Suite 415: Tonga room serves up tropical hangovers

By Greg Zeman
The Guardsman

Rum Is Magic
In the brazenly tacky magic trick of mixology and interior design that is the American tiki lounge, the rum and fruit juice serve as the rabbit in the hat. There’s nothing magical about a rabbit on its own, but when you make one appear in a two-gallon fishbowl with four crazy-straws and a week’s serving of fruit, it creates the illusion of someplace magical.

You forget you’re sitting on a wooden bench, drinking booze in an over-priced hole-in-the-wall where it looks like Adventureland went AWOL from Disneyland and spewed bamboo kitsch and plastic flowers everywhere.

A Lagoon Is Born
Long before it became a crumbling relic of a bygone era, the Fairmont Hotel built a 75-foot indoor pool and christened it “The Fairmont Terrace Plunge,” presumably because it had a diving board.

In 1945 — the year WWII ended — a set designer from MGM Studios had the diving board removed and buried the pristine simplicity of “The Plunge” under mountains of palm frond macrame and westernized “tiki-masks.”

The pool was re-christened as a “lagoon” and the Tonga Room was born.

Like any tiki lounge worth its salt, the Tonga Room looks like it was decorated by a drunk Navy sailor trying to recreate a south Pacific island he saw for only five minutes from the side of a boat. In fact, that’s almost exactly how the post WWII phenomenon of the tiki lounge began. Oddly enough, the concept was wildly popular with returning GIs.

Personally, I can think of at least a dozen better ways to celebrate surviving a tour of the Pacific theatre than giving yourself the worst hangover of your life in a place modeled after the hellish jungle nightmare you barely escaped. Perhaps some things only the “greatest generation” will understand.

Come For The Rum, Stay For The … Um …
The sign for the Tonga Room is half a block past the entrance, so most people walk too far and end up looking at the blank wall under the sign. I guess most people don’t believe the scraggly foul-smelling man who tells them it’s like the door for Hogwarts and all they have to do is hold their breath and believe in order to run through it. But screw you guys: He seemed cool and he looked like Hagrid.

The misplaced sign sets the tone for the disorienting fun house maze within. Some misdirection even seemed deliberate. Upon entering through the door, the sign I saw was not for the Tonga Room but for a gym, which made me question whether I was even in the right place.
I regained confidence when I saw a tiki statue at the end of the hallway and started walking towards it.

A tip: Walk away from that statue if you want to go to the Tonga Room.

If you do find your way to the entrance, someone will ask you if you want to eat or drink. If you must do either of these things at the Tonga Room, I strongly recommend the latter and advise against the former.

Because I went on tourist rip-off night, I was informed there would be a $5 cover charge and all drinks would cost at least $10. I would have left right then, but I was exhausted from the ordeal of getting there and wasn’t even sure I’d be able to find my way out again.

Reluctantly, I paid the $5 and hoped for the best. I must have done it wrong.

From the moment the band floated out to the center of the lagoon on the awesome boat stage — the best part of their act — and started into their first number, a soulfully tone-deaf rendering of “Moondance,” I knew I was in for a real musical treat.

Make It Rain!
If you play someone a recording of thunder and rain it has no noticeable effect. Likewise, if you spray a small amount of water into a larger body of water, again, there is no real effect.

But combine the two and, as one charmingly intoxicated woman dancing precariously close to the lagoon’s inadequate safety railing put it, “Woo hoo!”

Oh, and you know that funky you-forgot-to-clean-the-fish-tank smell? The Tonga Room’s got that too. It’s the water, I hope.

Verdict
Although I mostly keep going back to punish myself, I think it’s fair to say the tacky charm of the place is pretty hypnotizing.

If you like borderline-racist, “It’s a small world”-style parodies of other cultures combined with expensive, high-sugar alcoholic beverages scientifically guaranteed to give you agonizing, memory-searing hangovers that make you want to die, you will love the Tonga Room with a capital “L.”

Any garden-variety drunk can tell you there are better places to get better drinks than the over-priced astringent swill at the Tonga Room. But those places don’t have a lagoon, now do they?