Celebrity Dreams.....

      Like so many other "Denverites", I will always have my sweet childhood memories of Walt Disney's Celebrity Sports Center.   I remember eternal summers  with my friends,  dropped off by our parents on a summer morning in Glendale.  After watching a movie at the Cooper Theater,  it was just a short walk over to Celebrity Sports Center a mere block away.  There we would spend the rest of the day Bowling, Swimming, Skee Ball, Slot Car Racing and shooting pirates and skeletons at the mechanical shooting gallery downstairs.  A kid from Golden, Colorado, spending a day at Celebrity was one of the best things you can possibly do as a kid.


     In the 60's and 70's,  Walt Disney Productions owned Celebrity.  I distinctly remember the walls full of giant Disneyland attraction posters. The look, and feel of the operation was a real Disney experience.  For alot of us Colorado kids, this was as close as you can get to going to Disneyland.  Everything at celebrity was on a humongous scale.  The building itself was basically a big L-shape. On one side of the "L" there was 44 polyurethane lanes the other side there was 36 all wood lanes. The concourse between the two seemed like it stretched out forever. Walking down the main concourse, I remember the aroma of beer, cigarettes, bowling balls, and that smelly disinfectant spray for bowling shoes.  Also on the upper level, there were two game arcades, a billiard room, a bowling pro shop, a nursery, a coffee shop, a "Hofbrau" and a bar for the lanes.


     Two large staircases lead down to "Fun Center" and of course the Olympic size Indoor Pool.  The swimming pool was the largest man-made indoor pool that I ever saw in my life. I've seen lakes smaller than this pool!  It was so big that on occasion, they would even race fan powered sail boats there!   At the pool entrance, you would pay and get your ticket, go through the turnstile into a big locker room. Open your locker and get naked in front of a bunch of strangers.  A little creepy for a kid, (or anyone.)   After locking up your belongings, you'd walk through a cold and mysterious "sterilizing" pool of water, and finally into the cavernous pool area where you were hit hard by a cloud of choking chlorine gas, and the echoing sound of screaming kids and angry Life Guards with megaphones.  In the early days there was no Shark or Barracuda slides, just alot of water, a slide and two diving boards.  We would dare each other to jump off the high dive which to a 10 year old seemed as tall as the Empire State Building.  It took an eternity to climb the ladder to the top of the diving board.  My Knees would wobble as I peered over the edge of the board,  I never found the courage to dive head first off the top but I did a lot of "pencil dives."  It was important to take a big deep breath before you jumped because once  impacting the surface of the water you still had to swim back up from the eternal depths of the "deep end."  After swimming for a while, it was time to dry off and head out to the next Celebrity adventure.... The Fun Center! 
     
      Beneath the 36 bowling lanes was the Fun Center.  In the earliest days I remember they had huge slot car race tracks, two or three different courses to choose from.  I don't know how many lanes they had but it seem like 12 grooves of racing action.  I remember they supplied you with a "throttle controller" and if you didn't have your own car you could rent one.   For a while they had "Pojo", a hybrid of golf and billiards. And of course they had plenty of Skee-Ball,  Arcade Games, and there was the Shooting Gallery which was designed and themed in the unique Disney style.  It felt like Pirates of the Caribbean with pirate skeletons, treasure chest and all.  Finally it was time to dig down deep in my empty pockets and hope that I had a dime left to call my Mom to come pick us up.  At the end of of a day at Celebrity Sports Center, I was utterly and pleasantly exausted.