Photo of the Day (09.23.08)

by Grant Martin on

Today’s Photo of the Day is a shout out to Justin Glow (and maybe to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), the late editor of Gadling who recently moved to Chicago for work higher up in the blog food chain. As we catfish bottom feed the travel blog world, Justin sits upon his mighty throne in Chicago, peering down silently as a king among peasants. Helloooooo up there, Justin Glow! Helloooo!

Flickr user mce323 shot this photo at the base of the Marina City towers in downtown Chicago — thankfully not where Justin lives. Nice shot mce323.

Have any cool photos you’d like to share with the world? Add them to the Gadling Pool on Flickr, and it might be chosen as our Photo of the Day.

The bar car: a dying breed

by David Breisch on

So, what’s better than kicking back and relaxing on the train for your commute home? Well, perhaps that might be kicking back, relaxing and downing an alcoholic drink. Or two. Or… well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, that dream may soon be gone, as the “bar cars,” as they are popularly known – or “refreshment cars,” as they are officially known – are slowly being phased out of service. Formerly in widespread use in commuter agencies across the country, they have been disappearing more and more rapidly as transit organizations come under increased pressure to maximize passenger volume and revenue. Metra, Chicago’s commuter rail agency, ended service of its final bar cars last week, saying that they only produced $100,000 in revenue a year. That left New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Metro-North railroad as the only remaining commuter agencies with in-service bar cars.

Sorry, fans of the after-work-drink, looks like you’ll have to wait until you get home to indulge.

(Via Trains Magazine)

The Onion launches Decider cityguides

by Scott Carmichael on

The Onion has just joined the long lineup of online city guides with their newest publication; Decider. Decider launched in beta mode with a guide for Chicago and covers everything from movie reviews to restaurant guides. If you visit the site expecting the usual amount of Onion humor, you’ll be disappointed. The Decider is actually a serious site, with real reviews.

Of course, starting in Chicago is quite a challenge as they will be up against established sites like Metromix, Yelp and Citysearch. The advantage for the Onion is that they already have a large pool of journalists to use, and thousands of fans of their other work who might be interested in seeing how interesting an Onion publication is without satire.

The site currently lists over 5700 restaurants, but the vast majority have not yet been rated by readers, and I doubt that many people will be willing to sit down and post their reviews on this site if they already feel comfortable posting to Yelp or Metromix.

The site is also missing mobile access which is something they’ll need to get up and running as soon as they can. Yelp already has a GPS enabled version of their site for the iPhone. Then again, the only mobile version on Citysearch is for Mobile,AL. The ability to search for a restaurant or store on the go is something that can make or break a site.

I’m sure that the guide will improve over time, but I can’t help feel that it’s all just a little more of the same. There is nothing really new on the site and it’ll take a lot of user submitted reviews to become a truly useful resource.

Chicago is home to the first indoor Legoland in North America

by Scott Carmichael on

Last month, Lego opened its first US based Legoland Discovery Center in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg.

This large indoor venue is home to 8 Lego themed attractions, and should provide some Lego fun for visitors young and old. In the name of scientific research, I visited Legoland during their “soft opening” week at the end of July.

The location is right next to Woodfield Mall, and is in the middle of the Streets of Woodfield entertainment district. There is ample free parking. Schaumburg is about 20 miles from downtown Chicago, but there is no easy public transport system linking the two, unless you don’t mind a 45 minute CTA ride, a 30 minute bus ride and a 10 minute trolley ride.

This is the third Legoland Discovery center in the world; previous venues opened in Berlin and Duisburg in Germany. They are operated by the Merlin Entertainments group, who also own the Madame Tussauds wax museums.

The Chicago Legoland Discovery Center is quite easy to spot, partly thanks to the 30 foot giraffe built over the entrance. Once inside, you pass through “Mini Land”, which consists of almost all famous Chicago landmarks, recreated with 1.5 million Lego bricks.

Next up is Adventure Trail, where “Johnny Thunder” introduces himself, and warns you about the dangers of the Lego jungle. Kids will love having their photo taken next to a Lego lion, parrot and various other “wild” animals.

Once you leave the jungle, you arrive in the atrium where several full scale Lego heroes are on display, including Batman and Harry Potter. This is yet another great photo opportunity. This is also where you will find the Dragon Ride. This ride is not as scary as the name implies, and has no age/height restrictions. The 4 person cars take you through several castle scenes at 2 mph, and bring you up close and personal with a massive “fire” breathing Lego dragon.

The rest of the center is upstairs, where you’ll find the Lego 4D theater. This movie theater combines a 3D Lego movie with several other effects, I’ll leave it at that, as I don’t want to spoil any surprises. When you enter the theater, you are handed 3D glasses, but smaller kids will need some help keeping the glasses on. Without the special glasses, the movie looks blurry. The movie lasts 15 minutes and lines to get in can be fairly long, so get in line as soon as you can.

Across from the theater is the Lego factory tour. In this room, a Legoland employee explains how Lego blocks are made, and several machines show the process. Kids are invited to participate by pressing some of the buttons, and at the end of the narration, everyone receives a special Chicago Legoland brick.

The rest of the attractions are across the central hall. This large and bright room has something for everyone. If you are tired, you’ll be able to grab a snack from the Lego cafe. Toddlers can run around in the soft climb and slide zone and larger kids (or adults) can build Lego cars and race against others on a massive inclined racetrack.

There are tables with Lego buckets everywhere, and several soft Duplo building zones for smaller kids. In the rear corner is an entire area where toddlers and infants can play with extra large foam Lego blocks. They’ll have a blast building towers and walls here (I know I did!)

When you leave Legoland, you pass through the obligatory gift shop, which sells some fairly hard to find Lego items, so prepare to deal with begging kids and parting with more of your money.

Admission to the Chicago Legoland Discovery Center is $19 for adults and $15.00 for kids. Children 2 and under are free. I found the admission price to be fairly high; a family with 2 kids will cost $68 to get in, and you’ll have a hard time keeping the kids entertained for more than 2 or 3 hours. The Legoland Discovery Center is open 7 days a week from 10am till 8pm, but ticket sales end at 6pm.

Lines to get into the Legoland Discovery Center are often wrapped around the building. so I strongly advise purchasing your tickets in advance, as you’ll then be able to skip the long line for the ticket desk. If you arrive with pre-purchased tickets, you can enter through the right hand set of doors. This online advance purchase service also sells off-peak tickets, if you arrive past 3:30pm, you’ll save $2.50 on each ticket.

All in all I found the Legoland Discovery Center quite enjoyable, as did my 2 year old daughter. The entrance fee is steep, but unless you plan to fly to California, this is the closest you’ll get to Legoland in the Midwest.

Dispatches from around the world


TSA inspector damages planes and causes major flight delays

by Jamie Rhein on

As one of the duties to make sure air travel is safer, TSA inspectors check planes for security issues while the planes are parked.

Unfortunately, knowing which parts of planes should not be touched, and what a ladder looks like is a skill set that still needs some fine tuning.

According to this ABC News report, an inspector at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport used sensitive instrument probes as handholds while climbing into nine American Eagle airplanes. These TAT probes, pictured, are important to the operation of flight computers. As a result, 40 commuter flights were delayed.

At the time, the TSA agent was attempting to determine if the aircraft could be broken into and an agency official is quoted as saying “Our inspector was following routine procedure for securing the aircraft that were on the tarmac.”

Next time, try using a ladder and a brick.

Other tales from the skies
Amazing and insane stories from a real-life flight attendant and co-pilot