Couple to wed at Halloween Horror Nights

by Leigh Caldwell on

April Richardson and Adam Cohen (that’s the blood-drenched, happy couple in the picture at right) are the winners of a wedding package at Halloween Horror Nights.

The Vermont couple, who describe themselves as “lifelong fans of Halloween,” will wed on the steps of a haunted house at Universal Orlando on Oct. 15.

April, a graphic designer, and Adam, a pharmacist, met six years ago and got engaged this May.

“Getting married at Halloween Horror Nights would join our two loves in the best possible way,” April says.

If you entered and didn’t win, you can still get a horror-filled wedding. Universal is offering wedding packages with a chainsaw drill team, 10 “scareactors” as wedding guests, transportation in a hearse, and Halloween-themed menus.

For more information on the wedding packages, check out Universal’s wedding Web site.

Halloween Horror Nights is in its 20th year. The event runs on select nights through Oct. 31, with eight haunted houses, six scarezones and two live shows. More information on ticketing and travel packages is available at Universal’s Web site.

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Traveling women are Facebook addicts

by Tom Johansmeyer on

A new study of female travelers indicates that close to half can’t let go of Facebook when they’re on the road. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is the social network of choice for women on the go.

Ninety-three percent of women who have had an overnight trip in the past month, according to Women on Their Way, have Facebook accounts, and 68 percent of them use it for travel purposes. What do they like to do most? Share multimedia! Fifty-seven percent engage in that activity. Status updates and commentary about the trip are next (38 percent), followed by Facebook Places check-ins (13 percent).

While these activities can happen before or after the trip has come to a close, 46 percent of respondents said they use Facebook while actually traveling, and 77 percent connect to the social media platform via a laptop.

So, if you see some hottie in the hotel bar and want to know if she’s interested in doing something regrettable … well, it helps to be “friends” first.


[photo by Andrew Feinberg via Flickr]

Cross-dressing employee gets Hyatt sued

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Daynara Fernandez got back to her hotel room at a Hyatt and found, to her obvious surprise, a male employee clad in her skirt, underwear and … of course … high heels. So, is it all that shocking that she’s suing the hotel chain?

When she got back to her room, after having attended a wedding, her door was blocked by a cleaning cart. Getting past it, she saw, according to Gawker, that “her luggage had been opened and her belongings strewn about.” There was only one way the situation could have been made worse, I suspect, by one thing: finding a man wearing some of her clothes.

And, yep, that’s what she saw. Oscar Garcia-Franco, an employee of the Deerfield, Illinois Hyatt, denied t at first, claiming he was cleaning the room … yeah, that old line (get the blow-by-blow in the police report). Interestingly, despite wearing Fernandez’s skirt and shoes, kept his Hyatt shirt on! Now that’s company loyalty!

When he got busted by the guest, Garcia-Franco shouted at her, “Don’t tell, don’t tell,” a sure way to make sure your name and mug shot winds up on The Smoking Gun and Gawker.

[Via Gawker, photo by Markusram via Flickr]

Lost hiker found after six days in the wild

by Kraig Becker on

Los Angeles real estate broker Ed Rosenthal recently pulled off a big sale, and to celebrate he decided to get out of town and go for a hike, something he had done many times in the past. Little did he know that that hike would leave him scrambling for his life, even as he thought he was on his last trek.

On September 24th Rosenthal made the trip to Joshua Tree National Park where he says that he took a wrong turn and lost the trail. What seemed like a simple mistake sent him hiking off into a remote area of the park where he quickly found himself disoriented and completely lost.

Over the next six days he wandered the park looking for landmarks that could lead him back to civilization. He says that he would spend the hot days resting in the shade of a tree while at night he would walk, usually downhill, to try to stay warm in the cool desert nights. Eventually he hiked into East Wide Canyon, which descends to the park’s southern boundary. It was there that he was found last Thursday by a search and rescue team that spotted him from the air. He was just eight miles from where he had wandered off the trail.

While lost in the wild, Rosenthal wrote letters to his wife and daughter to tell them that he loved them. He also left instructions on where to donate some of his money to charity and passed on advice to his business partners as well. The lost hiker also wrote a chronicle of his trek that is reportedly the story of a man who believed he was going to die alone in the backcountry.

After his rescue, Rosenthal spent a few days in the hospital where he was treated for exposure and dehydration. He was released on Monday and is in fine condition after his ordeal. My guess is his family will buy him a compass and/or a GPS for Christmas this year.

[Photo credit: Matthew Field via WikiMedia]

Original Hershey Chocolate Factory closing in Hershey, Pennsylvania

by Leigh Caldwell on

Milton Hershey’s chocolate factory, with its iconic double smokestack, is closing soon in downtown Hershey, Pennsylvania.

According to a National Public Radio report, Hershey’s chocolate bars will still be made nearby, in a newer facility outside of town that better accommodates modern manufacturing equipment. The company says global competition is the reason the factory will be shuttered, with 500 jobs lost in the process.

When Hershey built his factory, he followed the lead of British chocolate-maker Cadbury in building housing, community centers and even an amusement park for the chocolate company’s employees.

But in the century since the company was founded, Hershey, Pennsylvania, has become more than a factory town. Its Hersheypark theme park now caters to tourists, and hotels and resorts have sprung up around it.

For decades, visitors to “America’s chocolate center” toured the original factory at the corner of Chocolate and Cocoa avenues along with their visit to Hersheypark.

Today, the factory tours have been replaced by a 10-minute ride at Hershey’s Chocolate World that shows the chocolate-making process in a more visitor-friendly environment. But a monorail ride at Hersheypark still passes the original factory, with a voice-over describing it as “the world’s largest chocolate factory.”

The factory broke ground back in 1903 when the town of Hershey was still called Derry Church. Five years into its operation, the plant gave birth to a candy that Hershey named the Kiss – starting a long tradition of churning out massively popular chocolate products. Hershey now produces over 80 million Kisses every single day.

Before Milton Hershey became the largest maker of chocolate in the world, he made his money with caramel – and was one of the first to use fresh milk in his recipe. The sale of his caramel firm is what financed his chocolate empire. And even though his empire is mostly known for its Kisses and Bars – the various plants around the world churn out almost 200 different candy products, including gum, mints, hard candy and licorice.

One famous product that was made in the town came from the H.B. Reese company – founded by a former dairy worker for Hershey. It wasn’t till 1963 that the Hershey company purchased Reese’s and making the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup a member of the Hershey family.

[Image credit: Flickr user slgckgc]%Poll-53886%

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