Adventurers Club

My Bud, Shecky

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Meet my bud, Mike Speller.  I call him Shecky.
We’ve been friends now for twenty years — You believe that, Mikey? — since the days I was a regular at the Adventurers Club in Orlando, and Mike was one of their first and best actors; and although we’re separated by miles, I know we’re connected through our foul, telltale hearts.
Mike is a professional actor, having performed in tv’s Welcome Freshman and in such films as Passenger 57 and my personal favorite, The Night Becomes Charlie.  Became Charlie?  Can’t remember.  His role in that fine film was “Man in Road.”  Oscar-worthy work.  Check it out on Netflix.
Today Mike is a professional storyteller, wandering around the semi-frigid climes of Chicago and the midwest like a zombieified Jack London.  You can go to his site here and see all about him, or even book him for a performance.  But this post is all about Mike’s newest venture: blogging.
If you’d like insight into acting, comedy, storytelling, or if you’d just like to get to know an all-around nice guy who’s also one of the most intelligent guys I’ve ever met, he’s posting here on Blogspot.  He’s way too modest, but throw him a cookie, and maybe he’ll tell you about the time he, Darin DePaul and I helped an adventurer save Christmas.
Santa still owes us.

Disney’s Hyperion Barf

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The Powers That Be at Disney announced on November 18, via their Disney Parks blog, what the future of the late, lamented Pleasure Island entails.  And the vision of Disney’s imagineers is shops, restaurants, a walkway, and . . . dull.

You can read the online announcement here.  What they don’t say is they’re pretty much taking the wrecking ball to the waterside portion of Pleasure Island and expanding it into an attractive walkway that connects the Downtown Disney Marketplace — shops and restaurants — with the Downtown Disney West End — shops and restaurants.  By adding . . . um, shops and restaurants, the Disney bean counters expect to make a lot more money than Pleasure Island ever did, since PI was basically a cash cow only from sunset to 1 a.m.

This may indeed be a huge financial enhancement for the Bank of Walt, but it is another huge blow to Disney fans who want some grown-up entertainment in there that captures the Disney imagination.  Go to the announcement.  The important thing is not their press release verbiage.  It’s the reader comments.

Only two days later, and the news has garnered almost 300 comments.  (These are comments that are safe and non-critical.  There are tons of comments that the Disney censors didn’t post . . . including one of mine that was analytical.  Guess they didn’t like me mentioning revenue and profit margins . . .)  And if you go through them all, you can see for yourself that at least 9 out of 10 want only one thing — something that will fit right into the vision of Hyperion Wharf without a hitch.

They want the Adventurers Club.

Seriously, in light of the Adventurers Club fans across the world, their vocal opinions . . . what do you think the Bank of Walt will do?

Get real.  Profit margins will beat fans every time.

The seat at the bar on the left is where you would usually find my wife on any given night between 1991 and 1992.  I would be occupying the seat to her right.  Our friends and favorite bartenders, Jackie and Ray, would be pouring in front of us while Darin, Mike, Bob, Phil, Tim, Andy, Art, Kris, Phran, Sheila, Leslie, Joan and others made magic come alive all around us.

It’s gone now.  But we have wonderful memories.

The Really, Final, Last Call at the Adventurers Club…

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I knew Jim Hill, a nice guy and a true blue Disney aficionado, very briefly when Disney’s Adventurers Club was at its heyday (imho, the early 1990s).  Although the Club closed in fall 2008 to the general public, it remained open for private parties well into 2009 . . . and this account of the very last night of the best place on Disney property is a fine, yet sad reminder of the Adventurers Club’s glory days.

The Ruins of Disney Dreams

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I’ve always been fascinated by ruins.  I never really knew it, though, until my Dad and I drove down to Disney World on Spring Break in 1980.

Just outside of Daytona on I-95 we passed an area on the right that was new to me — I had never seen it before — but it was overgrown with scrubrush and toppling to the earth.  It was the ruins of some amusement park, built on an I-95 outparcel to capitalize on the proximity of Disney World — and somehow, it failed.  Utterly.

