Rainforest Café is a restaurant chain that features animatronic animals, a tropical rainforest theme, and a menu that marks typical American restaurant cuisine such as burgers, steak, and chicken. 

   On the outside, this may not appear to have any real significance. A themed restaurant chain is nothing special; it shares a realm with others like it, akin to Outback Steakhouse. So what if they feature an array of colorful mascots, including Cha! Cha! the red-eyed tree frog, Maya the jaguar, and Rio the macaw? Any restaurant could do that if they tried hard enough.

   But that is not quite true.

   What originally was yet another ordinary restaurant chain with 23 locations in the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries, became an internet viral sensation. YouTubers Eddy Burback and Ted Nivison took it upon themselves to embark on a road trip spanning multiple weeks to visit and eat at every single Rainforest Café in North America, all while filming it and posting it onto YouTube. 

   The spontaneous and frankly bizarre nature of this two-part video series was partially the  reason why it gained massive popularity very quickly. Burback and Nivison’s videos, respectively, have accrued over 9.3 million and 7.2 million views since they were initially published in the summer of 2022. 

   The nearest Rainforest Café to Newsome is in Disney Springs, which originally opened in 1996. Curious restaurant-goers must cross the perilous highway known as “Interstate 4” in a drive that may be an hour and a half, but it may also be three hours. There, they can enjoy the delicacies of a themed restaurant that once went internet-viral.