Elvis Is Alive!

February 7, 2009 – 11:37

WOW, we just finished up the three day (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) Elvis Presley Expo here in Yuma, Arizona at the Cocopah Casino. It was great, it was miserable, and it was entertaining. You heard me right – “miserable”. This morning the EP (Elvis Presley) Expo was set to start at 11am, to go all day and end at around 7pm. Well, an hour before we left our RV to go to the EP Expo, these little wet droplets started hitting our RV windows. Uh-oh. Mother Nature has it in for us now.

So we left anyways (hey, we bought tickets right), so when we got to the casino the rain stopped and it really looked like the clouds were breaking up letting the sun in. We found our friends that met us there – there is 6 of us together today. So we put our stuff (jacket and blanket) on our chairs outside where they were having the EP Expo on the front lawn of the Cocopah Casino and looked around to see that even the vendor tables were not set up at all.

So a 1/2 hour later, when more people were coming into the event area, someone on the staff told everyone that the EP Expo has been moved to inside the casino in the small convention room and it has been postponed until 4 o’clock, the doors would open at 3 o’clock. *Sigh*…..and with this being the last day of the EP Expo, that means the best Elvis impersonators would be performing today and the contest would be held today to find out which impersonator would come in first place to win a cool $2,000 in cash.

The casino did give us the option to get our money back, but we decided to sit in line at the convention room doors with plenty of other die-hard Elvis fans for 4 hours. With slot machines all around us, we left Dad in line and the rest of us took off to play the slot machines. Now, I know what you are thinking, but the time went by pretty fast. I can only hope my Dad felt the same way. SO, anyways, I’m laughing just remembering it all. So we all caught up with each other and hopped back in line to go into the convention room.

Three o’clock rolled around, 3:15 rolled around, 3:30 came and left too with no entrance granted yet. Twenty to four o’clock, people started to get a bit irritated around us and were barking at the managers coming in and out of the convention room. People started sitting on the floor waiting in line. New changes in the itinerary again, they announced that they will be letting us in shortly but the event will continue all thru the evening into the night with no breaks, to help move it along quicker. Oh boy, around dinner time, people should be in just wonderful moods.

So ten of four o’clock they let us all into the room….I know most of you probably would of given up by now, but hey, we wanted to see the show. Cocopah Casino’s staff members has no people management skills at all. When the doors were suppose to open at 3 and now it’s ten of four, there were alot of people wanting to go in and the casino did not handle that situation too well.  We (all the people in line and this “line” snakes thru the casino to the front door), we were told that we could not sit on the floor, some people behind us were sitting on the floor waiting to go in. So, when we were told that we couldn’t sit on the floor, alot of people in line grabbed empty chairs that belonged to slot machines and sat in slot machine chairs in a line that snaked thru the casino and just about out of door. Yeah, exactly…..It was a disaster, but I ONLY hoped that the EP Expo was just as entertaining as the people we watched in line on the casino floor.

Now, they had, what, maybe 4 1/2 hours to move and set up the sound equipment and stuff inside this room from the outside. Along with people management skills, they also needed a lesson on time management. So we finally get inside and get decent seats. Well, yeah we got decent seats, we were the first one in line – HA!

So the show started and the first Elvis impersonator, I’ll call him the Mexican Elvis sang one Elvis classic song in his strong Mexican accent and clearly completely forgot the words to the second song he was suppose to sing. He was looking at the band members, repeating the three words in the chorus over and over again, with panic in his eyes.

The second Elvis, I’ll call him the Nicolas Cage Elvis. Hey, I call it as I see it. He looked just like Nicolas Cage – he did pretty good singing too. He had that cute Nicolas Cage smile. Anyways, the third Elvis impersonator, the “John Candy” Elvis was really into the music. He was dancing and singing like a star, until he fell off the front of the stage. Completely laying on the floor in front of us, still holding that damn microphone, he brought it to his mouth and said, “Elvis is now dead” over the speakers. Everyone just burst out laughing because he had that John Candy comic personality. And I can understand why he fell off the stage too, I counted 16 mega spot lights shining down on the stage. I’d be blind too with all those lights in my eyes.

Well, the show continued throughout the evening and they announced the top ten winners. When they announced the top three winners and then we found out who actually won the Elvis impersonation contest, we high tailed it out of there. We got home around 11pm and here I am! It was a good show over all. I’m very sure that the EP Expo will not be at the Cocopah Casino next year. It was very unorganized. I hope you all had a less hectic Saturday. Tomorrow we are relaxing most of the day and then there is a Bingo game scheduled at 7pm here at the RV Park. I will be finishing the weekend off relaxing and taking Jake for the long walk he deserves. Have a great weekend. Check on me again soon! 🙂