From the Tree House to the Whale : Fantasy Hotel Lets Guests Live Dreams

The bedposts are artificial trees and the suite’s private whirlpool is nestled in a crop of synthetic rocks complete with a mini-waterfall. The walls are a deep-green painted forest.

Welcome to the tree house suite, part of the new fantasy wing of the Burnsville Royale Hotel.

For $165 to $195 a night, guests also can retire to an igloo, a whaling ship, a sheik’s tent, a California beach, a 1973 Oldsmobile or any of a number of settings at this latest addition to Roger Dehring’s growing chain of fantasy hotels.

“We’re really just another hotel company that has a part of its business that’s a little unusual,” said Dehring, 43, of Minnetonka, Minn., owner of the refurbished Burnsville motel and similar outposts in the Wisconsin towns of Antigo, Dodgeville and West Bend.

Before the fantasy wing opened here in May, the hotel had the usual trappings for travelers: convention and meeting rooms, a restaurant, swimming pool and 88 standard rooms for $42 to $50.

“In addition, we have this one wing that looks like any other hotel wing--until you open the door,” Dehring said.

In the Moby Dick suite, guests are confronted with the wide-open mouth of a whale. The whirlpool--mandatory fare in the 12 fantasy suites--is inside the behemoth, ribs showing through a ceiling of whale stomach.

Then there’s the car suite. “Bring back the memories,” bids the promotion on the hotel fare sheet. “The stars, the moon and young love’s first kiss in the back seat.”

The beach room, bedless, offers sleep on a beige carpet randomly padded to give the impression of sand.

“Pharaoh’s Tomb” puts you inside a pyramid with sand- and cement-sprayed walls cracked to lend a more realistic look and feel.

“It’s a very definite, authentic feeling. Whatever authentic is. I haven’t been there either,” Dehring said.

The story of Royale Hospitality Group Inc., the Bloomington. Minn.-based parent company of Dehring’s four hotels, began at the Don Q. Inn in Dodgeville. The Don Q. offers such oddities as a 120-year-old barn for a restaurant and a steeple converted into a suite.

Dehring bought it in 1979 and quickly learned that something out of the ordinary is something in demand.

“We’ve kind of been expounding on it ever since,” said Mike Isabella, hotel group president.

The two are full of ideas for more elaborate--maybe impossible--suites. They picture guests sleeping on a 27-foot boat floating in real water, “God and (the building) code willing,” Dehring says.

Another idea is a hot-air balloon. Such a suite probably would have to be a three-story affair, they said.

Expansion of the chain is more than a brainstorm. Contracts have been signed for the purchase of new properties in Muscatine, Iowa, and Greenwood, Ind.

With the Burnsville specialty rooms already booked for the summer, Dehring and Isabella think it will pay to build more of the unexpected at their fifth and sixth hotels. They’ll entertain all ideas. In fact, they give guests “suite suggestion” cards that solicit names and concepts for future rooms and promise a free night for winners.