Well, you know how much we like going to new food establishments. Last night, we tried "Pirate Island" out for the first time. It is located where the University Mall Cinemas used to be. The pirates just moved the theatre seats out and the pizza and pirate paraphernalia in.
We were excited to go and dressed Calvin up for the occasion. The night started out great with the skaters next door commenting on Calvin's cuteness. (This was a breakthrough with these guys!) We told them we were going to the new place and they said they had heard there were pirate shows there as well! We were initially expecting something along the lines of Chuck E. Cheese's, but this additional information got us even more excited!
Even though there was no wait, it took a while to be seated. This was because there was a line for the hostess desk, and with each group, the host would spend a few minutes talking to them, then talking with another hostess, then talking with the group again, and so on. Then another hostess would seat the group. We figured they were trying to mimic Caribbean customs as we were all in line to make the journey to Tortuga.
The set decoration/production design was alright. It is definitely more decked out than a Chuck E Cheese's or the like. Every employee had the appropriate swashbuckling garb on. We really enjoyed the menus with the colloquial descriptions for us Mateys. We had a hard time deciding what to get because we got too distracted reading about Pete's One-legged Wrap and Eye-patch Salad. There was a small play place, an arcade ("Smuggler's Cave"), and plenty of neat rooms to be seated in.
Overall, it was pretty good. Our only complaints were that after we received our food, we were marooned until we were almost completely done eating. I had to hunt down silverware. And we couldn't find anyone to get us refills or to tell that they had brought us the wrong appetizers. Oh, also, since they didn't give us pirate hats when they sat us, the server made me beg him (literally) to go get us some, but then he never even brought them even though we reminded him twice. Okay, it sounds like we had a lot of complaints, but it seemed like our pirate had a lot of other tables he was trying to serve, so we tried to understand. We've said before that we are really easy to please, but also not hard to annoy. We're working on that.
Anyway, we did have fun. I bet it would have been more fun had we had small children with us (but not quite as small as Calvin) who could enjoy the arcade and such. I wish we would've had more time with those menus. A lot of creative time went in to those- you could tell.
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