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1980s Travel & Nightlife


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Travel



Upscale vacation destinations became very popular in the 1980s. We flew to Walt Disney World, relaxed at all-inclusive resorts like Club Med and partied the night away on cruise lines like Carnival and Norwegian.



hot weather fun
*For college students, Spring Break meant an annual trek to Ft. Lauderdale or Daytona Beach.

*To beat the summer heat, we headed for the nearest water park, where we enjoyed wave pools and water slides.


Club Med
Carnival Cruise Lines
Spring Break At Daytona Beach
History Of Spring Break
Magic Waters
Wet & Wild


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amusement parks
*Disney's Epcot Center opened in 1982.

*Remember Boardwalk & Baseball? ...it was one of Florida's shortest-lived amusement parks.

*Heritage USA was owned by televangelist Jim Bakker and his PTL Network. It opened in 1978 and was the third-most successful theme park in America. It closed in 1987 when scandal destroyed Bakker's empire.


A Virtual Guide To Epcot
Walt Disney World
Boardwalk & Baseball
Worlds Of Fun
Theme Park Brochures
Heritage USA


motels & hotels
The cost of staying in a motel was rising, and this resulted in the creation of economy motels like Motel 6 and Super 8. No upscale trends here...just a clean room, a pool, a phone and cable TV.

The more expensive motels were beginning to resemble resorts, with indoor pools, tanning beds, hot tubs and saunas. In your room, you'd find a mini-fridge and pay-per-view movies.



In the "corporate culture" of the 1980s, more people were traveling on business than ever before. Some hotel chains catered to them by providing free coffee, unlimited local phone calls, meeting rooms, conference calling and increased desk space.




Motel 6
Holiday Inn




At the new Holiday Inn Holidomes, the guest rooms overlooked a central domed atrium where the pool and recreation areas were located.


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Nightlife

city style




yuppie bars
tropical drinks
sports bars
dance clubs
imported beer
singles bars
video screens
electronic darts


house music
In the early 1980s, disco was dead. For clubs, this created a shortage of dance music. DJs created their own dance mixes by "reconstructing" records to make them danceable. They did this by extending them, splicing them together, changing the tempo and layering different bits of percussion over them. This became known as house music, and by the mid 1980s it was a sensation. In the late 1980s, house music made the transition to radio where it was regarded as an art form in its own right.

karaoke
In the late 1970s, bar patrons in Kobe, Japan enjoyed singing along with prerecorded accompaniment tapes. This was karaoke, a combination of the words kara ("empty") and oke ("orchestra"). In the mid 1980s, it became a fun activity for really brave (or really drunk!) people to do in American bars.


----- The L.A. Punk & New Wave Scene
Clubs Of The 70s & 80s
The History Of Karaoke
Clubs Of The 80s


the hot spots

New York City:
------- The Saint
------- The Funhouse
Houston:
------- Gilley's
San Francisco:
------- Trocadero Transfer
-------The Endup
Los Angeles:
-------The Roxy
-------The Odyssey
Chicago:
-------The Snuggery
-------The Power Plant
-------The Warehouse
-------Coconuts
-------Baja Beach Club




country
style




country music
line dancing
mechanical bulls
denim prairie skirts
cowboy hats & big belt buckles



The 1980 movie Urban Cowboy made Gilley's
and its mechanical bull famous




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