| rev:text
| - Holy cheese balls! I don't even know where to begin with this one. Overall, the entire thing was super cheesy - essentially a bad community theater performance.
Let's start with the venue. I had originally thought the Omni would be a good venue for this - sort of upscale and historic and fitting with an elegant murder mystery. In reality, it was a boring conference room with boring conference room tables and boring conference room food. Instead of mood lighting, there was work lighting.
Anyway, I dressed up as requested and arrived at the conference area for check-in and a pre-dinner cocktail party. Check-in was a the far end of a very crowded room and you had to ask in order to know that. I made a special effort to print my confirmation page as required (because who prints that kind of thing now?), but no one even looked at it. Then back across the room again to wait in line for drink tickets. Then to the actual bar to wait in line for a drink. Cumbersome at best. To top it off, it was HOT - we were all sweating because we were packed in there like sardines.
On to the table...we sat down in the conference room with maybe 90 other people. Slightly wilted salads with soggy croutons were at the table already and we got started once they brought some extra dressing (both options were empty before they made it all the way around the table). The waitstaff service was good throughout - what I would expect of the Omni. The meal was fine, but nothing to write home about.
The show stopped and started throughout the evening and was again, just super cheesy. After salads, we were given a list of questions and asked to awkwardly mingle with the other guests. I knew it was coming, but didn't love this part. I just felt like I was at work event making small talk. The rest of the clues came out over the course of the dinner in the form of an introduction scene from the detectives and then a couple of laminated sheets of paper that each table had to pass around and share. We had a guy at our table who was really into it and sort of monopolized the clue sheets, so I didn't really bother to spend any time on them. The whole thing just sort of dragged on and on, especially at the end when they had to read and evaluate everyone's guesses. I won't ruin the mystery for those who want to give this a shot, but the answer was pretty obvious.
Next, let's talk about value. I paid almost $70 (really almost $90 since they charged a $20 change fee to change may date more than a month in advance). $18 or something to park in the garage. Plus four drink tickets for around $10 a piece (needed every one of those drinks to get through the evening). Even if I hadn't been drinking alcohol, I'd have still had to pay for soda and such. Several people in the room paid extra to be suspects and participate - I'd have been really peeved if I'd done that because all it gets you is a chance to stand up and answer a couple of scripted questions. At the end, they ask you to tip the actors; so all told, I was into this for over $150 - way too much for the experience.
In the end, I really expected an elegant evening with a good show that made me think. What I got was a muddled conference charade that made me feel like I was suffering through yet another work conference event.
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