Ohio

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Reasons to Bring the Family to the Ohio Renaissance Festival

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One of our family’s favorite surprise adventures last year was visiting the 2015 Ohio Renaissance Festival.

Forget your cares and step back in time to this 30-acre re-created 16th Century English village and enjoy over 400 years of fun in a single day! The festival offers something for everyone featuring nearly 100 shows daily on 11 stages, over 135 unique arts and crafts shops, hearty food and drink, games of skill and human-powered rides to amuse all ages.

Over 150 costumed characters welcome you to the village! Rub elbows with Royalty as you cheer your favorite knight to victory in the thrilling Full-armored Tournament Joust. Welcoming you to a festive day in the village are dueling swordsmen, rowdy pirates, nobles, peasants, and daring jugglers. The sprawling landscape is dotted with hundreds of unique shops in the Medieval Marketplace featuring many one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted items. See time-honored crafts of glassblowing, stone carving, blacksmithing, leather tooling, boot making, and more demonstrated. The air is filled with the scents and smells of the foods of the Renaissance period. Feast like Royalty on juicy, giant roasted turkey legs, fresh baked bread bowls overflowing with soups and stews, fish ‘n chips, steak-on-a-stake, succulent roasted corn on the cob and a wide variety of the finest ales and wines. There’s something for everyone’s taste buds!

The food was quite honestly terrific!

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Visitors of all ages will be amused by the games of skill and human-powered rides. Try your hand at archery and see if you’re a modern-day Robin Hood, or climb the castle tower and rescue the lovely damsel in distress.

Everything from live entertainment to dressing up fit perfectly into our three young boys lives! They loved the Ohio Renaissance Festival and the reason we will be returning again for 2016!

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Ohio Renaissance Festival Discounts

Get $4 off Adult and $2 off Child tickets by using Promo Code “castle” when purchasing on our secure website at www.renfestival.com. Tickets good any day of the 2016 season (Saturdays, Sundays, and Labor Day Sept 3 – Oct 23). Online discount only. Not good with any other offers.

Review: Orchid Mania (Cleveland Botanical Gardens)

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160224 Cleveland Botanical Gardens

Have you checked out Orchid Mania (Cleveland Botanical Gardens)? This once a year event highlights the beauty of the orchid family of flora, bringing hundreds of orchid variety on display throughout the Cleveland Botanical Gardens.

Over the years, I have tried my greenthumb at a variety of plants. Sometimes my work resulted in the direct result of less oxygen creating species on this planet, resulting in the demise of the species. However, with several years of experience tending to plants and flora, I have become rather good at nursing a plant back into a beautiful species. No where is that more apparent than in the orchid variety of flora.

After getting my first couple orchids, they lost their flowers as all do. However, their leafy greens continued to flourish, and despite my wife telling me I should throw them out, I have managed to bring them all back into gorgeous blooms at least once per year.

Orchids take a good deal of patience and the right conditions to get them to flower again. Fortunately, I keep our orchids, now numbering a half dozen at indirect light windows, water once per week with a good soaking, and give periodic fertilizer and repotting when necessary.

So I had a big urge to visit the Cleveland Botanical Gardens Orchid Mania display for many years. This year when Orchid Mania appeared on Groupon, I knew our family had to take advantage of the offer. For only $20, I got our entire family into the event (I actually saved 20% on top of that with the weekly promo code).

Get your discounted tickets to Orchid Mania.

Our family had been to the Botanical Gardens a handful of times; however, in order to use the Groupon, it has to be used on a Wednesday evening, giving you a different view of the property at night.

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After enjoying the large variety of orchid blooms in the lobby and main hallway, we opted to enjoy a quick healthy bite to eat at the Botanical Gardens Cafe, offering fresh salad, fruit, yogurt, and sandwich offerings. The food was fantastic and healthy all at the same time.

Once darkness had set in, we went into the main atrium. Having the environment dimly lit created a whole new experience for all of us. The dark allowed us to see all the plants and few animal habitats in a new “light.” While you may not have been able to see the orchids in all of their glory, if you looked closely, there were many hidden gems to be discovered.

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I love seeing all the many variety of orchids on display, and it inspires me to keep on with the hard work on the promise of a gorgeous annual bloom.

While there were other kids at the facility for Orchid Mania, it appears to be more of a date night or girls night out event. There is a small play area towards the end on the upper level, giving the kids a chance to escape for putting up with dads staring at plants.

Review: Great Wolf Lodge Sandusky

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Have you stayed at one of the Great Wolf Lodge properties? Our family had the privilege to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge Sandusky, Ohio recently as part of a long weekend. We opted to take advantage of a deal through Groupon, offering us a Loft Fireplace Suite for 8 guests that included a $25 dining credit for $249. After taxes and resort fee, the total was $304.60. Even with the Groupon discount, for over $300 per night, it is a lot to swallow for only a single night. So does it live up to the high cost?

After checking in, our room was not ready yet, so we headed straight to the waterpark, which guests can get in as early as 1:00 pm. With only one entrance into the waterpark, the facility made for an excellent way to conveniently keep track of your kids. Our two oldest went off and explored within view of us while we watched our youngest in some of the little kid pools.

The park featured almost everything you would come to expect from a waterpark, with the exception of a wave pool, which was fine with us. While smaller, Great Wolf Lodge did provide a lazy river, beautiful hot tubs surrounded by faux rocks, and a variety of climbing and slide complexes for the kids.

We were most surprised by the two large slides that you ride down in tubes. They were very fast with some nice small drops that made them really thrilling for kids and adults of all ages.

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We also happen to be celebrating our kids birthdays during our visit. Their wristbands granted them free ice cream throughout the property which they more than took advantage of to fill their tummies. We also used our $25 dining credit towards some slices of pizza and the $1 upcharge of Dippin’ Dots.

The resort also offers a Native American/Nature show in the lobby with animatronic figures. While it may have been entertaining for kids, the sound quality needed some improvement.

The facility also offered face painting, story time, and a variety of other activities. For an additional fee, guests could use the arcade or Magic Quest.

Our room was nicely appointed with two beds on the main floor and a bed up on the lobby. The sitting area included a small dining table, outdoor balcony, and several flat screen televisions throughout the room. A small dorm style fridge was also included.

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Overall our family loved our stay at Great Wolf Lodge! The facility was well maintained and very clean. We were not bothered constantly by the staff that the kids were forced to wear life vests like at Kalahari, Castaway Bay, and other resorts we have visited.

The only drawback was our oldest son was running his hand down the wall of the halls and a piece of wood was sticking up and sent a piece of wood down under his nail and into his finger. When approaching the staff at the front desk, they seemed unconcerned when requesting directions to an emergency room because of the incident. I would have expected them to consult the on-site medics (assuming they had one) and file a report, but no one seemed all that concerned. After a trip to the ER, we had the issue corrected and were back to enjoy the rest of our stay.

Have you stayed at a Great Wolf Lodge? How was your experience?