It's hard to get a normal hotel reservation in Austin during the city's epic annual SXSW music-film-interactive festival—and this year, the most-coveted booking wasn't at the Four Seasons or Saint Cecilia's. To celebrate the premiere of the show's third season, A&E built a full-scale pop-up Bates Motel for one week, right smack dab in the middle of downtown, next to the SXSW convention center. The best part? This Bates Motel wasn't just for show—it's a real, functioning motel, complete with front desk staff, housekeeping, and everything, that'll be on-site until SXSW wraps up this weekend.
I was suuuuper-lucky and scored a one-night stay Sunday evening—and, of course, I photo-documented everything I could. Here's the grand tour.
The front office:
Local announcements:
My favorite thing ever: this taxidermy interpretive dance squirrel.
I checked into room 3:
It was simply furnished with a memory foam bed, some snacks, a nightstand, a lamp, and a standard-issue land-line phone without a dial tone (spooky).
On the bed, there was a guest book:
And of great interest to many of my friends: the bathroom:
Some of the rooms' bathrooms had blood in the tubs:
And I love that even the toiletries were branded: "Mother says lather up!"
Other cool details: the "Do Not Disturb" sign:
The Bates Motel notepad (I totes took one home with me):
The true-to-set coffee setup in the front office:
And, oh, the surprise guest in my dresser drawer:
One of the coolest discoveries: Tucked inside the bedside table was a copy of Jiao's sketchbook from season one—the illustrated retelling of how women were being trafficked for sexual slavery to White Pine Bay.
If you've ever wanted to see exactly what's inside Jiao's notebook, well, here's your chance. I made sure to take a photo of every single page:
