Out of Ideas

Reminiscent of Kissimmee's 125th Birthday Celebration Event that a sitting Commissioner, at that time, took charge of and then ran out of ideas for, the Kissimmee CVB seems to be in the same spot. As many of you will remember, there was a self-proclaimed Kissimmee Commission Cheerleader who cheered week after week about what a great event the 125th Birthday Celebration was going to be until it was discovered that no real plans had been put in place for the event and said Commissioner was scrambling for ideas and input. After quite a bit of bad press most of us thought that we would not see another botched event unfold like that one did, but hey, this is Osceola County after all.

Hold on to your confidence socks, because the WayneWho staff was just forwarded an e-mail from the Kissimmee CVB seeking the same kind of direction for the fall marketing season. Yes, the people sucking up tourist tax money because they are supposed to have the marketing thing nailed down are asking for any concepts or ideas people might have to help get the Kissimmee Market through the time period between Labor Day and Christmas in a year of economic turmoil. The e-mail states, "the Kissimmee CVB is looking for ideas for targeted special events for the upcoming Fall travel season. The CVB would like to find several concepts to develop, preferably that have the potential to grow into annual events that will attract visitors to Kissimmee and Osceola County from outside of the Central Florida area. ...Please send any ideas for potential concepts to Tom Lang, CVB Director." Basically Mr. Lang's idea is to fritter away money on any crazy idea that the tourist industry might put forward to get access to this tax money. Instead of doing the smart thing and lowering the prices, by cutting the tourist taxes to make our area more attractive to those with fewer and fewer vacation dollars, we are just going to blow the money on anything. Of course that means that we will all have to endure Power Pointless presentations that show how a specific crazy event idea is going to '..create jobs in an effort to stimulate the economic climate by engaging groups of fall travelers' or some other type of made up wording that will easily confuse the CVB board and the County Commission into fessing up the Benjamins. Get the popcorn popping.

The WayneWho staff's first reaction was that of Mr. Donald Trump. Your Fired! Mr. Lang was hired to put the CVB back together and bring ideas to the table on how we could better attract more visitors into our area. Anyone who was able to graduate elementary school could probably figure out that being the head of the 'Visitors' Bureau would somehow translate into working with and attracting visitors, but maybe we are just asking too much. After the WayneWho staff calmed down we realized that we should probably give the guy a break because at least we have not heard of a scandal breaking out at the CVB for at least a couple of months. Things at the CVB could probably be much worse than they already are.

In the spirit of the anger turning to shock moment, the WayneWho staff decided that there might be an opportunity for us to hit the tourist tax lotto with a doomed-for-failure plan like this from our CVB. So we brainstormed for a micro-second or two and came up with the idea of a Guitar Hero Tournament. Guitar Hero is still a pretty popular game and there is even a website that will tell you how 'Run a Guitar Hero Tournament.' And if Guitar Hero is not to your liking, then our other suggestion is to create a 50 foot high Plinko Board and do a Plinko competition. 'The Price is Right' fans are a zany bunch and they would drive to Florida to see something that freakish. We could even fly-in Bob Barker to give the event that high-end celebrity feel.

Just remember, you heard those ideas here first so you tourist tax addicts come up with your own ideas. We had the Guitar Hero and/or Plinko ideas first.

Ca-Ching.