Exploring an Untouched ABANDONED Hotel

Today we're venturing inside a nearly untouched, recently abandoned hotel. Known as a popular convention lodge, this 300 room hotel leaves behind a long legacy dating back to the 1970's and just recently shut its doors. Join me as I document a property seemingly stuck in time with everything left as it was, while the building decays around it. It's a surreal look into what a building is like when it's first left to the elements.

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Thanks to @UnchartedTravel and @emmi_lancaster

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BrightSunFilms 2022

Presented in 4K

[tmntleo]

Sad to see that vandals have already started destroying this place, but apart from that it's amazing how preserved this place is. Clearly they expected to just reopen after the main part of the pandemic, but they never did.

[rickstarz]

What I appreciate about your exploration videos is that there's no cheesy sound effects and plenty of silence. Everyone else seems to want to make ghost stories out of abandoned buildings, but whenever I watch your vids I end up contemplating the temperality of everything, how the biggest buildings/attractions can fall into irrelevancy at any time.

[personontheinternets]

I worked as a housekeeper when everything shut down and before they fired everyone, there was a couple weeks where travel was shut down but we were still working, so we took the opportunity to do the deep cleaning you dont get to do in the normal season, get all the comforters washed and stuff. So I could see that being done in the time right before going out of business for good, leaving it cleaner than its ever been since it first opened.

[tombuck]

It would be wild to show this to someone from 5 years ago and tell them, “yeah it’s because of a virus.” How terrifying.

[carloostazek]

Hi, I know i'm 11 months late, but it's strange for me to watch this. I was a customer service supervisor here up until closure. You all might be wondering why it was left with beds made and breakfast service ready to go. Unfortunately, the night shift handed over to the morning shift who started preparing for the day, at around 9am we were called, ironically, into the conference room, where we were then told that the hotel would be closing, we could go home and await further instructions as there was no need for us to be in. A week or two went by when we were told it's not necessary for us to return, and things were left pretty much where we left them. The only people who entered after us were managers and a removal team who dismantled/removed workable items that could be relocated to other properties. There was only 1 guest at the time of our closure, but we had a recruitment event being held there 2 days later, hence why Conference Room B was semi-made.

[Trades]

The restaurant set up, the pumpkin water catchers, the made beds...all point out that the employees here had NO IDEA that the day they came in to do their usual duties that it would have been the last time they would ever set foot into this establishment.

[raflamar]

What makes this place stand out so much is the level of preservation. It really looks like they were prepared to reopen after the pandemic. And it never did.
It looks like humanity just vanished from this place, and that is whats so fascinating.

[LauraK]

2:00 Respect to the servers and bus people who cleaned and set those tables that one last time. I hope y'all are doing okay. ♥

[kewkabe]

This was one of the Holliday Inn "Hollidomes" from the 70's/80's and it wasn't just for conventions. In the northern US it was a cheap vacation for people who would go to the hot, humid Hollidomes where you could walk around like you were in Florida, that also had a pool, arcade, shuffleboard, fooseball, bar and restaurants.

[chucker]

I am shocked the owners did not have an auction. Those pianos alone go for 16-27k depending on model and condition. But I will say I pleasantly surprised to see it has not been looted either.

[davidhibbs]

My brother worked as a security officer at this location when the pandemic first happened they and the whole staff would be notified when they could return to work. It never happened! To this day it's still not known why it never reopened and impossible to contact anyone in control. My brother always questioned why they were so concerned about security in this place. He said it was like guarding fort Knox. They spent a third of their revenue on security alone. They had backups on top of backups! Your every move was more than likely recorded!

[SilvaD]

I can't believe how much stuff is left behind in some of these places. You'd think they would sell/liquidate or donate or something...

[SpaceGhost]

I just wanna say that you mentioned "it's surprising there's so much decay on a short period of time". But I think people tend to forget these old buildings arent usually abandoned in perfect shape. Generally they're already having various issues by the time they're abandoned.

[RoxyFlare]

Thank you so much for this video. I'm a huge fan and love everything you make, but this one really hits home for me in a very tender and profound way. I apologize in advance to everyone for such a lengthy comment, but I've never gotten the chance to talk about this before.

This is the first time you've explored a location I've actually been to myself when it was in operation. It's very spooky to me because not only do I know this place, I know it intimately: I have extremely personal and special memories of this hotel, and staying there was a formative event in my life. I attended a conference here almost twenty years ago now - I can't remember the exact date - and I got to stay in one of the first floor atrium rooms. The experience changed my life. I'm not a frequent traveler or anything, but I've stayed in a few hotels over the years and have even been lucky enough to stay in a handful of really nice ones. I'd never stayed in a hotel like this one before, and I as write this I haven't ever got the chance to do so again. No other hotel I've ever been in has left this big of an impact on me: Those few days I spent here are burned into my psyche and have continued to inspire me ever since.

