What’s Splash House like? 5 first impressions from a newbie
Ever since I first experienced that special awe that comes with seeing a pastel sunset over the Ferris wheel at Coachella, I’ve been unable to get enough of the Coachella Valley’s beloved music festivals.
Whether I was genuinely losing myself in confused delight when Will Smith inexplicably showed up on the Coachella stage last spring, dancing my butt off to the-only-at-Stagecoach spectacle that is Diplo playing his annual country set or just chilling with friends at the campgrounds, I’ve found that nothing — not even passing my dreaded recent 30th birthday that clearly makes me geriatric by fest standards — has dimmed my enthusiasm for these signature local events.
Well, almost nothing. For all my inability to say no to any opportunity to get down in the desert, one festival has always eluded me: Splash House.
It’s not so much that it didn’t sound fun — who doesn’t love a good pool party? — but more that even the best lineup of DJs (and Splash House’s are usually nothing to sneeze at) has still never felt like quite enough to justify committing to spending three sure-to-be-scorching Palm Springs summer days anywhere else than my couch.
But when a Desert Sun editor came calling with an opportunity to check out this year’s version of the desert’s (only?) poolside EDM festival, the music fest lover in me knew I couldn’t well pass up a chance to see what the desert’s “other music festival” is all about.
So, this morning I threw on my coolest (read: still not very) t-shirt and an absurd amount of sunscreen (I think I got burned anyway) and headed out to the Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel. A few hours later, I’m happy to report I survived the temps that felt to be about a billion degrees and even managed to have some fun — and learn a thing or two.
Here are some observations from my first Splash House, or as I’ve always thought of it, the rambunctious baby brother in our music festival family that’s always up for anything.
1. Splash House is all about the vibes
It can feel a little lonely and, well, lame to roll up alone at what is basically a pool party on steroids as a notebooktoting journalist. So I was lucky when two Splash House vets were quite willing to get me up to speed on what I needed to know while waiting in line for the shuttles that take you between hotels.
Abel Romero, who traveled to Palm Springs from the San Fernando Valley, explained that probably the most important thing to know is that each of the three hotels has a different vibe. As he put it, The Saguaro is the place for rowdy partying, the Renaissance is more chill and Margaritaville is somewhere in between. While I didn’t make it to Margaritaville on Saturday, Romero’s perspective on the other two hotels felt pretty accurate.
Meanwhile Romero’s friend, Anthony Lozano, dished to me about what makes Splash House so special. He said he’s been to some of the biggest festivals in the country, including Coachella and the EDC festivals in Las Vegas and Orlando, but thinks Splash House beats them all because of the unique vibe that comes with the event being centered on the pools and hotels and the unique communal vibe that creates.
“Look at this,” he said as we entered a pool area at the Saguaro filled with smiling revelers. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Of course, he said, it also helps that you get to sleep in a hotel rather than on the dirt at a camp site.
2. Freak flags fly high here — literally
While Lozano’s point about the advantages of hotels over camping struck a chord with my aging back, I assumed I would miss the unique, fun and occasionally cringey sense of spectacle that a festival campground provides.
However, I needed not worry about this as I soon learned that Splash House approximates the festival campground vibe in its own unique way. Whereas at the polo grounds people fly colorful (and sometimes humorously vulgar) flags over their campsites, here they instead hang their flags over the hotel balconies that overlook the pool.
Those flags (combined with the mountain backdrop that was particularly impressive at the Renaissance Hotel) created a unique scene that I have never seen before. While the specifics of some of my favorite flags can’t be printed here