BRANSON -- I'm not sure what I expected to find here. I knew about Branson's strong faith-based focus, its patriotism, its hordes of Midwesterners.
And not much else.
What I didn't expect was the foot-stomping fun, the quality of the shows, the sweetness of it all.
But when you realize Branson has 42 theaters, 112 shows a day during its peak summer season and a population of 10,000 -- with 8 million visitors a year -- you get an idea of the town's special nature.
The shows are really good -- it's not a place loaded with washed-up performers, but a town many of them have come to as their prime choice.
Some of the shows could hold their own on Broadway. The Jonah production (based on the biblical story of Jonah and the whale) had enough animals to fill an ark, a 300-foot wraparound stage and a ship bigger than the Santa Maria that moves back and forth, rotates and opens.
They announced before the show started that "some liberties" had been taken with the original story. I don't think a skunk figured into the Bible version and I'm fairly certain Jesus didn't time-travel to comfort Jonah. But the production was jaw-dropping.
When I told a local how impressed I was with the acoustics in these various theaters, she said it's because they're fairly new (built in the 2000s) and have state of the art sound systems. I understood every high pitched, squeaky word spoken by a child actor in Jonah.
There's a lot more ... the quaint Main Street with, among other things, an old-time five-and-dime store that will gobble up more time than you expect; cafes with singing servers who, seriously, can carry a tune; a nature park with buffalo, deer, longhorn cattle, historical features and soothing waterfalls.
And there's Branson's answer to Disney -- Silver Dollar City.
As for the shows, you can find just about any type you wish: country and western, bluegrass, magicians, impersonators, a showboat and two theaters with Chinese acrobats.
First for me was Six, featuring the six Knudsen brothers (with four more nonsinging brothers in the family). They are billed as "an orchestra of human voices." Their performance ranged from impersonations of Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys to vocalizations (think drums, only they're doing it with their vocal cords, a la the group Straight No Chaser). Kevin Knudsen is the one with spiked hair; his voice leads the group.
Clay Cooper's Country Music Express was down-home, foot-stompin' music, along with a guy twirling six shooters and Cooper and his preteen son doing tandem lasso tricks.
But even more entertaining was the way so many shows reached out to the audience. Every set or so, a performer would hop off the stage, wade into the audience and single out several of the inevitable couples celebrating their 50th anniversaries. One of the shows I attended had cameras sweeping the audience so folks could wave.
And of course, everyone sells CDs and/or DVDs of the performances.
I loved the Showboat Branson Belle, a paddle-wheeler that offers a 2 1/2-hour cruise on Table Rock Lake. Once passengers are aboard, lunch or dinner is served, as are shows by magicians, dancers and impersonators. Honestly, the real Beatles never sounded this good. We were a month too early for the upside down violinist and Julliard-trained Janice Martin, but I caught her act in Seattle; wait until you've heard her do Vivaldi's Summer ... hanging upside down from silk ropes. Catch her show if you can.
SHOWSTOPPER
The showstopper for me was the Jonah production in the Sight and Sound Theaters. The place looks kind of like a castle, is new enough to have the latest sound systems and specializes in faith-based shows (Noah, Joseph and more). Between the animals, the animatronics, the pyrotechnics and 3-D video imaging, it is impressive.
At the end of Jonah, the cast invited the audience to come down front and join them in a prayer session. That is part of what Branson is, along with fierce patriotism.
Before I went, a friend told me that at noon the town gets to its feet to pledge allegiance to the flag.
Not exactly.
But in four shows, there was the one prayer session, a pledge to the flag and a medley of patriotic tunes. Not a single show failed to ask present and former soldiers to stand for a round of applause. Plus the Branson Landing water, fire and light show ends with the national anthem.
Branson has been well known in the middle of the country for decades. That changed when, on Dec. 8, 1991, CBS-TV's 60 Minutes described Branson as the "live music capital of the entire universe." At that time, there were 22 theaters in operation. Today, there are 42. Many agree that 60 Minutes launched Branson into a new era of growth and national awareness.
