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Cedar Point Wins Best Amusement Park Award

Thrill-seekers, get ready to have your stomach turned inside out. The 2009 Golden Ticket Award winners were recently named by Amusement Today newspaper, with the powerhouse Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, snagging the "Best Amusement Park in the World" title for the 12th consecutive year.

As the best amusement park ever, Cedar Point of course has to have the sickest rides. Three placed in the top-ten "Best Steel Roller Coaster" category, with the 310-foot-tall Millennium Force at No. 2, the 20-year-old Magnum XL-200 at No. 9 and the 42-story-tall Top Thrill Dragster at No. 10. But Cedar Point's awards aren't the only thing that lend it coaster cred. Built in 1870, it's the second-oldest amusement park in North America—behind only Lake Compounce in Bristol, Conn. Plus, it has more rides and roller coasters than any park in the world, with 75 rides, including 17 coasters.

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Microchip Wristbands Prevent Wet Benjamins At Theme Parks

Lugging around cash at your favorite theme park is a constant headache, not to mention plain unsafe. If you haven't spent it all on a super slurpie in a "collectible cup" or it wasn't sucked out of your pocket while upside down on a roller coaster, your cash is going to end up soggy from sweat or water rides, or both.

This is just one side effect of a summer visit to the water park, and Precision Dynamics is slowly working to solve our whining and complaining by perfecting the theme park wristband with embedded microchips.

Now when you go to the park you can pay for your churros and t-shirts just by waving your wristband at the kiosk. The embedded chip acts like a cashless payment system, hotel room key, and can even help moms and dads find little Timmy when he’s gone missing. Over 50 theme parks are currently using the device, including Schlitterbahn Water Park and the Great Wolf Lodge chain.

Unfortunately, all this new technology means that you can’t just use the same wristband for the whole week—they’ll be wise to your sneaking in. Of course, these chips will freak out those who are still wary of "big brother," but we're game if it eliminates sweaty dollar bills. Honestly though, we are a tad worried about one thing with these wristbands: that they'd cut off us after the third corn dog.

Related Stories:
· Microchip Wristband Becomes a Theme Park Essential [LAT]
· Disney To (Kinda) Offer Big-Brother Tracking Device [Jaunted]
· Amusement Parks coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: fmckinlay]

Tags: Thanksgiving Alternatives / Bowling / Water Parks / Thanksgiving-Alternatives-Map / → All Tags

Waterlogged Fun In Ohio

Why slump on the couch watching sports this Thanksgiving when you could be doing something active? There aren't any pickup football games at southern Ohio's Cherry Valley Lodge, but you can test your throwin' arm and your kicking legs with its Turkey Bowl Package, offered each weekend in November.

The resort is offering two days of passes to its CoCo Key Water Resort--indoors, of course!--along with two tickets to a special kind of bowling game: Bowling with frozen turkeys! Depending on how you feel about fowl, you may prefer hurling them far, far away from you to dishing them up. But if not, the lodge will also hand you a 15-lb. frozen turkey to take home, for a Thanksgiving redux.

Related Stories:
· Simply Your Feast At Hancock's Shaker Village [Jaunted]
· Thanksgiving coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: bwware]

Tags: Slovakia / Water Parks / Medical Travel / → All Tags

Cold Travel: Freeze Yourself for Health in Slovakia

From the front, the AquaCity building in Poprad looks like a harmless water park with a fun, twisty slide. But what they actually do inside is freeze people.

We're not trying to say that the pool temperatures are just a bit low or something. We mean that you can actually go there for some cryotherapy which involves walking around a chamber where the temperature is minus 184 degrees F.

Apparently doing this for a couple of minutes will give you (surprisingly) a warm glowing feeling and can suppress inflammation and pain for weeks. (Kind of like applying a full-body ice pack.) AquaCity has been winning a bunch of green awards for being all sustainable and eco-friendly, so they're doing something right, although we still wonder if they have a room full of snap-frozen tourists hidden somewhere.

Related Stories:
· AquaCity [Official Site]
· Stripped to Your Undies in Minus 120 Degrees [The Age]
· The Big Chill [Jaunted]

[Photo: xgeorg00]

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Theme Parks Travel: The Best of the Best

The end of summer usually means the end of amusement park season, too. But if you have one last opportunity to hit up a coaster or two, check out the best of the best as featured in Amusement Today's 2008 Golden Tickets awards.

This year the best amusement park honor went to Cedar Point in Ohio, which is known for its large roller coaster population. The best overall steel coaster award went, fittingly, to Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags New England; we can tell you from personal experience that it deserves the prize.

The Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort in Texas was named best place to get wet. And Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana was the big winner overall, with the best wooden coaster, The Voyage, the friendliest staff and the cleanest park. Surprisingly, Walt Disney World only received one award for the Illuminations fireworks show at Epcot, which was named the best outdoor night show production.

Related Stories:
· Amusement Today's Golden Ticket Awards [Official Site]
· Theme Parks coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: ewige]

Tags: Ski-Resorts-in-Summer / Adventure Travel / Water Parks / Summer Travel / Active Travel / Videos / → All Tags

Ski Resorts in Summer: Silver Rapids Water Park

There's great hope for agoraphobic water slide enthusiasts this summer at Silver Mountain in Kellogg, Idaho. The Silver Rapids indoor water park has thrills for everyone from toddlers to those taller than 42" inches that want to get their butts handed to them via the FlowRider, an artificial wave that moves at 35 mph.

We like this faux-wave not only for its overall water park bar-raising but also for its resemblance in name to one of our current favorite hip hop stars, FloRida. There's tons of great footage on YouTube of people getting absolutely wrecked on this "ride," but there's also some cool footage of pro surfers killing it.

For those of us that don't want to risk bodily injury, the 315-foot North Fork Lazy River is an option, and there's a variety of traditional water slides to try. And we couldn't help but notice Trestles Surfside Grill & Hot Tubs: Nothing speaks to us like the potential for enjoying a cold one while sitting in 105 degree bubbling water with some strangers from Idaho.

The water park in an airplane hanger costs nothing if you're staying at The Morning Star Lodge at Silver Mountain, otherwise it's $27. Rain, shine or crippling fear of the outdoors, it's time to slide.

Related Stories:
· Silver Mountain [Official Site]
· Water Parks coverage [Jaunted]
· Ski Resorts in Summer coverage [Jaunted]

Tags: Surfing / Summer-Vacations-With-An-Edge / Water Parks / Surfing Lessons / → All Tags

Summer Vacations With An Edge: Wave House @ MallSport

Built within MallSport, a mall designed for sporting enthusiasts, Wave House is the first artificial wave in South America--a place where surfers and surf wannabes can try their hand at riding 10 foot swell.

The pool pumps water and forces it into the pool, via high powered nozzles, to simulate large waves. There is only one ride per session, which means expect the queue to be massive, but the pool should have a low grommet count.

Looking for a non-boring summer vacation spot? We aim to please:

Check out our Summer Vacations With An Edge Map.

Know a spot we should consider for this map? Tip the help.

Related Stories:
· Surf Travel [Jaunted]
· Summer Vacations With An Edge [Jaunted]