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Airport News / Airports / SLC / Utah Travel / Delta / → All Tags

Salt Lake City's Airport Will Tear It All Down and Basically Start Over Again

Each week seems to bring more and more airport news, and this week is no exception as it looks like Salt Lake City International Airport is prepping for a major overhaul. We might be exaggerating just a little bit, but the plans and blueprints make it seems like they’re tearing down much of the place and starting from scratch. Airport officials better hope that their primary tenant—Delta—sticks around, as they wouldn’t want to spend all the cash for nothing.

The new additions and upgrades are going to cost around $1.8 billion, give or take a couple bucks, and if all sticks to schedule the cranes will be hanging out with the planes beginning in 2013. Airport officials as well as the city’s mayor have secured some funding from the airlines that call the airport home, so there’s quite a bit of momentum towards building the new place. However, it’s going to be a lot of work to get there, as the finished single terminal project won’t be complete until around 2018.

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Food Travel / Utah Travel / Holiday Travel / Tours / Best-Factory-Tours-Map / Factory Tours / → All Tags

Tour the Home of Holiday Sweet Stuff at Sweet's in Salt Lake City

When it comes to candy we just can’t get enough of the sweet stuff, so that’s why we’re off to check out another holiday factory tour. Even though the machinery is working overtime in preparation for Christmas, tours are still available at Sweet’s Candy Company in Salt Lake City.

The place has been cranking out the chewy and the crunchy for over 100 years, as things first got started all the way back in 1892. They might not be as well known as Hershey’s or Nestle, but they certainly have achieved their own candy pedigree.

To show off their skills, they welcome one and all on a free 40-minute tour of their factory. You do have to call first and let them know you’re coming, and tours are only available Mondays through Thursdays. They do ask that you leave the cameras at home, because they don’t want any wannabe Slugworths stealing their recipes of course!

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Airport WiFi / SLC / Airport News / → All Tags

Salt Lake City Airport Bends To The Masses, Will Offer Free WiFi

Death to $7.95-an-hour airport WiFi! After five years of ponying up more than $1 for every ten minutes online at Salt Lake City's airport, the airport itself has finally come to its senses will go free from July 1.

The beginning of free WiFi airport access at SLC in July shows that not only does passenger complaining work, but that it can help bring an airport up to date in keeping people connected. With their Boingo contract set to expire, Salt Lake had to make a choice, and for once it wasn't in favor of the nearly $100,000 in revenue that they got from the Boingo plan.

Now if only the masses who use major hubs like JFK, Las Vegas, LAX and Denver can have the same affect so that they too will make the decision to switch to free WiFi. Do we need to organize a picket line?

Related Stories:
· Salt Lake City airport to offer free WiFi starting July 1 [Salt Lake Tribune]
· Airport WiFi Coverage [Jaunted]

[SLC waiting area photo: stewf]

Travel Health / Celeb Travel / Uma Thurman / → All Tags

How Uma Thurman Stays Fit In Flight

We try not to think about what days of cramp-inducing flights every year are doing to our poor, abused muscles. So if, as the New York Post just reported, Uma Thurman is really doing yoga on a plane, we should support her! And maybe ask what her secret is.

Thurman was flying from JFK to Salt Lake City to attend the Sundance Film Festival, where her indie movie "Motherhood" was debuting, when she got up out of her seat and started stretching in the back of the plane, using the flight attendants' station for balance.

Then again, maybe in-flight stress relief is overrated: Thurman was spotted in the Salt Lake City airport frantically looking for her car service and yelling at the airport-provided escort.

Related Stories:
· Page Six: Limber Lungs [New York Post]
· Uma Thurman's Airport Stress [CeleBuzz]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo of Uma at the beach with her kids in 2007: Celebrity Moms]

Bad Seatmates / Airline Hell / JetBlue / Shalom Yarimo / Videos / → All Tags

Reminder: Don't Talk About Shooting People Mid-Flight

JetBlue Flight 359 from JFK to Burbank late Monday night had to land in Salt Lake City so the FBI could arrest what it says was a drunken and unruly passenger. Shalom Yarimo, though, told local TV station KSL that everyone onboard just misunderstood him--including when he was chatting with another passenger about the people he shot while in Lebanon.

In an phone interview from his jail cell, the alleged troublemaker said he wasn't even drunk on the flight:

It wasn't on an empty stomach. It was a full stomach and I know how to drink and I don't go over.

After making a few trips to the bathroom, he admits, the crew told him they were diverting to Salt Lake City. But while Yarimo says the crew is just vilifying him, FBI Special Agent Timothy Fuhrman, who's heading up the case, paints a different picture:

Some of his activities included running up and down the aisles, opening the overhead bins, shouting at the flight attendants, making a statement he had shot people in Lebanon.

Yarimo is slated to make his first appearance in federal court today on charges of interfering with a flight crew, and he'll likely also face questions about his immigration status. The FBI says the Israeli may be in the US illegally.

Related Stories:
· Man Arrested on JetBlue Flight Talks to KSL [KSL]
· Unruly Passenger Forces Plane to Land in SLC [Salt Lake Tribune]
· Bad Seatmates coverage [Jaunted]

[Video: KSL.com]

Missed Connections / OMG HSM3 / High School Musical / Zac Efron / Vanessa Hudgens / → All Tags

Missed Connections in Salt Lake City: High School Musical 3 Edition

Why are we so obsessed with "High School Musical: Senior Year"? We're not really sure, especially since we weren't one of the crazy children who ordered advance tickets weeks in advance.

