Spring Break 2005 - Day 1

After sleeping for four hours and getting Mark (who flew the red-eye via Chicago) at the airport, we headed to our first baseball game - the Toronto Blue Jays @ Houston Astros in Kissimmee. Using the map provided by the rental car agency, we attempted to find Kissimee, Fl. What should have taken us 45 minutes took almost two hours thanks to wrong turns and general confusion on all our parts. However, we still made it to the park with time to spare. The park was nice but the game itself was uneventful. We left after the 7th inning so we could go back to the hotel and take a power-nap in anticipation for tonight fun. The big event of the night was Pleasure Island at Downtown Disney. First we ate dinner at the Bongo's Cuban Cafe, a restaurant co-owned by singer Gloria Estefan. I had eaten Cuban food in Key West before and liked it, so I thought this would be good too. I wasn't impressed with the fish dinner I had - I think the fish in Key West is fresher and the food more authentic since the restaurants there are owned by actual Cubans. However, the live music at Bongo's was enjoyable and we didn't have to wait 45 minutes for our seats since the upstairs bartender unexpectedly took us out of the line and seated us rather quickly at his bar.

Next stop, Pleasure Island. PI is a collection of themed clubs. You pay $22 to enter and then have access to all the clubs. The first club we entered, 8TRAX, played music from the 70's and 80's. We had a few drinks there, watched people danced and then moved on to the BET SoundStage Club. Jon couldn't stand the music so he went out for a smoke and Mark, Steve and I had a drink. The night was still young and not many people were dancing. So we left and ended up at Motions, where they played top 40 music. This club was not too interesting, so we went to Rock 'N Roll Beach Club. They had a live band playing classic rock. This band was really good. We were impressed that they played the music that they liked, which was not necessarily the popular rock songs. They played obscure songs by Pink Floyd and The Who, and played them well. The crowd was small but seemed to enjoy the music. After they finished their second set, we journeyed to Mannequins Dance Palace. This ended up being my favorite place. The dance floor was a large rotating disk. I never thought that dancing on a rotating floor could be so fun, but is was. There were interesting people there, including someone dressed up in a Tron outfit. If you don't know what Tron is then you are too young. After getting our fill of this place, we went back to the Beach House to hear the bands third set. The finished around 2:30 AM and it was time to go home. We went to sleep around 3:30 AM. I am calling this "Day 1", but all the days kind of blurred together. Stay tuned for Day 2.