The "Behind the Scenes Casino Tour" at the Catalina Island Casino is a unique blend of living history, music history, movie star anecdotes, and luxury life in the 1930s.
My wife and I booked the longer Behind the Scenes Tour online three days prior. On previous trips to the island, we found that the tour was usually booked if you tried to purchase tickets at the door. This time we were successful and were there waiting first in line.
A few minutes before tour time, a very dapper, polo shirted manager type person greeted both my wife and me by name! Wow! But he was obviously going to tell us bad news and he did. He told us 16 people had canceled (mostly for bad weather) and the remaining couple had not yet arrived. Expecting the worst, we held our breath, and instead, were treated to a big smile and the words..." but we are going to do the tour anyway!" Wow again!
Sean Mcalpin is a very talented Personal Concierge for the Catalina Island Company and for our 90-minute tour he proved to be a charming, knowledgeable companion totally dedicated to promoting the wonders of this American Masterpiece of engineering and architectural innovation. Shawn is a bit of an explorer and curator as well as a businessman. He himself has discovered a literal treasure trove of paintings hidden in a previously undiscovered room within the casino. Sean continues to explore the many hidden places in this massive 12-story structure and regularly adds rare items to its tour collection. We could see he really loves this place.
We were eventually joined by a couple just off the boat and he gave them a warm welcome and caught them up on the details they had missed. The behind-the-scenes tour included a few extra rooms for our benefit since we were able to move much more quickly than the normal 20-person tour group. We saw the upstairs Ladies' Room... full of mirrors and original period divans, not normally featured on the tour. The Ladies' Room is notable for being the most haunted part of the casino and will soon be featured on a TV episode of "Ghost Hunters",
The Men's Room has an adjoining Shoe Shine Room in which John Wayne brawled with another unfriendly patron and having beaten him, picked him up, brushed him off, and bought him a drink at the bar down the hall! You can still smell the shoe shine polish in this beautifully tiled room.
So if the Men's Room and the Lady's Room have this much unusual history, just think how much more the Art Deco Movie Theater or the 6,000-person capacity Ball Room with priceless ceiling Tiffany Lamps, hidden spy rooms, and perfect acoustics have to offer! (By the way, James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) proposed to Linda Hamilton (Terminator) in the middle of this ballroom, and you can do the same for $10,000 a night.)
We took photos inside the casino and out on the circular colonnaded balcony overlooking Avalon Harbor. The sky was blue, the water azure and we could see LA and parts of San Diego from the same elevated viewpoint on this 12-story structure!
Too much to tell here, but the Catalina Island Casino is obviously the pride of the Avalon community and a popular venue for many West Coast music and movie celebrity events. You'll never see anything like it anywhere else. Thank you Sean!
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