In the game
The first trailer has a party scene at a big white modern house on the water: a crowded pool deck, palms, a dock with a boat, and the bay and skyline behind it. It is the shot that fixed Vice City as a place of money and heat, and it has been paused and picked apart more than any other.
Fans have matched the setting to the man-made islands off the MacArthur Causeway, Star Island above all, where the houses face the bay and the downtown towers line up behind them much as they do in the shot. The match is on geography and style rather than a single house: waterfront mansion, pool to the seawall, skyline across the water. Rockstar is not copying an address, and no specific real house has been identified with any certainty, so we call it likely and leave it there.
The real place
Star, Palm and Hibiscus Islands were dredged up out of the bay in the early 1920s, when Carl Fisher was building Miami Beach and needed both fill and lots to sell. Star Island is the famous one: a single oval road behind a guardhouse, lined with some of the most expensive houses in Florida and, over the decades, a roll-call of celebrity owners. Palm Island was Al Capone’s; he bought a house there in 1928 and died in it in 1947. That house was torn down in 2023, so do not go looking for it.
From the road you see hedges, gates and palm trunks. From the water you see what the trailer shows: white walls, glass, pool decks running to the seawall, yachts tied up at the back. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the line-up of the skyline behind the houses when you look at them from the bay side.
Go there
Take the boat. The 90-minute bay cruises from Bayside Marketplace (usually $30-45 a person, several departures a day) run the length of what the operators call Millionaire’s Row, and the guides point out the houses. It is touristy and it is also the only way to see the islands properly. Afternoon light is best.
By car, Palm and Hibiscus Islands are open to the public via their exit off the MacArthur, and Palm Island has a small public park with tennis courts if you want to stand on the ground. Star Island’s road is technically public, but there is a guardhouse and you will get nothing but gates from it. Do not plan around getting in.
Eat at Bayside before or after the boat, or drive on to South Beach; Joe’s Stone Crab is five minutes from the causeway’s east end.
The honest warning: the pool party is not on offer. These are private homes on a private island, the guards are serious, and drones are not welcome. Look from the water, and leave it at that.
Nearby
- Bayside: the boats leave from here.
- The causeway highway: the islands hang off the causeway’s north side.
- The causeway toll booths: the Venetian Islands are the quieter neighbors just north.
- Boats and jet skis on the bay: rent your own and pass the islands at your own pace.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.