A fun meal, or a waste of time? Two Orlando favorites that might be worth skipping

Nobody likes a Debby Downer, but fewer people like wasting their time and money. Not trying to hate on anyone, but these are two of my personal least favorite things in O-town.

Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows (8267 International Drive): The longest running mystery dinner show in Orlando is a night of painful improv and self-indulgent actors competing for stage time. Poor character and plot development hardly permit the audience to get into the mystery or to like the characters. The acting is amateur, the accents atrocious. When you finally solve the mystery, you feel relieved, not because you have ended the suspense but because you can finally leave! On a positive note, the drag queen MC should be applauded for his/her noble attempt to string together the evening’s events, and the food is pretty good, in a good airplane food kind of way. Despite my cynicism, I do know plenty of people who absolutely love both the production and the food and tourist buses seem to unload troves of pre-packaged holiday makers to a packed house, almost every night of the week! Sleuth’s is located a stone throw’s away from Wyndham Orlando Resort International Drive.

World’s Largest McDonald’s Play Place (6875 Sand Lake Road): I have never been one to jump on the anti-McDonald’s bandwagon, but the overgrown and overhyped Frybox called the World’s Largest McDonald’s Play Place is nothing special. True it features the standard McDonald’s menu plus paninis, deli sandwiches, pasta, soup, desserts, and hand-dipped ice cream, but the décor, the service, and the overall experience are definitely not worth a special trip to the transfat paradise. By chance, this just might be your closest MceeDee’s if you are staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Orlando-Universal, less than a half mile away.

- Paul Rubio

[Flickr/The Rocketeer]

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