| rev:text
| - 3.5 stars
First of all, to those who think this is a "museum of nothing", you are missing the point. It's a HOUSE MUSEUM. House museums are about architecture, interior design, and the lives of the inhabitants. Don't expect to see any sort of exhibit here, that's not the premise. If you don't think historic buildings are interesting in and of themselves, please skip this attraction.
What Casa Loma is, is an interpretation of the castles one would find in Europe way back in the day, except with an amalgamation of interior features. It was built by a bazillionaire who fantasized about becoming royalty or at least being on a first name basis with royalty, the Queen of England specifically. It is his own interpretation, and his own family home. It's not supposed to be a replica of any particular place or time.
The building is impressive when you are coming up to it, though I could do without the awful parking lot impeding on the facade. You can see in the distance another castle-like structure as well, it turns out this is the stable and garage building that is connected via underground tunnel to the main house.
We bought slightly discounted tickets online prior to our visit, and were directed to the smoking and billiards rooms to pick up our audio tour device and watch a introductory movie about Mr. Pellat and his house and life prior to beginning the walking section of the tour. The movie is very good and makes it easy to get a synopsis of the man who envisioned the house before trying to navigate throughout the place and keep the story straight.
After the movie, I walked through the house pretty much in numerical sequence of the map and audio guide. You can really go in any order you like. The audio tour has a lot of the same information as the movie but also includes bits about the specific rooms and items of note in the rooms. There are some original pieces and many "filler" items, as most of the estate was auctioned off due to Mr. Pellat's bankruptcy. This is unfortunate, since one of the joys of house museums is being able to see original contents.
The tour leads visitors through every floor of the house, which is impressive, since many house museums, especially one of this magnitude, only feature a selection of rooms. I believe this is partly due to the fact that the place was never "modernized" or carved in to apartments. Once Mr. Pellat moved out, the place was left alone until it was turned in to an attraction, so no on else besides he and his family ever lived there. I believe it became a tourist attraction or social space in the 1930s, so there is no awful 1950s-1970s remodeling happening here. The tour also guides visitors to the stable and garage building, which seem a little nondescript but could be more interesting if they put some more effort in to these spaces.
There are unfinished areas in the house, which are such because money ran out on the original construction. The unfinished basement, which was destined to become a swimming pool, now serves as a cafeteria.
All in all, I spent two hours here, yeah it's almost 100 rooms so you need to take your time. I enjoyed it but there are a few points that should be addressed to make this a more worthwhile place to visit (hence the imperfect 4 star rating).
- Discourage children under ten years or otherwise immature kids from visiting. Sounds mean? Well, judging by the noise level of all the children running through the place, I would say these kids have no idea why they were there, and were doing whatever they could to entertain themselves while TOTALLY ANNOYING people who were quietly walking through and trying to listen to the damn audio guide. Also, there is a shitload of "so and so was here" graffiti in the tower section, which is stupid and should be taken care of. Who graffitis in a freaking museum? Unsupervised kids of course. The thing is that there is no staff anywhere in the place except the ticket booth and audio guide desk, so they have no idea what anyone is doing all over this 98-room house. Hello, recipe for disaster. I am surprised there's not even just one staff per floor to keep an eyeball on the place.
- Fix and protect the floors. You can tell where everyone walks in the place because the floor is so worn, it looks terrible. The wood is gone beyond the bare grain. They need runner rugs or some sort of protective mats throughout the major pathways of the house. I would never let my floors get to this state, nor should anyone purporting to be showing a multi-million dollar mansion!
- Don't sell tickets for the days there are special events or filming going on in the house. I checked online and bought tickets for the day after filming for "Warehouse 13" was ending so that I wouldn't be looking at a movie set or be locked out of certain areas, but surprise surprise, there was "hot set, do not enter" signage and all kinds of equipment, props and actors all over the place. Yuck. The website basically lied.
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