I’ve got some vacation time coming up, and wanted to see if anyone has come across a truly creative and engrossing miniature golf course in their travels. If you remember that old computer sim (called IIRC Miniature Golf Construction Set or such), you could craft some truly wild (yet rewarding of skill) holes. So that’s what I’m looking for: consistent bounces off of obstacles, the first watchword is “fair”, but a lot of creativity goes into the layout too.
Not quite what I was talking about above, but along the Maryland coast (I believe) I ran across a natural grass miniature course which was actually pretty engrossing-just 10-50 foot holes, no walls, but contours galore-was pretty fun.
– The Putt Putt course near Chautauqua Institution in Western New York. Part of it is nostalgia. But it had:
Concrete walls (I’ve seen some Putt Putts that had the heresy of metal walls.)
Mostly skill-based holes, with 2 or 3 gimmicky holes a course to mix things up a bit. (I liked the “bullseye hole” myself, where you shot the ball up a 45 degree slope into a huge (8’ diameter) bullseye, and depending on which ring you got it in, the ball would plop out from a different pipe on the next level, and there was a house rule posted that if you got it in the center it was an automatic hole in one.)
A semi-wooded environment, which is much more aesthetically pleasing than the stark nothingness of most Putt Putts (and IMO also better than the modern novelty multi-level simulated stone surroundings), and in the summer of New York could make a difference between hot and bearable.
Plus, I played at that particular course enough that I was a scratch player.
– Best 18 near Ft Myers Florida. The schtick was that it replicated the “Best 18” golf holes from real golf. So it, again, was skill-based rather than novelty-based, although you did have to jump some water occasionally. I don’t remember what the sides were made out of, but I seem to recall that you could use embankments to hit the “green” on most of the shots rather than having to bounce off the walls. I wish there was more of that in mini golf these days (but I’d settle for more concrete sides)
Unfortunately, w/r/t your vacation, the former is now a parking lot for said Chautauqua Institute and the latter was never very full so is probably closed now 
You probably can’t go there on vacation, but I helped build one at a deployed location in Kuwait a few years ago. We built everything from scratch and modeled it after the gulf states geography. Lots of fun.
There was an all grass course in North Myrtle Beach 10-12 years ago. I’m not sure if it’s still there or not. I think it had a par of 72 and there were a lot of dog legs, no objects to bounce off of and it had breaks in it. There were actually two courses and it was a lot of fun. I think I played it a few times that vacation.
The best hole that I remember I think was in Ocean City, MD, it was on a pirate ship and you went on the deck of the ship and made the ball ‘walk the plank’ and it fell 4-5 feet. If you got it just right it would bounce a couple of times and right into the hole.
If you’re going to Estes Park, Colorado (near Rocky Mountain National Park), there are a couple modern brick-and-mountain golf courses in the touristy part of town, but when I and my family took a vacation there 2 years ago we played a lot more games at a one between the Park and the town. It was pretty run down, like a Putt-Putt that had seen its better days, but it was the best new-to-me course I’ve played in quite awhile.
Sides – Wood. Which is acceptable, but unfortunately some of the planks [del]are totally falling off[/del] aren’t tied down very well.
Play Style – 3 or 4 gimmicks per course, less angling play than Putt Putt so not as challenging.
Surface – Very slick, because the carpeting hasn’t been changed in quite awhile. So if you miss your putt it’ll sail to the other side of the “green”. But that’s okay to have a course or two like that for variation. What was annoying, though, was that some of the mats were so old they were detached and creeping up into the air in places, which is pushing the “keepin-it-real” envelope a bit too far.
Cost – Only $4 as of 3 years ago (the in-town courses were $7!)
Bonus – It did indulge in “par inflation” that old-school places usualyl don’t, so some of us were close to parring, or even did, by our fourth game, despite the fact that at Putt Putt only 1 or maybe 2 of them would be Par 3.