Live Shows at Halloweekends?

It has been at least a month or two since I have been to the park, and have not yet been to this year's Halloweekends.

Up until last year, I know the park had live music at the Red Garter Saloon. Last year they no longer had a show with live music at the Red Garter, and am wondering if this is still the case.

Also, out of curiosity, does anyone here know if any alumni of Cedar Point shows have moved on to starring or supporting roles on Broadway?

-Sam

the show this year is the same as it was last year with a couple of different songs, and as far as I know nobody in my time has gone to broadway... bigger and better things? yes, but I personally haven't heard about anybody going that route.

The show at the Red Garter is pretty decent. The choreography gets a touch cheesy at points, but overall an enjoyable show. I enjoyed watching the wait staff get into the show almost as much as the actual show itself.

The Dr. Cleaver show was good as well. If you don't enjoy cheesy humor, you might want to pass though.

Lots of people have gone onto Broadway. Most recently Natalie Gallo (Red Garter '04, '05, and Garter Halloweekends '06) and Halle Morse (Palace '06) are both currently in the Broadway production of Mamma Mia. Natalie has even played the leading role quite a few times. Sarah Staker (Centennial '07) has been hired as a Radio City Rockette this year.

Going further back...Greg Reuter, and Perry Ojeda have been in leading roles in several Broadway productions while Stephen Flaherty, who was a piano player in the Palace Theatre (back when it was Lusty Lills Palace Theatre), was the composer for the Broadway show Ragtime.

If you go even further back, S. Epatha Merkerson who is probably most famous for her role as Lt. Anita Van Buren on "Law & Order" is also a Cedar Point Live E alum. She's won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and has been nominated for several Tony Awards as well.

There's plenty of other people to list who have jumpstarted their careers by starting at Cedar Point, however I'm hungry and football is about to come on.

Well there ya go.

The Red Garter show is good, although I do miss the band. I just saw Sideshow yesterday and thought that one was really good. I haven't seen this year's Goodtime Ghouls or Dr. Cleaver.

Although it's not really a "show", the gypsy fortune tellers are really entertaining. Definitely check them out if you have a chance.

I was at the park this past weekend, and saw three shows - The Red Garter (Edge of Madness), the Sideshow of Magic, and Dr. Cleaver.

I think the Red Garter show was the best of the three, though it is really missing the live band. The singers are very talented, and everyone really seems to get into it.

The Sideshow was good as well... very entertaining and well done.

We didn't care for Dr. Cleaver.... we saw the show late on Saturday night, and the tech guys messed up a couple times, and some of the props didn't work. Even if everything had worked properly, this still would have been our least favorite show by far.

One thing that is still noticably lacking is the Trio of Terror (the Edgar Allan Poe performances.) If any of the Live E people are reading this - Bring Back Poe!

Nice to read that some Cedar Point alumni have made it to the big time.

I seriously cut back on my Cedar Point visits this year, but I've been to New York so many times that I didn't really miss it like I would have expected.

Being in New York so often, I got to see a handful of great shows, including "American Idiot." Seen it four times so far, and I can't wait to get back to New York to see it again. Plus, if you know where to go and when, you could win the chance to see a Broadway Show in a very good seat (sometimes front row!) for less than the price of a day at Cedar Point.

While I am comparing Cedar Point to Broadway, I do understand they are two completely different types of entertainment. However, it is not surprising that some of the great talent that can now be found on Broadway has worked at Cedar Point during their careers. I've come to expect very talented performers working there in Live E!

I used to love the great shows at the Red Garter. However, I just have a tough time stomaching the idea of watching talented professionals reduced to karaoke due to the lack of a band. But based on what I have read and heard, the show is supposed to be good, even without a band.

Does any major park still have live music, or is that just too expensive nowadays?

-Sam

Avalanche Sam said:

Does any major park still have live music, or is that just too expensive nowadays?

I'm not convinced it's a matter of cost involved. If you're only budgeted for a cast of 8, you can get 4 band members in there with 2 guy and 2 girl singers since instrumentalists and singer/dancers are all paid the same. The cost never changes. The problem then becomes if one, or even two of those singers gets sick, loses their voice, doesn't pass the pee test, etc. you're in a world of hurt. However, if you have smart instrumentalists, you can alter the show to cut verses of songs, or entire songs if needed to help out the remaining singers. But then from a managing standpoint, that same scenario that can be helpful can also hurt you if the instrumentalists get bored with the show and decide to play a prank on one or all of the singers by taking a song up or down a half step...especially if the song is already in a higher or lower key.

That aside, I'm almost wondering if the reason they don't have live bands anymore is the overall volume problem. I do know that the Live E department would get overrun with noise complaints (usually from older people) about how LOUD the shows would be when they had bands. The live show venues at Cedar Point aren't exactly ideal for instruments. Garter and Palace are all wood-filled which causes sound to reflect and bounce EVERYWHERE. That makes drums and cymbals appear that much louder. And since those venues are so small, throwing mics around the drums and sticking the drummer behind plexiglass wouldn't really make a lot of sense because you're still gonna have enough stage volume to fight with. Anytime a drummer would be playing loud, the sound guy would have to bring everything else up to accommodate the drums. Pretty soon you have a race between the drummer and sound guy to see who had the most volume.

I do know Worlds of Fun in Kansas City has a show with a live band, but they're also in a much bigger venue where they can control the band volume a lot easier.

YerMom said:

I'm not convinced it's a matter of cost involved. If you're only budgeted for a cast of 8, you can get 4 band members in there with 2 guy and 2 girl singers since instrumentalists and singer/dancers are all paid the same. The cost never changes.

But that seemed to be the issue when I commented to Kinzel about getting rid of the Red Garter band in the first place.

Good point about the acoustics though. I'm not an expert on this field, but it makes sense.

If only Cedar Point had a venue with great acoustics...

Still on the other side of this fence, I do not miss the band. My bandgeek heart/brain/soul just can't stomach the '07 Nights of Darkness. It makes me want to stab my ears and go deaf...

Wasn't Nights of Darkness in '08? The Red Garter Show in '07 was Monsters Rock: Buried Alive.

While some years were better than others (the live bands did get a little sloppy for a couple of years), nearly all of the Monsters Rock shows were a lot of fun and more of a total production than Edge of Madness. The style of show and many of the song selections for Edge of Madness came from the template set by Monsters Rock.

Edge of Madness is perfectly fine for what it is, I'd rather have any show in the Garter than no show at all. If going all singers/no band means keeping a show there for HalloWeekends, so be it. Still, having the right live band and singers really gave the show so much genuine energy and fun. It would nice for that to happen again sometime.

^Yes it was I took two years off this to garner '07, unfortunately this is '10 not '09 haha