Family Fun

KIDS! By Janis Turk

Fly high! Jump on a plane. Climb in a treehouse. Spend hours of endless fun at the DoSEUM kids’ museum. Plan a complicated family getaway in an escape room. Become a junior chef during a kids’ summer day camp cooking course. Cool off at a camp based on water fun. Spend a Sunday learning about nature and making plants into art. Have some spooky thrilling fun downtown at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Your adventure awaits! Which thrill will be your favorite?

IFLY

Have your kids dreamed of skydiving or maybe just floating to the ceiling like Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins? Why not let the kids experience what that would actually feel like? At iFLY San Antonio, the ultimate thrill is soaring up in the air in a specially-designed wind tunnel for an awesome indoor skydiving experience available to kids of all ages and challenges. Flyers ages three and older (the sky is the limit) can try indoor skydiving. It is not scary—there are always well-trained world-class instructors flying beside you. It all begins with an orientation and lesson on the basics of indoor skydiving. Each flier then receives a flight suit and helmet and takes his or her turn in the wind tunnel where an instructor will stay with the flier throughout the iFLY experience. Best of all, indoor skydiving is both limitless and inclusive, so regardless of physical or cognitive challenges, everyone has the opportunity to indoor skydive: simply call ahead for more information on the All-Abilities iFLY program.

FLIGHT TOURS OF SA

Rather see the city in a new way, flying in a real plane, enjoying a birds-eye view of San Antonio and beyond? Take the kids on a Barrio Aviation Tours flight tour in a real airplane. They offer one-hour flights for up to three people, and you will get to see downtown San Antonio, Medina Lake, the Texas Hill Country and so much more.

ESCAPE ROOM

Escape rooms are the latest craze and your kids and family will be thrilled trying out this fun interactive adventure. Escape rooms are hands-on group game venues created by professional game designers, organizational behaviorists, psychologists, mathematicians, lighting and set engineers and other professionals. Challenging and fun, these exercises in exciting teamwork involve brain teasers and friendly competition. Family members of all ages (usually in groups of 10 or fewer) will enjoy rooms with different puzzles and themes. Imagine you have got just 60 minutes to find your way out of a locked room based on a fun storyline, using just your brain and a series of puzzles, clues, plot twists and challenges. This all takes place in clever spaces enhanced with impressive lighting effects, entertaining set designs, thunderous sounds and more.

San Antonio escape rooms and “panic rooms” include these, among others: Escape the Room, Komnata Quest, Great Rooms Escape, Exit Game Escape Room, Extreme Escape and the San Antonio Panic Room. These mystery-theatre-meets-reality immersive experiences include different levels of difficulty: some rooms are designed to be a bit more challenging than most and others tend to be a bit creepy or have things that jump out and scare guests, while most just have family-friendly storylines like an old Wild West bank heist, a cabin or a vault or a prison cell to escape. Most escapes take an hour or less and are fine for families with kids. Choose an escape game based on your own comfort level.

WITTE & DOSEUM CAMPS

Parents can plan ahead for their kids to enjoy days of adventures with other kids at various San Antonio museum day camps. For starters, enjoy the numerous educational and fun day camps and classes at both the Witte Museum and the DoSEUM. From June 6 through August 12, San Antonio’s popular DoSEUM on Broadway offers 20 different camp options this summer. Go on a dinosaur dig, explore the Earth and why it matters, design your own fashion collection and even participate in a DoSEUM-wide spy mission or have some water fun.

The Witte Museum, also on Broadway, is often a place that stimulates kids’ imaginations and thrills them with fun adventures. So, every day is an adventure at Witte Museum Camp. These summer camps for kids cover themes like cooking, the art of nature, engineering and more. Different events are available for kids ages 6-12. And with a wide range of themes and camps occurring throughout the year, the Witte offers year-round fun for everyone. This July, do not miss the STEAM Sunday event on July 10 at 1:30pm for a “Foliage Folios” experience at the Memorial Auditorium at the Witte Museum. Here, kids and adults together can learn what a herbarium is and how is it used. This hands-on workshop examines the helpful and harmful properties of different plants. You will create your own pressed plant art, as well as a press you can use for future art.

RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Sometimes the most fun spot, believe it or not, is right there near the River Walk. Across from the Alamo facing Alamo Plaza, you will find the thrilling, weird, wacky world of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Everything there from dinosaurs to wax figures, moving theatre motion simulator rides and Ripley’s Illusion Lab will elicit squeals of delight. Adventure always involves a freaky fun surprise at Ripley’s.

WRITER’S BIO

Janis Turk is an award-winning travel writer, travel guidebook author and former professor who loves finding adventures at every turn. The former newspaper and magazine editor is also a bilingual writer helping with the writing and plans for Grupo La Gloria and Chef Johnny Hernandez’ exciting and popular annual San Antonio Day of the Dead parade and festivities coming again this October.

click on this:

BARIO AVIATION INC. www.BarioAviationServices.com/tours

DOSEUM www.TheDoSeum.org

ESCAPE THE ROOM www.EscapeTheRoom.com/san-antonio

IFLY www.iFlyWorld.com

WITTE MUSEUM www.WitteMuseum.org

RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT www.Ripleys.com

SAVE $3 ON ADMISSION TO LEGOLAND® DISCOVERY CENTER OR SEA LIFE SAN ANTONIO