Imagine my delight when I was at Seaworld in Orlando, FL and stopped by the restaurant and lo and behold, you can get free beer!
Turns out Anheiser-Busch owns the park, and offers free samples of it’s beer. There’s even a free Beer School, with a 30 minute prsentation, and of course, FREE SAMPLES!
Of course, there is a catch:
-Only 2 free samples of 12oz beers, and 3 4 ounce samples (though, if you come back in 3-4 hours, most likely there will be a different server).
-You of course have to pay the $50 admission into the park.
-And, yes, you must be 21.
But you add it all up with Beer School, and hey, you are up to about 3-4 free beers with your lunch or at the end of a long day! Or, down a few before seeing Shamu. It’s amazing how much better Killer Whales are to watch with a load on.
What other great deals or free stuff is there out there?
Darned good deal there. Down the street (okay, 70 miles via I-4) in Tampa, Busch Gardens (also owned by Anheuser-Busch), has not one but TWO sampling rooms, with two free beers each - one in the Colony House and one next to the ‘Birds of the World’ show. One caveat - have a good grip on your free beer when the Bateleur Eagle flies from the upper cage to the stage, skimming an inch over your head. Danged thing scared the bejeebers out of me the first time I saw the show, and had to walk around with beer-sploshed pants for the day.
And yeah, Beer School is great! I learned a lot, and especially watching the other people tasting bad, post-dated skunky beer.
[Um, when were you in Orlando? And why didn’t you tell anyone? I live a few miles from SeaWorld - nothing like having killer whales and walruses in your backyard. We could have met for free beer!]
Well, I’m right over here about 6 miles from Busch Gardens!
How I love the “Hospitality House” over in the middle of the (otherwise painfully dull) bird area of Busch Gardens. It’s the only place I’d ever drink “Red Wolf”.
Common sense might tell you that it’s best not to mix beer and roller coasters… but I know otherwise.
I think it’s a bad move on their part though. Surrounded by a park full of smal children in various stages of “fun”, which includes everything from the standard idea of fun to screaming at the top of their lungs and desperately needing a nap, what adult wouldn’t like a beer, to savour it’s foamy goodness to keep from lashing out at their own children.
Back to the original OP, there’s a place near St Louis, besides the Budweiser brewery itself to score some free samples.IIRC, they don’t offer beer school yet,but the admission price is $4.00. A small park called “Grant’s Farm”. Still standing on the grounds is the house U.S. Grant built. Anheiser Busch owns it as well. http://www.grantsfarm.com/
It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the New York State Fair (held at the end of August), but I remember a lot of the freebies we used to get. A few off the top of my head:
[li] At the Horticulture Building, the New York State Potato Growers Association gives out a half a baked potato for free. They used to give out whole baked potatoes, but ended up running out very quickly. [Caveat - if you a going on “Senior Citizens get in to the Fair for Free” day, get there early. They’d line up outside the door at 8 a.m., and the building doesn’t even open until 10.][/li]
[li] Free fudge samples in the Dairy Building. We’d hit every one of the counters (kind of like the ‘poor man’s buffet’ sampling everything at the old Hickory Farms store) over and over again.[/li]
[li] Free plaque detector tablets (chew them after brushing your teeth and they’d stain your teeth red wherever you missed brushing) and toothbrushes at the “Hall of Health”.[/li]
[li] Free silent movies (Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy) at the “Art and Home Center”, accompanied by a guy improvising on a theatre organ, just like in an old moviehouse. (An Eve kind of event.)[/li]
Fun stuff. I miss the Fair.
Other freebies in New York:
[li] Winery tours all through the Finger Lakes Regions of upstate New York. Small samples (some places were generally free, or free with the purchase of an engraved wineglass), free cheese, and since I was the designated driver of the group, I got free grape juice.[/li]
[li] Tours through the Utica Club Brewery (remember the Schultz & Dooley talking beer mug commercials?) used to include two beer samples (or root beer for the young’uns and non-drinkers) at the end of the tour.[/li]BTW - TM - bad link there.
Left Hand Brewing, on the banks of the mighty St. Vrain River in Longmont, CO, will give you as many free samples of any of their beers as you want. They currently have about 10 taps in their tasting room, and you can do the “beer tour” going from lightest to darkest. They even let you do that when you’re such a constant customer that you have your own glass, engraved with your name, kept behind the bar - and this isn’t the type of place that you can buy a glass and leave it there. They are given to you by the owners when they’ve judged you to be sufficiently ubiquitous to deserve one. (Not that I’d know anything about that…)