Indiana Hotel Turns Suite Into Stranger Things Living Room In Time For Spooky Season
While the town of Hawkins, Indiana, remains fictional, one hotel in the state is turning “Stranger Things” into reality.
The Graduate Bloomington is offering fans of the Netflix series a spooky stay in the show’s universe by turning a suite into the homes of multiple characters just in time for Halloween, according to ABC affiliate WHAS 11.
“We really wanted to make locals and people from afar come to Graduate Bloomington to feel like you’re in the series,” Lauren Davis, the hotel’s sales director, told WHAS.
One of the rooms aims to resemble the living room of Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and comes with the alphabet wall she used in Season 1 to communicate with her son, Will (Noah Schnapp), while he was trapped in the show’s alternate dimension, “the Upside Down.”
The adjoining room mimics the Wheeler family basement and includes the fort that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) used to live in while hiding from shadowy government authorities, as well as a stack of her favorite Eggo waffles, according to the hotel.
“The Upside Down Experience” is decorated with 1980s wallpaper, includes retro board games, and comes with a map to hunt the fictional Demogorgon, according to Elite Daily.
Additional Easter eggs include student IDs, costumes worn by the characters and Will’s drawings of the Upside Down from Season 2. Visitors can chronicle their stay in the suite, which has a milk carton bearing Will’s photo and the Byers family Christmas lights, with an included Polaroid camera.
“I think it’s the fact that you can quite literally hang out in this suite the whole time and never leave,” Davis told WHAS. “It’s cool how you can take pictures, listen to the cassette player, try on all the outfits, play the games in the other room and have fun and not have to leave.”
Davis told WHAS that recreating these rooms took “lots of investigating to be able to figure out where to get identical pieces. A lot of guests that stay in this room actually say it feels like they’re on set because the wallpaper you’ll see is identical, the drawings and everything here, identical.”
Currently priced below $300 per night, the suite includes two beds and two baths, and comes with bike tours across town and two tickets to the WonderLab Science Museum. While it stays true to form by excluding a modern television, the suite does provide guests with wireless internet access.
In a nod to the character, the hotel is donating 11% of the proceeds to the museum.