Archive for the 'Texas' Category
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 »
Busch Gardens to keep name after sale; Clydesdales to depart SeaWorld
October 7, 2009 12:24pm
Anheuser-Busch’s sale of SeaWorld and Busch Gardens to the Blackstone Group for $2.7 billion should have little to no impact on the operation of the theme parks, officials said.
The Busch Gardens parks in Tampa, Fla., and Williamsburg, Va., will retain the Busch name as part of the deal, said Jim Atchison, president and chief executive of Busch Entertainment.
The Clydesdale horses stabled at SeaWorld parks in Orlando, Fla., San Antonio and San Diego eventually will be redeployed to other Budweiser marketing initiatives, Atchison said.
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:
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.
Everything is bigger in Texas, including new Dallas arts venue
September 15, 2009 5:57am
The eyes of Texas will be upon the Big D next month during the opening of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, a $354-million complex for music, theater and dance. [Updated at 9:36 a.m. PDT, Sept. 15: The center will be renamed the AT&T Performing Arts Center to acknowledge a sponsorship agreement, officials announced .]
The center, which will open in downtown Dallas on Oct. 12, will provide new state-of-the-art homes for companies such as the Dallas Opera, Dallas Theater Center and Texas Ballet Theater. The new venues will be woven together by a 10-acre pubic park.
A week of opening celebrations will christen the center with concerts, public art installations, outdoor performances, architecture forums and contemporary dance.
Golden Ticket awards honor top amusement park rides of 2009
September 10, 2009 5:43pm
Amusement Today magazine awarded the Golden Ticket today to the Prowler wooden coaster at Worlds of Fun in Missouri as the best new amusement park ride of 2009 in the United States.
The Voyage at Holiday World in Indiana remained the all-time favorite wooden coaster, with Prowler claiming the eighth spot in the Top 10 wooden coaster list.
Diamondback at Kings Island in Ohio was named the best new steel coaster for 2009, moving into the seventh spot on Amusement Today’s all-time Top 10 steel coasters list. Bizarro (formerly Superman – Ride of Steel) at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts maintained the all-time top spot in the steel coaster category.
Schlitterbahn water park in Texas snagged best new water ride of 2009 honors for Congo River Expedition.
Theme park news: World of Color concept art, China building Neverland tribute, Obama records Disney World audio track
July 18, 2009 7:02am
A roundup of my theme park Twitter updates for the last week:
Pictures: World of Color concept art from Blue Sky Cellar at Disney’s California Adventure. New website. (Disneyland News Today & Mice Age)
“Mouse Ears” author David Koenig calls fatal monorail accident at Walt Disney World “years in the making.” (Mouse Planet)
Latest accident: Twelve hurt when two Disney buses crash at Walt Disney World. (Orlando Sentinel)
Blueprints: Fantasyland remodel calls for dueling Dumbo rides, “Gaston” restaurant & plenty of character meet ‘n’ greets at the Magic Kingdom. (Disney Report)
Be my guide: Social media travel tips are valuable but limited by the crowd
July 9, 2009 10:10am
View Be My Guide: Cross-country road trip in a larger map
When it comes to collecting travel tips, there’s strength in numbers. For the last two weeks, I have been traveling across the country in my 1999 Pontiac Grand Am and using the collective knowledge of readers and online social-media wanderers to lead the way.
The response was overwhelming —literally, my e-mail in-box could barely hold it all. But the tips were invaluable and led me to hidden gems that AAA or most other travel agencies would never have listed. I’ve put a lot of them on the Google map above.
For many of the 14 cities I visited, locals whispered to me via the Web, pointing me to the underground hot spots. Some of the best suggestions popped up in Chicago, Nashville, Austin and Albuquerque. The pearls in those cities were mostly small, unassuming places outside the usual downtown bar scenes. They’re hidden from the public eye.
Be my guide: Crowded El Paso bars can make you loco
July 3, 2009 10:46am
Some of you warned me about El Paso, the latest stop on my two-week, reader-driven road trip. Reader Daniel Anaya e-mailed to say that the city “has little to redeem it in general.” Based on what I saw, I wouldn’t come to that harsh a judgment, but it’s certainly not the most lively city on a weeknight.
El Paso is very rich in its culture collision. Since it’s right on the border with Mexico, many immigrants find themselves in the city either temporarily or permanently. For some perspective on how densely populated the area is with Spanish-speaking people, 11 of its 26 FM radio stations are broadcast in Spanish.
Readers offered few picks for El Paso, and most of them were restaurants. Anaya mentioned two bars: King’s X and the Garage Tequila Bar, which I had trouble finding. Eventually giving up, I stopped at Club Dedo, where a few patrons were congregating outside for a smoke.
Be my guide: Austin, Texas, music scene is packed with good, bad and weird bands [Updated]
July 2, 2009 2:12pm
Readers seemed to have endless suggestions for my stop in Austin on my two-week, music-driven trip. No wonder. This city lives and breathes music. I tried to hit as many spots as I could, which made for a long night of good, bad and just plain weird performances.
The weirdest was Patrick Wolf at Antone’s. A slender man wearing a black, S&M-type get-up, he played guitar, pounded on keyboards and even whipped out a violin for a couple of songs. The blond-haired, glitter-covered British chap removed his chain accessories and rolled around in the mosh pit (see photo at the top) while the band performed very catchy dance-rock tunes.
His drummer was phenomenal, and the band’s violinist was a master of catchy riffs. Wolf, too, was talented and eccentric, with a voice similar to the lead singer from the Darkness and a demeanor on par with Kevin Barnes, the sexually ambiguous front man for the rock group Of Montreal. And the sizable young crowd joined in step, putting together a conga line at Wolf’s request.