As soon as I spied those ruins between the trees, I was captivated.  When we drove back, I looked for them again, and saw them.  In those few seconds, an idea was born, and a trilogy of novels blossomed in my head — which I will write in the next few years.

Disney World, itself, now has a few ruins.  Its first water park, River Country, was closed years ago, and the more upscale and sanitary Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach replaced it.  But the old-fashioned swimmin’ hole is still there.  But it ain’t the way Walt ever dreamed of.

Ruins.  Go here to see the pictures — it’s sad, and amazing, and beautiful, all at the same time.

Years ago, Philip Wylie wrote a novel called, “The End of the Dream.”  I’ve never read it — never even seen a paperback copy in a used book store — but the title is appropriate when regarding the unsanctimonious and undeserved death of Disney’s Pleasure Island.  Truly, it was the only place on 42 square miles of Disney property where adults could go and have fun — dancing, dining, drinking, sans kids…and they closed it all, not because it wasn’t bringing in a whole lot of revenue, but it just wasn’t enough.  The island didn’t meet Disney’s profit margin, nor the company’s future financial goals.

Greed killed Pleasure Island.

The most Disneyesque nightclub on that man-made island was the Adventurers Club, and it was filled with not only wonderful characters (and some actors who have since become best friends) but the building itself was stuffed with strange and wondrous artifacts, all real, yet all given backstories of the most fictional origins, was the main character.

That building, closed to the general public for just about a year, open only to banquets and private parties since then, is now permanently closed…and in immediate ruins.  It looks like the large pieces and artifacts remain, but everything on the walls —

History.

A friend of mine is at Disney World as I write this, and about an hour ago he raised a glass of bourbon on his balcony at the Grand Floridian and toasted the memory of Pleasure Island as a favor to me.

I toast all my friends, and all the actors and people that I became close with..and I toast the loss of Disney for Grown-Ups.

We were there, when.

Now, it’s ruins…all in the name of profit margin.  These pictures are from Screamscape.com.  I lightened them up in PhotoShop so you can see them a little clearer, but nevertheless, it’s all very sad.

Pleasure Island memories

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This is it, people. If you’ve been to Disney World since the spring of 1989, you’ve seen the searchlights, you may have even been there, dancing and drinking. The rack cards were in every Disney bus; the commercials were on every hotel TV and every Orlando station.

Pleasure Island, the premiere destination for adults visiting Disney World, is closing in three short days.

This blog at the Orlando Sentinel was the inspiration for tonight’s entry about hot summer nights, and hedonistic pleasures, and tropical islands — even if they’re man-made. Submitted for your consideration is my own list of 19 years of Pleasure Island memories. I hope you and your families have many, and that they are good ones.

• 1989 • We expected a French Quarter of night clubs and fun, and were not disappointed. Maria and I found the Adventurers Club, and like the day I stepped out of my dad’s car in 1971 and saw the color of the blue, blue Florida sky for the first time, I realized I was home. We were greeted at the door of the Adventurers Club by Graves, the butler, as portrayed by Andy Clark (Andrew B. Clark in Woody Allen’s Radio Days). We sat immediately at a mezzanine table overlooking the main room and wondered just what the hell was going on. Then Maria and I noticed a man on the opposite side of the mezzanine, looking down. Leather jacket, leather hat, whip. I asked Graves, “Is that who I think it is?” Graves said, “Yes sir. Dr. Jones frequents the Club on his days off from University.”

Later that year, different vacation. The Club opened at 7. Still daylight. We were the only ones in there, sitting at the bar. Fletcher Hodges came out (an actor named Michael, who soon thereafter moved to L.A., and the next time we saw him was in a men’s room in a hilarious Halloween episode of Roseanne), placed some PI matchbooks on a barstool and started spinning them into wildly and madly oblivion. Later that night (I believe) we were still at the bar when a bunch of suits with walkie talkies came through, escorting Bob Hope on a tour of the Club. Maria still regrets not getting his autograph for her middle sister. But hell — who wants to bother Bob Hope?

