Disney California Adventure Overview

Combine the magic of Disney with the best that California has to offer and the result is Disney   California Adventure, a theme park that celebrates     the Golden State in style. Once you enter the gates of this park, you are transported to the land of promise, opportunity and glamour. Disney California Adventure is a journey from the California of yesterday to today and   a tribute to this   land of dreams. Its larger than life images and icons seem to be plucked from a Hollywood blockbuster. From Grizzly Peak (an icon at the park) to a white knuckled roller coaster, the sights and sounds are inspired by the rich history of this majestic state. Guests can ‘soar’ high above the pacific coastline, bobbing along white water rapids, tumbling down an elevator shaft or simply savor a glass of wine from the Napa Valley. Whether you prefer "action, comedy or romance," Disney California Adventure has something for everyone.

When the "Entertainment Capital of the World" gets a touch of Disney, you know that Disney California Adventure will be an unforgettable experience.

Disney World of Color at Disney California Adventure Park

Highlights from the World of Color Show at Disney's California Adventure. World of Color combines fountains, movie projections and lighting effects to produce the highly anticipated show.

Legoland lands rides

We have a couple of Legoland Florida renderings and more complete information about the Winter Haven theme park, which is scheduled to open in October 2011.


These are renderings from the park’s Castle Hill section, which will be new construction at the park. The castle will be home to the Dragon indoor-outdoor roller coaster.  To repeat my favorite quote from yesterday’s media briefing,  general manager Adrian Jones said, “



There’s a perception in Central Florida that you have to build a castle in order to have a successful theme park.So we built one.OK, let’s examine the ticket situation. Pre-sales have begun on single-day tickets and annual passes. They can be purchased at  Source http://www.LegolandFloridaResort.com.

Flying Boat Theme Park Ride

A Self Operated Water ride at an Austrian park, with very Funny laughing.

Hotels near Hershey Park

The most famous of the attractions located in Hershey, PA is Hershey Park, an amusement park that first opened in 1907 as a place for Hershey employees to enjoy some downtime. Today, it’s where you can find 13 thrilling roller coasters of all styles and more than 50 other rides and attractions.

As a big roller coaster fan, I made it a point to ride as many as possible in the single day I spent at Hershey Park. The park is home to plenty of coaster history, including the first coaster with an inversion on the United States east coast, the SooperDooperLooper, and the first wooden racing/dueling roller coaster, Lightning Racer. While Racer was my favorite ride of the park, coaster enthusiasts will enjoy the 95-degree   downward drop of Fahrenheit and the historic value of Wild Cat, originally built in 1923.

North America biggest mall

At first glance, it seemed like any other large shopping center. Then I saw giant the roller coaster.

Edmonton, the provincial capital of Alberta, Canada, doesn't seem like the sort of place that would be home to North America's largest mall, but here it is. In a city of less than a million people, this huge surbuban complex has become the city's best-known landmark.

West Edmonton Mall is, to some degree, just like Australia's mammoth shopping centres - endless lanes of chain stores selling electronics, homewares and clothes, clothes, clothes - but there are a few factors that set it apart, such as the indoor amusement park (complete with rollercoaster), the enormous water park and the resident sea lions (seriously).

These extra features mean the mall has more in common with some of the mega-casino complexes in Las Vegas than with your typical shopping centre (and, yes, there's a casino here too). But first and foremost, my girlfriend and I are here to shop. We're nearing the end of our Canadian trip and it's time to start picking up souvenirs and gifts (mainly for ourselves). In fact, every time I had been dragged into a store elsewhere in Canada I'd used the Edmonton visit as a get-out clause.

"Don't buy that now! Wait until we get to the mall," I'd say, and it worked a treat.

On the negative side, I was now paying for it by being dragged into many of the mall's 800 stores to look at handbags, dresses and boots. For the most part, the mall's fashion stores tend to be well-known chains, some available in Australia (Espirit, French Connection, Hugo Boss) some not (Gap, Banana Republic and the seemingly much sought-after Zara). If you're looking for unique or local fashions, the mall's probably not the best place to find them. Edmonton also boasts the very funky Whyte Avenue, which is populated by an endless parade of hip young things and is home to a multitude of cool stores, bars and restaurants.

