The End of Suburban Cincinnati's Alpine Chalets
Originally envisioned as an alpine lodge to complement the nearby amusement park, the Kings Island Inn and Resort attracted the likes of the Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. In its later years, it changed with the times and fell from its role as part of a "Midwestern Disney World." In the coming days, it's headed for demolition.
UPDATE: While finalized development plans have yet to materialize, a followup article was published in February 2015 featuring photographs made inside the resort prior to its demolition.
This past sunday, Kings Island Amusement Park closed for the 2014 season. The Kings Island Resort and Conference Center across the street closed for good. The digital marquee by the highway displayed a message of gratitude to an employee who had worked there for 42 years and as I walked across the lot, a car pulled up to me. In the sedan was the hotel's General Manager who somberly confirmed what I had heard the other day: the hotel was in fact closing.
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| - The resort's front entrance. |
He had just finished locking the place up and filled me in. Essentially, the facility had gotten to a point where it badly needed refurbishment. Cheap construction and carpet had caused serious mold problems and the cost to renovate had become too high. He, nor the workers who came by later, seemed to have a clear idea of what was taking the resort's place. The only thing they knew was that eventually a liquidation auction would happen and the building's would be razed. What could come to the property next, no one seemed to know.
The resort itself was a bit of an anomaly. Price wise, the cost of a room per night was situated well below established names like Holiday Inn and Marriott, but above the discount brands like Super 8 and Microtel. Reviewers from Hotels.com, Tripadvisor and Priceline all seemed to agree that the hotel generally deserved "2.5/5 stars," the common theme being that it was "outdated." Nevertheless, sprinkled in amongst the mediocre and overly negative reviews were a few positive ones, mainly coming from loyal customers who seemed to visit every summer.
What made this lodging destination unique though was its history and its billing as a "resort." As I walked around the property you could tell what the original intent was. This place was once an oasis, something truly different and upscale compared to the average roadside hotel/motel experience. In its later years though, it seemed to have become more like a Motel 6. Not that there's anything wrong with Motel 6, but I wouldn't exactly call Motel 6 a "resort."
The property's "resort" moniker hails back to its inception in the late 60's. Cincinnati's famed Coney Island Amusement Park on the banks of the Ohio River was landlocked and flood prone. It had been purchased by Taft Broadcasting in 1968. By 1970, Taft broke ground on their replacement for Coney Island: Kings Island, situated along Interstate 71 in the town of Kings Mills, OH. In the early 70's, regional/seasonal amusement parks were springing up all across the United States. Many of them, Kings Island included, were vastly different from the "Six Flags style" corporate themed packages of rides and entertainment you find today. Back then, the big idea was to emulate Disney's "vacation destination" ideals in quality and execution. Kings Island's existence didn't begin just as an amusement park, but was intended to be a massive entertainment complex. The properties initially included the amusement park, a campground, two Jack Nicklaus designed golf courses, the College Football Hall of Fame and the Kings Island Inn.
All of these things were born under the management and ownership of Taft Broadcasting. The Inn opened with 117 rooms in May, 1972. Themed to an alpine resort, it borrowed architectural themes indicative of Swiss, Italian and German architecture - some of which was still visible when the place closed. By October of that year, ground was broken to expand the Inn's facility up to 300 rooms.
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| - A 1979 brochure touts: "Hong Kong Phooey invites you to relax amid the Alpine enchantment at our 300 room Kings Island Inn. Enjoy both indoor and outdoor pools, a game room, tennis courts and miniature golf." Image from KICentral.com. |
At the time of its construction, the resort was really the only game in town. Early 70's Mason/Kings Mills wasn't anywhere near the suburban powerhouse it is now and featured very few lodging options. Kings Island itself was promoted and marketed more as a tourist destination/getaway rather than a regional entertainment option, so the idea of offering a full resort fit right in. The Inn was truly once a proud part of the Kings Island brand, so much so that it was featured in two prominent television shows filmed at the park in the early years.
The first was the Partridge Family's "I Left My Heart in Cincinnati" episode.
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| - The Partridge Family places an order with the poolside wait staff at the Kings Island Inn in 1972. |
EDIT:
After publishing this article, commenter "chiggerspook" noted that the main playing the waiter in the episode mentioned above is legendary Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench:
The second time Kings Island and its resort were featured in television was the next summer when The Brady Bunch filmed their episode "The Cincinnati Kids."
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| - The Kings Island Inn featured during the opening credits of an episode of 'The Brady Bunch.' |
The Brady's spend most of the episode over at the park where they try to salvage the dad's business trip, but the Inn is featured in a few shots. In 2001, Nick-At-Nite debuted a series entitled "Pop-Up Brady." The series took classic episodes of the show, but would have interesting factoids "pop up" on screen. In one of the scenes featuring the Kings Island Inn, the factoid stated that the actors were dissatisfied with their stay at the resort particularly due to "spiders in the bathtub."
The whole episode doesn't appear to be online, but a highlight reel of the "pop-up" version can be seen here.
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| - The Great Wolf Lodge (opened in 2006) and Kings Island Amusement Park seen across the street. |
As mentioned before, The Kings Island Inn operated under a common ownership with the nearby amusement park and other attractions. By the 1980's though, things started to change. KICentral.com offers an excellent, detailed history of the park, but here's the gist of the story:
At the end of the park's 1983 season, a management group within Taft Broadcasting purchased two-third's of Taft's interest in Kings Island and its sister parks. Their new partnership was dubbed the Kings Entertainment Company (KECO). KECO along with its Taft parent company were eventually purchased by Cincinnati business tycoon Carl Lindner in 1987. Lindner controlled KECO until July 31, 1992 when he sold Kings Island, its campground and KECO's other parks to Paramount Communications. Lindner retained the adjoining properties across the highway where his namesake tennis arena now stands. The College Football Hall of Fame was closed (a story for a different day), the golf courses sold to new owners and the Kings Island Inn was liquidated.
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| - A courtyard between chalets. |
I haven't found any sources indicating who eventually purchased the Inn and reopened it, but at some point it came to be known as the Kings Island Resort and Conference Center. Oddly enough, neither the park's Paramount/Viacom or current Cedar Fair ownership seemed to take issue with the hotel using the "Kings Island" name, despite the resort now being owned by a separate entity.
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| - Pedestrian bridge connecting the chalets with the indoor pool. |
The photographs I took for this article were made on the afternoon of November 2, 2014. The resort's final guests had checked out that morning. In many ways, the buildings and property still reeked of their 1970's design.
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| - Entrance to the indoor pool. |
Through the years the resort had managed to hold on to some of the amenities from its inception, some of which couldn't be found at nearby competing hotels.
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| - The resort's indoor pool. |
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| - The resort boasted two tennis courts. |
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| - Basketball hoop and pond overlooking the nearby suburban landscape. |
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| - Playground located in a courtyard of the chalets. |
The outdoor pool seemed to have been closed towards the end of summer and hadn't been drained, just left to wait for its impending demolition.
Three school busses parked out front were emblazoned with paint jobs evoking the Partridge Family's iconic transportation from the television show. The busses were once used to shuttle guests between the hotel and the park's public "pick up/drop off" area as opposed to the front gate as they had when the two businesses were under the same ownership.
Initially when I went up to photograph the hotel, I didn't see its story becoming an update for QC/D. However, while walking around there was something that struck me. In the eight seasons I worked at the park and with how much time I've spent in the area, I had never once stepped foot on the resort's property. As I walked the grounds, it was evident that the hotel had once been a far more grand experience, the product of another time. To me though, this wasn't just some 1970's faux Swiss lodge that had been turned into a discount motel, it reflected the evolution of the nearby park and surrounding area.
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| - A courtyard within the resort. |
The Kings Island Inn and Resort had at one time truly been a destination built around luxury, just as the park across the street had. These days, there's no doubt that Kings Island is one of the premiere regional/seasonal amusement parks in the world. Disney World though, it is most definitely not. The attention to detail and escapism that the park and resort of the early 70's preached was a reflection of different objectives, a much bolder vision than what you'd find today. The Kings Island area bordering Interstate 71 was planned as a Walt Disney World for the Midwest. In many ways, it once was. Watch the aforementioned Brady Bunch/Partridge Family episodes and you can see that the park has a totally different feel than it does today. That notion is very clear in this early 70's brochure for the Kings Island Inn:
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| - Brochure located and scanned by Standbyme. Featured originally here. |
Words like "luxurious," "enchantment," "elegance," and "sophisticated" are used to describe it. It touts nightly live entertainment, a cosmopolitan restaurant evoking old world charm and claims to whisk you "into another part of the world." Judging from the online reviews seen earlier, it seems the ideals of the early 70's didn't survive ownership shake ups and changing times. The resort was no longer the only game in town, subdivisions grew up along with movie theaters, fast food and other hotel options. The park across the way, still top notch, but it now focuses on seasons passes and frequent regional visitors rather than tourists and destination vacationers.
In the Spring, Kings Island Amusement Park will open for the 2015 season per usual. The Kings Island Resort and Conference Center though, will be long gone and with it, remnants of the ideals and vision of a different time.
As of this article's posting, future plans for the site following the building's demolition have not been announced.
UPDATE: While finalized development plans have yet to materialize, a followup article was published in February 2015 featuring photographs made inside the resort prior to its demolition.
- For more Kings Island history and the fan universe that surrounds the park, check out the ever awesome KICentral.com.
- Special thanks to Ryan aka Boddah1994, Standbyme (aka JD) and a man who interprets things for their help with this article.
Over the years, several of QC/D's urban exploration stories have focused on abandoned amusement parks: View all of the stories
Updates | Oct. 22, 2017:
- I got to tour the entire facility as it met the wrecking ball in 2015.
- The entire facility is now demolished.