CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 10, 2012 | By Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times
Steve Wicke is "just big into space. " The Westminster man took four months off his warehouse job last year to visit every NASA site in the United States. On Saturday, he joined an estimated 20,000 people who swarmed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's leafy campus for its annual open house weekend. Buses and SUVs clogged Oak Grove Drive near the La CaƱada Flintridge boundary with Pasadena and filled JPL parking lots to disgorge passengers of all ages, who descended on the exhibits and activities as if they were new amusement park rides.
BUSINESS
May 13, 2010 | Hugo Martin
Southern California theme parks last year had few new attractions but lots of discounts, bargains and two-for-one deals for recession-weary vacationers. But this summer get ready for a 3-D King Kong, 200-foot-tall animated waterspouts and a 45-foot tall Lego water slide. Buoyed by an improving economy, most major Southern California theme parks have made multimillion-dollar investments in new attractions opening this summer to help attendance numbers rebound from last year's slump.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 29, 2010 | By Louis Sahagun
A few weeks before the opening of Santa Catalina Island's zipline attraction, its designer popped a question that caught a handful of local officials and visiting journalists off guard: "Want to zip?" Bradd Morse, the president of Canopy Tours Inc., was mindful that being among the first to hurtle over rocky, cactus-filled canyons at speeds of up to 40 mph while dangling from a cable as high as 300 feet off the ground might make some people nervous. But getting these individuals -- public safety officials, mostly -- to take a ride on the Catalina Zipline Eco-Tour is all part of the plan to transform this struggling harbor community of about 3,000 people into a more prominent Southern California destination.
BUSINESS
January 27, 2010 | By Hugo Martín
After nearly 19 months away from the spotlight, a new King Kong -- more grizzled and, definitely, ferocious -- is preparing to return to Universal Studios Hollywood. Since the old animatronic Kong was destroyed in a fire on the theme park's back lot, Hollywood's top visual effects wizards have been tinkering away in a giant hangar in Playa Vista to create a new, more realistic ape to terrify visitors who take the park's signature back lot studio tour. Inside the humongous drab-green building, Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson has led a team of film and theme park ride experts in creating a 3-D version of the hairy ape to replace the Kong that died in the June 2008 fire.
BUSINESS
December 18, 2009 | By Dawn C. Chmielewski
It looks like Abraham Lincoln. It moves like Abraham Lincoln. And it quotes Abraham Lincoln. But historians say it still doesn't sound like Abraham Lincoln. After a four-year absence, Walt Disney Co. pulls the curtain back today on a new high-tech version of Lincoln for its "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" show at the Opera House on Main Street in Disneyland. The animatronic Lincoln, incorporating cutting-edge technology that gives the mechanical man nuanced, lifelike facial expressions and lip movements, first premiered debuted at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 30, 2009 | Steve Chawkins
Michael Jackson was never a fixture on the county fair circuit, but his Neverland rides now are on a never-ending tour. The attractions he set up in his estate's private amusement park have been auctioned off and are being trucked from carnival to carnival, pitched as a chance to take a spin on a piece of history. At the far end of the midway at the Tulare County Fair in the Central Valley this month, signs announced: "Michael ride here! This is one of Michael Jackson's rides from Neverland Ranch!"