Back at the mall, I was beginning to discover what sets it apart from Chadstone. The first thing I saw was the ice-skating rink. A huge space in the centre of the mall, it's where young Edmontonians come to show off their skills on the ice. They leap, spin and occasionally fall over, but for the most part they're exceptionally good. You probably have to be, because the rink is open to the rest of the mall, meaning shoppers can stop and watch while they sip their Tim Horton's coffee.

More unusual than the skating rink was the life-sized replica of Christopher Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, sitting in an indoor lake that's reportedly the biggest in the world. Next to this was the sea lion pool, where a pair of Californian sea lions and their trainers perform free shows twice a day. The pool is next to an enclosure featuring several lemurs and a three-toed sloth. I began to realise why the mall was accredited as a zoo.

Originally opened in 1981 by the Ghermezian family (patriarch Jacob moved to Edmonton from New York and his decendents, including 30-odd grandchildren, still reportedly live in the city) the mall started with 220 stores, but within two years this had grown to 460. Over the next 16 years, at an overall cost of $C1.2 billion ($1.3 billion), it continued to grow and hold the record as the world's largest mall.

It lost that status in 2004, as Asian and Middle Eastern construction booms saw it overtaken (it now ranks as the world's fifth largest).

Still, many of the mall's stats are mind boggling. It covers 492,000 square metres and is home to the world's largest car park (room for 20,000 vehicles). There's 23,500 jobs here – on basic maths that means about 3 per cent of the city's 780,000 population works here.

So large is the place that I can believe it when a taxi driver tells me that groups of teenage girls runaway from home to come and live in the mall (I fail to see any evidence of these girls for myself). And for those visitors who really never want to leave, there's a 355-room hotel, suggestively called Fantasyland, on site.

For many, though, the mall has two major non-shopping drawcards: World Waterpark and Galaxyland.

The first, as the name suggests, is an enormous indoor water park, complete with waterslides several storeys high and the world's largest indoor wave pool. Even though it's a warm day outside, this indoor oasis is packed with families enjoying fun in the … skylight. Not wanting to pack wet togs when we depart in the morning, we opt to give the water park a miss and head instead to Galaxyland.

Galaxyland claims to be the world's largest indoor amusement park, but a first glance at the carousel and toy train it all seems a little smaller and, well, kiddie-sized compared with outdoor parks. But that's before step into the rear section and see the rollercoaster. Called the Mindbender, it's 14 storeys high with three loops and yet, like all the attractions here, it's indoors.

Now, I may be in my mid-30s, but I still love a good rollercoaster. And yet, I like to watch it go around a few times before biting the bullet and getting on board. Unfortunately, it looks like the Mindbender isn't running, as we wait around for several minutes and see no activity. But just as we're about to give up, we see people boarding. Turns out that, as it's a Monday, it's just quiet. We head downstairs and are first in line for the next ride.

As far as rollercoasters go, it's a good one. As we rapidly ascend to the apex at the beginning of the ride, we're treated to a window view out across the top of the mall. Then, the plunge kicks in and we're also turned upside down.

After we can walk straight again, we take on a couple of the tamer rides in the park, before remembering what we came here for in the first place: shopping.

We've been here for hours and still haven't bought a thing. As my girlfriend takes me through another series of clothing shops, I spot a couple of good-looking bargain shirts and a jumper. After the purchase, I lead the shopping stakes 3-0. It's an upset no one would have predicted.

Trading hours are running out, but my girlfriend finally finds something she likes: a bag from Urban Outfitters. Eight hundred shops later, we've come back to the very first place we went into. Still, it's best to shop around.

