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Tags: Halloween / Halloween Travel / Parades / Scary Travel / Freaks / New York City Marathon / Marathons / Active Travel / → All Tags

A Hell of a Halloween Weekend in New York

Halloween is always a party in New York, but this year several forces combined to make it even wilder than usual. First of all, it happened to fall on a Saturday this year, drawing that many more people out of their apartments and into the night. Second, the Yankees played the Phillies in Game 3 of the World Series - and won! - giving the barroom crowds a grand reason to order a few ill-advised rounds of shots. And third, the New York City Marathon took place the very next morning, giving the Halloween revelers some great human drama to wake up and soothe their hangovers to. Add to that the extra hour of weekend we got because of the end of Daylight Savings Time and you've got a city with every reason to cut loose.

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It's Halloween, Do You Have Your Silver Shamrock Mask Yet?

Happy Halloween 2009, everybody! I've always loved Halloween, because it's one of those all-fun, no baggage holidays where you're pretty much required to party and be ridiculous. As the Geto Boys point out, this year Halloween falls on a weekend, ramping up the crazy factor in cities around the world. I'm fortunate to live in New York, home of the legendary Village Halloween Parade, and even luckier to have a friend who lives along the parade route, so we'll be watching from above the fray. It's fun to stand along the sidewalk too, but be prepared for a crush of bodies akin to Times Square on New Years Eve.

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Tags: Best Factory Tours / Best-Factory-Tours-Map / Movie Travel / Halloween / → All Tags

Zombies And Factories Just Go So Well Together, Especially In Columbus

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

In this year's surprise horror comedy hit "Zombieland," a college student attempts to find out if his parents in Columbus, Ohio are alive. If you find yourself in the position of having to flee from a zombie invasion, you may want to hide in these Columbus-area factories—so take the tours now, just in case.

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Spooky! Haunted Mansions In Real Life

What if the ghost isn't inside the house, but is the house? NPR rounds up three pieces of fiction where houses want their inhabitants to get out, and quickly, like Manderley, the domain of secrets in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca where a skittish second wife tries to root out how her predecessor died.

British writer Du Maurier based her depiction of the mansion on two real-life, but sadly private houses, Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire and Menabilly in Cornwall, having visited one as a child and rented the latter as an adult. While you can't tour either one, you can catch a glimpse of Milton Hall from the nearby Peterborough Milton Golf Club (includes free lessons for beginners!) or stay on the grounds of Menabilly in one of two gamekeepers' cottages offered for rent. And really, do you want to get closer? Probably not.

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October Brings HalloWeekends To Cedar Point Theme Park

Welcome to October—it started today if you weren’t paying attention—and that means it’s time to really focus on the spookiest season of them all. Theme parks have been doing their best to get ready for Halloween, and one of those coaster kingdoms is Cedar Point. The coaster capital of the world has installed some orange light bulbs, added some pumpkins, and transformed the park into a scary adventure. HalloWeekends is yours to enjoy through November 1, and if you missed their rides during the summer, this is your last chance until 2010.

This is the 13th year that HalloWeekends have taken over the park, and it looks like they’ve really upped the scare quotient for this year. There’s two new haunted houses including Happy Jack’s Toy Factory. It sounds too creepy to us, we prefer when our toys don’t come alive. Along with the usual rides there will be plenty of scare zones between the different attractions in the park. Just pay attention and you’ll be safe, otherwise you may never make it to the park’s giga-coaster, Millennium Force.

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Disneyland Is Already Thinking About Pumpkins And Candy

With Independence Day barely in the rear view mirror, another theme park is already prepping their offerings for Halloween. Hoping to build the excitement for the autumn amusement season, Disneyland in California has announced its plans for the spookiest of all holidays. Halloween Time will run from September 25 through November 1, just in time to take down all the pumpkins and put up all the Christmas trees.

Space Mountain will be getting a special holiday-themed overlay to spice things up for those looking to celebrate all things black and orange. The Ghost Galaxy idea premiered at Hong Kong Disneyland, but the folks in Anaheim will borrow this concept to add some new music and ghostly images to the walls of the roller coaster—sounds spooky awesome.

