I'm starting to seriously consider pursuing a private pilots license for recreational purposes, I'm on the northwest side of town, but willing to drive further for a school with a good reputation and well maintained planes and instruction. I've looked around on the google reviews for the various places around town that show up and every one is a mix of gleaming positive reviews from discovery flights and salty bad reviews usually obviously based on personal interactions early on in the process.

I'm interested in opinions from people who have seen the process all the way through in the local area and what your experience was with those organizations in terms of safety, quality of instruction and general feel/attitude(no pun intended, okay maybe intended). Whether your experience was great or awful. Also if you want to throw in what it ended up costing with them in the end to get to the private license, that information is always welcome as well.

Thanks in advance for your input, from someone really looking forward to getting in the skies after years of dreaming about it.