• 1991 • We moved from Hampton to Orlando, got annual passes to the parks and Pleasure Island. Maria’s 60 year-old mother visited once, and we danced and partied on PI, and our main memory is of her sitting in the giant beach chair outside XZFR’s, smiling, smiling, smiling.

• After ’89 or so, every night at PI was New Year’s Eve. The PI Marching Band marched through the Club every night, down PI. At midnight, a curse was placed on the Club, and when it was successfully removed by the chanting of the audience, the band would strike up and confetti would be blown through the Salon, mirroring the celebration outside. When the confetti stopped, it was after the outbreak of the Gulf War, and the public was told it was because children were getting scared by the indoor fireworks. Who did they think they were kidding? It was budgetary, and the clean up crews were tired of doing their jobs.

• My friend Mike Speller started out at the Club in ’89, even doing previews for Michael Eisner, and if you remember any of the promos or commercials from that time, he was the guy in the waiter’s suit and gorilla mask. He and some of the other guys portrayed Marcel, the Club’s simian valet, who would occasionally enter the salon and pick lice from the female visitors’ hair.

We didn’t really become friends until we moved there. Then two bartenders, Ray and Jackie (all named Nash at the AC), became our close friends, and they (well, primarily Jackie) brought us into the actors’ circle. Mike and Darin DePaul (follow the link if you want, but it does not chronicle his successes on stages across the country or Broadway…or the upcoming Meryl Steep movie…) quickly became two of our best friends, because we somehow connected. There was a mutual bond between us all that extends to this day. I miss them both. I was Darin’s best man, and I don’t think I could have lived a prouder day.

• The real New Years Eves. they were best at the beginning and got cheap at the end. Dancing in a conga line with Buster Poindexter. Larry “Bud” Melman going to every club and saying “Happy Goddamn New Year!” Paul Schaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band. Weird Al. Joan Jett. Peter Gabriel and Roseanne Arquette touring the Adventurers Club. Buffets at every night club, two free drinks, and free party favors, starting at $65. By the last year it was over $125, no drinks, no buffets, and no party favors. At the right place, at the right time. Trying to get out of the PI parking lot jam, jumping out of the car, white shirt, red vest, black pants, stopping traffic, waving cars, then jumping back in the Bluesmobile and shouting, “Hit it!”

• After every night at PI, Maria and I would pause just pass the Empress Lilly and look across the water at the Lake Buena Vista Villas. My parents took us there in 1980, and then we took my mother in 1986. By the time we moved to Orlando, both were gone — and we would stop and silently say goodnight to them, watching the reflections of the villa lights rippling on the lake, and wondering why.

Now the villas are gone, too.

• Darin, playing Emil Bleehall, nerd extraordinaire, at the Adventurers Club. He comes up and asks me a stupid question, to which I reply one of HIS lines — and he replies, in character, “Hey, thanks for nothing, fuckface!” I nearly spit out my gin and tonic — which, by the way, was comped by my friends.

• Mentioning that we wanted to see the comedy show to one of our actor friends; and suddenly we’re escorted from the Adventurers Club and backdoored into prime seats at Comedy Warehouse. We met a LOT of wonderful people!

• Writing a complimentary letter in 1990 to the AC manager, and the next time we visited, it was displayed in a shadowbox near the bathrooms (really, where it belonged).

• The story was that newcomer Emil Bleehall just arrived to Pleasure Island from Sandusky, Ohio. The actor portraying him would start out walking from the far end of the island (near the long-gone Fireworks Factory), suitcase in hand, and ask his way, interacting with bystanders, to the Adventurers Club. One of my regrets: I never saw a single actor do this. We were always in the AC before or after.

• 1989 • Spur of the moment: on the mezzanine, I opened a drawer of the desk. Inside was a handwritten letter from Graves to one of the Club adventurers. Funny. Unique. I kept it. It’s in a desk drawer here in our own library right now, waiting for someone to find it.

