BoyTv

AAA's first 5 diamond resort

I have always loved this hotel since it first opened over 20 years ago. Orlando had never seen anything like this outside of Disney. It is amazing and beautiful. Hemingway's is still my favorite seafood restaurant in Orlando. You will always get an amazing and fresh piece of fish. The beautiful La Coquina is the fine dining room. The food is expensive but the service, china, etc give you what you are looking for in a fine dining experience. The brunch they serve is unique and worth the high price. I've even stayed here once and loved it. The pool and hot tubs with grottos were great. We even rented a tiny sail boat and went around the small lake. I do not golf, but they have one of the highest rated courses around. Our company Christmas party was once held here. The banquet room was rather plain and our party sucked, but I blame that on the cheap company budget and not the Grand Cypress. Over all I LOVE IT

BEST GAY DAYS HOTEL for HOT BOYS

Official or not, I've seen it year after year and it's full of HOT MEN. The hotel brings in DJs to play each day for their pool parties. If you stay here you get 4 wrist bands, and the lucky few of us who live here are hoping our friends will give us one of the bands so we can come and dance and play in our swim suits. The pool parties are one of the best high lights of Gay Days. I have many local friends who book a room a year in advance. Drawbacks are that this hotel cannot provide anywhere near enough ICE for our gay boy needs. My friends bring in blenders and mix Miami Vice drinks for all of us. There is never enough ice. I am always getting a call to come out to the pool and please bring a cooler of ice for them. It is not cool to pull your cooler of ice from the parking lot into a huge hotel and then to the 15th floor. I hate that. Apparently this is a huge problem for all of Kissimmee and Lake Buena Vista. Every 7/11, etc in all surrounding areas are out of ice. It's true Gay men drink, and when together, they drink a lot. Room service will also take forever during this week. That seems odd since I know that many of the boys are barely eating food at all during Gay Days. You will definitely find the A crowd of muscle boys at this hotel. It will not disappoint. The hotel is first class and very clean. Please don't leave it as you found it and we will always be welcomed here.

Beer, wine, Levi, Leather and Bear

Don't worry if you are none of the above, you will not be required fit a mold. I went there for a Trident Leather fund raiser. They had a $5 draft beer bust out back. They also offered other fun fund raiser ideas. The Trident men were all friendly. I am not a leather man, but can play along and have fun most anywhere. I put on a harness and my right arm band. I met the head honcho of Trident and he made sure that I was introduced to all those he thought I should know. He really made everyone feel at home. I had a blast. I hope they have good weather for the next fundraiser. I had another beer inside when the keg ran dry. The bartender was very friendly and vouched for the man who was hitting on me. It's always good to get another opinion, even if you weren't interested. I will be back. It's the closest replacement we have for the much missed Full Moon Saloon. This bar has tapped into most of their clientele. Full Moon fans, check them out.

So close, they almost hit the mark

I love the chandeliers, they are enormous, but when you see them you expect the rest of the place to live up to that. The place used to be so smoky inside that many of us refused to go back because of it. They have flat screen TVs where they originally showed gay porn. I didn't even know you could in Orlando. Good for them. Now it is sports or news or something. I don't know who thought the crowd was too young. Many say it is full of old trolls. Hey, that is not nice at all. Everybody ages. I would say it is an unpretentious crowd. I didn't see Versace on anyone and certainly not on everyone so get over that idea. I have no problem with young or old and the mix seemed like most bars to me. They do have usually at least two dancer on blocks working for their tips. They are usually skinny twinks. The bartenders are hot and I love that they are in their underwear, you will too. Thankfully they have opened a makeshift patio out back. It's tiny but because they leave the door open, it helps to pull the smoke out. They have a pool table in the other room. It's a good place to meet or to go out on an off night for a drink or two. I don't think there's a lot of attitude, but it seems like people are their with their friends and stick to them rather than cruise or meet others.

Great decor and totally hip

There is no parking so valet. It looks great outside and the water wall feature is very cool and they have another one over the dance floor and sometimes a dance is up there behind the water and that can be very sexy. They serve great martinis in the white room. Even the floor is white and very cool. TV monitors are hidden behind the white glass walls. The Disco dance floor reminds me of an over sized genie bottle. It doesn't work flow wise at all because you have to cross the dance floor to get to the black room. The black room as it has been known to be called has an enormous enclosed rectangular bar that forces patrons to squeeze up against the wall. That may be the only way you might meet someone here. The strippers all have those creepy looking banana g-strings. When I first saw the black room on my first visit i knew they must have ran out of money when they got to that space. So rather than fill it with glamourous things they just built an huge bar to suck up the square footage. I think the space is cool overall, but I don't have any friends that will go there with me so I don't go either. If they close off the dance room from the others and maybe change the black room a bit and find a way to make a circular motion around the entire club then they could have a hit.

