Tommy Wind

Explore human cultures, the natural world, and the universe with a visit to the attraction voted #1 in New York City by Zagat Survey "U.S. Family Travel Guide"! See world-renowned dioramas, the 94-foot-long blue whale, the new 122-foot-long titanosaur, and incredible dinosaur halls. The Museum covers 1.6 million square feet on an 18-acre campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so we advise you to wear comfortable shoes. The world renown permanent collection offers a “field guide” to the natural world, global cultures, and the universe while topical special exhibitions present and explain the complex issues of our times. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Space Show in the Hayden Planetarium and/or a Giant Screen film in the Lefrak beaux arts theatre. Both are conveniently located near Museum entrances. Opened to the public in February 2000, the Rose Center for Earth and Space is one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the Museum. It contains five exhibition spaces, including the Hall of Planet Earth, the Hall of the Universe, the Cosmic Pathway, Scales of the Universe, and the Hayden Planetarium. Bathed in natural light, the spectacular seven story structure is an architectural marvel. The luminous 2,000 ton (1,800- metric-ton) Hayden Sphere, which appears to float behind one of the largest suspended glass curtain walls in the United States—almost an acre (4,000 square meters) of astoundingly clear “water white” glass held together with 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of rod rigging and 1,400 steel spiders. Organizing cosmic objects around the physical principles that unite them, the Rose Center creates a seamless journey from the outer reaches of the universe to the inner workings of planet Earth. The American Museum of Natural History is a must-see, especially if you're traveling with children, since many of the exhibits appeal to a person's sense of wonder and curiosity. The museum is an extremely popular place to visit. Insider's Tip! - Use this self-guided tour flyer to see the real exhibits behind the Night at the Museum movies! Current Museum Exhibitions Our Senses: An Immersive Experience: November 20, 2017–January 6, 2019 We get to know our world through some or all of our senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste—but they’re just parts of a much larger puzzle. The highly experiential exhibition Our Senses delves into how our brains work with sensory organs to shape our perceptions and reveals how, until recently in our evolutionary history, humans have been oblivious to nature’s other crucial signals, including UV light, infrared sounds, and electrical fields. Unseen Oceans: March 12, 2018–January 6, 2019 Oceans explores our blue planet’s defining feature—the world ocean—as revealed through 21st-century technology. Visitors to the exhibition will meet the elusive giants of the sea, including whales, sharks, giant squid; sink beneath the waves in a virtual submersible theater; and marvel at the vivid fluorescence displayed by marine creatures but invisible to us . . . until now. And they’ll leave with a deeper awareness that the future of the planet depends on the future of the ocean. The Butterfly Conservatory (October 7th, 2017 - May 29th, 2019) This exhibition, an annual favorite, features up to 500 live, free-flying tropical butterflies from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The butterflies are housed in a vivarium that approximates their natural habitat, includes live flowering plants that serve as nectar sources, and features controlled artificial light, temperature, and humidity. T. rex: The Ultimate Predator: (March 11, 2019 - June 16th, 2019) This exhibition will focus on the on the genus of dinosaurs known as tyrannosaurs. The exhibition will explore how these mega-predators came to be, with an emphasis on the most famous and impressive member of the family, Tyrannosaurus rex. Updated Climate Change Exhibit Understand one of the most urgent scientific issues of our time. explore how climate change is affecting the world today as well as what might happen in the future if the current course continues. Insider's Tip! - Use this self-guided tour flyer to see the real exhibits behind the Night at the Museum movies! Current Museum Films Space Show – Hayden Planetarium Dark Universe: narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium Celebrate the pivotal discoveries that have led us to greater knowledge of the structure and history of the universe and our place in it—and to new frontiers for exploration. Giant Screen Films – 3D & 2D showings Backyard Wilderness: now through June 30, 2019 Audiences enter a wild world of breathtaking beauty and captivating animals, including an array of nature’s master of mimicry.  

CeeLo Green takes to the Las Vegas stage for a concert at Caesars Palace Las Vegas inside the intimate bar/lounge Cleopatra's Barge.

Penguin Passport is your ticket to a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium’s colony of sub-Antarctic penguins. Suited up in your Antarctic snow gear, the 45 minute tour takes you onto the ice where you have the exclusive opportunity to sit among majestic King and cheeky Gentoo penguins. You will also have the opportunity to see food preparation and veterinary areas, as well as how the state-of-the-art exhibit maintains sub-zero temperatures.  

