ORLANDO, Fla. – Hundreds of people painted downtown Orlando green this weekend.
Many said it’s one of the best places to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, including Dara Donnelly. He said he comes downtown every year for this holiday.
“Orlando has gotten bigger and better, like the Irish cultural scene has gotten even more amazing and we’re really glad to be here,” Donnelly said.
It’s fun for the bar hoppers and financially beneficial for the bar owners.
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Gabriel Zagury, the general manager of High Tide, is one of them.
He said his bar was packed with about 600 people Sunday morning and he saw more by the hour.
Zagury said every penny customers spend really shores up business.
“We definitely love the boost that we get,” Zagury said. “Recently, especially after COVID, it died down a lot downtown and we’re a little bit off the beaten path over here on Church Street, but we’re looking to get our reputation back up.”
People celebrating said it feels good to help Orlando businesses.
“We want these bars to stay open for us,” a person celebrating said.
Money isn’t business owners’ only concern though.
“We [want to] make sure that everybody’s safe, especially during one of the biggest drinking holidays of the year,” Zagury said.
If you want to come inside High Tide to party, security will use a wand to search you and instead of employees just looking at your ID, they are required to scan it.
“It keeps a database for everybody downtown if somebody were to get kicked out of a bar downtown you can scan their ID and it can tell you which bar they got kicked out of and what the reason was for and what the threat level is for so at your discretion you can let them in or not let them in,” Zagury said.
The safer people feel the more fun they can have.
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