Years ago, we'd come up and watch the Minnesota Twins play at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN. One place that we stayed at two or three times was The Thunderbird Motel which was literally in the shadow of the old Met Stadium. In fact, many of the teams who played the Twins in the 60's and 70's were housed at The Thunderbird. It was a pretty nice place in it's day.
On one of my trips to Minneapolis/St. Paul a while back, I was driving by the Mall of America - which was built on the site of the old Met Stadium - and I got to wondering if the Thunderbird was still around. Well, it is, except it's now the Ramada Mall of America hotel (see map) and Thunderbird Conference Center.
I decided that even though it wasn't a Hilton, Marriott, or Holiday Inn property (the three chains I stay at, in that order), I'd stay at the old T-bird the next time I went to the Twin Cities.
I made the reservations and I was a little taken aback at the price of the room - and in a good way. It was only $89 a night. Considering that a very basic Hampton Inn in the Twin Cities is now around $109 a night, I thought that either it would be a great deal or a big mistake.
I checked in one evening recently and I was pleasantly surprised to see the spacious lobby was still in place. It still has a lot of the Native American motif throughout the place. They still have The Thunderbird Lounge, the Bow and Arrow restaurant and the Totem Pole coffee shop. They still have the meeting rooms with the names such as Chippewa, Seneca, Yakima and other names of Native American tribes.
The Thunderbird logo is still prevalent everywhere in the hotel. Here's the indoor pool with the big T-Bird logo (shown at right).
The rooms are nice. Not great, but still nice. They have tons of drawer space in the rooms, the bed was comfy and it was a good bargain at $89.00 a night. My room overlooked the outside courtyard which has the only outdoor hotel pool in the Twin Cities. (Yes, they have two pools in the summer!) In fact, I was reminded by my cousin, Sarah Burke, that I cut my knee on the ladder while climbing out of the pool when I was about 11 years old. I still have the scar.
The room I was in also had five different prints of paintings depicting Native American life. The bathroom, I do remember from years ago, because it had a small tub with a little seat in it sort of like the one in our house when I was growing up. It was kind of neat reliving some of my past in this place.
What is interesting, however, is that the Ramada web site for the hotel sort of downplays the Native American theme. So much to the point that they don't name the coffee shop or restaurant, they don't really talk much about the Native American and Old West art work and artifacts. It's like they don't want to let the activists who believe that all things Native American not on Native American soil is degrading to Native Americans know that this place exists other than it's a regular Ramada hotel.
The internet hook-up was a little "iffy". It would allow me to take my work e-mails, but it wouldn't let me send out. The walls are also a little thin - I heard the radio in the room next to me turn on at 6 a.m. and I don't think it was at that loud of a volume. But it's near the airport and walking distance to Mall of America and the new Water Park of America. (Shuttles are also available to the airport, mall and to the water park when it is opened.) For the updates they've done to The Thunderbird, the $89 a night room was a good bargain.
Will I stay there again? Well, I'm so indentured to Hilton properties (I have over 500,000 Hilton points) that I almost have to stay there. But, yeah, if I have trouble finding a room at a reasonable price on the southside of Minneapolis, I'll go back.
I've gone there for work and saw that motel but never stayed there. I'll give it a shot!
Posted by: Pedro | August 14, 2017 at 06:38 AM