Getting the flavor of...The world’s largest Legoland

The world’s largest Legoland

If my 9-year-old and his pals were slightly younger, I’d say they just enjoyed an awesome play date, said Paul Abercrombie in The Washington Post. Though the kids had recently stopped building with Legos, they were “in Lego heaven” the moment we entered the new Legoland Florida—the second Legoland in the U.S. and the largest anywhere. My son deemed the first ride we took, the Dragon roller coaster, “kind of tame.” But the Boating School ride proved to be fun once we realized that we could “treat the boats like aquatic bumper cars,” and the Coastersaurus, a wooden coaster, earned “universal approval.” The 150-acre park also features a real rarity: “sculptures kids willingly pose with for photos,” including a 20-foot-tall, all-Lego head of Albert Einstein. My gang’s consensus was that the park is “probably better for kids 8 and younger.” Yet at closing time, those same voters “only reluctantly” agreed to leave.

‘Beautiful downtown Culver City’

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Once-downtrodden Culver City, Calif., is experiencing a revival, said Beverly Levitt in The San Diego Union-Tribune. A “glamorous boomtown” from the 1920s through the ’40s, when most Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies were made in local studios, the city center became all but deserted after MGM’s fortunes dwindled. Since Culver City sits between Venice Beach and Los Angeles, it was until recently mostly a “place you had to drive through.” But that began changing in the 1990s, when Sony bought MGM. The city responded by renovating façades and making the downtown especially desirable for restaurants by widening sidewalks and mandating outdoor dining space. Ford’s Filling Station, created by Harrison Ford’s son Ben, is a major draw, as is the “totally green” Akasha Restaurant, located in the historic Hull Building. Nearby, the “beautifully restored” Culver Hotel regularly features music from the golden-era ’20s and ’30s.