·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
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I’ve given so many thumbs lately that I’ve had to create a new category for it.

The latest downer came from a visit to a Playhouse Disney Live show in Rupp Arena. My daughter adores all things Disney, as do most children. She watches all kinds of Disney shows and movies, she has all kinds of princess stuff and dress up clothes, and we went to see Disney On Ice earlier this year and it was a fantastic show. Jenny said it best – you spend money on Disney and you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, this show was the first thing we’ve run into that did not follow that tenet.

We paid about as much for these tickets as for the Disney On Ice ones, but the seats were a little to the side. No problem – you could have sat anywhere at Ice and had a good time. Ah, but not so here. This show consists of characters dancing around on stage like your average play along with a big screen in the back that provides a backdrop and even shows a few scenes. It sure would have been nice to have seen that magical screen! Now, I know what you’re thinking – we bought the cheap seats and sat over on the edge, right? Nope – we were maybe halfway around to the side, but only the folks directly facing the stage would have had a good view of that screen. What a mess. To make matters worse, the sound was not so great, either. I maybe caught half of what was said the whole way through.

Toward the end of the show, though, Lindsay was hanging in there. She was dancing to the music and seemed to be enjoying it, so I figured we’d be OK. Then at the end, *all* of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters come out… well, you know, except for Daisy and Pluto. Mickey had made a few appearances during the show, and after they introduced Minnie, Donald and Goofy and said “The gang’s all here!”, you could just hear all the children ask in unison “Where’s Daisy?”. Brutal!

I’ll bet if you pulled Walt’s frozen head out of the vault, thawed it out and told him about this, he’d… well, maybe what they should do instead is pull out one of the movies we haven’t seen in a while and re-release it as some special edition so that they can afford a couple more actors to dress up as Daisy and Pluto for all of ten minutes. Woof!

After a not so pleasant visit to some other distillery recently, Jenny talked me into returning “home” and seeing the Maker’s Mark distillery this weekend. On the first two Saturday evenings in December, they dress the place up with lights and wreaths, serve bourbon balls and apple cider and even have Santa on hand to make it a kid-friendly event.

We got to roam about on our own and talk to some of the Maker’s folks. They have employees at several stops to show you around and tell you all about how they make their bourbon. Imagine that! A self-guided tour at a historic landmark – outrageous! The place looked very pretty and we had a wonderful time. Lindsay especially loved seeing the lights and running around to look at them.

A friend commented on my other post that distilleries are “very slick branding and advertising opportunities”. Maker’s does so many interesting things like these special December weekends that it is no wonder so many of us are fiercely loyal to them. Indeed, their Ambassador program is one of the coolest “clubs” I’ve ever been in. Woodford and others should takes notes. It surely costs Maker’s money to put these events on, but I am guessing they more than make up for it by getting the best type of advertising of all: word of mouth. And I’m sure the sales of all those special bottles don’t hurt, either. They could dip the things in mud and sell them, if they wanted.