Press release: BUSCH GARDENS’ NEWEST SHOW OPENING NIGHT CRITTERS TAKES THE STAGE

TAMPA, Fla. (July 9, 2014) – Busch Gardens® Tampa’s newest live stage show Opening Night Critters takes the stage this summer in Pantopia Theater. Featuring rescued domestic and exotic animals, including dogs, cats, birds, a horse and a kangaroo, among others, this theatrical tale follows a couple of stage hands as they haphazardly find themselves in the spotlight as the human stars in an all-animal production. 

The stage hands quickly discover that working with these animals isn’t as easy as they had originally thought. Try as they might, they can’t get their costars to cooperate and when nearly all hope is lost, their kindness and compassion is rewarded when everything falls into place for a fun-filled, furry and feathered finale.

See a preview of Opening Night Critters, now playing in Pantopia Theater, on the Busch Gardens YouTube channel.

In addition to Opening Night Critters, guests can guests can take advantage of extended park hours until 9 p.m., special entertainment, high-energy DJs and the thrill of riding world-class coasters in the dark during Summer Nights®. Now through Aug. 17, Busch Gardens amps up the excitement with fan favorites like the energizing acrobatics show Kinetix and fireworks every night.

New in 2014, Gwazi Park heats up with Saturday-night concerts during Summer Nights. In addition to pop, R&B, alternative and Latino music artists, guests can indulge in summer-favorite grilled food items and a selection of craft beers.

The Summer Nights excitement, including concerts, is included with daily admission or any annual pass. The full concert area is open to guests and located just behind the Gwazi rollercoaster. Concerts will take place at 8:30 p.m., immediately followed by a grand fireworks finale. Note: concerts will take the place of Kinetix on Saturday nights only.

Celebrate at Busch Gardens all week long with the all-new “Select Your Day, Select Your Savings” ticket offer. This new pricing lets guests choose between a weekday visit or an “any day” visit, both offering great savings, including saving up to $30 on a single-day ticket. Guests have the flexibility to use their tickets up to one year from purchase, but what they might enjoy most is the convenience – buy online, print tickets at home and go straight through the gate.

Annual passes, which include unlimited admission throughout the year, free parking and no blackout dates, continue to be the best value for Florida residents and start at just $13 per month with EZpay.

Event dates, times and details are subject to change. For more information, visit buschgardenstampa.com, or call 1-888-800-5447.  Be the first to know about new events, special deals and future announcements by following the park’s blog at BuschGardensTampaBlog.com, or “like” the Busch Gardens Facebook page, and follow @buschgardens on Twitter and Instagram.

Event review: RePlay: Symphony of Heroes

As heard on the Geek I/O show episode 54, executive producer Jason Michael Paul, of JMP Productions, announced that the North American premiere of the video game symphony  RePlay: Symphony of Heroes, was coming on April 19, 2014 to Saint Petersburg, Florida’s very own Mahaffey Theater.  Myself and Rachel had the pleasure of being invited to come down and watch this absolutely spectacular performance.  

Before the performance, we were treated to a backstage tour and to listen to a part of the symphony’s final rehearsal.  We were also treated to another meeting, face to face, with Jason before the event.  

CJ with Jason Michael Paul

Rachel with Jason Michael Paul

After talking with Jason a bit about what he was doing here in town, and he let us know that he enjoyed the Yankees v. Rays baseball game the night before, as well as some of the local cuisine.  He let me know that he was not a fan of stuff that was a chain and that he preferred to support the local eateries instead.

We then got to just lounge in the beautiful St. Pete springtime, overlooking Tampa Bay at the Mahaffey Center, waiting for the event to start, and it was a very simple process getting the tickets and moving into the event, thanks to the amazing staff at the Mahaffey.  

Now, the event.

Panorama of the theatre

We get into the theatre, assigned seats, once again the Mahaffey can really handle itself with a crowd.  The theatre is beautiful, and there is a buzz in the air, there are geeks like us everywhere, happy, talking, there are even a few random people in costume!

The lights dim and the guest conductor comes up, a brief narration come across with the soft underscore of music from the orchestra, and then the music from Elder Scrolls: Oblivion strikes up!, The crowd goes completely silent, only gasps heard, and the announcer, Nigel Carrington (Dear Esther, The Dark Knight) comes up, explaining the story.  You are the hero, and you will discover yourself through the stories of other heroes, Master Chief, Link, Chelle, Chrono, and many, many more.  Before each of the chapter’s music, Nigel comes up once again (to the backdrop of Dear Esther music) to explain what your hero’s next step in the journey is.

