It’s that time of year again: cheery romantic Christmas movies fill every possible time slot, and we settle in with a glass of wine and a box of tissues to emote throughout the season. Now, there’s a new Lindsay Lohan movie on Netflix that checks all the holiday boxes and you can even stay in the resort where the movie was filmed.
The movie Falling for Christmas takes place at the fictional Belmont Summit Resort, which is really the Goldener Hirsch hotel in Park City, Utah, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection. The hotel sits in the dramatic mountains where world-class skiing takes place: 100 groomed miles of it. In fact, the movie begins with a ski race within the first five minutes!
The Goldener Hirsch is a modern build; the romantic male lead, Chord Overstreet from ‘Glee,’ says, “It looks like something out of Space-X.” The hallway of black-and-white ski lockers with orange arched doorways resembles a piece of contemporary art, while the infinity-edge hot tub with heat steaming up on a snowy day conveys all the relaxation of a luxurious apres-ski experience. You can see that hot tub in the first few minutes of the movie, as a drone flies past to show people indulging.
But while the movie initially focuses on the 40 modern residences designed by architect Tom Kundig, there’s also an older portion of the resort that looks more like an old-world Austrian chalet with the pitched rooflines and balconies with wooden notched heart-shape balconies you expect. And that part of the resort plays the North Star Lodge: the small, in-danger-of-closing hotel run by Overstreet’s character. Reveal that two main characters are widowers within the first 15 minutes (too pesky to handle mothers, right? Disney taught us that), and you’ve got the makings of a plot that...makes you want to book a room in this hotel!
And if not Goldener Hirsch, perhaps somewhere else in Park City. Right now, the city will give a $150 gift card to anyone who books lodging for more than three night before Dec. 18th. Park City was home to the Winter Olympics in 2002, so you can try your hand at bobsledding on the Olympic track—or maybe you’re up for stand-up paddle board yoga in a geothermal crater or ‘fat biking’ in the snow? There are tons of winter sports, dining, museums and even a free trolley throughout the region.
And who knows? You might meet that special widowed hotelier (or pampered daughter of a special widowed hotelier) who makes mistletoe meetups super great.
Curious which US ski resort was ranked second best in the world? Find out here.
And here's our list of the best ski resorts in the US: Park City's #1 but there are 19 others to look at.