As part of a summer movie travel survey, Fandango asked more than 2,000 moviegoers which iconic “movie resorts” would they would most want to visit across America. The following top five U.S.-based hotels, made even more famous by the movies shot on their sites, were recently featured on “The Today Show.”
Film fans are looking to follow in the footsteps of their favorite stars at these five classic movie location destinations, ranked in order of preference:
1. Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Turtle Bay Resort, Hawaii.
Oahu’s legendary North Shore has seen plenty of filming activity over the years (it served as the home base for TV’s “Lost”), but no movie or TV show boosted its profile as much as the Judd Apatow-produced comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, starring Jason Segel, Kristin Bell, Russell Brand, Jonah Hill and Mila Kunis. Rumor has it that many fans flock to the white sand beaches of the 880-acre Turtle Bay Resort, hoping to flirt with a sympathetic front desk clerk like Kunis in the hope they’ll land a free suite. (Trust us; it won’t work.)
2. Dirty Dancing’s Mountain Lake Hotel, Virginia.
Though Dirty Dancing takes place at a fictional 1960s Catskills lodge called Kellerman’s, it was actually shot partially in the Appalachian Mountains at this family resort in Southwestern Virginia. (Other scenes, like the iconic lake practice, were shot in North Carolina's long-gone Lake Lure Resort.) Fans can see the film’s dining room, gazebo and places where Patrick Swayze taught Jennifer Grey how to dance.
3. The Shining's Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon
Although Colorado’s Stanley Hotel was the real inspiration for Stephen King’s fictional Overlook Hotel, Oregon’s 1937 national park lodge was the exterior for the Overlook in Kubrick’s classic horror film. There is no spooky room 237 at the Timberline, and you won’t find the garden maze where Jack Nicholson chased his family (most of that was created on a set in Englaand) but fans still show up for chills and thrills, which can be found via year-round skiing and snowboarding.
4. Somewhere in Time's Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan. This Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour/Christopher Plummer time-travel movie was based on a Richard Matheson novel called Bid Time Return (which was actually set entirely at San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado, see below). But a scheduling conflict brought about the location shift and the movie story was moved to Chicago and Upper Michigan’s timeless, forested Mackinac Island. Romantics still flock to the resort, listening to the film’s lush John Barry score, in the hopes that they may discover their own Jane Seymour strolling by the shore.
5. Some Like It Hot’s Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego. This colorful Victorian resort from the 1880s looks like a movie set, from its ornate cage elevator to its spectacularly landscaped grounds. The Del achieved Hollywood icon status when it played the Florida millionaire beach hideaway visited by Marilyn Monroe, along with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (in drag), in Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic Some Like It Hot. Monroe and her then-husband, playwright Arthur Miller, stayed in their own private Hotel Del bungalow.
