Mai Tai Resort Motel (Polynesian Retreat), Osage Beach

Has anybody ever heard of the Mai Tai Resort Motel Polynesian Retreat) located in Osage Beach on the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri? The limited info I could find on the place indicated that there was a Luau Restaurant, a Top Deck Restaurant on the third floor, and a bar/nightclub called the Luau Shack.

Check out the entrance that greeted you at night, is that cool or what. Bigbro, what year are those cars??

Here is an aerial photo of the compound.

And the description from the back of the card.

Polynesia in the Ozarks, who knew? This is right up there with the Tan-Tar-A resort from the Ozarks that was posted by Basement Kahuna.

Here is an add posted by Woofmutt on Tiki Finds

From a Lake of the Ozarks travel guide. No year. (Early to mid 60s at the latest.)

Prize question: WHERE did they rip off the Tikis and outrigger from ? :D

Mai-Tai Resort pool area. Dusty do you have an address on your card?

"Anyone who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream" Karl Woermann

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-05-29 17:40 ]

A blow up of DC's card showing the pool area and building. I put an arrow to show the angle the photo was taken. And Sven I give up on were the ad highjacked the images.

On 2009-05-29 15:01, bigbrotiki wrote:
Prize question: WHERE did they rip off the Tikis and outrigger from ? :D

Chin Tiki?

I posted about this place years ago on Ye Olde Yahoo with no comments. And I missed this thread last year. I finally go to scan that ad yesterday and did a search before posting (Ozarks, I thought) and had no hits so just throwed it in the Tiki Finds.

Trav,

Where DID you get that image of the pool and building? Very nice, I have been wondering what this place might have in store after I found the postcards.

Woofmutt, great ad, glad you posted it and got this thread back up again.

Bigbro, I have seen that ad before, but I don't know where. It's not Chin Tiki. Damn it! Another stump TC question.

DC

OK -I won't torture you any longer about the origin of those Tiki/outrigger graphics:

I know I have the original somewhere, but damn, I can't find it, so here is one of those infamous PTD out-of-focus shots (which I swiped from the Hawaii brochure thread), of the letterhead from the Reef Hotel chain in Hawaii, I tried to re-focus it in I-Photo:

(But thank you PTD, for without your image I could not have proven the rip off :) )

Bigbro,

I can't believe you are using one of PTD's camera shots! Here is a blow-up of the logo from a matchbook I have. I knew I had seen that somewhere.

DC

Thanks! Allow me to perform a clear identity comparison (after tweaking contrast and focus on the Reef art):

Here is another postcard from the Mai Tai Resort posted by Tikisgrl recently on Tiki Finds.

DC

Came across this cup on ebay and figured it had to be from this place with the font and Tiki rendering.

Now we need to see a menu, etc.

DC

Cool find - a Tiki resort in the Ozarks? No way!

I doubt what my eyes have seen.

I just got this postcard with the pool view of the Mai Tai resort. Great looking scene.

Must be another blue law area with respect to serving drinks, the back of the card advertises "set-ups" for drinking around the pool. I still don't get this?

DC

That's funny. The entire normal architecture has been "wallpapered" with thatch. Everything is furry!

Here is another postcard from the Mai Tai that was on ebay. They had Tiki torches and funny Tikis.

Funny Tikis with breasts!

Reminds me of the female Trader Vic's Tiki posted by Tattoo recently.

DC

What a cool photo! And you did not get it ? Did .... ? I can see the caption for it:

"A typical evening scene in the Ozarks"

Torches, Tiki and concrete screen block --tres Tiki Modern! And kinda sparse, compared to the previous pool postcard that looked like a woolly mammoth (what made me think of that?) had shed all over the place! Maybe they got all those torches for the pool, and when they saw all that thatch decided to keep them far away down by the beach! :D

Bigbro,

Lost that postcard to one of the ebay Big Game Hunters. I had never seen that Tiki style before and then you posted this brochure on the Aloha Kai thread. Looks like the same type.

DC

Found this brochure for the Mai Tai resort at an estate sale in KC last wee.
It was among lotsa travel items of mid-60s vintage.

Rick, welcome to TC. If you get a chance, go over to the introductions thread and tell us about your tiki interests. I have been searching for information on this long gone resort for a while and have not been too successful. Thanks for sharing your great find.

