This Weekend In Techno Town

FRIDAY MAR 7
Fresh back from a tour that included gigs in Las Vegas, Los Angeles & Scottsdale, DJ Meaux Green returns to O-Town with a show this Friday night at Vain Nightclub. DJ's Byno, ATM and Big Makk open!
($10) 

SATURDAY MAR 8
This Saturday night at Club V onboard Victory Casino Lines, the 2am sailing (technically Sunday morning) has DJ Magic Mike, DJ Pete Manos, DJ DavidZ and resident DJ Shal.  The ship arrives back to Port Canaveral at 7:30am Eastern Daylight Time.Who's up for an all-nighter?
($10 Boarding Fee includes Parking)

For something completely different, consider the Great Orlando Mixer at the Cheyenne Saloon, Church St. Station. Gatsby garb required! ($30) 

SUNDAY MAR 9
In case you missed his recent performance at Roxy in Orlando, DJ Dash Berlin (NL) brings his mostly Trance show to Tampa this Sunday night, performing at Hogan's Beach resort!
($29.50)

80's Toons Gone Wild!

You don't have to be a Megacon attendee to come out to the 5th Annual Megacon After Party taking place on Saturday, March 15th at Backstage Lounge in the Rosen Plaza Hotel.  This year's party theme 80's Toons GONE WILD....your sexy take on 80's cartoon heroes or villains!  Tickets are just $15 and it includes free valet parking at the hotel. DJ Nelson Flux (Star Wars Celebration Afterparty, Arkham Nights) along with DJ Evolv3 (Ultra Music Festival, Vibe Music Festival), both spinning House/Dance. This will be a sellout so get your ticket here now!

INNA - Deja Vu

Our Saturday morning article featured a couple pictures of the fabulous light wall in Orlando's Bikkuri Lounge.  Blog reader Keren from DFW was sure she had seen a similar wall in a music video from Dance/Pop singer Inna (RO) and sure enough, she found it!  Thanks for sharing, Keren!

PI Update: Hyperion Wharf vs Disney Springs

As you know, the Pleasure Island clubs closed in late September, 2008 amid plans by Disney to outsource all of the existing buildings to third parties to be operated as restaurants and shops.  But a deteriorating economy and allegedly high rents put a hold on potential lessees and those plans never materialized.  Finally, in Fall, 2010, Disney instead announced Hyperion Wharf and Save Pleasure Island Blog was the first to publish the plans. Those plans were quite vague on substance with large areas of Pleasure Island remaining "seed & mulch".  In April of 2011 the Blog was the first to report that Hyperion Wharf was either on indefinite hold or cancelled and it wasn't until March, 2013 that its replacement, the much-grander Disney Spring, was announced.  But we wonder how much of the Wharf carries over to the Springs?  

Hyperion Wharf was limited to Pleasure Island of course while Disney Springs impacts the entire Downtown Disney complex. Pleasure Island becomes "The Landing" in this reincarnation and is now under active construction.  In the Wharf plans as shown above, the Lily Pad area was to keep it circular look with some sort of compass-look embedded into the ground. 

At that time the Lily Pad area did get rebuilt but it never gained the compass look. As we saw last weekend, the Lily Pad area is under active demolition and reinvention again! At the rear, notice the only pedestrian option from this area is to head towards Raglan Road and Mannequins.

One holdover from Hyperion Wharf is this new pedestrian passageway that is going to cut through what is now the service court between Raglan Road and Portobello. This throughway was so important to the Hyperion Wharf plans that it led to club Motion being demolished.  The club unfortunately sat at what is the top end of the new route.  Notice the plans have at least one new retail store along the routing.

