No way in hell would I do a tour again
After completing a tour in 2010, I would not recommend this to anyone. I was given a 3 day 2 night free weekend stay and told that in order to complete the free weekend my guest and I just had to complete a 90 minute "tour." My guest was my boyfriend, with whom I was hoping to have a nice, relaxing weekend. I booked the reservation and put down the required $100 deposit, which I put on my credit car. After completing the tour, the deposit plus a $100 gift card would be returned. When we went to check in they told me my name was not listed as having a reservation. Instead, they had used my boyfriend's name -- this sexism did not go over well with me.
They told us we had to be at the tour center at 7:50 am for an 8 am tour. I wasn't looking forward to waking up so early but because of the perks I felt it was worth it. Besides, I thought I'd be out by 9:30 and have the rest of the day to enjoy the resort. They matched each person/couple up with a salesperson who sat you down in a room with the 50 plus other people at a small table with piped in top 40 music circa 1982 and offered a continental breakfast that consisted of terrible coffee, watered-down apple juice and non-filling bagels and pastries.
Then, they put you in a car with the salesman and gave you a driving tour of the resort showing you ever possible inch of the resort. We lucked out and had a very nice salesmen who didn't look or act like a total scum bag like some of the other salespeople appeared to be. However, the tour of the resort went from "90 minutes" to 6 hours. It was unbelievable. They had us trapped in the car and showed us things we had already seen from driving around the day before. We were only staying for the weekend and at that point lost half of our day to get to enjoy the slopes or any of the other activities we had planned.
We finally made it back to the sales office and were asked what we'd pay for a time share. I said that I wasn't interested but thought it was a nice resort, which was greeted with "I'll sell it you for for less than half of the first offer" -- and then half of that a few minutes later. Finally, after convincing the salesmen I wasn't going to buy, he had to bring his manager over I guess as part of the procedure. The manager offered prices and went on trying to sell the place.
They finally let us leave to collect the deposit and gift card. I felt free at last. But there was one more trick up their sleeve: after being "checked out" they sat us down with another salesman who asked what price we were given and if we'd purchase the a place if we were offered an additional 50 percent price cut. After saying no, they let us leave and gave us the deposit back and gift card.
We finally walked out around 3:00 feeling drained, exhausted, hungry and as if we had just woken from a bad dream. Our morning and afternoon was completely wasted. At that point, all I wanted to do was leave the resort and go home.