Fantasy Fest; it was fun, but now you must go.. Part TWO

OK.. finally, the second part of my Fantasy Fest post!

The Haunted fort is all cleaned up, we had our Wrap Party out on the beach last Sunday night, and my life has returned to something resembling normalcy. What a crazy month! Now back to where I left off….

DSCN1135 After Walter got on the ferry back to the mainland, and Christina and I had our night of relative peace and quiet, the next wave of visitors drove into town.. Christina’s brother Josh and his friend Jeff. They arrived Wednesday evening around 8:00. I’d made some paella for the occasion, so we feasted on that and had some drinks at the apartment before heading to Duval street.

We wandered around on Duval for a couple of hours, and after tiring of that madness, we walked over to Schooner Wharf to visit Frank Everhart. Josh hadn’t seen Frank perform before, so I knew that would be big fun!

True to form, Frank blew Josh and Jeff’s mind with some truly amazing magic, and topped it all off by pulling Josh’s phone number out of thin air and laying it out in cards on the table.. by this time it was pretty late, and Christina and I were pretty much ready to crash, she had to work in the morning, and I’m just getting too old to be out past midnight!

We walked back to the apartment and Josh and Jeff went back down to Duval to see some more of the madness. It was after midnight at this point, yet they were bound and determined to get up early and hop a fishing charter at 8 AM. Beer goggles make everything possible! I was doubtful they’d make it…

When I woke up Thursday morning, Christina had already left for work, and Josh and Jeff were snoring loudly in the living room. It was almost 10:00 AM.. I guess no fishing for them! The apartment stunk mightily of stale beer and seafood from the paella I’d cooked, which the two wonder drunks had finished off at 4 AM when they got in. At least I didn’t have to deal with leftovers filling up the fridge. The best part was that there wasn’t any food on the floor or the walls, which was an improvement over Walter’s visit (I’m still finding LoMein noodles in strange places).

We showered, fiddled about for a while, then left the apartment to find some food at around 1:00 in the afternoon. We walked down to the marina and wound up bellying up to the bar at Conch Republic Seafood… apparently it was time for a Bloody Mary!

We ordered some of the always fantastically yummy food there. I nursed my bloody mary while waiting for the food and prayed for my head to stop swimming. When the food did arrive, I switched up to a Blue Moon, and launched into my chicken fingers. When lunch was finished we all looked at each other and wondered what to do next. Eventually we settled on a swim in the pool at Dante’s.

Dante’s is another favorite place of mine to go, it’s essentially a big swimming pool with a tiki bar on each corner of the large pool deck; there’s a waterfall, a fish fountain in the middle of the pool, and it overlooks the marina.. what more could you want from a place? Food? YES, they they have good food too! I have yet to write a review here on ConchTales about Dante’s.. I guess I should get on that now that the October madness is over.

Dante’s or Bust!

We walked back to the apartment and picked up some towels, changed into swim trunks and headed back down to the marina. A quiet float in the pool was the only thing on my mind right then.. to let it wash the cobwebs from my head and get me ready to face yet another night of excessive insanity!

I knew we were in trouble when we walked up to the front… there was a live band playing.. so much for a quiet float. Luckily they were good so we continued on, but the real shocker was yet to come… the pool was FULL of naked women.

Well Men too, and luckily they weren’t naked, but still, I tried to not register the dudes . In all honesty, I tried to block out the vast majority of the women as well.. but you have to take the good with the bad I suppose.. after all it is Fantasy Fest, and we can’t start discriminating now.. that would run contrary to the entire premise of the event. The pool deck itself was wall to wall with more naked and half-naked women. I guess my quiet float in the pool was just not meant to be! The sacrifices we make… I tell you.

DSCN1215 Well, we ordered up a couple of beers and sat back to take in the spectacle. We were looking over the throng of people trying to take it all in, when I noticed Josh’s eyes get large… I followed his gaze…they had built a wooden platform in the center of the pool with some outdoor carpet on the top, and a stripper pole sticking out of it. Oh boy.. this was gonna get good. I’m guessing it was precisely at this moment that Josh decided the trip down from Orlando had been worth it.. haha.