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Universal Studios Is Already Prepping For A Horror Show Halloween

Although summer has just begun, the theme park-loving people are already looking forward to the next major holiday. To get the blood racing, Universal Studios has announced a few new details about this year’s Halloween festivities, and like usual, it looks to put other park’s offerings to shame.

The theme this year, Halloween Horror Nights, will be based on slasher films, horror flicks, and other scary movies. The parks on each coast will have similar offerings, but the park in Orlando has announced a few more details than its sibling out west.

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So Much Fun It's Scary

The Halloween spirit turns up in a lot of odd places (we see you, dentist's office!) but nowhere was odder than seeing these balloon columns popping up everywhere at Dallas' Love Field last week. But given how seriously Love's main carrier, Southwest Airlines, takes the holiday, it only seems appropriate that some of the good cheer would spill over from Southwest HQ, which is very close to the airport. How close? We'll show you that and way, way more after the jump.

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Gary Kelly Plays "Sharp Dressed Man"

The biggest news coming out of Southwest Airlines' Halloween bash this year was what CEO Gary Kelly's costume would be. On Friday, we analyzed his choice of Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top--but today we have exclusive video of Kelly performing one of the Top's biggest hits, just after the jump.

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Ghost Snakes and Zombie Dancing at the 2008 Village Halloween Parade

New York has a parade for just about every holiday save Arbor Day, but the one that seems to suit the city best is the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. This year, a confluence of factors made the parade a bit weirder than usual, creating a timely diversion from regular life so that people such as your correspondent could get out of their heads for a while and appreciate the lengths many New Yorkers go through just to entertain. For starters (and to paraphrase a classic rap track), this year Halloween fell on a weekend, making a traditional party night even more of one. Add to that a highly-charged election with easily-caricatured candidates, an economy in free fall, and the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's Thriller, and you've got the makings of a major Halloween spectacle. Being slightly past whoo-hoo! age, we avoided the six-deep crowd on the sidewalk and enjoyed the parade from a friend's apartment overlooking Sixth Avenue, and while it made for lousy photographs, the elevated perspective highlighted the effort and energy that goes into New York's freakiest mass happening of the year.

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A Close Reading Of Gary Kelly's Costume Pick

Southwest's Chief of Wacky Getups is leading the troops in Halloween celebrations today dressed as Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Kelly definitely pulls it off, but when past outfits have included full face make-up and dressing in drag, a fake beard and a hat seem more than a little conservative.

Maybe the economy has him toning things down? It's still too early to tell if a recession will put the breaks on leisure travel, a big part of Southwest's business, but if it does, the carrier won't be able to fall back on fees as a way to earn some extra scratch.

Looking ahead to 2009, a potentially drawn out fare war with the new super-Delta at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International can't be an exciting prospect. And while the airline notes that its recent quarterly loss was more of an accounting issue than a business downturn, no one likes to lose $120 million.

Then again, it's just a costume.

Related Stories:
· A Sharp Dressed Man [Nuts about Southwest]

[Photo: Southwest Airlines]

Tags: Spookiest Small Towns / Spookiest-Small-Towns-Map / Halloween / → All Tags

Spookiest (Not That Small) Towns: All The Ghouls Know Cleveland Rocks

Even though Liz Lemon couldn't make it work with Floyd there, there's still plenty to do in The Cleve--especially when Halloween is involved. It definitely has its share of spooky stories and haunted legends--and they're all available to you thanks to some ghoulish entrepreneurs.

Start with a tour of some of the Cleveland's oldest buildings and likely hiding places for supernatural beings. A five-hour long Ohio City and Beyond Ghost Tour will even take you into Franklin Castle, a real haunted house.

If you're more of a marine thrill seeker, drop some cash on the Burning River Ghost Tour. You'll step aboard the USS Cod submarine docked on Lake Erie as you look for the serviceman who died trying to protect his ship. Even if you don't spot any ghouls, you'll finish off the tour at a local brewery--so you can wash away any disappointment.

Related Stories:
· Haunted Cleveland Ghost Tours [Official Site]
· Spookiest Small Towns Map [Jaunted]

[Photo: Elfboy]