Photos courtesy of Cabana Bay Beach Resort
Styles come and styles go, but cool remains constant. It is - appropriately enough - universal.
Cool was born in that brief transition between "keen" in the 50s and "far out" in the 60s. Cool is Sean Connery, sitting poolside casually nursing a cocktail. Cool is the glint of sun off chrome. Cool is beach blanket bingo, with the young American male discovering the wonders of the bikini. Cool is feet propped out the windows of a woody with a longboard on the roof and the Beach Boys on the radio.
As tastes changed and "far out" gave way in its turn to "rad" and "dope" in the ensuing decades, this brightly colored atomic-age cool remained, passing from novelty to kitsch and finally returning to its rightful place as the vanguard visual style of America's tastemakers.
Cool is back, and it calls Cabana Cay Beach Resort home.
Cabana Bay's throwback aesthetic has brought cool back in a big way, elevating the neon-hued color palette and meandering wavy patterns of the late '50s and early '60s beyond their throwback roots and giving them new and modern life. These days, cool lives in the sparkle of the neon sign greeting visitors, the multi-tiered tower dominating the pool, the vintage swizzle sticks in The Swizzle Lounge. Cool lives; and it brought the classic family drive-up vacation with it.
"There was this nostalgic aspect of it," said Russ Dagon, vice president and executive project director for Universal Creative, who had a major hand in the look and feel of the property. "This is an idea that we all like because we remember it to some extent. We remember going on family vacations and having an experience and there's something you'll take away from that."
Dagon was central to the distinctive vintage look of the property (he cautions against the use of the word "retro," saying, "We use the world retro a lot, but I was corrected by one of our graphics people that it's vintage. It's not retro, it's vintage.") but he had a lot of help in creating the multi-layered environment at Cabana Bay.
"It was myself and Mark Woodbury, president of our creative group that talked about different ideas. We had a number of things that we considered, and kept gravitating towards … this was a concept that we really liked that we knew we could deliver really well."
And as with most creative endeavors, some of the best ideas came from all members of the team. Dagon points out how the idea to use '50s-era brands like Zest soap and Alerto V05 cream rinse came from operations. "We were designing a bottle that we could put the shampoo in and they came in and said, 'Hey, we can get this.' And we just threw our design away and said 'Do that. That's better than anything we're going to come up with.'" Even some of the bigger details came from outside the team. Charlie Gundacker, senior VP of attraction development for Universal was the one who came up with the name for the lobby bar, The Swizzle Lounge. (Said Dagon, "We told him, 'Yeah, why wouldn't we name it that?'")
The way this visual language has been captured at Cabana Bay is everywhere, and it's nowhere. You walk through the lobby and you'll hear the Beach Boys, the Platters and every other manner of oldies tunes. But head to the pool, and doo-wop blends effortlessly into a blend of today's poolside hits.
Feel the crisp rush of air conditioning as you enter a room and you'll be greeted by a dazzlingly period-appropriate color scheme, a wide surfboard-inspired counter that sweeps past the Japanese-style sliding wall and back to the beds, where a genuine '50s alarm clock awaits. And of course you'll see that Zest and Alberto V05 waiting in the shower. But you'll also see high-def TVs, USB chargers and all the modern amenities of very "now" hotel.
"All of our hotels take you to a place," said Dagon. "Portofino, it's Portofino Italy. Hard Rock, it's the rock star's mansion. Royal Pacific Resort is the golden age of travel, it's Bali and Indonesia; it's an island-hop. This wasn't to take you to place so much as a time. You're immersed in the '50s and '60s. And the idea to take you to a time was something we really liked."
The result of this dedication to time travel is a hotel that recaptures that classic era of the drive-up family vacation, from the vintage family trucksters parked out front to the groovy piles of pillboxes and footlockers in the lobby. It doesn't feel like a 1960s hotel, it feels like what a 1960s hotel felt like to that family pulling up in the family station wagon. Every detail, from the way the colors pop at the Atomic Tonic poolside lounge to the collection of 1950s bowling trophies at the on-site bowling alley Galaxy Bowl evokes a time and place where cool never dies.
It's a pedigree that Cabana Bay, a Loews Hotels property, comes by naturally. Each of its buildings evoke a historic hotel - Thunderbird, Starlight, Castaway, Continental and Americana - but it is this last one that holds a special place in the property's DNA.
"Americana was the first hotel developed by Loews ," said Dagon. "The terrarium here is another nod to Loews Americana. We recognize our partner and what they've meant to the hotel industry and really wanted to celebrate that."
Indeed, the palm trees central to the main lobby that greet visitors are the spitting image of the iconic Morris Lapidus-designed terrarium that anchored the original Americana in Bal Harbour Florida. It's just one of the many details leave guests in a wonderful sort of time warp. The on-site fitness center carries the Jack LaLanne name, and its walls carry scores of photos, plaques and mementos from the king of 1950s fitness. Video screens roll through vintage advertisements at the Bayliner Diner. It's everywhere, and yet somehow the theme never seems forced or inauthentic.
"The day we opened, I saw a grandparent walking with a grandchild and pointing things out, 'Well this is the way it used to be when I was a kid,'" said Dagon. "You like to think that's going to happen, but to see it first-hand was neat."
There is no shortage of nostalgia, but more than that, Cabana Bay harkens back to the golden age of the family vacation, puts a masterful modern spin on it, and in the process has created an old-meets-new destination unlike anywhere else.
And that's pretty cool.
READ ON: You know what else is cool? Getting into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter an hour before everyone else. Your one free twist of the time-turner comes with a stay at Cabana Bay, and it's crucial to Enjoying Universal Orlando Like a Pro.
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