« Jury Duty | Main | The Junk Drawer »
Tammy and I spent last Friday night at Goofy Golf in Shalimar, Fl, which is just outside of Fort Walton Beach. This place really took me back...it was a pretty good ways off the main drag of Fort Walton, so it wasn't all "tourist-y". It was extremely crowded, but I got the feeling that the majority of the people there were locals.
This place was a very old school miniature golf place. I think that literally on every hole, the cup was directly straight ahead of where you started. No trick shots, no bank shots, no inclines to negotiate...they were all straight ahead. What each hole did have was an increasingly silly (one might even say Goofy) blockade between you and the cup. This place really reminded me of the putt-putt place on The Simpsons. There was the obligatory windmill, spinning around hoping to hit your ball with one of its blades. There was Mickey and Minnie, dancing around in a circle, forcing you to time your shot correctly to avoid them. There were bowling pins moving up and down, barn doors opening and closing, and yes, even a giant frog in the way.
The atmosphere was made complete by a very talkative girl behind us, who was probably in her early to mid teens. She was definitely from the area, and had played this course many times...and of course felt obligated to give me advice on just about every hole.
On the last hole, if you got the ball in the snake's mouth on your first shot, you won a free second game (I should have mentioned the games were only $2 each, which was very refreshing). Of course, if you missed, your ball was sucked into the oblivian that all balls at miniature golf places end up, and no one seemed to know what you were supposed to put down for your score there. Oh well.
The next night, we ended up going to a different miniature golf place. This one was smack dab in the middle of Highway 98. Games were $5.75 each. There were no giant animals or weird moving things in your way...just a pirate theme throughout. The course was a lot harder, and it seemed like every hole had either an incline to deal with, or a sub-hole you had to hit so the ball would go through a pipe and roll to another section. There were several holes that I firmly believe it's physically impossible to get a hole-in-one on. This place, too, was very crowded...it was fairly new, and filled with tourists.
Which one did I like better? The old school one, of course. Sure, the newer one was, well newer, but the other one just felt so cheesy...maybe that's why it felt more natural. Miniature golf isn't about sport, and it's not about competition...it's about spending time with people and having fun. There were lots of families at both places, and of course lots of couples like ourselves. Cheesiness and miniature golf should go hand in hand.