Doing a search for something else here and came across this post a bit late.

I stayed with my family at the Holiday Inn in August of 1977. One of the very few times my family ever stayed in a Holiday Inn. 

The pool was originally located under the dance floor/stag area in Schooner's lounge. It had a deep end and diving board (I loved diving), and hot tub/jacuzzi too, and the diving board was later removed (insurance pretty much did that for all hotels). The pool area had some glass windows that were always steamed up, but when clear you could see out to the walkway along the back side of the hotel, and beyond to the lake. The windows were also not very weather proof/inefficient and the pool area leaky later on.

Later, the owner of the Canal Park Inn (Richard 'Dick' Sonntag (sp)) had the antiquated pool area removed and semi-filled in to enlarge the bar/dance area, and you could tell as the floor there had more of a hollow feeling. I believe it was also used for some storage under there too. Then a new larger pool area, with a bigger but more shallow pool, larger jacuzzi, and bathrooms/shower was built off the back of the building and farther down (toward Endion and off center to that midsection) which you could see from the Lakewalk. I swam in the new pool (after hours) quite a bit back in the day.

The old outside bar was pretty popular, and there were attempts to revive it, but it was not up to code (no running water and such - and the owner didn't want to sink any money into it), so it could only be used limited (bottled beers, wine coolers and the like from iced troughs), while mixed drinks and wines (and sometimes food too) were brought out from the bar by servers, and when busier (such as over Blues Fest/limited weekends) they'd staff the area, otherwise it was serve yourself. When it was nice out it was a very popular place to go as it was one of the only places you could have a drink outside along the lake (besides Chi~Chi's deck, or Grandma's).