Branson Murder Mystery — Local services in Branson

Not vegan friendly but some vegetarian options. Food is buffet style, serve yourself and the staff clear the tables and top up drinks at your table. Chicken, meatloaf, salad bar, rolls, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, green beans, cake. I recommend the all beef meat loaf and mac & cheese. The mashed potatoes were made with cream and too heavy for me, and the chicken was pretty dry and plain. The meatloaf was really flavorful though and the mac & cheese was nice and cheesy. Others have said the food is catered by Golden Corral. I couldn't speak to that but I would believe it. Food is included in tickets, as well as beverages in the form of water, lemonade, sweet tea or unsweetened tea. Soda, coffee etc could be purchased separately. As far as I could tell personal requests for dietary restrictions could not be accommodated. Unfortunately the bowls and plates are Styrofoam and the cups are single-use plastic but the utensils are metal. Our tickets were for 3.30p and the food was served immediately. Whole thing ended about 6.30p. There is a short 10 minute intermission toward the end right before the murder is solved, when there was about 30 minutes left at 6p. Although it's a "dinner theatre" it's more accurately a buffet dinner followed by a show. Jokes are predominantly sexual jokes about women, or violence jokes about guns and there are gunshots as part of the show as well as guns handed out to the audience. Therefore I would say this is NOT child friendly, not a family show. Teenagers would be okay but I wouldn't want little ones to see this. There's also some slapstick humor. The other jokes were all hyper-conservative political jokes. Personally I prefer to keep politics out of my entertainment, especially since my family has folks on both side of the spectrum and this show was an activity during a family reunion in Branson. The political jokes went down like a lead weight with us. Overall this fell short for me and seemed catered toward an older crowd with the script and humor feeling out of date. It reminded me of movies from my parents era, very "boomer humor." I also found the plot hard to follow. It felt more like a comedy improv show than an actual mystery play. Some of the characters seemed to have no role in the plot and were there just to make fun of. Be warned that there's audience participation! There was a cast of 5 and like 10 roles were filled by awkward audience members, which may be part of the reason why the plot was confusing. There was some weird bit about a Mayor and voting to be Branson town or Lucia town that came up repeatedly and I never understood what on earth that was about. If this were just a musical sketch comedy show and they scrapped the thin murder mystery plot it would be significantly improved. The cast had decent chemistry and were engaged and seemed to be having fun so the script really is the problem here. There's handicap parking but the buffet and seating area is very cramped and crowded and not accessibility friendly. Due to it being so cramped and crowded, many of the seats have only partial views of the stage. To help with this there are 3 screens up connected to a single camera which somebody is controlling and constantly moving in order to keep the cast in frame. Unfortunately with audience participation and cast members frequently leaving the stage and being in 2 or 3 locations at once this is impossible to keep up with on 1 camera. If the food were made to order and we could actually see the entire stage I would say the price was fair. For what it was, this was...

Loved everything but the political jokes and I would have liked some way to get refills on my beverage during the show… Venue was very nice. We were seated promptly and were told we could immediately start serving ourselves from the buffet. Got our food and it was really good. In fact, I went back for seconds on the Mac and cheese. Food at these types of productions can be hit or miss, but this one most definitely fell into the “hit” column. The waiters are also the actors in the show. The drawback to this is refills on drinks tend to stop as soon as they are onstage. Before you say: “well, duh…,” I would hope that someone would consider this an opportunity. Some people have medical needs that require drinking water after eating and it wasn’t easy to get that water once the show has started. This might be easily solved by asking people if they would like a small pitcher of water on their table before the show starts. The show itself was a lot of fun, they allowed members of the audience to participate if they chose to, nobody was “voluntold” to do this. I participated as did my mom and you could go as over the top as you wanted to with your part as you wanted to so we had fun with it. The show follows a script but the actors often break from it with schtick and banter. Most of it was very funny. However, it was clear they assumed that all audiences supported a particular candidate who is no longer in office. Truth is, not everyone may. It may have been ok if they gave equal ribbing to both sides, but it just wasn’t that way. Don’t get me wrong, those jokes were a very small part of the show. However, they really didn’t seem necessary unless some of the actors were trying to send a message themselves. It really tainted my experience a bit. Yes, I realize this show was in Branson and, this area really seems to swing a certain way politically, but the visitors to Branson come from all over the country, and world for that matter, and may not all feel that way. Again, not a huge part of the show by any means, but it could have been left out and the show would have been just fine. That’s what my point is, it didn’t really offend me, I don’t get easily offended, I am just saying it didn’t really add anything to the show and may have detracted from the...

My wife and I live in north Arkansas and have been regular visitors to Branson since we were both children...I only say that to say this: we have seen a lot of Branson Shows over the years...We attended the Murder Mystery Christmas Show on 12-18-21. This show is probably the most fun in all of Branson! It is absolutely hilarious! It is wonderful people that make it that way, let me explain our experience!

I was informed that the food service started at 3:30 and the show started @ at 4:30. My wife and I never intended to eat(we aren't snobs, we just wanted to maximize our time in Branson with some "fine dining". I informed the theater ahead of time to explain we wouldn't be dining there and would show up later for the show)...That said we left our restaurant @ 4:00 and were 3 miles from the theater...A wrong turn on the "round about" @ Branson Landing and we were stuck in gridlock traffic for 30 minutes.

At 4:32 I received a phone call from the theater manager asking if we planned to attend the show. I explained the traffic situation and guesstimated that we were 15 minutes away. The theater manager stated the she would try to delay the beginning of the show until we got there(just to note I never asked for that and apologized profusely for being late and now "holding up the show") It took longer than I expected and received a follow up call from the manager at 4:47, I explained that we were still 5 minutes away...She stated that they had to start now and offered to refund/reschedule our tickets!

We arrived 5 minutes late and were rushed in to our seats, we had barely missed anything at all! The friendly lady I was seated by, quickly caught us up on what was going on and when we were supposed to get loud to which "key words". Like I stated above it was a really wonderful show. My wife and I were mortified that we were responsible for holding up the show, but they were beyond gracious! However, I am not "amping up" my review based on their kindness/customer service...This show stands out on it's own for it's production quality and execution, but the genuine kindness of the staff was...