The Palm Springs Pool Day Guide: Passes, Rules, What to Bring

A Palm Springs pool day is mostly a question of which pool, because the city has three kinds and they work completely differently: the hotel pools that sell day passes, the water park out by the airport, and the pool at the house you rented, which is the only one of the three where you get to decide what is in the cooler. We have done all of them, usually in the same long weekend, and the plan below is the one we would hand a friend who texted “pool day in Palm Springs, what do we do,” with the rules each place actually enforces, the month that gets the heat right, and the short list of what goes in the bag.

The hotel pools you can buy into

You do not need a room to use the good hotel pools in Palm Springs. Nearly all of them sell day passes through ResortPass, you pick a date, pay, and show up at the front desk with the confirmation, and the only catch is that weekend passes sell out days ahead and most of these pools are adults only, so check the age line before you book for a group with kids.

The Ace Hotel & Swim Club on East Palm Canyon is the one everyone knows and the one we still like best for a Saturday, because the main pool has DJs on weekends and the Commune pool around the side is the quiet one, when it is not closed for a private event. Basic passes started in the mid thirties on ResortPass when we looked and climb on weekends, and a daybed or a cabana is a different budget entirely. The hotel is plain about it on its own FAQ: no outside alcohol, buy at the poolside bar.

Photo: Ace Hotel & Swim Club.

The Saguaro is the rainbow colored one, the pool runs from eight in the morning to ten at night, and the party is scheduled rather than accidental, a DJ on Saturday from one to four and Sunday from eleven to four. Weekday passes come with a food and drink credit, which matters because the pool bar only opened Friday through Sunday the last time we checked, and the posted rules are the strictest of the three: no outside food or drink, no glass, no personal speakers. If the group wants to hear each other, the Saguaro on a Tuesday is a very different pool from the Saguaro on a Saturday.

The Kimpton Rowan rooftop is the one for a late day, the pool is open from ten in the morning to ten thirty at night, High Bar is up there with it, and after five the deck goes adults only. The view is the sell, downtown below you and the mountain right there, and it is the pool we would pick if we only had the afternoon and wanted to stay through sunset. Passes include towels and self parking, and the lounge chairs are first come, so the people who get the good ones are the people who arrive at ten.

Photo: Kimpton Rowan Palm Springs.

The honest summary of all three: a hotel pass buys you a chair, a towel and a bar tab, and the cooler stays in the car. That is fine for one day of the trip, but it is not how we would spend the whole weekend, and the next section is why.

The water park and the city pool

Palm Springs Surf Club on Gene Autry Trail is a real water park with a lazy river and slides on the general admission ticket and the wave pool as a separate booking on top, and it is the right call when there are kids in the group or someone genuinely wants to surf in the desert. Adult admission was in the mid thirties to forty dollars when we looked and about half that for kids, hours shift with the season, and the prohibited list is long: coolers, outside food and drink, glass of any kind, alcohol, your own chairs and umbrellas, speakers. They have said a sealed bottle of water is fine. Bring that and a card, and plan on the park’s food.

Photo: Palm Springs Surf Club.

If all you want is a swim, the Palm Springs Swim Center in Sunrise Park is the city pool, sixteen dollars for a non resident adult, five for residents, open from six in the morning until three Monday through Saturday and from seven on Sunday. There is no scene and no bar and that is the appeal, you can do laps at seven before it is ninety out and be at breakfast by eight.

Photo: City of Palm Springs.

The rental pool, which is the real pool day

Most groups we know rent a house, and the house pool is where the day actually happens, because it is the only pool in town where you set the hours, pick the music and own the cooler. Two things to know before the first can gets opened. The city’s good neighbor rules for vacation rentals say no amplified music outside at any time while the house is occupied and nothing audible from the property line, and most rental contracts put the nighttime hours at ten at night to ten in the morning, with a fine to the guests and a strike against the house if a neighbor calls it in. Palm Springs enforces this, the city takes the neighbor’s call, and the houses that get flagged are the ones with a speaker on the patio. Keep the speaker inside with the doors open and nobody has a problem.

The second thing is the heat, which is the whole reason the cooler matters. At ninety five degrees a beer starts tasting heavy by the second one and a hard seltzer turns into a burp you did not want, and by three in the afternoon the people drinking those are inside with the air conditioning. We make SUNGOD for exactly this afternoon: Minted Sol is cucumber, mint, lemon and ginger with a neutral grain spirit and spring water, five percent, no carbonation and not much sugar, and it is the can we can still drink at four when the pool has turned to bathwater. The rest of that argument is in the non-carbonated list and the congener guide if you want it. Our stockist in town is Mirage Wine & Liquor at 2781 North Palm Canyon Drive, open ten in the morning to eleven at night every day, with delivery through their own site if nobody wants to leave the pool. Or order a case to the rental before you drive out, which is what we do when the group is bigger than one car. Either way it is aluminum, and aluminum is the only thing any pool deck in Palm Springs will let you keep.

When to go

October is the month this guide is written for, and it is the one we would pick. The long term average high for October in Palm Springs is about 91 degrees, early October still runs into the mid nineties and the last week of the month settles into the mid eighties, so the water is warm, the deck is bearable and the evenings are the kind where you stay out. July averages well over a hundred and the pool is only usable before ten in the morning and after six. March through May is the other good window, with the warning that the festival weeks in April push rental prices to the roof, and a group doing a bachelorette weekend out of San Diego should look at the second half of October before anything in spring.

What to bring

The bag for a hotel pass is short: sunscreen that you actually reapply, because the sun out here does not feel as strong as it is until you get home, a hat, sunglasses, sandals (the deck at two in the afternoon will take the skin off a bare foot), a refillable water bottle, a card for the bar, a charger, and something to read. Towels come with the pass everywhere we listed. Leave the speaker, the cooler and anything in glass in the car, because none of them get past the gate.

The bag for the rental pool is the same list plus the cooler, two bags of ice, a float, and a case of cans. Fill the cooler the night before so it is cold at eleven and not at two, keep the spare case inside the house rather than in the garage, which is an oven, and put the water bottles in the cooler too, because the people who stay out longest are the ones drinking water between cans. If the group is coming from the coast, the locator has the stops on the way, and once you are in town Mirage is up at the north end of Palm Canyon Drive, a short drive from any of the hotels above.

Hero photo: Visit Greater Palm Springs, the pool at The Saguaro.