Casa de BriMan
The Ponchos Do Nothing

Happy St. Patty’s Day everyone! I hope everyone wore green today and avoided the dreaded pinch. I plan on celebrating with corned beef and cabbage, beer, watching a movie with my girlfriend, beer, and beer. I got to enjoy some early festivities at Margaritaville on Friday night. The night’s band was playing “Devil Went Down to Georgia” when a couple of Irish folk decided to river dance, bedecked in their best St. Patty’s clothes.

I made my way to Universal for the weekend. I spent two whole days at each park, pretty much walking around and just enjoying all the theming the parks have to offer. I must say, Islands of Adventure is in desperate need of some T.L.C. A lot of the props have faded with the times. Spider-Man’s queue needs a lot of work, Hulk needs a fresh coat, and Jurassic Park, well, let’s just say they need to borrow some pixie dust from Mickey. Personally, I feel that ride needs the most attention, especially with it being so close to Harry Potter. The stegosaurus on top of stone perch looked like it was having a seizure. I always thought that they should just do away with the River Adventure and re-do it as everyone’s beloved rumor, the Jeep Ride (we can save my ideas for another episode of the Casa). Hopefully, when they get ready to open up the Wizarding World everything gets a nice, fresh touch up.

I met up with Sledge and his wonderful other half, Angela on Saturday afternoon. After hesitation to ride it all day, I got talked into riding Popeye’s Bilge Rat Barges on the condition of getting a poncho first. When I purchased the poncho, the cashier laughed saying “Won’t do ya any good.” I laughed along thinking it will keep me drier than if I didn’t have one. I might as well have not even bothered with spending the 7 bucks. The water made its way through any possible opening in the poncho. In fact, the hoodie helped water get to my back. Like a moron, I forgot to take off my shoes so they were soaked as well. I was drenched, with a poncho. The cashier was a prophet. I felt compelled to take the poncho off go back to him and ask for forgiveness for not heeding his warnings. Since I was already soaked, I rode Ripsaw Falls. I always felt it was a poor man’s Splash Mountain. It’s a whole lot of fun, but it’s just seems as if it was made on the fly.

One thing I noticed was that all the wait times that were posted over the weekend were a lot shorter than what was posted. When I jumped on Ripsaw Falls, they wait time posted was 90 minutes. We waited maybe 30-40 minutes. The Mummy had a time posted of 25 minutes, we waited 10. Sledge had said that Universal is always off on wait times. Maybe it’s time you get a little bit more accurate. Then again, it is nice to have people see the wait times and get scared off. It means shorter wait times for me.

I got to experience Mardi Gras for the first time. It was “bleh” to me. Yeah, getting the beads were fun as always and some of the floats were neat, but I just didn’t really get into it. I think between Sledge, Angela, and myself, I scored the most but Sledge earned his the hard way by showing some skin although the gentleman decided it was worth only one set. I probably would have enjoyed the event more if it was the Four Seasons and not K.C. and his Sunshine Band. I would have really enjoyed seeing Frankie Valli sing “Sherry”, or “Oh, What a Night”. Oh well.

One thing I would like to complain about is the special little “Annual Passholder Section”. There was nothing special about it. It was towards the end of the parade’s route, and it was just a little special roped area. There were no special drink or food stands. No special seating arrangements. In fact, I think about 85% of the people in the area, weren’t even passholders. How would I know this? Well no one was guarding the ropes to check passes. If you are going to have a special area for us passholders, maybe you should give a little more “Oomph” to the area.

So it’s Mid-March, and Orlando United is enjoying an awesome first month. Now that most of the puzzle is compete, it leaves one more piece; the Orlando United Radio Podcast. In preparation of the “World Premiere”, we are asking everyone to start sending in your questions, and thoughts to ouradio@orlandounited.com. Stay tuned as we keep you guys updated on the official date.

That's all for this week kiddies.

BriMan
brian@orlandounited.com