Not pretentious

Hanks is a dump. But the kind of dump that knows it's a dump and doesn't seem to mind. The clientele is not Harvard educated and you won't find any tweed jackets. It's a shack that serves beer and wine. The patio (really where is the concrete or pavers?) is really just a large outdoors. There is no landscape, save one small palmetto bush that serves as a cover for what has made the bar infamous. This bar should be on every gay bar trash tour. It has been on our trash tour for years. A Trash Tour, is when you get your buds together to go to every gay beer and wine only place in town. Hanks is rarely crowded. Two pool tables and the juke box has a little bit of everything. I have never experienced the problems or pleasure they speak of in the bathrooms there, but the patio may have that to offer if there are enough people there who are interested. I would call it a Levi bar more than a leather bar, but you could wear either and fit in. It's a cruise bar for sure. One of only a few in Orlando.

Over 25 yrs going to this bar. Not anymore

Well as a young gay man in Orlando, you could not do much better. It had/has everything. I will always miss Miss Vicky's bar. It was the silver sunken bar with mirror ball piano and raised circular patron area with art deco styling. The lighted hallway was very Saturday Night Fever. I would read my school books from early college underage days at the pool and work on my tan. I would go at least 2-3 times a week in college. Off and on for many, many years. All of that has changed. We all kid about what renovation we paid for with all our $ spent here. Many other bars come and go, but the PH always remains. Volley ball used to be big here on the weekends and then it got way too serious. Enter the 90s. The PH really got it's first taste of serious competition, Club Firestone. That really split the night life. Firestone got the A crowd, and the drug crowd. PH kept the B-F crowd, and the liquor crowd. But the drinks and cover are cheap enough that the liquor crowd was often more messed up than the drug crowd. I get roped into going to the PH when friends come to town. Mostly my now famous blogger friend who lives in NYC. We went on Christmas night this last year. A tradition we have had since the 80s. Wow, what a bitter disappointment. Yes the place is filthy and you do have to hold your breath to pee in the mens room and it won't matter which mens room you try. They all wreak of sour urine. Does anyone use a clean mop around there? If you love being shoved or asked to move on the dance floor so the cleaning woman can sweep up napkins and burned out cigarettes while you are trying to dance, then you will be in heaven. That is about the only cleaning that seems to be going on. The speakers are totally shot. They sound like tin. That is especially sad because they will play the music so loud you wish you had ear plugs. Loud does not equal good. Lastly the crowd today. Who are these people? What demographic are they shooting for? Even on their supposed theme nights, you have no idea why this group has come together. There is one of everything, and I do mean thing. Yuck. The parking lot is full and yet you cannot imagine anyone in the crowd even owning a car. Many look homeless. I know it is an Orlando mainstay, but now with the Full Moon completely torn down and gone, you have no where to escape to but the courtyard of the motel. It's dark and dingy everywhere you look. Oh and I've been in those rooms. Anyone who has lived here as long as I have has been and if not then they are lying. I have seen the so called updates. They still give you a paper placemat for a bath mat. Yuck. I refuse to "meet" anyone staying there. I feel bad for them. They are obviously thinking of a PH from long ago. We have other dance bars. I suggest you check them out. The only reason to go to the PH, might be their drag shows. It's a large enough theatre and it really seems like a theatre. If you like drag then go. But beware of all the drunken straight girls there with their gay boys. Why do they always want to see a drag show? Orlando needs a new bar or PH needs a cleaning crew. Shrink that bar outside the disco. Enhance your sound system. Hire a real cleaning crew to come in there after hours and change up your sleazy image. Note to sleazy types, cruising the balconies has not been permitted for years and you must keep your draperies pulled. So it's not for you either. The neighborhood was always scary. Now more than ever. The parking across the street that was always available for many years is no more. They do offer a dirt lot, but it is not watched or if someone is there they leave when it is full. Watch out, my blogger friend spent hours there one Thanksgiving waiting for the police to arrive to fill out the report for the smashed out window in his rental. His was not the only car and the police don't care about the gays down at the PH, unless it's to bust the hustlers who hang on the corners. You can see their faces on the City of Orlando Police web page "Busted". I feel sorry for our sad PH. Their time share idea doesn't seem to be working out as well as they planned. They should have put that money into the club itself. It really needs an overhaul.