to match its clubs, and the WET Deck was it.
The copying started at once. Through the 2010s a dozen resorts added DJs and cabana rows; the Valley Ho’s OH Pool, the Maya dayclub in 2013, and later the rooftop pools at the Canopy, Caesars Republic and The REMI. all sold the format the W proved. Our cabana entry calls it the Scottsdale cabana economy, and the W is its founding document.
The deck had its rough year in 2020. When the state closed bars that July, the W’s pool, which operated under hotel rules, drew complaints about crowds in an Old Town that otherwise looked like a ghost town. The hotel answered with construction: Stockdale hired Sigma Contracting and Cawley Architects to gut the second-floor entertainment level, expand the space around the pool, add bars and build the Cottontail Lounge, all while keeping the pool open to guests. The $3 million job finished in April 2021, and the lounge gave the deck a night life it had previously borrowed from the clubs across the street.
The latest change is at street level. Sushi Roku, the hotel’s opening-day restaurant, closed in July 2023 after fifteen years, and Alliance Hospitality Group spent more than a year turning the room into Sexy Roman, which opened in 2025 with a martini cart and a dress code. Together with the rebuilt Maya and The REMI. a block away, it marks a district trying to grow up without growing quiet.
Honest assessment: the WET Deck is still the best-located pool party in Scottsdale and the one we would book for a group that wants the full Old Town weekend. It is no longer the tallest, the newest or the calmest. What it has is the thing the copies cannot buy: it was first, and on a Saturday in April you can still feel it.