Craig Platt travelled as a guest of the Canadian Tourism Commission and Tourism Edmonton

The cultural life of North Korea

A street scene in Pyongyang. Photograph: Dan Chung/Guardian

Old men playing cards in a park; a woman shopping for vegetables; tired workers jostling for space on a rusting trolley bus. These tiny glimpses of daily life would be unremarkable anywhere else. But this is Pyongyang, capital of one of the world's most insular countries, and even the mundane is an extraordinary sight – more fascinating to a journalist than the pomp of North Korea's largest military parade, the real reason we have been allowed in.

We expect to see the portraits of Eternal President  Kim Il-sung and his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, gazing down at us from roadsides. We have been well briefed on socialist haircuts and vinalon, the miracle fabric made from limestone and better known for durability than comfort. We have read the propaganda, combining revolutionary fervour, the vocabulary of 30s potboilers and accounts of Kim's visits to potato-starch factories.

But who knew that The Da Vinci Code was a hit in this strictly controlled city? That Céline Dion is a karaoke favourite? Or that the mass performances are not only a tribute to the leadership and motherland, but the way that many young people find partners?

Few foreigners see this city at all. Around 2,000 western tourists visited last year, plus perhaps 10 times as many Chinese visitors. The expatriate population, excluding Chinese and Russian diplomats, and including children, stands at 150. Mobile phones are confiscated at entry; visitors are accompanied by official escorts at all times; tourists' photos are inspected and frequently deleted, even when their subject matter is – to outside eyes – entirely innocuous.

Information is so sparse that interpreting North Korea is not so much like reading tea leaves in a saucer as examining them while they float in a milky brew. People devote their careers to the country yet acknowledge they know little about it – one Seoul-based expert, Park Hyeong-jung, is reportedly writing a paper on "just how terrible our research and predictions are", though others say information about daily life – such as market prices – is much better than two decades ago.

Our rare media trip has been organised by the government at little notice to show the world that Kim Jong-un, the leader's youngest son, is now heir apparent. We arrive in Pyongyang less than 24 hours after flinging scribbled applications at the Beijing embassy and officials admit they hadn't expected so many journalists. With minders in short supply we have more freedom than usual, visiting the railway station, department store, vegetable shops and kiosks and a local restaurant. This is by far the wealthiest section of the wealthiest part of the country.

"Nobody who lives in Pyongyang is an ordinary person. This is the top five to 10% of the population," points out Barbara Demick, whose book Nothing To Envy offers a vivid account of ordinary life in North Korea.

On top of that, we have arrived amid unusual celebrations. The party has promised special supplies to households in the capital, including a bottle of alcohol, cooking oil and sweets. Most passersby are drab, in grey, khaki or navy outfits; their only colour the red Kim Il-sung badge pinned to each lapel. But women attending the military parade have brought out their bright traditional gowns for the holiday and others show a thirst for colour, with vivid bags or jackets. Hot pink is a surprisingly popular shade in Pyongyang. Most are immaculately made-up and all are neatly coiffed. Hair is a serious matter in North Korea, which licences a limited range of haircuts – in 2005, state television launched a series titled Let's Trim our Hair in Accordance with the Socialist Lifestyle.

On the streets, a handful of residents lick ice lollies; one tiny girl holds a candy floss stick in each hand. Across from our hotel, people jostle at food stalls for savoury pancakes, fritters and pizza (reportedly a favourite of Kim Jong-il's). An enormous white frosted cake with pink icing roses is priced at 9,000 won (£6.25), while a dish of shaved ice with syrup costs just 5 won. Young men take aim at shooting stalls, and around town crowds gather to watch open-air concerts, the bands lined up in neat rows like Merseybeat-era Beatles.

But some who know the city suggest that attractions such as the street lighting will vanish once we have gone. Even during our visit, most roads away from our hotel are dark. The sleek restaurants surrounding it are almost empty. The central department store is gloomy, illuminated only by late-afternoon light and a string of fairy lights. As at a rainy English fete, the effect of the bunting above the counters is more plaintive than festive. Stock lies untroubled in glass counters or on the shelves behind them: lengths of plaid fabric, clocks, footballs, pastel towels, TVs and even a cafetiere set. There are perhaps 20 visitors sprinkled across four sizeable floors and the only actual customer appears to be a small child buying a cheap plastic toy.