• Ray, the bartender, and his magic tricks. He wasn’t great, but he was FUN; and he was the best at impressing semi-drunk 20-something babes at the main bar. This boy put the ooooooo in smooooooth. He’s now at the Outer Rim Lounge at the Contemporary resort. Say Hi from Rusty.

• Kristian Truelsen, actor and sender of semi-annual Christmas cards, God bless him, pulls me away from the bar, hands me a cup of water, says, “Let me sit on your lap and you drink this water, okay?” I say okay and he leads me to a chair facing the poof — the poof is the big couch surrounding the statue of fishing Zeus. There he sits on my legs, I place my right hand below his neck as though he’s a ventriloquist’s dummy, and I proceed to say, “I will drink this water as my dummy talks.” I drink the water, I move my hand, Kristian opens his mouth dummy-style, and water pours out of it.

I laughed for days. During the Clinton campaign, he, I, Darin and Mike attended an Orlando Clinton/Gore speech, then had lunch at Orlando’s best ever restaurant, the original Pebbles. Kristian regaled me with Lateral Thinking Puzzles, all of which I remember 16 years later. Damn you and your perfidious influence! DAMN YOU!!!!

• Dinners at Portobello. It was then Portobello Yacht Club; now, menu changed, just Portobello. Dinners in the restaurant were always good. But appetizers and drinks sitting at the bar were even nicer; talking with the maitre’d and the wait staff, the thin pizzas, ordering dishes that weren’t listed on the menu! Damn, I love personal restaurants like that.

About ten years ago, having medium-rare tuna for the first time at a table for two. It may have been the night Maria had Halibut in Grape Sauce, which she craves to this day, but it has never since been offered. A group of about 10-15 walked past our table, and at the end of the line was a deeply tanned, wavy-haired, shirt open to his belly, Wayne Newton. They sat at the big table way in the back. I said to Maria, “Maria, that was Wayne Newton.” She said, “Who?” I said, “The guy at the end of that big group. Wayne Newton.” She craned her head and looked and said, “Yeah. Right. Sure.”

My own wife still doesn’t believe me.

• There are other nights and other years, like the night an Imagineer, on an endless expense account, bought us a bottle of Dom Perignon; the night a woman flashed her tits for cameras at the beach club and smiled at me as I laughed at the sight; the night my bro-in-law ruined Art’s “table-hopping” line; dancing in 8-Trax to disco music I used to hate; the hookers that would show up, not looking like tramps, but ultra-sophisticated escorts; the one and only time we saw the shrunken heads over the AC bar shiver; learning that the Cage, what 8-Trax started out as (a teen club) was the most violent-prone place on property; the nights talking with the private animator who’d call ahead to the AC to put his Coronas in the freezer; Darin’s best night, where he imitated all of the actors at the Club, and Darin’s last night, where we surprised him by driving to FL in a 12-hour spurt; the one-way mirrors in the mens room of Fireworks Factory; Len, who valet-parked our cars for at least five years then went on to law school (YOU OWE US!); the 1992 Miami refugees of Hurricane Andrew who came to Orlando for electricity, a hot bath and a cold beer (you are remembered!); the cheap FX in the AC — did you know the Colonel’s voice is not amplified by a microphone, but by the echo effect of a highly expensive…plastic cup? The night after actor Phil Card’s vasectomy, when he went around to every woman in the Club and pronounced that he was “built for pleasure.”

And should I even mention seeing Pauly Shore?

Naaaaaaah.

I will miss you, Pleasure Island. The big, leg-moving Jessica Rabbit sign, the giant beach chair, the games no one really played, the cheap souvenirs, the expensive animation souvenirs, the coin-operated boats, the shrimp bars, the Jazz Club and the cigars, the Neon Armadillo, the roller-skating, the half-naked women, the imagination that has now given way to annual budget goals.

Pleasure Island is dead.

Long live Pleasure Island.