That atrium was so, *so* beautiful when the hotel was operational. My nervous system is hypersensitive to stimuli, and walking through those doors into the atrium for the first time was overpowering in the best possible way: To me everything felt bright, warm, colorful, inviting and welcoming, and the banners hanging down from the ceiling added just the right touch of grandeur. It felt alive and bustling as guests and conference attendees mingled, toed and froed, but it also felt cozy at the same time. It was like we were all in living in our own little community together: That wide, spacious concourse was like our own Main Street, we had our own community swimming pool (with hot tub!) and, when I was there at least, there was even a video arcade in that second floor kiosk-room you can see in a few shots. At night we'd all "go out on the town", sit by the pool and socialize, then go upstairs and hang out at the arcade into well into the wee hours of the morning. Some kids would even play tag and hide-and-seek by ducking and weaving between the atrium, the surrounding hotel and the maintenance areas! It was so lovely and so much fun. I caught myself repeatedly thinking how nice it would be to live in a place like this, especially given its location and what the weather gets like there 'round about February or March.

For years and years after that conference this hotel stuck out in my mind, and I never could completely explain why. Sure, it was a delightful weekend or whatever, but something about the building itself touched my heart too and it frustrated me I couldn't identify or articulate what it was or why. Over a decade later I discovered the philosophy of themed spaces and, entranced, I read all I could about design theory, Victor Gruen and the mall concept. Only then did things finally "click" for me: The reason I felt so happy in places like (good) malls, the ski mountain I live by with an outdoor plaza stylized as an Alpine village, the Contemporary Resort and EPCOT in Walt Disney World and this hotel is because I have some kind of innate, deep-rooted affection for modernist architecture. I love inhabiting a space that's been meticulously designed from the ground up around a theme and to service a need for people in a creative, elegant way. It's probably also why I have a huge thing for ocean liners too. I now consider 20th Century design theory a true passion of mine, it's helped mould my creativity and imagination in all sorts of new ways and allowed me to learn much more about who I am as a person. I'm confident in saying that never would have happened if I hadn't stayed here all those years ago.

I knew the hotel had changed hands a lot over the 2010s, went through some hard times and eventually closed in 2020. Even so, it's still so surreal seeing it like this. I'm happy it's more or less untouched (or at least it was when you were there), and I echo the sentiments of a lot of the other commenters calling it for it to be turned into a residential community. The housing situation in this country is so sad and it breaks my heart when people go homeless while places like this are torn down and forgotten. It's a cliché, I know, but in the case of this sort of modernist design in my (admittedly very limited) experience, "they really don't build them like they used to anymore". It's infuriating, too, because this is pretty much the exact problem this type of architecture could have helped solve in the first place.

I don't know if anybody will read this given the absurd length and lateness both, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my story all the same. I literally cried genuine tears writing this. Please keep doing what you love: Art like this touches people.

[SirBilliam]

I've been to a few hotels that have a large closed in atrium, and for some reason, I have always really liked that style of hotel. You can go outside your room to the amenities without having to actually go outdoors, which is nice when the weather is really cold or hot. Something about those hotels has always stuck with me, but sadly more and more of them are closing.

[harlowblackadder]

I remember those Holiday Inns designed with all the rooms facing an indoor pool! So fun for us kids on road trips to swim at night.

[stevew]

It's a shame that the building can't be repurposed into, say, apartments. I love seeing unusual buildings being made into apartments - my sister's old co-worker was a teacher who had retired, the school she taught at was closed right afterward and was converted to apartments for seniors. The room she moved into turned out to be her original homeroom. I wish more landowners would repurpose perfectly fine, structurally sound buildings into something other than a future pile of rubble.

[dominicfaga]

me and my friends just found this hotel its crazy how good condition it's in. I hate when people destroy it. It's been 2 weeks since this video and all the dishes in the restaurant are broken on the floor. I hate people that's trash these places and ruin it for the rest.

[jvoulo]

As a local inspector in that county, I remember in the beginning of 2020 inspecting their kitchen right before they closed. They had no idea it was coming. Recently, from what I have been from the local codes department, it has been vandalized so much that no one wants to buy the property. Apparently the homeless were burning the mattresses in the pool to "heat" the place while people have been stripping copper and other valuables out of it for the past few years. It's changed hands a few times but so far no one has actually done anything with it. The other high rise hotel that is adjacent to it also belongs to the facility and has since had a large fire in one of the top floors. I don't believe anything will come of the place as it stands. Time will tell.

[MarksKicksOnRoute]

There's absolutely no one that delivers such amazing content like Jake and Company! Six stars rating!