Even if you haven't ridden a bike for many years, downhill cycling is easy to do, as it is downhill all the way and a nice smooth ride at your own pace. Just a couple of tiny uphill bits, but very manageable. With stops for photo opportunities and a visits to tiny villages, on with stop for lunch at the 'Cannibals' restaurant [ optional extra]. You can take a packed lunch or picnic with you if you prefer and belongings can be left in the van. You will have British guides with a wealth of knowledge they are happy to share with you on you adventure day out with Downhill Bikes and they have some amusing tales to tell you too. Imagine a land of discovery with majestic mountains and dramatic gorges. Fertile valleys and Moorish castles and quaint villages with abundant wildlife and soaring eagles. Now you can enjoy all of this on your Downhill Bike Ride where imagination turns into a wonderful reality!      

SKYDECK CHICAGO At 1,353 feet and 110 stories above the streets of downtown Chicago, The Ledge at the Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower) Skydeck will transform any visitor's--or local's for that matter--experience with the Windy City. In January 2009, Willis Tower owners began a major renovation of the beloved Skydeck, which originally opened in 1974, and served as a premier tourist attraction throughout the skyscraper's tenure as the Sears Tower. When ownership changed hands, the fresh blood added a fresh look--and adrenaline rush--to the 103rd floor in the form of retractable glass balconies extending about 4 feet over Wacker Drive and the Chicago River below. Still the 8th tallest building in the world, and the absolute tallest in the Western Hemisphere, Willis Tower's Skydeck draws 1.5 million people a year who are eager to ascend the 110-story, 1,454 foot (443 meter) building for awesome panoramic views of the city and surrounding countryside. Your journey to the top of the Willis Tower starts with a walk through an airport-style metal detector, followed by a slow elevator ride down to the waiting area where visitors queue for tickets. A sign will tell you how long you'll have to wait to get up high; this is a good time to confirm the visibility. Even days that seem sunny can have upper-level haze that limits the view. On good days, however, you can see for 40 to 50 miles (64 to 80 kilometers), as far as the states of Indiana, Michigan. Iowa, and Wisconsin. While you wait, you can watch a film about Willis Tower factoids. Then you'll wait a little longer before the ear-popping, 70 second elevator ride up to the 103rd floor deck. From here, the entire city stretches below, and you can see exactly how Chicago is laid out. Willis Tower, Skydeck, and The Ledge Fast Facts The hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind each week on Skydeck windows served as this inspiration for The Ledge. The Ledge boxes can each bear about 4-1/2 metric tons of weight, and adventurers who trust that statistic enough to prove it can often be found jumping and bounding around the entirely translucent enclosures as Chicago's heavy traffic and infrastructure bustle below. The Ledge’s glass panels weight 1,500 pounds apiece, and each box is comprised of three layers of half-inch thick glass laminated into one seamless unit. In addition to serving 1.3 million tourists per year in its 4.5+ million square feet of space, Willis Tower is home to more than 100 companies, including prominent law, insurance, transportation, and financial services. The Ledge's glass boxes retract into the Skydeck main floor for easy maintenance, probably mostly cleaning off the 974 dead birds that must fly into them every month. The Moonwalk is the most popular dance performed on The Ledge, followed closely by the Running Man. Riverdance clocks in at a distant third. Bringing people who are afraid of heights to The Ledge is not recommended, unless you are mean-spirited or really don't like them. In which case, you should probably just take them here. Willis Tower was known as Sears Tower for decades, until the 30th anniversary of Diff'rent Strokes, at which point it was rightfully renamed   SHEDD AQUARIUM EXHIBITS UNDERWATER BEAUTY – A SPECIAL EXHIBIT Our living world is full of wonder. Celebrate with us the unbelievable beauty living in our oceans, lakes and rivers in a new special exhibit at Shedd Aquarium: Underwater Beauty. Get a glimpse of the grandeur beneath the waves as 100 species from around the world come together in an evocative new space. What is beauty? Spark your curiosity as you see all the ways beauty moves and coexists. Watch sea jellies pulse, eels ribbon and a rainbow come alive with reef fishes. Feel the rhythms, embrace the colors and savor the patterns found only underwater. Experience a world worth celebrating – and saving. AMPHIBIANS! Get ready for a toadally ribbiting experience! Shedd’s new special exhibit, Amphibians, hops into the aquarium May 16 and is included with admission. ​In Amphibians, you’ll meet 40 species of frogs, salamanders and rarely seen caecilians. Learn how amphibians’ lives are full of change, from their life cycles to their adaptations to live in nearly every environment on Earth. Find out how too much change can spell trouble for amphibians — and how you can help them cope with big changes in our world today! Waters of the World Travel the world in 80 habitats. Dive into Oceans, from coastal kelp forests to the seafloor. Explore the self-contained ecosystems of Islands and Lakes. Visit Rivers—big and small—and learn more about our local waters in the new At Home on the Great Lakes exhibit. Meet hundreds of amazing animals, from tiny mantella frogsto a a giant octopus, from a Grand Cayman blue iguana to Nile knifefish, and from moon jellies to sea stars. We even have map turtles, in case you get lost. Caribbean Reef Take a 360-degree tour of an underwater reef community. Follow a green sea turtle. Peek at a moray eel in a rocky crevice. Watch regal rays glide by. Get eye-to-eye with parrot fish and sharks. Visit Caribbean Reef, Shedd’s award-winning 90,000-gallon circular habitat in the grand rotunda. Amazon Rising Take an exotic journey in the Amazon, home to one-third of all living things. Watch out for anacondas and piranhas, spiders, rays and a camouflaged caiman. In churning river channels, still lakes and even flooded treetops look for tetras, turtles and fruit-eating fish called tambaqui. See how the region’s animals, plants and people adapt to the water’s dramatic annual rise and fall. Abbott Oceanarium The Abbott Oceanarium immerses you in the vibrant coastal ecosystem of beluga whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, sea otters and sea lions. You’ll also find a host of fishes and invertebrates that make their homes where freshwater flows into the ocean or where tides turn seascapes to landscapes and back again each day. Use our self-guided map to discover how animals are linked to each other, their homes and you. Polar Play Zone Kids have a place at Shedd that they can call their own—Polar Play Zone. It’s cool as ice and twice as nice! The penguins think so, too. Play! Splash! Pretend! What would you like to be? A sleek sliding penguin? A deep-sea explorer? How about both? In Polar Play Zone, you can slip into a penguin suit and try being a bird in the Icy South play area. From there, head to the Icy North to explore the belugas’ Arctic waters in a kid-sized submarine. Don’t forget to shake hands—or is it arms?—with colorful sea stars in the touch pools. In Polar Play Zone, you’ll learn about polar opposites—big and small, fast and slow, shallow and deep, even north and south—while you play. The Oceanarium Aquatic Presentation​ is included however based on available seating and remaining show times at the time of guest arrival. (2019 Aquatic Presentation Schedule) Stingray Touch (seasonal experience) is included. Open late May through October. 4D Experience is not included however the 4D experience tickets may be purchased at the theatre for $4.95 per -person