The recession didn't hit Branson as hard as you might expect.
"We're 100 miles from a lot of major metropolitan areas," Lynn Berry of the Branson Convention and Visitors Bureau said. "People who might have gone on a more distant vacation decided to just drive to us."
Meanwhile, perhaps not well known outside the area is the beauty of the landscape. There are dense hardwood forests, rolling hills and highways that cut deep clefts into artfully layered sandstone rock.
"Many people don't think of Missouri as a fall color destination but it's gorgeous here come late October," Berry said.
One of the advantages of visiting Branson and other tourist sites in the fall and spring, which make up what the tourism industry calls shoulder season because they bookend summer, is smaller crowds and less traffic.
Summer is the peak season for family-friendly Branson. Traffic is so thick, there are color-coded road detours (yellow, blue, red) so people can avoid the main drag, Missouri 76.
During spring and fall, retirees come by the car and busload. The performers know it and adjust their shows accordingly. The retirees know it. And it's all good fun.
Witness the master of ceremonies on Showboat Branson Belle during our May visit:
"Um, we know some of our audience is on the elderly side so we're careful to make sure the stage lights aren't too bright. [Pause for effect.] They tend to want to walk towards the light."
The place roared with laughter.
DON'T MISS ...
• Dick's 5 & 10. Located along Main Street, this place has (by count of Steve Hartley, one of the family owners) some 50,000 individual items. There are model cars, more Hello Kitty purses than you ever knew existed, Elvis Presley drink glasses, joke undies, souvenir baby T-shirts of the "My Daddy Drives A Tractor" variety, toys from the "olden" days and bacon soda pop, which comes plain or with maple flavor.
"People come in and spend seven or eight hours going from aisle to aisle," Hartley said.
• Mel's Hard Luck Diner. Located in Grand Village, a kind of Southern antebellum-style shopping center. The decor of Mel's is 1950s. Its claim to fame (along with its gargantuan ice cream sundaes) is its root beer milk shakes, huge hamburgers and the singing servers, who audition for the job and and are really good.
A side note about singing talent in Branson: Even our bus driver was good, belting out in a hearty (and on tune) bass as we boarded our bus one day. "Some of our singers have done really well on American Idol," I was told.
• The Titanic Museum. The museum's outside is the front half of the ship. Inside are re-creations of everything from staterooms and menus (third-class dinner was biscuits and gruel while everyone else had actual food) to heartbreaking individual stories, staff in period costumes and fascinating artifacts. Of the survivors, 97 percent of first-class women made it while only 25 percent of all third-class passengers survived ... it pays to be rich.
• Zip-lining. There are a dozen zip lines in the Branson area. We did Branson Zipline and Canopy Tours at Wolfe Creek Preserve, which has great scenery, neat historical features and one of the kindest, gentlest zip lines I've been on.
• Dogwood Canyon Nature Park offers 10,000 acres of waterfalls, caves, hand-built bridges, a replica of an 1800s church that hosts weddings and, at the end, a wildlife preserve that you visit via a tram with deer, buffalo and longhorn cattle.
• Silver Dollar City is Branson's Disney-like park set to an 1880s theme. It started in the 1950s as a cave tour (the cave tour is still there), but quickly evolved into a period theme park when the owners realized more people were visiting their mock western town than the cave. Today there are 100 craftsmen, a dozen-plus shows, 30 rides and seven festivals, making it one of the top amusement parks in the country.
Adrenalin junkies will love Outlaw Run, the world's only double-barrel-roll wooden coaster (thanks to steel topping on the rails), the Giant Barn Swing and WildFire, a 12-story steel coaster with a top speed of 66 miles per hour and and five inversions including a two loops, a roll and a corkscrew.
Crafts on display include blacksmithing, candymaking, pottery, a working gristmill and much more. Shows range from bluegrass and country to folk music, vaudeville and, on occasion, opera.
In the end, I was exhausted, way overfed with comfort food and happy.
Yeah, I would go back. In a second.
Style on 06/28/2015