Most of the chapter’s music is accompanied by scenes from the games they are from, with the exception of a few, which brings me to my real only dig on the event, the two games we personally were looking forward to seeing, Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII were completely lacking cinematics.  I am sure that was because of a licensing issue, and nothing more (this was one question that both Rachel and myself were not able to ask).

The music is beautiful.  The cinematics are breathtaking.  The event flows effortlessly and is by far one of the most beautiful and breathtaking events that I personally have had the pleasure of attending in a very long time.

Now some credits, thank you all again for this event and opportunity. 

Here are some links for review:

Replay’s Site

JMP Productions

Full media for the event

2014 Bay Area Renaissance Festival

By: CJ Boat

NOTE: as of this writing, the event is still on, weekends until April 6, 2014.

The Geeks landed for the second time this year over at the Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Tampa at the MOSI fairgrounds.  This is an unique event in the Tampa Bay area, where nothing else really exists like it in the area.  We’re going to go over food, vendors, events, and performances, and you can make up your minds to visit or not (you should go, several times). We have been twice, and I am going to cover the last time we went, celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day weekend.

When you think of food at the Renn Fest, you think of a couple of things instantly, turkey legs and mead.

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There was much of these things and more here.  We had a few things to eat here, a broccoli and cheese soup in a bread bowl, turkey leg, pork kabob, some apple cider, and mead! MEAD! The bread bowl was good, but nothing really amazing, it filled the spot, it being a  80°F sunny Tampa day, and us being hungry.  We ate that, then turned toward the main portion of the Festival festivities, what is lovingly called Piper’s Valley. 

    In Piper’s Valley, we have all of the theme weekend’s celebrations: in this case St. Patrick’s Day merrymaking.  This leaves everything in a lovely shade of green, most of the tents are green, and of course all of the beer is green as well. There is a lot of beer!  Not being a beer drinker myself, we opted for more of the finer things in life: cider.  It is an amazing thing being in summer-like conditions sharing an ice-cold cider (Woodchuck in this case) and hanging out with friends. (Image here)

    After this, we left the madness that is Piper’s Valley on an epic quest (we split the party during this part, and the outliers never returned - never split the party) to get actual protein in our systems.  Some of us opted for the almighty Excalibur of turkey legs, and some of us opted for a pork kabob(I opted for the pork, which wound up in my cider, and made it AMAZING, much to my surprise, but it may have been the mead talking) both of which were delicious, and there are plenty of other items of food here (including a wide selection of vegetable and vegetarian choices - don’t do the portobello mushroom burger, it’s not good) and lots of drink to be had.

Of course other than Faire food, you are thinking of things to buy, and there are dozens of vendors with varying merchandise, from handmade soaps, to homemade walking canes, wands, swords, leather garb, pirate swag, and so much more.  In particular we found an awesome vendor who made remarkable blade replicas made of leather, and another really awesome leather workshop, where they would run lectures through the day, and if you paid the right amount, the artisan would do custom work for you through the day. The main thing to remember is make sure you have enough money to get that mead, because you can easily break ye ole bank on the merchant rows.

A specialization of this particular Renn Fest is the amount of events going on.  There are hours and hours of events outside of the performers.  There is high tea at 4 PM, human chess matches, jousting, the King’s Court, massive brawls, and more! We sat and watched a few jousting matches, the human chess tournament, and the grand melee.  There may be other events that I am missing, but that is what we were able to cover, and they are all really fun events, and your time will be wisely spent going to these amazing things.

    Our personal favorite thing to do is going to the performances.  The Washing Well Wenches, Johnny Phoenix, a random time-travelling rabbit, mud shows, the wheel of doom, and lots more.  We saw a couple of Johnny Phoenix’s shows his adult show and a normal show (watch the adult show - it’s infinitely better), the Washing Well Wenches doing their raunchy comedy act, and a very cute rabbit being coerced into doing things with carrots and that kind of thing.  After the Johnny Phoenix adult show, we sat and talked with him for over a half hour, and booked him for an upcoming podcast! This was by far the most interesting event, because we were discussing very personal things with a man … well… there’s a photo-dump below, and he’s the tall bald man.

As always, if you are in the Tampa Bay area, and have some fun things for us to cover, send us an email over at [email protected].

BARF Site

Entertainment

Merchants

Here are some pictures of the event. Click to progress through.