
The Golden Palace begins where The Golden Girls had ended, in the quartet's now-sold Miami house. With Dorothy Zbornak having married and left in the previous series finale, the three remaining cast members (Dorothy's mother, Sophia Petrillo, Rose Nylund, and Blanche Devereaux) decide to invest in a Miami hotel that is up for sale. The hotel, however, is revealed to have been stripped of all of its personnel in an effort to appear more profitable, leaving only two employees: Roland Wilson, the hotel's manager, and Chuy Castillos, the hotel's chef. This requires the women to perform all the tasks of the hotel's staff.






The girls sell their house and head for their recently-purchased Golden Palace hotel, only to find business isn't exactly booming -- the entire hotel staff consists of three employees, and to make matters worse, the hotel is flat broke.
Rose gets the producers of a local talk show to advertise the hotel for free in exchange for providing accommodations for the show's guests. Soon, however, the girls meet the first guest -- a very strange man whom the girls suspect may have been a murderer. Meanwhile, Blanche imposes her authority over Roland and the staff, and Sophia serves margaritas to try and lure in new guests.
While going through past guest records, Blanche and Roland discover the name "Miles Webber" listed several times, which they take to mean only one thing -- Rose's boyfriend, Miles Webber, has been cheating on her. Meanwhile, Sophia catches Oliver extorting money from a guest.
Rose takes a liking to an elderly guest at the hotel named Vivian, but the others become worried when she displays signs of severe senility. Meanwhile, Sophia and Chuy begin making Chinese takeout after call-in customers mistake the hotel for a Chinese restaurant, and Oliver tries to raise money for a date.
The hotel books a convention of lawyers and a group of "judges" -- but when the judges show up, the girls discover they're not actually judges, but a gang of bikers. Meanwhile, the man Chuy's ex-wife cheated on him with is hired as another cook, and the hotel's insurance policy is cancelled.
The Golden Palace is being sued by the owner of another hotel: he says part of the girls' parking lot is on his property. Blanche challenges herself and tries to deal with this as a business woman instead of seducing the man so he drops his charge. Chuy is mad because Roland, who is captain of the volleyball team, will not let him play but lets Rose on the team even though she is not better than he is. Blanche finally finds a solution to the problem without getting romantically involved.
Rose is enamored with a hotel guest who looks exactly like Charlie; Blanche is horrified to discover her visiting son Matthew wants to pursue a career as a comedian.