Ace Ventura - Pet Detective filming locations
Film locations: Florida
Ace Ventura – Pet Detective location: Ace Ventura’s ‘Surfside’ apartment: Campton Apartments, Washington Avenue, Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida, is the location as Jim Carrey shoots to overnight megabucks stardom with his love-it-or-hate-it manic shtick as the animal-friendly ’tec tracking down the Miami Dolphins’ kidnapped mascot, Snowflake.
Ace Ventura (Carrey) keeps a secret menagerie in his ‘Surfside’ apartment, the Campton Apartments, 1455 Washington Avenue – alongside the artsy rock venue Cameo Theatre at 1445 near Espanola West – in the newly-revitalised art deco district of South Beach.
The football stadium from which Snowflake disappears is the real home of the Miami Dolphins, the Pro Player Stadium (formerly and famously the Joe Robbie Stadium), 2269 NW 199th Street, a hi-tech 73,000 seater sports arena about 16 miles northwest of downtown Miami. If you fancy catching a game, there’s a Metro-Dade Transit Authority bus from town.
You can also visit the exclusive seafront villa of fish-collector Ronald Camp (Udo Kier), where Ace skips the party to find a shark in the cellar.
This is Villa Vizcaya, 3251 South Miami Avenue at 32nd Road in Coconut Grove on the coast of South Miami, built in 1916 as the winter home of magazine founder James Deering.
Ace Ventura – Pet Detective: the party at the villa: Villa Vizcaya, 3251 South Miami Avenue, Coconut Grove, South Miami, Florida
A smaller-scale Xanadu, the Italian Renaissance mansion is packed with European artefacts – Roman sarcophagi, Catherine de Medici’s fireplace, the contents of Italian villas. There are formal gardens and tours of the building. A frequently-used location, you can also see the villa in Absence of Malice, as the mansion of James Stewart in Airport ’77 and as the site of the mayor's bash in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.
The ‘African’ villages of the dismal sequel, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, were constructed on the 777 Ranch, at Hondo near San Antonio, Texas (tel: 830. 426.3476).
A 15,000 acre wildlife reserve, the ranch is open to the public for safari tours and, yes, you can ride the same zebra-striped jeep seen in the movie.
More scenes were filmed in Texas, at Camp Waldemar, Botany Bay Plantation and Cherokee Plantation in South Carolina; and in Canada, at the Panorama Resort, British Columbia.
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Ace Ventura - Pet Detective, 1989
Director
Tom ShadyacCast
visit the film locations
Miami: Flights: Miami International Airport
Visit: Villa Vizcaya, 3251 South Miami Avenue at 32nd Road in Coconut Grove on the coast of South Miami (admission charge; tel: 305.579.2708)
Pro Player Stadium (formerly and famously the Joe Robbie Stadium), 2269 NW 199th Street, about 16 miles northwest of downtown Miami. There’s a Metro-Dade Transit Authority bus from town (tel: 305.638.6700)
Trivia
See more of Miami in Goldfinger, Scarface and There’s Something About Mary