The Last Glorious Days of the Adventurers Club

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Seems like the Adventurers Club on Pleasure Island — the one the Disney suits are closing because it just wasn’t making enough money — is raking it in during its last month of normal business. My friend Mike Speller, former cast member and actor at the Club, is planning on being there for its last closing weekend, and I was hoping to make it as well; but this report from Disney reporter/critic Jim Hill explains why I may just have to live with the Adventurers Club glory days — 1989 – 1993 — in my memories and in my heart. (Reprinted below/link above)

Mike, Darin, Andy, Sheila, Tim, Fran, Art, Joan, Kristian, Phil — you were the best they ever had.

And may God bless Marcel.

This past Friday night, visitors to the Adventurers Club got to see a brand-new artifact added to the wall in the Main Salon : A video projection screen.


Photo by Max Schilling

Given that this piece of Pleasure Island is supposed to be a recreation of a gentlemen’s club from the 1930s, one might wonder why the Mouse was adding this technological anachronism to AC’s carefully themed interior. But — sadly — the reasoning behind this particular installation at the Club was all too obvious.

As one PI vet told me this past weekend:

“What we did on Friday night was a test. Over the next two weeks, we anticipate that a record number of Adventurers Club fans will be coming back to Pleasure Island, trying to catch one last Balderdash Cup or Hoopla. And given that the Library has limited capacity … Well, we don’t want any of our Guests to go away disappointed. So we’re experimenting with doing simulcasts at the Adventurers Club. Projecting the Balderdash Cup & the Hoopla out in the Main Saloon at the very same time that these live stage shows are being presented in the Library.”

To be honest, Friday night’s test of the Adventurers Club’s new video projection system wasn’t entirely a success. Why For? The way I hear it, when the video feed for the Balderdash Cup was projected out into the Main Saloon, people literally stopped in their tracks to look up at that screen.

Which — as you might imagine — totally disrupted guest flow within the Club. To the point that Friday night’s presentation of the Balderdash Cup wound up playing to only 2/3rds of its usual house because … Well, many AC visitors couldn’t actually make it down into the Library that night. They found their way blocked by all of those Guests who were standing there in place, staring up at that video screen.

Still, this new video projection system was back in operation on Saturday. And it’s a good thing that it was, because the Adventurers Club got totally slammed that night.

As one longtime visitor to the Club told me last night:

“I’ve been visiting the Adventurers Club for over 15 years now, and I’ve never seen this place that busy. At one point, the manager literally had to tell the doorman ‘One in, one out.’ Meaning that the Club was at absolute maximum capacity. And before anyone new could be allowed to enter that building, someone who was already inside the Club first had to go outside.


Copyright Disney. All Rights Reserved

The place was completely packed on Saturday night. I’m talking body-to-body. The Main Salon was so crowded that the cast members who were leading the New Induction ceremony had to literally warn the Guests who were gathered there to ‘Please be careful when you do the Adventurers Club salute. We don’t want you to accidentally take someone else’s eye out.’

To accommodate the crowds, they had both the upstairs & downstairs bars open that night. With all three of the bartenders in the Club going full tilt, serving drink after drink after drink.

According to cast members that I spoke with last night, it’s been like this for two months now. With huge crowds coming out every night in order to say ‘Goodbye’ to the Adventurers Club. Given the enormous amount of money that Disney obviously has to be making off of alcohol sales at this one Pleasure Island nightclub, you have to wonder if they’re now having second thoughts about killing off this cash cow.”

At the very least, Pleasure Island managers are now doing everything that they can to milk this cash cow. Even going so far as & increase the Adventurers Club’s capacity by changing the seating arrangement in the Library (i.e. removing most of the tables that used to be located in this part of the Club and opting to go with fixed rows of seats instead) as well as getting rid of most of the over-sized, over-stuffed chairs that you used to find in the Main Salon.

