rainforest cafe, planet hollywood (1/?)
featured an insane central rotunda with stage, mezzanie, video wall, a full tech box, and absolutely gigantic signage for what was essentially the world's coolest micro center. did not last long... at all. rip to Fry's
like i never fucked with planet hollywood or hard rock cafe but i miss themed retail because there was still some attempt at allure of the senses and embracing whimsy even if the end result was still just trying to sell you shit
its why i have a lot of love for classic ads before everything became the same shade of Facebook Beige And Helvetica Font because imagination cauterized techies who see art as something they have to Solve entered the game. show me some fun. i dont care if the burgers are mid at least rainforest cafe was fucking fun. give me that Y2K Silver Chrome Disco Esque Gaudiness on everything again
I had the pleasure of visiting one of the four(?) surviving rainforest cafes in Niagra Falls recently and, while it definitely doesn't fuck as hard as it did in its heyday, it still kinda fucks. Visit notes:
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Walking in gave me flashbacks to entering Chuck E Cheese as a kid. Immediate ugly carpeting and a sea of arcade games.
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Past the arcade games was the well-hidden actual entrance to the restaurant. Before we entered they took our photo in front of a kitchy backdrop. At the end of the meal they offered to sell these photos to us for about what we paid for the whole meal (and you better believe I bought that shit). One photo was of us in front of the backdrop, and puzzlingly the other was us photoshopped to look like we were standing outside the very building we were in. I have no proof of this but I'm fairly sure the first photo was also photoshopped to put us in front of the backdrop. We were also given a third party website and a code we could use later to download the photos digitally. The code did not work.
-It was CACOPHONOUS. The animatronics were always moving and making canned sounds, and every 30 minutes (as we were told by our waiter) there's a "rainstorm" which involves zero actual rain and is also really loud and stirs up the animals. We were sat underneath a leopard which clicked audibly and ominously every time it moved. I cannot imagine working here without going deaf or insane.
-The food was extremely B- which truly surprised me. I was expecting cafeteria-quality plain hamburgers but they actually were trying for something. The portions were HUGE too, I'm not normally someone who has trouble cleaning a plate but I had to tap out most of the way through my grilled chicken sandwich, which, among other things, contained two substantial fillets stacked on top of each other.
Final review: a magical experience, I will never go there again.