Operating Calendar: Remember that LEGOLAND Florida and the water park are not open 365 days a year.    Please click here for a detailed calendar view of opening times. FREE Shuttles available from Orlando: Shuttle leaves from I-Drive 360, 8350 Universal Blvd, Orlando, FL 32819. You can add a free shuttle voucher to your order here.   KENNEDY SPACE CENTER Kennedy Space Center General Admission This package includes admission to KSCVC includes all of the exhibits, attractions, the IMAX theatre tickets and a very comprehensive bus tour to the Apollo/Saturn V Center.  Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (KSCVC) is a must see destination in Central Florida. Less than an hour east of Orlando, KSCVC provides a mixture of the past and the future, with rich historical references in each of the exhibits, coupled with a clear vision into the future, bolstered by the amazing learning from both the International Space Station and the Hubble telescope photos.  It is easy to spend a full day at KSCVC, particularly if you would like to add on 'Lunch With an Astronaut*' or one of the special interest guided tours. Hotels are plentiful in nearby Titusville or the Cocoa Beach area, just south of Cape Canaveral. *Additional fee, to be paid direct at KSCVC. For a virtual tour of the Atlantis Shuttle, please click here: http://vtour.govtour.com/xplorit.php?tid=67507 Please note, this does not include Transport and is an entry ticket only.