A Pac-Man Bedroom and Laser Maze: This Airbnb Home Is all Fun and Games
At this wonderfully whimsical Airbnb home, every single space — from the carnivalesque lounge to a backyard billiards pool — gives you a way to play.
By Jessica Dodell-Feder
Photographs by Brian Guido
Andrew Greenstein’s home in Clermont, Florida, sits a mere 30 miles from the country’s most famous amusement park, but most of his guests will never even consider making the trip to Walt Disney World. That’s because this 15-bedroom Airbnb, called Great Escape Parkside, is a mini theme park itself, with oversize board games painted on the walls, a laser maze bedroom, a human whack-a-mole court, and a “billiards” pool with a chalk-cube-shaped hot tub. “People will stay for four nights straight without leaving and tell us they still didn’t catch every detail,” says Andrew’s wife, Belinda.
To build a home like this — where bedrooms double as actual Twister and Clue games, and Scrabble boards appear on the ceiling — you have to be at least a little obsessed with games, and Andrew readily admits his infatuation. As a kid he would play round after round of Monopoly against himself, he says, and these days, he and a friend battle over Boardwalk during two-hour lunches a few times a week. Unlike the couple’s other game-themed mansion, Great Escape Lakeside (yes, they own two, plus two other Airbnbs in the area), this home was built from the ground up in just six and a half months. And because most features are custom, including the wall murals and much of the furniture, the Greensteins had to hire a crew that included 12 artists to get it all done. “My carpenter used to look at us like, ‘Wow, you guys are crazy,’” says Andrew. “Now he builds all kinds of cool stuff for us and often adds his own ideas.”
Not that they need the brainstorming help. “We’re always coming up with concepts. There’s never a meeting; it’s just kind of driving around or hanging out, and you’ll be like, ‘A Stratego room with a Battleship bathroom! Duh, why didn’t we think of that before?’” Andrew says. “It can’t just be like, ‘Yeah, that one is good, but….’ It has to be like, ‘Yes! How amazing would that be?’” And while it’s gratifying to see those ideas come to life, the couple’s biggest joys come from wowing their guests. “It’s one thing to look at what we’ve built, but it’s another to see dozens of people actually using it all — laughing, smiling, having the time of their life,” says Andrew. “It’s like you’re at the greatest birthday party ever that never ends until you check out.”
“We used to joke with our kids about making a game-themed house. Then we actually built it.”
— Andrew Greenstein, Host
Twister bedroom
Twister’s iconic colorful dots cover this bedroom floor to ceiling. How do you know what move to make? Just look up: The ceiling fan is the spinner!
Operation bedroom
Stark white walls and tiled floors give this space a clinical vibe, befitting the classic surgery-themed game. To play this oversize version, you use giant tongs to extract the wooden “bones.”
Splashy pools
The Lakeside pool has some water park–like bells and whistles, while the Parkside one, at first glance, seems pretty standard. But look a little closer and you’ll see it was modeled after a billiards table, with “pockets” carved out of the corners and sides and a “cue stick” water cannon.
Pac-Man bedroom
Staying in this Great Escape Lakeside room (or a Ms. Pac-Man version at the Parkside property) is like living inside the arcade game. Rope lights along the crown molding help the walls glow like a screen.
Fully loaded lounge
Anchored by an air-hockey table, the ramped-up rec room also offers Skee-Ball, ring toss, a mechanical fortune teller, and other arcade and carnival favorites. And while the house is equipped with techie features like app-enabled escape rooms, it’s often the analog amenities that get the most play. “On one wall, we have this giant, ridiculously intricate maze that you try to solve with dry-erase markers,” says Andrew. “I never thought anybody would use it because there are so many other games people could be playing, but they will stand in front of it for hours!”
Laser Maze bedroom
Forget resting easy. The point of this bedroom in the Lakeside Airbnb (and a similar one in the Parkside property) is to stay on your toes: Make it to one end of the room as fast as you can without getting hit by a beam. “Most people never come close to cracking the best score,” says Andrew.
About the author: Jessica Dodell-Feder is a writer and an editor at Food Network Magazine. She’s a native New Yorker who now lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter.
