Club Reports: Legends Sports Bar, Endent Bar

First time visit to Legends Sports Bar on South Orange Avenue across from ORMC. Large two-level facility with a 70's Disco party taking place last night!

DJ Ken Battles on the controls playing 70's Disco, Old School, R&B and........

The Cupid Shuffle! Can't get away from that song that was regularly played at Motion at midnight but it did bring up the dancers. Relatively small crowd on hand for what should have been a jammed-up event. But even I didn't hear about it until pretty late!

Lots of groovy ladies in the house! Those in charge made me the official Judge for the Men's and Ladies dance contests for which prizes were give out. Lots of fun and lots of 8TRAX memories!

The move from South Orange Avenue to North Orange Avenue also moved the music from the 70's to the 80's with my visit to Endent Bar. I told the owner Indie John that I was calling his place Endent Bar and he acknowledged that he needed to get his sign fixed, LOL.

DJ Dem Rok was in the control tower all night mixing the typical Saturday night early 80's New Wave hits with lesser-known music from the same era. It was really awesome!

The dance floor stayed full all night under the shiny disco ball!

And a good time was had by all!!

Upcoming Music Cruises To Consider

The cruise industry enjoys a guest satisfaction rating of over 90%. First time cruisers usually become addicted and can't hardly wait to return to a few days of travel at sea, relaxation and.......the unlimited food! Of course to many, a cruise also represent nights of partying and you hope when arriving that there's going to be a great DJ on board! So it didn't take long for promoters to try to combine the lure of cruising and the love of great music!



OCTOBER 5, 2011: Coming up first is the ELECTRONIC MUSIC CRUISE. The DJ lineup currently includes Chus & Ceballos, Chad Andrew (Senso, Bliss), Camea, Che Rizik, Sebastian Paiza & Donnie Lowe (Gryphon) This is a 3-night cruise from Port Canaveral on Norwegian Sun sailing to Nassau and Great Stirrup Cay. You must book through EMC to sail and attend the private DJ events on board.




NOVEMBER 14, 2011: Coming up next is SHIPROCKED. This one is live heavy metal bands, not DJ's but I thought I'd mention it for RRBC rock fans. You can see the band lineup on the flyer. This is a 5-night cruise on MSC Poesia from Port Everglades sailing to Costa Maya to Cozumel. I attended this event last year and can tell you that most of the concerts are in the ship's main auditorium and smaller lounges. To get to see them you must book through Shiprocked. However, a number of bands also performed nightly on the main pool stage and everyone on board could attend those. Very heavy metal but a lot of fun drawing a really crazy crowd!



JANUARY 6, 2012: Kicking up the dance music a notch is the new HOLYSHIP event also sailing out of Port Everglades on MSC Poesia. This sailing is a 3-nighter to the Bahamas though. The current DJ lineup includes Steve Aoki, Fatboy Slim, Gina Turner, Laidback Luke with Dubstep provided by Rusko, Diplo, Skrillex and Destructo! The DJ events will be private so you must book through the promoter to attend.



 

JANUARY 27, 2012: Last and likely the best is the one that started it all, the GROOVE CRUISE.  DJ's have not yet been announced but they're always some pretty big names. This is a 3-night sailing on Norwegian Sky from Miami to Nassau and Great Stirrup Cay. They used to just book rooms on a cruise ship and sell them like the others above are doing. But this event has gotten so crazy and so huge that they now charter the entire ship. Everyone on board is expecting House & Dance and that's what is delivered. You need to watch the video on their website! The earlier you book, the better the rates.

Club Reports: The Groove, Latin Quarter

Thursday night is 80's Night at The Groove featuring DJ King (Motion, Rock'n'Roll Beach Club).

The club was pretty crowded last night including this group riding the train!

It did thin out after 1am. Great music although it sure seemed like he played a bunch of 90's too.

The adjacent Latin Quarter has DJ Leony (Sirius/XM BPM, RadioDanz, Club 23) playing various Latin music styles along with lots of Top 40 Dance and House. Really fun!

The place was wall-to-wall jammed from early to late!

