Things to Do in Fayetteville

Balls hurtle toward pins on 24 well-oiled bowling boulevards at B&B Lanes, where groups, teams, and individuals hone gutter-hugging techniques seven days each week. Each lane hosts up to six bowlers at a time and features a lounge area with ample room for groups to stretch their bowling legs between frames. The alley also hosts an onsite kitchen with quick and hearty snacks that hungry players can slide across the butter-soaked lanes for extra flavor. The seven-day bowling schedule includes extended hours on weekends, along with glow-in-the-dark bowling hours that provide an experience similar to bowling in bioluminescent reefs.

As the super-otter aircraft climbs through the clouds, the energy in the plane is palpable. First-time skydivers and veterans of the sport, all giddy for the oncoming rush of wind and velocity, ready themselves for their leap into the vast blue yonder waiting just outside the plane’s door. For the skilled staff of Triangle Skydiving Center, that feeling is the reason they come to work every morning. Whether they're plunging themselves and a harnessed patron through midair at 13,500 feet or selling high-quality parachute equipment in the gear store, they're dedicated to helping customers find that thrill that previously was only attained by shrinking the kids and living vicariously through them as they spelunk from picnic tables.

Triad Lanes offers bowlers of all levels recreational and competitive atmospheres. Beyond the well-oiled boards and gutters, it features onsite amenities, as well as youth bowling and birthday parties. In addition to open hours, the alley hosts special events, such as cosmic bowling on Friday and Saturday nights from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., when they lift all rules concerning gravity and primate-assisted space exploration.

When not training for a triathlon or embarking on an adventure race, certified yoga instructor and Get Twisted owner Dee Chrisman teaches daily yoga classes in her Hope Mills studio. Dee helps each student on their path to honing a stronger body and sounder mind through Vinyasa-style classes. As each session's sequences of flowing postures link together with mindful breathing techniques, students follow at their own pace, making the classes appropriate for practitioners of all levels. A stock of mats and props provides all the necessary materials for yogis, and soft lighting and sepia walls give the studio a cozy, earthy feel, generally preferred over the barren, overly bright lunar feel of many other studios.

“I’m too scared to do a hot yoga class” is a phrase that’s all too familiar to Sherry Carpenter. The owner of The Funky Buddha Hot Yoga Studio and instructor recognizes that the balmy temperatures and 26 plus poses of hot yoga can intimidate those who have never taken a class before. That’s why she offers a beginners class that teaches students the poses used in hot yoga and prepares them for entry into one of the studio’s hot or warm yoga classes.

Sherry Carpenter trained under Arianna Gallagher of Chesapeake Hot Yoga, who was in turn trained by Bikram Choudhury—the founder of Bikram yoga—as well as B.K.S. Iyengar. In addition to her yoga classes, Sherry also offers Russian medical massage, which she learned while studying at the American & European Massage School. She teaches students inside a pale-green studio with mirrors and smooth hardwood floors. The studio also features curtained changing rooms, where post-yoga students can trade their sweaty asanas for clean ones.

Shrouded in groves of leafless trees, Darkside Haunted Estates looms ominously. Dilapidated black shutters hang from the two-story house's white, weather-beaten siding, and behind its black door, nightmares have stirred to life for more than two decades. Throughout its eerie grounds, the staff has installed dynamic special effects on a collection of attractions that has ballooned to more than a dozen, including a quarter-mile haunted trail and a backwoods hayride. Unsettling sites tell the estate's sordid story through the Darkside Mortuary, Rottenkorr Cemetery, and The Orphanage. They’ve also installed a "Fame of Shame" board, which keeps track of visitors who bail early and of monsters who faint at the sight of their own fake blood.