Josh’s friend Jeff had wandered off by the time we finished our first beers, and josh and I decided he was a big boy and could take care of himself, so we acquired a couple more beers and headed for the pool. I gave the camera to Josh knowing that he’s far less shy when it comes to taking photos of naked girls than I… besides, I was bound and determined to have my float in the pool unencumbered by technology.

We finally made it into the water through the wall of people surrounding the pool, and waded out into the deeper end of the pool where the crowd was thinner. I’ve never in my life seen such a spectacle, and I have to say that it was completely surreal. The music was pounding, the women were dancing, people were laughing and drinking and just having the best time. I remember thinking how great it was that something like this can happen, and no one was fighting or getting all agro.. it really was cool. Only in Key West I suppose… I know if they tried anything like that in Orlando, the police would be tazering and pepper-spraying everyone within a 2 mile radius just for being there.

Well, I floated and drank my beer, and Josh took about 200 pictures. I’ve picked out a couple for the hi-lights gallery I’m posting here, the rest of them along with all my other FF photos can be found on my picasa page here. There’s a lot of them, and most are dull, but I’m not one to edit, so they’re all there.

The stripper contest started soon enough and I though Josh would pass out from the excitement. I got out of the pool right before it started, not wanting to be trapped by the crowd, made my way to the bar for another beer, and ran into Moose.. a friend from the Haunted Fort. We chit-chatted for a bit, and I noticed that it was getting pretty close to 5:00.. Christina would be off work soon and we were scheduled to be on a sunset cruise leaving at 6:00.. yikes.. better get Josh out of the pool! And quick!

The mad dash

I pushed my way back through the crowd trying to see Josh in the swirling madness of the pool.. he was way in the back shooting photos of the strippers like he was Austin Powers. I couldn’t make eye contact with him.. I guess I was going to have to go in and get him.

After about 10 minutes of working my way through the crowd, I finally saw an opportunity to jump in the pool.. I went for it.. dove over some naked women and landed in about 3 feet of water scraping my elbow on the bottom as I went. I was thinking as I stood up and stated working my way to Josh that there had better be enough chlorine in the pool to kill whatever stray bacteria there was.. some of the people in the pool were relatively scary looking.

Finally I made it to him.. I told him we had 40 minutes to get out and make it half way round the marina to the sunset cruise.. he shut off the camera, and we hi-tailed it out of there.

We collected our towels and shoes and such where we left them at the table by the bar, and looking around realized that Jeff hadn’t made it back.. I called Christina to check on her progress and found that Jeff had made it back to the apartment, and was coming with her.. we were to meet them at the dock.

DSCN1439 Well, we made it just in the nick of time.. hopped on the catamaran, and we were off for a couple of hours, sailing into the sunset with an unlimited supply of beer and wine.. god help us! And I had to be up to drive to Orlando in the morning!

The sunset sail was fantastic as usual, we drank our fill of beer, and stumbled off the boat around 8:00 and made our way to Schooner Wharf to see Frank again. Once again, Christina and I were too wiped out to stay out too late, and we left pretty early, leaving Josh and Jeff to wander about for a bit before coming home late.

In the morning I packed up my suit and toiletries, and headed out to Orlando… a lovely 7 hour drive. Made even better by the grueling week I’d had, and the small hangover from the night before. The boys were still snoring on the couch when I left around 10, and I made it all the way to Marathon before I just had to stop for Coffee…

Thus ends my Fantasy Fest tale. Christina, Josh, and Jeff of course continued that pace for 3 more days, and the photos of the parades and people they saw are in the gallery.. I can’t decide if I’m glad I missed all of that, or I wish I’d been there to see it all.. I guess only living through it next year will tell..

All I can say for now is.. I’m glad it’s over with.. and I look forward to doing it all again next year!

Check out the full galleries here.

Here’s some of the better shots for those of you who don’t want to weed through 500 photos..

FF2009Hilites (32 photos)
23 October 2009