And since Thursday night is Ladies Night at LQ with free entry and free drinks till midnight, there were definitely plenty of people of the female variety!!

CW Update: Could We See A New Club at CityWalk?

Will CityWalk be adding an additional night club? There are rumors out there that say that although I've got no verification and I have my doubts that it would happen anytime soon. Where would a new night club go? I always thought there was just one location remaining, the one pictured above across from Bob Marley's. (It actually goes deep into the tan building that is behind that green entry building.)

One of our CW sources has told us that there is actually a second location that could house a new club and here's a picture of it. It's the area between The Groove and Pat O'Brien's where Fat Tuesday occupies a small niche in front of it. That's the entry door.

You'll need to click on this photo a couple times to enlarge it to see any detail, but it's a mirror image of The Groove space although not built-out in any way. There's even an upstairs section with balcony. This location is a actually a better candidate to be used for a new club than the first one. Would love to seem them put this to use. And if Disney doesn't get their act together on Pleasure Island fairly soon, I think they might! What kind of new club would you like to see them open?

This Weekend In Techno Town

Are you a fan of the Just Dance interactive video game series? If you are, you are invited out to the new Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort this Saturday, July 30th for the world's first public viewing of the new Just Dance 3 game! There will be professional gamers kicking it off but then fearless fans will get to give it a try. The game won't be released to the public until October so you can experience it well in advance. There will be prizes. The hotel is located in that small enclave of non-Disney land located on Disney's side of I-4. From Buena Vista Drive, use the Chelonia Parkway entrance road. Who says there's no dancing at Disney World!

Happy Birthday Flag Counter

The Save Pleasure Island Blog began in obscurity more than 3 years ago back on July 14, 2008 shortly after it was announced that the clubs were being closed. But today, July 27, 2011 marks the 2-yr anniversary of when the Flag Counter was added to the Blog. I chose the domestic version since I assumed nearly every reader would come from the United States.

So where do we stand after two years? Well, according to the Flag Counter, we've had 97,319 new hits and 231,000+ total page views. Sure that's nothing compared to many websites but it's still pretty significant that close to 100,000 people care enough about what is going on at Pleasure Island to find out about the Blog and actually go to it. (With many from other countries!) Unfortunately, I was not counting during that first year.

The biggest day ever was March 11, 2011 when the Blog exclusively released blueprints of what was then coming to Pleasure Island as part of Hyperion Wharf. Consisting of mostly demolitions, seed and mulch, it wasn't pretty. But please keep tuning in as we continue this journey together. And if you have information to share, please email me as all sources are confidential. Thanks for reading!

PI Update: AC Artifacts Appearing Everywhere But Pleasure Island

Big thanks to Canadian reader Belle who alerted us to the fact that the new Disney Aulani Resort is going to apparently have parts of the Adventurers Club included in their kids club known as Aunty's Beach House. In this interview below conducted by the website DIS Unplugged, the Imagineer gives some hints about what's coming. Skip to around 22:00 for the AC connection.

Artifacts stripped from Pleasure Island's Adventurers Club have now appeared at D-Street in Downtown Disney West Side, Trader Sams in Anaheim, Aunty's Beach House in Oahu in addition to the originally reported destination of Hong Kong Disneyland! No recent reports on the Colonel though. You'll recall he was for sale a few months ago at Disney Property Control but when it got publicized, he was suddenly removed from sale.

Blog Response to Orlando Sentinel Article

PICTURED ABOVE:  Club Motion a few weeks after closure. Click to enlarge.

KingBob responds to Sunday's Orlando Sentinel article about Pleasure Island:
1) First of all thanks to the Sentinel for publicizing the absolutely sorry situation out there on Pleasure Island. While the Blog has attempted to cover it as best as possible and while the situation has been the subject of endless discussions on various on-line forums, this is the first real analysis by a major print publication.

2) Agree that there is a long-running debate within the Disney company about whether adult-only entertainment fits with Disney's family-entertainment brand. Given WDW's location within a community where the number one radio station is one that plays only music that is safe for the little ears, this is not surprising. Disneyland, watch out!