Rick,

Thanks for posting the brochure, nice to see some more info on the Mai Tai. Did you find Tiki Central while you were researching the Mai Tai?

As I went back through this thread, I noticed that the bar ended up being called several different names:

Luau Shack (my research)
Sky Line Tiki Lounge (ad)
Mainlander (postcard)
Eye of the Hurricane Bar (Brochure)

Can you read the sign above the entrance to the hut on the front of the brochure?

DC

Saw another ad from the Mai Tai.

This one advertised dancing at the romantic Luau Club.

DC

i bet the mai tai became the tan-tara resort: http://www.tan-tar-a.com/

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=6441&forum=1&vpost=67077

neato coolville has a whole mess of photos on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neatocoolville/3575394169/

I scored another great postcard from the Mai Tai. This one shows the main entrance and port-cochere with lots of Tikis, torches, thatch, an outrigger canoe and other Polynesian elements.

Close up of the Tikis on the left.

Looks like they may have all come from the catalog Bigbro posted. Where is the catalog from?

The entrance with Witcos and more Tikis out front.

Tiki in the Ozarks!

DC

On 2009-07-11 09:49, Dustycajun wrote:
Here is another postcard from the Mai Tai Resort posted by Tikisgrl recently on Tiki Finds.

DC

here is a slightly different scan of that same card -

On 2011-03-24 10:56, Johnny Dollar wrote:
i bet the mai tai became the tan-tara resort: http://www.tan-tar-a.com/

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=6441&forum=1&vpost=67077

neato coolville has a whole mess of photos on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neatocoolville/3575394169/

I know why JD thought that but I was pretty sure that it could not be true. I remember very clearly that my Grandparents went to Tan-Tar-a in the early 1970's. Even as a kid I knew Tan-Tar-a had been around awhile. I just felt that the two resorts existed at the same time. Since none of the postcards in this thread are dated or were mailed, we have no certain dates of operation for the Mai-Tai. The brochure Rick posted is cool but again no date is given.
So what became of the Mai-Tai??? I have always wondered how to figure this out. I wrote to the Osage Beach Chamber of Commerce and got a nice reply from someone who gave me the address of the former owner and I then wrote him a letter and mailed it to see if he was receptive to filling in some blanks about what is known about his former resort. NO reply. :(
A couple of years later I found a box of old travel brochures at an estate sale. Mostly from the late 1960's and early 1970's. Among the contents were several publications from the Lake of the Ozarks region including Osage Beach, the town closest to the locations of Tan-Tar-a and the Mai-Tai.
When I got home I pored through the brochures and ads figuring that I would surely find ads for the Mai-Tai. But NOOOOOOOOO. Not a single one. Plenty of Tan-Tar-a though. I started to lean towards JD's theory a little but something just didn't fit. The urban archaeologist in me was not satisfied.
Frustrated at not finding what I hoped for, I put the brochures away until yesterday when I decided to give them a fresh look using a different strategy. The address. It's basic. Lake road 54-30. That's it. Then I remembered a map in the pile of brochures. Since Tan-Tar-a is still in operation, I checked it's location on the map and it turns out to be on the opposite side of the lake channel and downstream a ways from the site of Road 54-30 where Mai-Tai should be.
Lake road #30 is off of Highway 54. It's only about a mile long so I checked every business on the road until by a process of elimination I had one that seemed to fit. A place called Osage House. So back to the ads and finally....BINGO. Although the camera angle is from the lake looking ashore, you can tell that this is definitely the same place that used to be the Mai-Tai. So here's what I found:

1972 Ad

1975 Ad

1982 Ad

And finally here is a recent satellite image of the same property with plenty of pavement and not one clue remaining that would prove that the Mai-Tai ever existed here. This is progress aka big money at work in the Ozarks.

So that's it folks. Guess I will just make my own Mai-tai...where's my Rum?

Here is a scan, rather than an iPhone photo, of the Mai Tai brochure I found a couple of years ago. Perhaps now you can read that it says "Snack Shop" above the entryway.

On 2013-08-15 05:59, Johnny Dollar wrote:

here is a slightly different scan of that same card -

check this out! found thru recent internet research - this is from a 35mm slide, dated 1966. it is clearly a view of the same building from a considerably lower elevation - note both detail and overall photo.

cheers,

j$

Found this ad for the Mai Tai Resort in the April and May 1966 editions of The Plaza magazine, published in KCMO.