Inspecting this area more closely, we see the the existing service court at the upper left and behind that big brown door, the replacement service court.  The dirt area on the left is where the new Boat House restaurant is going; it's footprint extends out over Village Lake.  To the right, we see unknown construction taking place including a circular excavation into the ground.  This is near where the outdoor amphitheater was to be built for Hyperion Wharf but we don't know yet whether it survives for Disney Springs. We also see a new building under construction in the upper middle, roughly to the rear of where Fuego used to stand.  We still don't know what is coming but we do know that after 5 years of nothing, they've finally got their Mouse tails in gear!

Concert Report: Spacemen Live (Firestone Live)

Another great concert last night at Firestone Live and in reality, I'm going to have to call this one nothing short of amazing!

Arriving to find the mysterious DJ X (Xquizit Records, Amphitheatre, Cage) on the podium!

And DJ Jimmy Joslin (180 Grey Goose Lounge, Vanity Nightclub, O'Shucks) stopping by to say hello to Save Pleasure Island Blog!

And then taking over on the stage. This second installment of Return of the Kings had a smaller DJ lineup than the first run last November but it was no less crazy!

Celebrating the early years of Orlando's dance scene, the music was Old Skool all-the-way!

Moderate-sized crowd around midnight that would explode into a packed club later on!

Mannequins was represented!

Lots of Breaks in the mix!

Friends in every direction!

Breakbeat boyz!

Waiting for the Spacemen!

Firestone's new lighting was in full glory last night!

Spacemen coming out to check their equipment.  I had never seen them before and had no idea at this point what I was about to experience. They left the stage as DJ X finished his set.

And OMG, without warning......there they were!

Spacemen Live (USA)!

And for the next hour they blew-out the place with a Progressive Electro Breakbeat program while dressed as.....well, spacemen!

The packed club stared in as much amazement as I was!

I've seen a lot of shows, I've seen most of the top DJ's.  But this was incredible!

Spacemen Live.....worth any price!

Spotted: The beautiful DJ LadyV (Earthdance) plugging the upcoming Future Sound of Breaks event at Mekka in Miami on March 28th. Sorry the picture came out kind of fuzzy. Let me assure you that I've spoken to the Blog's official photographer about his intoxication level last night!

And at Firestone last night, a good time was had by all!

DJ Peapod's New Album Released!

After a long 3 year wait, we finally have a new album from internationally famous DJ Peapod (USA).  It's called "Shiny Dreams" and you can listen and download it for free here.  Peapod was the Friday, Saturday & Sunday night DJ at Mannequins on Pleasure Island and was thus arguably the most well-known of the resident DJ's during the club's final years.  He's currently resident DJ at Dillinger's in Binghampton, NY.  
My favorite album of Peapod's has been his 2006 "Proud".  Some amazing tracks on there, as heard at Mannequins! But "Skinny Dreams" may be his best yet!

Club Reports: Bikkuri Lounge, Suite B Lounge

Lots of EDM going on last night in Orlando with Excision at House of Blues, 3LAU at Firestone and DJ Rob N here at Bikkuri Lounge!

Rob N (USA) was a Insomniac Discovery Project winner and played a set at Electric Daisy Carnival - Orlando in 2012.

 The club is actually pretty dark but my flash lit the place up!

Bikkuri has these awesome light walls!

Changing colors and designs to the beat of the music!

As this was "Lost in Trancelation" night, his set was nearly all Trance.

Lots of build-ups and crashes, he played both vocal and non-vocal Trance.

The dance floor stayed pretty full during his awesome hour set.

I was next summoned over to Suite B Lounge.

Arriving just in time for DJ Lee Coombs (GB) arrival.

Pretty crowded but not packed early this morning.

The dance floor stayed pretty full.

The music alternated between Progressive and Breaks.

Spotted: DJ Security (Fundamental Breakz Collective) with Lee Coombs.

Spotted: DJ Vitamin C (Silly Grape / Silly Philly) with friend.

Mixing in some incredible Classic Dance towards the end of the night really got the crowd cheering!

Everyone in the club was dancing to the Old Skool!

Spotted: DJ Jade (Underground Sound) with friends!

And a good time was had by all!