People kept trying to guess who we were.

“Amelia Earhart?” I heard multiple times.

Grasping from my pilot costume, Natasha got, “…and another…pilot…?” numerous times.

But 10 lucky people during the night did, in fact, give us high fives or club salutes (“Kungaloosh!”).

The best one was at the candy station in Frontierland. We walked up to one of the hosts handing out the candy, bags out, and he said, “Let’s see…what are you? Don’t tell me…let me guess…”

Thinking he looked young enough to be a new Cast Member or a College Program intern, I pointed to the Official Club Pin on my tie.

“What’s that?”

His eyes got bigger than Mickey’s in a cheese shop.

“Oh my god! BEST COSTUMES OF THE NIGHT!”

We shared club salutes.

“Oh…oh, wait a second.” He turned from dumping the handful of candy he had into my bag to the candy barrel. “I need to take care of my fellow adventurers!”

He then took a giant armful of candy and dumped it into my bag.

I held the bag up to gaze into the path to diabetes he had dumped in.

“Wait, wait, I’m not done with you yet!” He turned the path into the highway to diabetes.

“Oh, oh…Samantha! Fantastic!” He followed up with a similar highway for my wife.

“I so mourn the loss of that club,” he said. We commiserated. Everyone mourns the loss of one of the most unique and fun places on Disney property.

But the spirit lives on. As one of the performers said, “You guys have to take care of each other. When the club is gone, and we’re gone, all you’re going to have is each other, your fellow adventurers.”

So the spirit of Kungaloosh lives on in all the high-fives, shouts of “Hathaway!” and “Samantha Sterling!” and “Kungaloosh!”, and two gigantic bags of candy we got that night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvVkQI9ujuo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGUq-0gZOwI

• Yvette Final Maid Show 1
• Yvette Final Maid Show 2
• Yvette Final Maid Show 3
• New Member Induction Part 1
• New Member Induction Part 2

There are some very teary moments in both shows for real fans of the club.

Video Links:

Happy Wanderer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1JyuMHszeM

Pamelia Perkins sings History Is Made By Stupid People – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiqHDvYaTc

Otis T Wren Poison Pigeons – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNtmfqiOJdY

Emil Bleehall Sings about the Future – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMSNUOuHiQ

Hoopla Finale – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTGVW9_XpSc

Enjoy and Kungaloosh!

Yes, if you don’t mind moving to Japan, there appears to be a thriving business in having maids serve you food and tea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjNGX-jQS94

How much do we fans love the folks in the cast from the Adventurers Club? They were unique, incredible talented, and I can’t wait for when I get to see them all again in starring roles somewhere else.

(You’ll catch at the end of this that Sugar Snapp, the maid, was the next performer up onstage. With this incredible act to follow she was absolutely perfect, performing her fun “Grey Squirrel” song and reminding us how fun and happy a place the Adventurers Club was. I know I’ll miss it because I never, ever had a bad time there. Sugar reminded me of that by bringing me right back up and making me laugh!)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Kungaloosh! More to come….

From 20080927AdventurersClub

While we were waiting, some of the servers and cast showed up and looked absolutely floored by the number of people in line. They took pictures, they chatted, and they pumped up the crowd. This was going to be, as Hathaway would put it, “AWESOME!” I really wanted to ask one of them what it felt like to be the cast of Star Trek.

From 20080927AdventurersClub

From 20080927AdventurersClub

Before the official opening, the characters came out, and we got he huge surprise that Sutter Bestwick, one of the adventurers who hadn’t been at the club in a while in the flesh, had actually showed up for the final show. It was awesome that the characters came out to get us all ready for a final Kungaloosh!

From 20080927AdventurersClub

I admit it, I welled up a bit during the first new member induction. Natasha and I were standing there on the center balcony, wrapped up in the rally as Pamelia and Fletcher led us through the handshake and creed, and I just had a moment, where I felt it all rushing up. It wasn’t sadness or depression, it really was this welling up of all the happy moments, this tidal wave of visions of how many times I’d been through the induction, or been in the Radio Show, or gotten to be a part of the show.

From 20080927AdventurersClub

A friend of mine and I have often discussed the idea of books or movies that we like being places we like to be. Those are the books that you go back to, you read over and over again, and you love getting lost and surrounded by the emotional and artistic landscape. That was the Adventurers Club for me — a place I loved to be. Natasha and I would fall into bed after a good night there, pass out, wake up the next morning creatively energized, having spent a night full of phantasmagoric dreams and visions. I remember how many nights I dreamed about giant mansions full of secret passages, and being on safari in strange places full of magic. How can you not love a place that gives you visions?

If it all sounds a little strange, just chalk it up to being a relatively safe form of absinthe.

From 20080927AdventurersClub

That night we went to the Balderdash Cup, which proved what a weird, experimental theatrical experience the club was. The show pits Otis T. Wren, Hathaway Browne, and visiting Junior Adventurer Emil Bleehal against each other in a battle of adventurous tales. The story structure is meant to lead the audience down the garden path of voting for Emil, the innocent and underdog, and not to vote for Otis, who was cheating to win. But this night, methinks there was some Internet collusion going on because Otis (played by an actor who is a fan favorite for his amazing ability to chew the scenery in an amazingly funny way) got a standing ovation and won the cup!

From 20080927AdventurersClub

This is not supposed to happen, right? Wrong! That was the whole point of the club. You never knew what was going to happen. The audience was involved in almost everything, and that means you never know what’s going to happen because the script is advisory. It’s the critical path through the story, but that’s not what we’re there for anyway. We’re there for the twists and turns. We’re there for the adventure of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

From 20080927AdventurersClub

I voted for Emil, I admit it. Not very creative, but Emil performed the entire show in an amazing, amazing duet with Emil Sr., his dad, who was portrayed by one of the actors who opened the club 19 years ago. Both of them are amazingly funny people. But the real trick is, Emil Jr. has this way of digging straight to the emotional core of a scene. Otis runs out with the cup, hooting and hollering, and the crowd sits there in smug satisfaction, and Emil looks at the crowd and says something like, “How could you? I wanted to win it for my pappy!” And I think just a few of those smug people had a big moment of regret, thinking, “I was just fooling around. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” as they squirm in their seats.

From 20080927AdventurersClub

And he took it to the Hoopla, too. I thought I had it all under control, and he sang this beautiful Jonathan Coulton song, When You Go…

Only a moment ago we had nothing but time
Everything lasted forever and you were all mine
Only a dream I know
Thinking you’d never go
Tearing off pieces of myself
Just for the time it buys me

Fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere and keep it there
Take it when you go

And he sings it to the Adventurers Club. To the place. To the place I want to be. To the place, which as he said, was the bookshelves and the masks and the walls. But unsaid was the true thing that it was also the people, the actors, the audience, the crew, the bartenders, the Imagineers that built the place and decorated it, and the writers and directors who imbued it with characters and show. And I loved it.

From 20080926AdventurersClub

Kungaloosh Forever!

• Kungaloosh on WoWHead Beta Section

• Kungaloosh Quest on WoWWiki

<waggles fingers in fishy wave from just above navel><mimes imbibing><raises hand>

Kungaloosh, Blizzard! You are truly adventurers!

From wow

(And please don’t make me change my character name!) ;p