Magical journey: 25 years of Tony Brent and I-Drive dinner show

[Disney4me]

The Outta Control Magic Comedy Dinner Show is marking its 25th year at WonderWorks Orlando, an attraction on International Drive. The family-oriented production serves up a menu of unlimited pizza and salad and features longtime magician Tony Brent or other performers.

The attraction focuses on edutainment but also features laser tag, ropes course, art gallery, its Extreme Weather Zone and the dinner show.

Brent’s magical journey has wound from west Tennessee through Walt Disney World and to the upside-down-looking building on I-Drive. He has been with Outta Control as a performer since its beginning and has been the producer of it from an early point, too. He sat in the ground-floor room, where the show happens nightly, with the Orlando Sentinel and talked about the show’s roots, attention spans, British fans and more.

ORLANDO SENTINEL: Were you here from the beginning? How did you start?

TONY BRENT: It was [founder] John Morgan’s idea. He’s a magic fan. This was a party room. They had tried a couple of different things in here that didn’t work. So he had the idea of doing a comedy magic show. So that’s how the whole thing started.

OS: So, you, like, answered an ad in the paper?

TB: I came here to work for Disney in ‘99, and I was working at Hollywood Studios at the time. Do you remember the Blue Sheet, which was a performer’s newsletter that used to come out? Well, I moved here, and I subscribed to the Blue Sheet … and there was an ad for a magician. And so I called the number, I talked to this gentleman, and that was the end of it. I found out later he came to Disney to see me perform. I was one of the streetmosphere people, and I also did the pre-show for “Fantasmic.”

This guy came and saw me, and then they called me, and then we had a meeting, and they offered me the job. It was originally called the Night of Wonder, and it was a scripted show about a magician and his assistant – his assistant’s in love with him. He doesn’t realize it. She was a singer, so she sang in the show. We even had a live keyboard player who played the music. … That was the original show, but the audiences thought it was for adults only because of the romance angle. So we had an issue there of marketing it the right way. So, about a year and a half in, we decided, as a group, to change the whole thing. …

I managed to hire another fellow that I worked with named Danny Devaney, whom I’d known since the early ‘90s. We worked at a ton of other places before Florida, and so he joined us, and it became a two-man show, more comedy-heavy than magic. And one of the owners said we were out of control, and that’s how it became the Outta Control Magic Comedy Dinner Show.

After moving from Tennessee to Florida, Brent worked at Disney 's Hollywood Studios before starting his long-running Outta Control gig. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)

OS: Where did you move here from?

TB: I was living in Tennessee, but I was mostly touring. I did colleges, corporate events, comedy clubs back when they were popular, all kinds of stuff. I’d been down here once before and auditioned for Disney and didn’t get it. And then my buddy – the one I just mentioned, Danny Devaney – was here working for Disney. They had a spot to fill, so he called me. I came down and auditioned and got it.

OS: What else has changed?

TB: Danny eventually left when they built another WonderWorks in Pigeon Forge [Tennessee]. He went up there to work at that one. I stayed here to do this one. It was still a two-man show for a while, and then eventually I was working with a couple who decided to do cruise ships. I decided to try it myself, so it’s been a one-person show since then.

OS: How has the magic changed since the beginning?

TB: The tricks have gotten shorter. I’ve got one that’s been in the show since the beginning, which used to be 12 minutes long. Now it’s five. So things have gotten speedier, like the movies – quicker, cut scenes, things like that.

It wasn’t necessarily intentional. It was based on the audience and the changes in the audience over the years.

OS: You could feel them nodding off?

TB: Exactly, yeah, or looking at their phones or things like that. So you have to adjust based on crowd feedback.

OS: Are you competing with the phones? Do you feel that? Aren’t we all?

TB: The flip side of it is, I don’t mind people recording their family members that are on stage. I don’t want to take that away from it, either. … Even if I’m interacting with a person from the audience – Like, if I was talking to you, if they’re with someone, they’ll have their phone on them, you know, going back and forth. So, I don’t want to take that away from them. It’s fine. It’s a good memory.

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OS: Which trick is the biggest talker or stumper?

TB: The original one that I was talking about, which involves a lemon and $100 bill, is actually a classic magic trick that’s hundreds of years old. … But that’s the one that’s been in the show the longest, and that’s one that’s talked about probably the most. And then there’s one with a bowling ball that’s also really popular.

OS: Do you have hecklers? Do people yell out how the trick is done? Or do they just Google it later?

TB: I’m sure they Google it. … And usually, if there is anyone yelling out, I can get them on my side, you know? It doesn’t end poorly.

OS: Do you change the show very often?

TB: If I feel like I’m getting in a rut with something I’ve done too many times, I’ll rotate things out, and then I’ll put something new in. Also, I have extra things up there depending on the crowd, so that I can switch in a second, if I need to, based on the audience.

OS: Has anything fun gone wrong?

TB: Oh, yeah. The good thing about comedy magic is the audience doesn’t really know necessarily if it’s meant because I do some things that appear to go wrong, and in the end they’re right. It’s part of the show. And then there are occasional things that happened that are not part of the show, and they don’t really know. They just keep laughing.

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OS: You’ve developed a U.K. following. How did that happen?

TB: I don’t know how that happened. Yeah, there’s just, there’s some elements of the show that people will tell me are very British humor. And I think it came from when I was a kid, I used to sneak up at night and watch “Monty Python” on Sunday night and “Benny Hill” and all those British comedy shows, and maybe part of that wound up in the show or even maybe subconsciously. It wasn’t intentional, but, yeah, people from the U.K. tend to be fans.

OS: What’s the No. 1 question people ask you?

TB: The No. 1 question is probably when did I start? Or how did I get started?

OS: So, how did you do that?

TB: Two things … There’s a guy who came to my elementary school. … He was a retired policeman who did a “say no to drugs” show before “say no to drugs” was a thing. So that inspired me.

Then there was also a guy on television locally out of Memphis who was a weatherman on Channel 5, who was also a magician. He had a show called Magicland, and it was the longest-running TV magic show in America. It ran 26 years, I think, out of Memphis, and he was a local legend. People loved him. His show aired on Sunday morning at 10 o’clock. He had a live audience and did cartoons in between magic tricks. …

He and I became friends. … He told me all the inside stuff after he had retired.

For tickets or more information, go to wonderworksonline.com.

Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.

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