3) The resort's bragging that the club's closings have not harmed DTD guest ratings is laughable since the people who would disagree are no longer there to be polled. And they brag of financial growth? Unfortunately the losses in revenue are easily hidden and blamed on the horrible economy rather than the truth. Thus, no one has been held accountable for the disaster.

4) They say the night club business is a "low-margin business?" Everyone knows that alcohol-revenue is legal stealing; there's a reason liquor licenses routinely sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It ain't because the business is low margin.

5) Disney really did not know how much each club was making. PI made money as a whole from ticket sales, drink sales and merchandise sales. The latter two could be attributed to the clubs that sold them but ticket sales were not tracked. When the Island was gated your ticket was scanned at the entrance, you were given an armband and away you went. We don't really know if ticket sales got allocated to the clubs and if it was, in what manner that was calculated. After the Island was opened the first venue visited scanned your ticket and gave you your armband. Tickets were not scanned after that no matter how many venues you visited.

6) The fact that representatives of existing venues on the Island would not comment for the Sentinel article speaks volumes.

7)  No doubt the collapsing economy and credit crunch caused initial plans to falter. After more than 2 years Hyperion Wharf was offered up but apparently attracting few takers. So the fact that it's on indefinite hold and may never be coming back is taken by PI fans as a sign of hope! Splitsville is a sign of hope.

8) We just want our clubs back.....in one form or another.

PI Update: Orlando Sentinel Mentions Save PI Blog

Today's Orlando Sentinel has an article about the lack of activity on beautiful Pleasure Island. Of course Disney denies any problems, simply saying that it has taken longer than anticipated. Considering that we are at 3 years since the clubs were closed and nothing new has replaced any of them, that would appear to be an understatement. The Save Pleasure Island Blog gets mention in the article's last paragraph located at:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/the-daily-disney/os-disney-pleasure-island-20110723,0,2350241.story
Thanks to the Sentinel's reporter Jason Garcia for including my thoughts in his research for the article!

Club Report: Independent Bar

8TRAX fans of early 80's MTV classics need to be hanging out Saturday nights at Independent Bar (currently doing business as Endent Bar until their sign gets fixed!).

On Saturday nights its DJ Indie John spinning New Wave/Old Wave from the booth overlooking the dance floor.

Downtown Orlando was particularly crowded last night; not sure what else was going on that brought so many people into the city. Parking lots were jammed.

Like wise, I-Bar was jammed too.

Didn't do any wandering last night, staying put for a change.

Spotted: DJ Stefan (Rage Room @ 11/12 Lounge, Necropolis @ Independent Bar)

And a good time was had by all.

Club Report: Suite B Lounge (Davie's Angels)

Friday night! Suite B Lounge. Downtown Orlando. Davie's Angels!

Davie's Angels consists of DJ's Davie-D (center), Heather Collins (left) & Jennifer Marley (right). One of his angels was missing though....DJ Bella from Tampa.

In past concerts of theirs I've attended, each had their shift on the decks and then were finished. Last night was a "tag team" event with each spinning a few songs, turning the turntables over but returning later on.

Palm Bay's DJ Jennifer Marley (Party95.com) was leading with Breakbeats when I first arrived.

Her method of operation is off of CD's.

Moderate sized crowd up until around 1am.

Not sure of the name of it but Marley played what is the last song on the famous Mannequins Medley! CO2 spraydown needed!

Orlando's DJ Heather Collins uses the old school method of vinyl.

And speaking of old school, Heather mixed Breakbeats with a lot of classic dance songs from the 90's! Sweet Harmony!

Collins rocking the silver metallic/destructed look.

After 1am Suite B became really jammed!

After 2am there were people at the door still trying to get in but not allowed to. Should have come here first people instead of Vain!

More Breaks please!

Spotted: DJ Pedro Vazquez with Firestone girl.

Let's not forget DJ Davie-D who was taking turns throughout the night!

Crowded dance floor!

He was also operating off CD's. No computers in here.

And a good time was had by all!