Prudhommes Landing Inn, Ontario

Seeing this place was probably one of the highlights of the ill-fated trip to Toronto that my husband, a friend, and I took about two months ago. Road closures, high prices, a parking ticket, and bad traffic all made the trip more of an unpleasant than pleasant experience, which was unfortunate because I'd been looking forward to visiting Toronto for a long time. But while we were still on our way, blissfully unaware of how many hours we would spend sitting in an unmoving car or how much money two days in the city would cost us, we stopped for a bathroom break at a Tim Hortons near St. Catherines, Ontario. And to the right of the Tim Hortons just happened to be this place. 

I was super excited because I love abandoned buildings but had never actually gotten to look at one up close before (one that hadn't completely fallen apart, that is). So while my husband and friend were in Tim Hortons, I walked over and did what exploration I could in the short time that I had, which consisted of walking partway down the building and peering in each window I passed.

Here's how the pool room used to look:

photo from TripAdvisor.com

When I Googled it later, I found that there actually used to be an amusement park behind the hotel (if only I'd known when I'd been there; I would have loved to explore what remains of that, even though from what I read online there isn't much at this point). The hotel only closed a few years ago, I believe, but the amusement park--Wet and Wild--had been closed for a while before that. The comments on this article and this one are interesting, with people reminiscing about working at the park and discussing why it might have been closed (a string of unexplained freak accidents is one theory). This page has then-and-now photos of the park ("now" being 2008), and here's a link to the location of the Tim Hortons on Google Maps; the hotel is the big building to the right of the pin, and you can see the amusement park's old go-cart track behind it. As of 2012, the whole property was for sale. 

A few more photos:

the "AAA approved lodging" sticker is ironic

this also-abandoned establishment is next door