Courtesy The Curtis
The Curtis
Denver
It’s fun to hear Marge Simpson’s voice announcing the Big Hair floor in the elevator at the Curtis hotel in downtown Denver’s theater district. But it’s funnier when Robert Van Winkle, the artist formerly known as Vanilla Ice, stays at the hotel and hears his own voice announcing the fifth floor; i.e., the One Hit Wonders floor.
“He loved it,” said Kate Thompson, director of sales and marketing for the Curtis. “He thought it was hilarious.”
And that’s the point of the 336-room hotel’s pop culture theme: “Laugh. Have fun. Be happy.”
The first three floors of the 16-story hotel are devoted to public and event spaces; they include a neoretro lobby and the Corner Office restaurant on the ground floor.
Each of the 13 guest room floors has a different theme: Perfect Pairs, One Hit Wonders, Fun and Games, Laugh Out Loud, Sci-Fi, Big Hair, Champions, Chick Flicks, Dance, Dun Dun Dunnnnnn, TV Mania, Mad About Music and Pedal to the Metal.
Touches of each theme are evident everywhere: a silhouette of Bert and Ernie on the Perfect Pairs floor, quotes from “Top Gun” on the Pedal to the Metal floor and a framed picture of the masked Michael Myers from “Halloween” on the Dun Dun Dunnnnnn floor, the hotel’s scary-movie level.
“So few hotels have a 13th floor that we really play ours up,” Thompson said. “It’s Jack Nicholson saying ‘Here’s Johnny’ when you get off the elevator.”
The Curtis opened as an independent hotel in 2007, then partnered with Hilton in 2010 to become a DoubleTree hotel, she said. The hotel’s theme came about with the original owners, who wanted it to be a fun, pop-culture-filled property.
Each room is decorated with chic, contemporary furnishings, and the theme isn’t overwhelmingly in your face: a Speed Racer print on the wall or a movie quote etched into a mirror. But the Curtis is launching a renovation in December to refresh the guest rooms and convert one room on each floor into a “hyper themed” room that will be completely over the top, Thompson said.
The hyperthemed room on the TV Mania floor, for example, will replicate a vintage talk-show set, and the Will Ferrell movie “Talladega Nights” will be the inspiration for the hyperthemed room on the Pedal to the Metal floor, Lucy and Desi for the Perfect Pairs floor, and Star Trek on the Sci-Fi floor.
www.thecurtis.com
