Originally published at: Beyond the Holidome: Remembering Holiday Inn's humid, moldy, fabulous indoor mini-resorts | Boing Boing
…
9 Likes
I want to live in a holidome.
14 Likes
I don’t know… sounds a bit… moist, maybe?
11 Likes
Just embrace your inner middle-class brit and admit you want to go to center parcs.
11 Likes
Some of them may still be operating. At a family event about a decade ago I visited someone who was staying at one because they had kids. No tiki hut, unfortunately. At the time I thought it was a more recent innovation, but TIL.
9 Likes
I remember playing Spy Hunter in a big open space that smelled like chlorine.
The holidomes kind of remind me of a tiny casino, it was cool to have something to do and somewhere to be in a hotel rather than just being in your room.
14 Likes
10 Likes
I had Prom date dinner at the restaurant in a Holidome in 1984, where the tables were out on the “green”. I swam in a Holidome swimming pool somewhere in the Midwest like Missouri or someplace a few years later where the pool extended to the outdoors under a low barrier that you could swim under.
11 Likes
You could at least cut mushrooms from your grocery budget. Just harvest the ones that grow under the bed!
10 Likes
Great Wold Lodge is the modern version of this.
8 Likes
There was still a Holidome in my hometown, Wichita Falls, TX, operating in the late 1990s. I know this because the company I was working for at the time hosted its annual sales rep meeting there one year. That was the last year they had an open bar at the annual sales rep meeting. I think it also led to a couple of sales reps being let go. The company was lucky they didn’t end up with a sexual harassment lawsuit out of the incident. Anyway, that’s my memory of the Holiday Inn Holidome.
9 Likes
Or even the more expensive version - Kalahari.
At least these newer hotel chains have figured out that the water park stuff needs to be in its own room so the moisture can be controlled and contained.
9 Likes
9 Likes
I have the same memory, but the game was Rastan. Played a lot of air hockey with my dad as well. Good times!
In my kid memory, the muggy chlorine humidity was very pleasant. And the Holidome seemed to stretch on forever…
My grandparents were big fans of the local Holidome through the 80’s. I haven’t thought about that place in years!
5 Likes
7 Likes
There’s a ton of urbex videos of these resorts on youtube if you feel like being grossed out
5 Likes
I have similar memories but the arcade games were much, much older (analog games, like Magic Baseball). My family started staying at the NEW Holidome on Longboat Key, FL in the early 70s. I have absolutely fantastic memories of the place. Yes, the chlorine smell within the enclosed area was like being at a high school swimming pool, but the place was fantastic. I was small enough that the spa was strong enough to pull me off the seat and out into the middle of the water.
I used to find quarters that I’d run over to play the games with. My grandfather would get a roll of quarters and, every time I was off playing games, he’d toss a few more on the floor near where he and my father were sitting. I’d come back and “find” more quarters, much to my absolute excitement.
We stayed at that place every Christmas for a number of years. Those memories are really wonderful. Even now, I can still smell the chlorine.
A few years ago, I was working a Ren Faire in Peoria, IL and we were put up in what was once an old Holidome. It was weird to see, everything but the pool gone, just stark, empty, and lifeless. It was torn down shortly after.
Those of you who missed out on the age of the Holidome, truly missed out on some of the glory days of family vacations.
15 Likes
I looked at a house that did the same thing with a hot tub. At first I thought it was kind of neat, but then it didn’t have any water in it and I thought about the AC bill in Texas, and the extra humidity. It also had foundation problems and some other weird problems.
3 Likes
I have a favorite photo, 1981ish, with my future wife and her parents at a Holidome in Cincinnati, we 17 and 18.
We still laugh about it because there was thunderstorm and her mom said we were not allowed to swim in the indoor pool because we were sure to be electrocuted.
We sat around the pool and got drunk instead.
9 Likes
There’s a long-lost almost majestic Gobblerosity to those images:
https://www.lileks.com/institute/motel/
(Because someone had to do it).
5 Likes
