T-Rex Cafe is completely over-priced and worth every penny!!!

Do you remember how cool it was when the Rainforest Cafe first opened at the mall?  Or how awesome it was when you first saw Jurassic Park?  Well, imagine if the two were combined.  Yes, T-Rex Cafe!

On a Sunday night at approximately 5:30, there was about a half-hour wait to get a table.  Not too bad.  While you are waiting, you can conveniently spend money at the insanely large gift shop and Build-a-Dino Workshop (you got it, the same exact thing as Build-a-Bear Workshop but with Dinosaurs).  Or you can opt to play in the bone yard and unearth dinosaur bones.   My kids are experienced dinosaur excavators from our many trips to Cañon City, Colorado, so they jumped right in to strut their paleontological skills.

As we were walking to our table in the oceanic section of the restaurant, the hostess told us about the end-of-civilization-dramatization that was happening at that very moment above our heads in T-Rex Cafe.  Every 20 minutes the lights dim in the restaurant and meteors light up the ceiling to demonstrate how the dinosaurs were eliminated from our planet.  Bitchin’.  Here is a video of the dinosaur extinction exercise.

There were at least 20 animatronic dinosaurs gyrating and pulsating throughout the restaurant.  I was very impressed.  I posted more pictures of these empowering T-Rex Cafe beasts on my Picasa Site.  There is also a room that reminded me of the ice palace in Superman.  The room has a giant fossil embedded into the icy walls that change color every few minutes.  You have to walk through that room to get the bathrooms.  And get this — even the bathrooms have dinosaur fossils.  Total class.

We also ate food at T-Rex Cafe.  I had a Stegosaurus Steak & Cheese Sandwich for $13.99, which was quite good.  I have a theory, though, about food at restaurants like this.  I firmly believe that we psychologically embellish the taste of the food in outrageous theme restaurants to justify spending twice the amount of money that we would normally spend for a mediocre dinner.  That being stated, the sandwich was delicious and well worth 14 bucks.  Heck, I would have paid $20.00.  The kids had Cosmo’s Cheesy Macaroni and Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.  Mmmmmm…. Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.

Since this is my first restaurant review, I should make it official and throw down some stars.  The official Scott Stafford [dot] Com Rating for T-Rex Cafe is Five Stars (but I refuse to list out of how many stars…).

Alright, it has been a couple months since I last updated scott stafford [dot] com.  I will be more active in the next few weeks.  Let’s start by posting some interesting tidbits about our vacation in Florida.  The main focus of our trip was Disney World (note: 5 year old boy and 3 year old girl), but we also took a couple day-trips to the beaches in Pinellas County, just west of Tampa.  It is about an hour drive from where we stayed in Kissimmee to Tampa, and about another 1/2 hour from Tampa to the beaches.  I took a bunch of pictures at Fort de Soto State Park and St. Pete Beach.

I loved our trip to Florida and could totally live in a beach house if the opportunity arose.  I also feel that Florida receives a lot of undeserving criticism.  Yeah, there’s a lot of old people.  Yeah, there’s like 100 different kinds of deadly, man-eating snakes.   Yeah, the mosquitoes are the size of small birds.  Yeah, there’s like a 90 percent chance when you hear about a missing-child-found-dead-at-the-bottom-of-a-lake-after-being-molested-by-his-mother’s-boyfriend that it happened in Florida.  But, c’mon, the beaches are awesome!!

We only explored two beaches, so I can’t say with certainty that Fort de Soto State Park has the best beach in Florida, but I’ll say it anyway.  North Beach at Fort de Soto State Park is the best beach in Florida!!

The main reason I love Fort de Soto so much is because it is an amazing escape.  In an area of 3 million people, you can drive for 20 minutes from St. Petersburg and find yourself on powder-like white sand collecting sea shells, building sand castles, fishing, sunning, and swimming in complete solitude.  No restaurants, no hotels, no broken glass, no cigarette butts, no washed-up band-aids… no people.  Pure awesome.

I swam out to a sandbar and spoke to a local couple who were diving for sand dollars.  I dove down and grabbed some myself.  They told me that the secret to preserving sand dollars is to use a half-water and half-bleach solution and let them soak over night.  We never got around to buying bleach, but it’s supposed to make the sand dollars bright white.

I’m not the only one who loves Fort de Soto.  Both Dr. Beach and Travel Advisor have named it the best beach in America.  Probably for similar reasons.

A few days later we ventured over to St. Pete Beach which — as a pelican flies — is only about 6 miles north of Fort de Soto.  But what a difference!  St. Pete Beach is more like a California beach, but with about 1/3 less people.  That still means that there are a lot of people, but you can easily find a place to lay your towel or blanket with a 30 to 50 foot buffer or so.   The waves were bigger at St. Pete Beach and it was certainly more lively.  There were kids running around, teenagers throwing a football, locals leathering their skin,  a gang of skimboarders, and general beach stuff.  We were in walking distance to restaurants  and hotels, as well.  Alcoholic beverages are not allowed on St. Pete Beach.  From my research, alcohol is only allowed on Treasure Island Beach, which is only a couple miles north.

St. Pete Beach has very easy access and good parking.  It’s a fun place to hang out for a few hours.  The place really fills up around 4:00 pm, when the kids get out of school.  Not a bad way to grow up.  Oh, and there is a great restaurant called Middle Grounds Grill in Treasure Island.  Some of the best fish I have eaten.

Here is the link to the pictures at Fort de Soto State Park and St. Pete Beach in case you missed it.