Certainly the adorable moppets in the Disney juggernaut would never stoop to posting about that cute boy from the school play on Craigslist--and they'd be even less inclined to do it in scrubbed-clean Salt Lake City--but the rest of us, well, we're all in this together:

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Movie Set Travel / High School Musical / Zac Efron / Venessa Hudgens / Ashley Tisdale / → All Tags

Movie Set Travel: High School Musical 3: Senior Year

The High School Musical franchise strikes again today with its third installment: Senior Year. The Wildcats are facing college, and Troy and Gabriella realize they're going to be separated. The next logical step? Stage a cheeseball musical of course! Just exactly how our senior year ended....

Grab the nearest teen you owe a favor to and drop them off at the theater. We're not sure we could stomach all the singing and dancing, but we hear it's quite catchy and lives up to its musical name!

Where is the Wildcats fictional high school? In Salt Lake City, Utah, at East High School and Murray High where much of the film was shot. Read on for some cool things to check out in SLC...

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Celeb Travel / Movie Travel / High School Musical / Vanessa Hudgens / Ashley Tisdale / Videos / → All Tags

Anticipated Movie Travel: "High School Musical 3" Filming in Utah

OMG! Guess who popped up on "Idol Gives Back" last night? Our old "High School Musical" buddies Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale, who sent their charitable best from--oh boy--the Utah set of "High School Musical 3: Senior Year."

We've already tracked the location of the fictional East High School, home of the Wildcats and Zac Efron's spray tan. It figures that the squeaky-clean Utah would be the site of Disney's mega-franchise. We're heading out there right now to get the chance to carry Lucas Grabeel's Uggs.

Related Stories:
· "High School Musical" Star Goes Kiwi [Jaunted]
· Utah Invaded By Singing, Dancing High Schoolers [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

Business Travel / SLC / Airports / → All Tags

Road Warrior Travel: Your Mobile Office at SLC

We were flying home from our trip out to Sundance when we stumbled upon these rental offices at Salt Lake City International. From Regus Express, they're basically short-term cubicles that you can rent to avoid the prying eyes and the pricked up ears of your fellow passengers. Office time goes for a steep $9 for 15 minutes (or $16 for 30 minutes), but if you're expensing it, who cares, right?

Each one of these little business niches has high-speed wired Internet with VPN capability, a fax, a land line phone and even a computer. You're of course free to use your own laptop instead.

The SLC location is between concourses C and D. (It's conveniently near a bar for toasting the newly made deal or drowning your business sorrows!) Regus has locations in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Oakland, Philly and Seattle, too.

Post click, the interior of a Regus cube.

Related Stories:
· Regus Express, SLC [Official Site]
· Business Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Airport WiFi Guide [Jaunted]

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Celeb Travel / Movie Set Travel / → All Tags

Utah Invaded By Singing, Dancing High Schoolers

If the words "High School Musical" don't mean anything to you, you either live at the South Pole or you've already celebrated your thirteenth birthday, or both. While the now-famous cast of the tween phenomenon, whose sequel broke a basic-cable record last Friday night, has mostly been spotted in and around Los Angeles, come next year they'll be off to film "High School Musical 3"...in Utah?

Sure, the fictional "East High School" of the movies is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but both installments were filmed at Salt Lake City's East High School to give them that essential vérité of taking place in a real school. (Albeit one in which kids sing and dance without being forced.) With an entire school at his disposal, director Kenny Ortega (also responsible for the sorely undervalued kid-musical "Newsies") could transform the place into Camp HSM, with no steps out of place.

Having once made a pilgrimage to the high school which appeared in another teen movie, we can sympathize with the kids who will undoubtedly try to drive past the school during filming. Hang in there, SLC! Just pretend it's the Olympics with more screaming. If you're not on that side of the Mississippi,  there's still time to join next weekend's sleepover party in Chicago.

Related Stories:
· Salt Lake City Travel [Jaunted]
· Hotels in Utah [HotelChatter]

[Photo: answerme]

Eat-n-Sleep / Hotel Monaco / Food Restaurants / → All Tags

Eat 'n Sleep in Salt Lake :: Bambara + Monaco

Our Eat 'n Sleep feature profiles a restaurant in a random city and a hotel nearby. It's kinda like that old show "Dinner and a Movie" but you know, with restaurant and hotels. And better jokes.

Bambara is one of Salt Lake City's liveliest dining spots (at least the restaurant's website says so). We hear from less biased sources that Bambara is one of the best restaurants in Salt Lake City.

Bonus: the hotel is located right upstairs, so you can have an extra lemon drop -- their signature drink -- and not worry about finding your way home. It's located right downtown, so diners can look out the restaurant's oversized windows, and imagine they're in a larger city, while enjoying the hospitality, prices, and scenery of beautiful Salt Lake.

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YouTube / Airports / Luggage / Celeb Travel / → All Tags

Suitcases, Boxes and Duffle Bags: Oh My!

The JetBlue flight we took from Burbank to JFK this week had to make a fuel stop in Salt Lake City. It took about half an hour and no one was allowed to deplane, but if we had known about how popping SLC's airport is, we might have busted out without warning. Then again, Fabrizio Moretti (whom we saw the previous night at El Compadre) was sitting right behind us, so maybe not.

Either way, this has got to be the most boring travel video ever posted on YouTube. If the enticing caption ("Four minutes of baggage claim footage from the Salt Lake City Airport") doesn't delight your imagination, it might at least inspire you to finish the clip just to see if someone really filmed a baggage claim for four minutes. Indeed they did, and isn't it funny that the video director is a user calling himself "travelinlibrarian?" That's a clue to boringness if ever there was one. It's so fitting, we love it.