By Eric Raddatz.eraddatz@news-press.com

This past Monday, I was motivated to go where I’ve never gone before - The Shell Factory.Can you imagine that?

Five years living here and I have never visited this North Fort Myers extravaganza. The shame.

Thrilled to be art directing the Top 12 Things to Do in Southwest Florida Before You Die, I wondered how I’ve managed to drive past the place so many times and not stop in.

I guess I always imagined it to be simply a warehouse of mollusk. Yawn.
I mean, it is called The Shell Factory. And the sign advertising it on U.S. 41 is just a big upside down V with a shell in it. Not exactly calling to me, you know?

Boy, was I wrong. Never would I have expected it to have have lions, tigers and bears. Throw in Liquid Fireworks, a karaoke restaurant, Ms. PacMan, Subway with the toasted buns, a homemade fudge factory, miniature golf, a petting zoo and a very helpful staff.

My original boring expectations expired. I swear I got lost a couple times in the massive collectibles store.

I sampled some fudge, contemplated swimming with the baby alligators and heckled the hermit crabs before I saw on my map there were indeed other, bigger animals lurking nearby. $8 to get in seemed a little high, but I guess they do have to pay for the 500 pounds of food these creatures consume each day.

After pranking the llama, hissing at a rattlesnake and mimicking a screeching mountain lion, I headed to the Liquid Fireworks (formerly known as Waltzing Waters) show. It was the highlight.
Washing down my veggie Subway with a Dr. Pepper, I shivered a bit in the crisp but clear night.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Multi-pulsating sprinkler-style water squirts in quick bursts, snakelike slithers and spraying explosions with red, white, orange, blue and green lights choreographed to music I might have heard at Groove Street.

I couldn’t help but wondering, though, who imagined Queen and Celine Dion would go together so well? I had a David Letterman Emmy’s moment in my somewhat-whacked head.

Queen, Celine…. Celine, Queen.

Moving along.

“Don’t they have something like this in Vegas?,” I asked Drew, the reporter actually writing the story.

“The Bellagio,” he determined. Just without the lights.

This was made here? Just two blocks from my first Cape Coral condominium? Can you imagine Cape Coral being the home of such fine (and patented) manufacturing wizardry?

I had to find out if I could own one, too.
The answer was no.

Not unless I could come up with a quarter of a million dollars. Try $1.3 million for one like the Shell Factory’s: fully equipped with stainless steel flotation housing and thousands of feet of throbbing machinery.

If I was interested, I found out, they could set my personal Waltzing Waters to the punk ska sounds of Rancid or No Doubt, but it might not amaze and wow viewers the way Elvis and Abba do, warned Michael Przystawik, grandson of the inventor of the now internationally known Waltzing Waters Inc.

He told me he’s had some amazingly unique requests. In the late 1990s, the Sultan of Brunei coughed up the cash to have his own personal Waltzing Waters made, and when Przystawik delivered it, the opening act was none other than Michael Jackson.

Since I can’t quite leverage that kind of capital, a couple of friends and I decided to make it a personal project to do a poor man’s Waltzing Waters show. Maybe even hold a competition.

HGTV could cover it. $200 worth of sprinkler heads, voice-activated system from Radio Shack, an old garage sale disco strobe and my “Out Come the Wolves” album on a vintage boom box … at least it would get ‘em talking in my North Cape neighborhood.

I’ll be back, I promised myself - if not for karaoke or fudge, then at least for some more Liquid Fireworks. I mean, $3 seems so reasonable compared to $1.3 million.

- Eric Raddatz is the art director of Tropicalia and addicted to Dr. Pepper.