Aconchalypse : Day 1&2

Fantasy fest fun facts: 

FF is a week long party that started in 1979 to help raise tourism in Key West. Since its beginning the celebration has grown and it is estimated that 100,000 people flood the streets of Key West every year on Saturday night to see the parade. Throughout the year building up for FF people are also raising money towards AIDS Help. This organization assists those who are living with HIV. A Conch King and Queen are selected based on their fundraising for this organization. 

Our week began on Saturday with the "Fort Zachary Taylor Vampire Ball and Haunted House" Fort Zach is situated on the south western edge of Key West and it is the location that Rick and I were married in 2007. We dressed up as a vampire bride and groom. It is amazing that we had spent so much time trying to figure out the perfect costumes and yet I found myself running around duval looking for those dumb cheap vampire teeth- which I never found. We got ready at the hub of all things FF - Joe and Cher's house. The McMonigles have lived in Key West for the better part of 8 years and Cher has an entire closet dedicated to everything costume. If you are having any last minute costume issues or inquiries this closet will have any and all accessories you may need. When we arrived at the fort the place was not very crowded but you could hear the undeniable sounds of screams and chainsaws which mean the haunted house had to be pretty awesome. To give you a better understanding of what the fort looked like here is a picture from google images from the top of the fort. 

 The farthest side was where the haunted house was set up. To the left by the black wall they had a movie projection playing old black and white thrillers. and to the right side in the larger opening they had a dj and dance floor. The dance floor was pretty neat because they had black lights surrounding the outsides and then they strung red lights across the ceiling and had smoke. It looked awesome in person but it was hard to catch on film. Next to the dance floor but in the grass was the bar - cash only :(  We spent a portion of our time dancing and then we headed up to where this images was taken so we could look out towards the ocean at night. Here are some images from that night :

Rick glasses had the mustache and teeth hooked to the lower part of the glasses.. 

There was one debbie downer moment during the vampire ball and that my friends was when I lost my phone.. I know I know you may be saying to yourself - "again!?" but this time I was prepared for the event. I didn't cry because I knew exactly where it was - it was somewhere in the fort. We ended up using the find my iphone app and it was discovered face down near the flag pole. The funny part of this is that Cher was forced to go through the haunted house again with Rick to try to find it while I retraced my foot prints. They said that as they walked through the actors would jump out and try to scare them and they'd say "have you seen a cell phone?" To which the scary clowns and crazy chainsaw man would say "no no I haven't seen it but here let me help you look"  We ended this night on duval street with a few cocktails and prepared our plans for the Zombie bike ride the next day.

 Sunday was the third annual Zombie Bike Ride. The ride started at 5 o'clock at the "Recycle"  bike shop located on stock island. Throughout the early afternoon the recycle had set up areas for zombie face painting as well as music. The ride went from the Recycle Bike Shop along South Roosevelt past the airport with a scheduled first stop at Salute on the beach. From Salute the ride went up Duval and ended near Fogarty's Bar. Like the vampire ball we had known about the zombie bike ride but we did not plan well. At 2:30 we went to Cher's for makeup- all of the girls were doing sugar skulls. Not having any previous experience with this type of makeup I had Miss Carolina help me. She did a great job. When we got home to get dressed neither Rick nor I had a clue what type of zombie we were going to be- I grabbed my best gypse outfit and we struggled with Rick's costume. As we stared into the back of our closet a light bulb went off in my head as I caught a glimpse of our tennis rackets. Rick would be the most perfect Roger Federer zombie. This is a long standing joke with our friends because many of them believe Rick looks quite a bit like Roger. In fact they believe it so much they used it in a facebook posting for the local news (Rick says thanks again Spurge). The path of the zombie ride went directly by our house so we decided to not start with the group but rather meet up with them along the way. We grabbed our cooler and roadies which fit nicely into Rick's new basket and road toward the airport. It was pretty fun to see people lining up along the path to watch the zombie parade that was about to happen. I don't think anyone knew how large the event was going to be...

Our seats along South Roosevelt were directly in front of a curve in the road which allowed for one of the coolest entrances of a zombie bike ride. We sat there for about 10 minutes and then it was like a scene out of the Walking Dead.. well except for the 80s rock music blaring out the speakers oh and the fact that the zombies were on bikes - but a line of zombies came around the corner and then boom in both directions all you could see were thousands of zombies on bikes. There were so many great zombie costumes..

Annette was a mermaid zombie - and they used fishnet stocking and  green spray paint for the gills... so cool .

I love the fact that even though we forgot the headband people still knew Rick was Roger .. "Haha that guy is Roger Federer"

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When we left Salute on the beach we took our bikes down Duval and ended at Fogarty's bar. It was an interesting experience to see a bunch of zombies sitting down for dinner inside of a restaurant... Here are a few more zombie images from the streets.

No words...

Those were just the first two days - more stories and images to come :) 

Come visit soon we miss you all. 

xoxoxo

Rick and McKenzie