Post #289368 by Volcano Girl on Sat, Mar 3, 2007 9:42 AM

On 2007-03-03 06:07, Kono wrote:
I made you a mai tai last night but I drank it!

Thanks for all the work. You're doing a fine job on the scanning. I wonder who made the Bora Bora statue? What's interesting about that statue is that it has the marquesan style head on top of a moai style body.

Did you say that you have a sketch or blueprint of the layout? I'm having a hard time picturing it in my head. Am I correct that there was a Bora Bora Lounge, Lava Lounge, Lanai and Dining Room?

Do you remember ever hearing about or visiting the other Florida tiki establishments? As Sven mentioned, the large bowl at the Cypress Gardens luau is the one that they use at the Mai Kai in Ft Lauderdale.

Hey, no fair on the mai tai!! :P

Oh, yes, and the layouts. It turns out that they seem to be sketches Dad must have made of how to arrange a certain portion of the restaurant for say like a private party or something. They aren't making real sense to me. It must have been something he was playing around with, because the outlines of the space are all the same, but some of the basics, like where the restrooms are changes on each one, the different stations are in different places (ie. water station, turn-in order station), even the manager's office in a different place on each sketch. Also there are notations with math problems about how much of a certain thing needed to be ordered or accounted for. It does not show the layout of the rest of the building, at least not in a way that I'm understanding it yet. I'll try to ask Mom if it supposed to complement some other drawing or layout.

As for the blueprint, I think it's just of the house when Dad used to live there as a kid. It doesn't relate to the transformed building in any way that I can discern, other than it's what the structure was like before it was altered. Seeing that she sent some pictures of the house before it was changed, that's probably all she had, so she sent it. I'll get around to showing the couple of those house pics after a while.

I really, really wish that I had a photo of the entrance to the restaurant, through the covered walkway. I mean it's great to see the volcano and the lagoons and the buildings, but that next (missing) view would be total sweetness. It's funny, but as helpful as these pictures are to give you an idea of the place, it almost seems like they are not the parts that I really want to convey. I guess we will have to glean as much information as we can from each one of them.

As for the buildings, there were two. I think that the nightclub building housed pretty much one long room, with a bar to the left as you entered and the stage on the far side (I think, but I'm not 100% on the stage position, it could have been on the right about midway.) This nightclub building was called the Lava Club by Mom, but I think I called it the Tiki Lounge in my earliest posts.

The restaurant building housed the main dining area, the Bora Bora Lounge/aka the Tiki Lounge by Mom's words/aka the lanai. I always thought the lanai was the entryway before you got to the atrium part when the BB statue was, but I guess I was using the wrong terminology. So really there were three areas that were used by most guests (the dining room, the lounge, and then the nightclub, which was separate). If Dad had a separate banquet room, I am unaware of its location. I would have to guess that for private parties he must have closed off an area of the restaurant to regular customers, maybe used some sort of room divider or curtain. I just don't know for sure, but will ask Mom if she remembers any more about that. Maybe that's what those sketches of layouts are for.

The only establishment that I had heard of back then that was Polynesian (besides our own) was the one at Disneyland. We had been there about a year or so before Dad opened the Volcano. Mom said that she remembers that Dad had visited Anne Langford's (?) place in Ft. Lauderdale, and I can only guess that she is referring to the Mai-Tai there. However, I can't seem to find a reference to Anne Langford with any of the historical information online about the Mai-Tai. I got the impression that they were sort of friendly competitors, so it's possible that Dad either borrowed the bowl from them or had one of his own. Maybe when the place closed the Mai-Kai got some of the ephemera?? Unless someone knows anyone at the Mai-Kai to talk to, I don't think we'll ever really know some of these specifics.

I have seen one picture at the Critiki Mai-Kai site that reminds me of the entrance to the Volcano. Here it is!

That little bridge over the water...picture something akin to that, but instead have it be a thatch-covered walkway. The part closest to us (where the musicians are) would be walkway on top of grass with the lagoon and volcano to the left (out of sight from this vantage point, but not in real life). Once you cross the bridge (which was longer than the one in the drawing) are the big heavy double doors to the restaurant. After you go through the doors, the BB is in front of you, the main dining are is to the left and the bar/lounge is on the right. Is it coming into your imagination any better? I will attempt to sketch a layout and will scan it in at some point.

I do know that Dad loved Trader Vic's, but I don't know which location, or if he discovered it after the Volcano or before. He traveled extensively across the US and loved eating out at any fine restaurant, not just Polynesian. I have matches somewhere in my huge collection (if it still exists) from the Mai-Kai although I have never been there myself. Some of the pictures on Critiki look very dark on the restaurant parts, and the ambience at the Volcano was not as dark as those. If there are any of the old Kahiki in Columbus, it was more similar to the atmosphere there. I do know for a fact that Dad had no idea of the Kahiki's existence until we took him there in the late 90's. We were stunned that there was another restaurant as close in ambience to the Volcano, and had never heard of it in all Dad's travels (although in fairness to Dad, I don't think he visited Columbus at all until we moved here).