This was definitely a night I’ll never forget.

Let me start by saying, a friend and I decided to go to a murder mystery dinner since we had never been to one before.  I love trying things I’ve never experienced before so I was all for it.

The first thing that threw us off guard was the location of this place.  We didn’t really pay much attention to it until after we purchased the tickets.  The cross streets threw us off a little because neither of us could figure out what was in that location other than old buildings in the “rough” part of town.

Come to find out, we were right!  Omg.  I’ll never know how they can get people to come to this location in the first place other than the fact that these people don’t all know about this part of town—until they get there and it’s too late by the time they realize it.

There’s a homeless shelter across the street one way and there’s a park across the street the other way where the drunks and crack-heads mingle.  It’s definitely a part of town I wouldn’t think to go to for a dinner theater.

On the night of the dinner, the amazing part was when I pulled into the parking lot behind the building where the dinner was held and saw the cars and people all fancied up in suits, ties, and dresses—but look directly across the street and you see a complete contrast.  WHAT?!  Two different worlds side-by-side.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not opposed to the homeless shelter—and the drunks and crack-heads have a right to mingle where they want to.  I just didn’t expect to pay so much for a dinner ticket to a play in this area in an abandoned building turned into a dinner room that looked like a big warehouse of a bingo hall.

When we arrived there, we all waited in line to get our picture taken in 1950’s-style accessories they dolled us up into since it was a 50’s-themed play.  But they weren’t going to charge us 50’s-themed prices for the pictures though!!  They seriously were selling the photos for $20 a piece after the show was over.  I could have had someone take a picture for me with my digital camera for free!

And don’t get me started on the food!

Chicken Parmigiana.

The bread.

The salad.

I don’t have a clue almighty what in the world I was eating.  (Anything you see in quotes is strictly because I still don’t know if you can even call it that!)

• Let’s start with the “bread basket”—a loaf of generic bread sliced down the middle.  Seriously?!   Did we really just pay for this?!
  
  
• Let’s move on to the “second course”—the “salad & dressing.”  First of all, the dressing was in packets.  Packets, I say!  Where am I??????  To top it off, my favorite dressing only came in fat-free and the other two options didn’t look so appealing.  So I grabbed the fat-free Ranch and toppled it onto my salad.  Let’s just say the entire thing tasted like grass with water.  So I only ate one bite and I pushed it to the side.  Done.

• By now I’m scared to see what the “main entrée” looks like.  A person came to “take our order” at our table.  I ordered “chicken parmigiana.”  CAN YOU SEE THE SLOP THEY BROUGHT OUT ON A PLATE TO MY TABLE!!  No way!  I can make a dinner plate at home better than that!  It tasted just like it looked, too.

During this whole time, the “play” was going on.  I was completely lost as to what was happening at all.  We could barely hear them talking on the microphones.

This was an interactive “dinner theater.”  Each table was a team of 10 people.  I refused to be our team captain because I was so baffled as to where we were in the first place!  Someone else volunteered.

We were supposed to get up and ask questions and discuss the play with the other diners and the actors to find out “who dunnit.”  We could “bribe” the “actors” with fake money, too, for more information.

I didn’t get up to interact with anyone since I didn’t know what to ask anyway because I could barely hear anything that was going on or keep up with it all.  Come to find out—one clue was that the “killer” did not even know they were the “killer.”

My friend and I only stayed for two hours because we just couldn’t take it anymore.  We had no idea how long this play was going to last—so, needless to say, we never did find out who the “killer” was since we left early.  AND WE LEFT HUNGRY!!!

The detective.

The actors.

Dinner room.

My friend and I did have some good laughs throughout the entire thing though because we just couldn’t believe the entire experience we just encountered from beginning to end.  All we could do was look at each other and laugh.  Let the good times roll!

So, if you have nothing else to do today, give a murder mystery dinner a try if you’ve never been to one before—especially if you like the interaction of trying to find out “who dunnit.”  You may come across a pretty decent one—and, if not, just laugh your way through it like we did.  At least it gets you out of the house.

Take-Away Life Lesson:  You never know what life is going to throw at you next, so try to find the humor in it all.

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