h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Roll Carnival, Fasching, and Mardi Gras onto a tropical island, throw in the festive Halloween mood, sprinkle liberally with alcohol, and remove all inhibitions, and you have Fantasy Fest, Key West's annual week of raucous debauchery.

Started some twenty-five years ago as a relief from the hurricane season, Fantasy Fest caught on fast. Nowadays, upwards of 85,000 people pour into the tiny island for costume contests, parades, displays of naked flesh, and the consumption of mass quantities of alcohol daily from noon until four a.m.

Kickoff starts with the Goombay Festival, a celebration of the island's Bahamian roots. Booths and stages along Petronia Street through Bahama Village feature Reggae and Zydeco music peppered with barbecued goat and Red Stripe Beer. This gets everything off to a rollicking start.

Throughout the week, costume and headdress contests ratchet up the excitement. Pretenders in Paradise, a Pier House tradition, recognizes the incredible creativity and professionalism of costume creators on the island. The Headdress Ball, at Atlantic Shores Resort, honors the Carmen Miranda in all of us. The Second Line costume march parades from the cemetery to Duval Street, and Saturday's Street Fair begins at noon and gives everyone a chance to promenade up and down Duval Street in their fantastic fantasy creations.

Some seem to think that costumes are frivolous, and have body painters decorate their natural canvases for display. Some years, it gets the three frowns and enforcement requires modesty dots. Other years, the city fathers just let the good times roll...

The mania culminates Saturday night in the Grand Fantasy Fest parade. Visitors expecting a small-town creation gape in astonishment as hydraulics, water sprays and confetti blasts rival the best of New Orleans or the Rose Parade. Beads and trinkets shower down from the floats and balconies along the route. Revelers along the Duval Street path close in behind as the parade passes, and the party really gets underway.

Sunday wraps the entire spectacle up with a huge disco tea dance at Atlantic Shores, because literally, it ain't over until The Fat Lady Sings!

You might have been to large Carnival-style parties before, but the level of civilized good-natured partying you will find at Fantasy Fest will change your mind about the others forever. There's just nothing like an October party where the night time temps are in the eighties, and the island encourages fun like no other place on earth. You might even find time to enjoy a sunset!