Hash House A Go Go

Image: Hash House A Go Go

Instagram has changed our lives in countless ways. It’s made travel increasingly visual and experiential — with destinations needing to be photographically stunning in addition to culturally interesting. It has also, sadly, increased bullying among teenagers and even some adults — with the performance of reality being far more important than reality itself.

But, above all, Instagram has also changed the way we eat. Namely, it has turned food into a meme.

Restaurants like Toothsome Chocolate Emporium, Planet Hollywood, and Beaches and Cream have become Instagram famous for their ridiculous milkshakes — with pieces of cake, pies, and other insane toppings exploding off the top. Others serve food in ridiculous vessels like martini glasses or miniature clotheslines.

The king of such meme cuisine in Orlando is the Hash House A Go Go mini-chain — a comfort-food eatery that you will no doubt see on a list of must-try Orlando dishes. The gimmick is, of course, taking a normal dish like a burger or fried chicken and turning it “twisted.”

For example, most dishes are served with a steak knife stabbing through the middle — whether it’s the platter-sized pork tenderloin, the fried chicken, or the burger. Most are also topped with with several different garnishes and colors, turning them into must-photograph entrees.

The food is, ultimately, fine — but it doesn’t live up to the hype, nor the spectacle. Food doesn’t need to be a meme to be good, truly.

Madame Tussaud’s

Image: rusty_clark, Flickr (license)

The premise of a wax museum is rather simple — walk among wax replicas of the famous stars of stage and screen. You can get your picture taken with Lady Gaga! Or LeBron James! Or Abraham Lincoln!

But, the Orlando outpost of Madame Tussaud’s lays bare just how shallow this premise truly is. Just next door, at Walt Disney World, you can visit the Hall of Presidents and see a lifelike, moving vision of Abraham Lincoln. You can get your picture taken with Darth Vader or Queen Elsa — and they’ll pose and interact with you.

And most importantly, the Disney and Universal characters don’t look as though they were hand-sculpted out of mashed potatoes.

Even the best wax characters have a kind of uncanny valley element to them. And yes, it can be kind of kitschy fun to get your picture taken with them and explore them, but that fun generally wanes fairly quickly. If you’re visiting Orlando, it’s likely only for a short time — do you really want to spend some of that time looking into the glassy eyes of faux Tony Stark? 

The Outlet Malls

Image: inazakira, Flickr (license)

If you were a bad person in life, then upon your death, you are immediately transported into an Orlando Premium Outlet mall for all eternity. They are the circle of hell Dante forgot. They are so bad, you’d think the Geneva Convention would have banned them.

I have been to the outlet malls on quite a few occasions, lured in by the siren song of the Disney Character Warehouse — an outlet store that sells Disney Parks merchandise at deep discounts. Several years ago, this was a decently well-kept secret. Now, the secret is out and it’s simply not worth it.

If the outlet mall experience was composed simply of fighting with a random person in the Disney store after you both tried to grab the same $10 Expedition Everest T-shirt (marked down from $30!), then it might be tolerable. Sadly, it’s so much worse than that.

First, you have to find parking — no easy feat with thousands of tourists having the same idea as you. You can give in and pay for parking, but then, you’re paying for the privilege of shopping. Who wants to do that?

Secondly, these outlet malls were seemingly built on the surface of the sun. If you visit in the summer, they pose a genuine health hazard with such intense heat. If you visit in the winter, you’ll wonder what cruel trick you pulled in a past life that required you to be cursed with such horrible heat, even in January.

Lastly, the crowds are genuinely insane. Hotels within walking distance provide a steady flow of people to the malls, as do chain restaurants nearby that serve as beacons to exhausted travelers just looking for something the whole family can agree on. Tour groups from other countries clearly make these outlets a destination, and even if you arrive super early, you likely won’t be alone for long.

I’ve done the outlet thing before. I totally get why you’d want to do it. But trust me, just don’t. At this point, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it — or, more specifically, if I tried to go to the outlet malls one more time, it just might kill me.