To further increase AC’s capacity as this much beloved Club gets closer & closer to its previously-announced September 28th closing date, PI officials are also talking about returning this nightclub to its original 1989 traffic pattern. Meaning that — after Guests have seen a show in the Library — they’ll then be directed to exit the Club entirely. Duck out through that door that’s located next to the bar. And then — should these WDW visitors actually wish to re-enter the Adventurers Club … Well, they’ll have to get on line with all of the other Guests who are already queued up outside of this nightclub.


Photo by Max Schilling

In the meantime, Guests are desperate to have something tangible to remember their last trip to the Adventurers Club by. Which is why the Club’s souvenir cups (Which the bartenders offer AC’s signature beverages in) are flying off the shelves. This past weekend, the AC actually sold out of those glasses that feature Arnie & Claude’s faces (i.e. those two talking heads that you’ll regularly find hassling tourists in the Mask Room). And in the coming week, the Club expects to sell through all of the Yakoose-shaped mugs that it currently has in stock.

Meanwhile the Club’s managers regularly patrol the upstairs and the downstairs. Making sure that the AC’s more rabid fans don’t help themselves to other sorts of souvenirs. And by that I mean trying to pry some of the artifacts & photographs that are currently on display in the Club right off of the walls !

Which — I know — sounds like crazy, crazy behavior. But trust me, folks. It’s a crazy, crazy time at the Adventurers Club. With people standing 5 deep at the bar in the Main Salon, with the cash registers there constantly opening & closing in order to accommodate all of those drink orders … And yet Disney officials still insist that Pleasure Island has to be closed because places like the AC just don’t appeal to WDW visitors anymore.

Oh, really? Try telling that the people who were still standing on line outside of the Adventurers Club at 1 a.m. this past Saturday night trying to get in. Try telling those folks that this PI nightclub is no longer popular. I’d imagine that those Guests might have a few choice words for you. None of which would be “Kungaloosh.”

Anyway … It’s a very sad & frustrating time for Adventurers Club fans … Made sadder still by the news that just came out of Glendale. Which has three Imagineers who were closely associated with the creation of Pleasure Island (i.e. senior vice president Rick Rothschild, executive producer Chris Carradine, director of concept design John Horny) being let go from that division of the Walt Disney Company earlier this month.

Speaking of Imagineering … The guys from WDI quietly put out the word late last week that the opening date for Disney’s Hollywood Studios‘ newest attraction — the “American Idol Experience” — has been pushed back from January of 2009 to the Spring of next year.


Copyright 2008 Disney. All Rights Reserved

Why For the delay? Well … As I understand it, the retooling of the interior of the old “Superstar Television” Theater is taking far longer than Disney originally expected. Which — given how large & lavish the sets for the “American Idol Experience” are supposed to be — isn’t really all that much of a surprise.

I also hear that Disney Parks — working with 19 Entertainment and FremantleMedia, the co-producers of the “American Idol” television series — has hatched this elaborate promotional plan for the “American Idol Experience.” Which involves this new DHS attraction being prominently displayed and/or mentioned as part of each episode of AI that airs on Fox in the coming season.

This promotional effort will culminate in late May of 2009 when the winner of next season’s “American Idol” is named. The very next day (or thereabouts), this individual will then be flown down to Walt Disney World so that they can then take part in the grand opening of the “American Idol Experience.” Which will (in theory, anyway) garner lots of free publicity for Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ newest attraction.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean WDW Entertainment still won’t be holding AIE soft opening sometime in the last winter / early spring of 2009. The way I hear it, those folks want six to eight weeks of daily performances under their belt before they then invite the press in to check out DHS’s newest attraction.

The only wildcard here is … Well, because AIE was originally scheduled to open in January of 2009, DHS managers then felt justified in cutting “Fantasmic !” back to just two days of performances during that exact same time period. But now that the “American Idol Experience” ‘s soft opening has been pushed back by at least a few weeks, one wonders if Disney World officials will now revisit their earlier decision? Perhaps return Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ nighttime extravaganza to its rightful seven-days-a-week spot on that theme park’s entertainment schedule.

Anyway … That’s the latest on AC & AIE. With one getting ready to close its doors, while the other postpones its grand opening.