Remember the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess? Big, sleepy place next to the golf course? Great for families and retirees? Gerald Ford stayed there. Your grandmother probably played canasta there.

Well, your grandmother would be aghast — aghast! — to see what’s become of her poor Princess. Hedonists have taken over the pool! The DJ is crunkin’. The booties be thumpin’.

See the poolside scene photos

It’s a Vegas-style pool party, yo, and the staid, stately Fairmont hasn’t seen this much floss since the Oral-B convention of 1983.

Dubbed Salvation, it’s the brainchild of Ken Gerber of the Gerber Group, which operates a chain of bars and restaurants, including the Whiskey in New York City and its many offshoots. When I first introduce myself to Gerber, there’s one of those slightly awkward, faintly Hollywood-ish “Do you know who I am?” moments when I confess ignorance about the company he runs with his siblings.

“My brother is married to Cindy Crawford,” he says helpfully.

Yeah, that rings a bell. Sort of. Admittedly, I should know about the Gerbers — in the greater duchy of American nightlife, they’re landed gentlemen.

Though it starts at noon Sunday, Salvation is effectively an extension of Saturday night

On the first day of operation, the sprawling Fairmont pool is filled with young, toned Scottsdale regulars, most of them clutching drinks. They’re an attractive, uniformly flab-free lot. I wonder if Gerber enforces a body-fat-percentage rule at the door. The doormen don’t seem to be equipped with calipers. Hmm.

The whole pool party rage started about five years ago in Las Vegas, most famously with a racy Sunday event called Rehab at the Hard Rock Casino. Gavin Rowe of the party portal Lavishvegas.com says that Rehab is the Peking Man of pool parties: “They were the originators. And, now, essentially every casino has jumped on the bandwagon.”

And not just casinos, and not just in Vegas. Weekend pool parties are sprouting up all over the Valley, including one at the Hotel San Carlos in Phoenix hosted by DJ William Reed, and one with DJ P-Body at the Hotel Valley Ho. Heck, if you have a pool at home, you might want to talk to some promoters. Maybe they’ll rent it from you.

“We don’t want this to be Rehab,” Gerber insists, noting that some of his revelers brought their underage kids. “We just want to inject some energy into the Sunday scene. But it’s fun and friendly.”

Maybe, but I doubt Gerber would be upset if, say, Rehab regular Howard Stern showed up at Salvation with a gaggle of thong-wearing pros.

Surveying the scenery at Salvation, I must admit it’s impressive. Specifically, the range of body types is astounding, at least within the narrow confines of “hotness.” There are Nubian sex queens, semi-anorexic Flockharts and one muscular (yet somehow profoundly feminine) flaxen-haired 20-something who looks like she should be riding a polar bear in a Smirnoff vodka ad. The lads are just as camera-ready, including one hormone-enhanced bruiser who looks like a giant, tanned, inflated pig bladder.

And, yet, as Gerber says, it’s a pretty tame scene. Unlike some of the bluer Vegas pool parties, there’s no outright nudity. So keep your shirt on, people. For now.

(Note: Because of the July 4 holiday, there will be no Salvation party this Sunday; it will return July 13.)