Archive for the 'Midwestern States' Category
Six Flags Magic Mountain to add family coaster for 2010
November 3, 2009 6:26pm
Six Flags Magic Mountain will add its 17th roller coaster in 2010, bringing the Valencia amusement park into a tie for the most coasters in the world, officials said.
Scheduled to open in early summer 2010, the family coaster will be located in the northwest corner of the park between the looping Déjà Vu coaster and the Johnny Rockets Shakes and Fries food stand.
The steel coaster moves Magic Mountain into a statistical tie with Ohio’s Cedar Point for the coveted title of “roller coaster capital of the world,” according to Roller Coaster Database.
California’s Great America to add swing ride, re-theme kids area for 2010
October 23, 2009 5:55am
California’s Great America officials expect the Screamin’ Swing ride at Knott’s Berry Farm to be relocated to the Santa Clara theme park by summer 2010.
Knott’s is removing the pneumatically powered pendulum swing ride to make room for Demon Drop, a 26-year-old thrill ride being removed from Cedar Point and relocated to the Buena Park theme park.
Confused?
Priceline gives weekly updates on Thanksgiving and Christmas air travel
October 21, 2009 9:59am
If you are still waiting for a good deal to book your holiday travel, we suggest you tune into Priceline’s travel blog. Brian Ek is giving a weekly update on flight costs for travel around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Earlier this month we talked with Ek about holiday airfare prices and concluded that if you had to pick between traveling during one of the holidays, Thanksgiving was going to be cheaper. However, in this week’s analysis, prices are going up for Thanksgiving and coming down slightly during Christmas.
“At the macro level, Thanksgiving airfares increased to an average $372, while December holiday airfares dropped to an average $423. Thanksgiving is still the better deal, but Christmas is looking better,” Ek writes.
These averages are based on flights booked by Priceline customers. So, what does it mean for SoCal travelers?
Ek said that airfares between Los Angeles and Chicago were down 9% for winter travel and up 20% for Thanksgiving. However, fares between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., were down 8% for Thanksgiving travel and unchanged for winter travel.
For more end-of-the-year travel booking advice, read “Holiday travel planning tips from the experts.”
—Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger
Image: Priceline logo. Credit: Priceline.com
Knott’s Berry Farm to add 1980s-era thrill ride in 2010
October 20, 2009 11:01am
Knott’s Berry Farm’s new attraction for 2010 is an aging hand-me-down thrill ride that’s older than many of the Buena Park theme park’s patrons.
The Demon Drop attraction will be relocated from sister park Cedar Point in Ohio, where the ride debuted in 1983 — when Ronald Reagan was president, Michael Jackson introduced the moonwalk and leg warmers were in fashion.
Knott’s officials confirmed that the installation of the drop tower ride will begin in January with a grand opening scheduled for Memorial Day Weekend 2010. Knott’s will keep the Demon Drop name, color scheme and theme.
Fair Oaks Farms tour in Indiana: For $10, a birthing barn and a giant inflated pillow
October 20, 2009 8:35am
As quirky, off-the-beaten-path attractions go, it’s hard to top Fair Oaks Farms, a working dairy farm with 21st-century flair, only an hour or two from Chicago or Indianapolis. Fair Oaks features 3-D movies, a birthing barn, farm tours, a play area with a gigantic inflated pillow (think trampoline) and a restaurant that serves probably the best grilled-cheese sandwich ever. And the ice cream might be even better.
It won’t break the bank either. Farm tours are $10. Meals are even less (sandwich/soup combo $6.25). And this is not the drab, dusty farm from your third-grade field trip. It is a state-of-the-art facility in a storybook setting.
The birthing barn alone makes this attraction worth a pit stop. All day long, Holsteins in the first stages of labor are brought into a theater, where in an hour or so, they produce a baby calf right before your eyes. As biology lessons go, it is thrilling stuff and, of course, fairly graphic. The entire operation, which houses 30,000 dairy cows, produces 80 to 100 calves per day. Warning: The process may be a little overwhelming for children under 5, though when we were there kids of all ages were in the audience.
From haunted houses to ‘Hell on Earth’: Where to get scared in the U.S. this Halloween
October 10, 2009 11:19am
For you lovers of gory lore, creeps and costumes, and the ghostly paranormal, this is your season. In this day and age, it takes a lot to tingle the spines and curdle the blood of the public, but these Halloween attractions in the U.S. seem set to spook, and entertain, even those with the thickest of skin.
Haunted houses
At the top of the “America’s best haunted houses 2009″ list released by trade publication HauntWorld Magazine is 13th Gate in Baton Rouge, La. The 40,000-square-foot attraction may have you “crawling thought a Crematory oven and an old hearse” or “standing on a rickety bridge overlooking hundreds of live snakes,” according to the attraction’s website, and they even advise that those with preexisting heart conditions, women who are pregnant or anyone with a weak bladder should not visit.
Other haunted houses ranked highly by HauntWorld include Netherworld Haunted House in Atlanta, the Beast in Kansas City, Mo., and House of Torment in Austin, Texas. Read the rest of this entry »
Halloween events at U.S. theme parks
October 1, 2009 12:16pm
If the calendar on the wall says October, then it must be time for Halloween mazes, monsters and mayhem to take over theme parks across the U.S.
Here’s a rundown of the haunted attractions:
Six Flags Magic Mountain to reclaim coaster crown in 2010
September 30, 2009 5:36pm
The back-and-forth war of one-upmanship between Six Flags Magic Mountain and Cedar Point resumes next summer when the amusement park behemoths battle again for the coveted title of “roller coaster capital of the world.”
Six Flags President and Chief Executive Mark Shapiro said this week that Magic Mountain would add a “family attraction” for 2010, with an official announcement expected in November. But regular Funland readers already know that the “family attraction” will be a new roller coaster.
Magic Mountain’s 17th roller coaster would move the Valencia amusement park into a statistical tie with Ohio’s Cedar Point for coaster supremacy, according to Roller Coaster Database.
Get your kicks with Route 66 itinerary from National Park Service
September 24, 2009 5:56am
Route 66 fans, rejoice. The National Park Service has put up a mother lode of info about the historic Mother Road that stretches across two-thirds of America, from Los Angeles to Chicago.
The nostalgic Route 66 microsite offers maps, essays, photos, histories of landmarks and an awesome resource list with hyperlinks to fan sites, museums, tourist bureaus, official documents and more.
It’s enough to make you pull off the road and open your laptop. You’ll learn about the quirky Aztec Hotel, one of the few Mayan-styled buildings left in the U.S., in Monrovia, Calif.; the Milk Bottle Grocery, a tiny shop improbably topped by a super-sized dairy bottle in Oklahoma City; the iconic Blue Swallow Motel, with its charming neon signs, in Tucumcari, N.M.; and other roadside nostalgia.
Free-night offer by Country Inns & Suites
September 22, 2009 5:55am
Everyone’s serving up free nights these days. Expedia is doing it with a recently announced promotion. And Choice Hotels —with Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge a couple of the names under its banner — has offered, after a three-night stay, points applicable for a future one-night stay.
Now, the mid-range Country Inns & Suites by Carlson has joined the trend with a deal of its own, available at its hotels in the U.S. and Canada.
Deal: Through the “Free Night Fall” promotion, stay two or more nights at a participating hotel this fall and you’ll receive a voucher for a future free night that can be applied to a visit of two or more nights this winter. You can redeem the voucher at any participating hotel, regardless of where you stayed initially.
After your stay in October or November (see valid dates below), you’ll need to register online to receive your free-night voucher in the mail. Read the rest of this entry »
