Things to Do in Kansas City

The professional pilots at Timberview Helicopters ferry passengers high into the clouds aboard a sky-scraping whirlybird during flight tours through Destin, Kansas City, and Key West. Having chartered flights for National Geographic and the Travel Channel, these pilots expertly navigate planes toward sweeping, picturesque views, allowing sightseers to steal glances of Fort Walton Beach, downtown Kansas City, and Key West's ocean views from a perspective normally reserved for birds and astronauts with binoculars. Additionally, their high-definition videos grant guests a lasting commemoration of their in-flight experience. When they're not chartering tours, they teach budding pilots the gravity-defying tricks of their trade through pilot training and lug precious shipments from port to port with their cargo-lifting services.

Your choice of Segway tours are:

A glass bridge is suspended above a field of 9,000 red poppies, each flower representing 1,000 soldiers who died in the Great War. This living symbol is one of the many powerful exhibits within the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, the only museum in the US dedicated exclusively to World War I and dedicated by Congress as the nation's official WWI museum in 2004.

Designed by Ralph Appelbaum, who also lent his expertise to such landmarks as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National World War I Museum integrates first-person accounts into a narrative that flows through its permanent and visiting exhibitions. The museum's collection comprises WWI artifacts such as field artillery, a 1917 Harley Davidson motorcycle, and unopened cigarette packs from a 1914 Princess Mary Christmas Box. Beyond the exhibitions, the museum extends to Over There Café and a gift shop.

Pilates instructors helm classes that include mat-based sessions and Pilates circuits, stocking their studio with reformers, chairs, and other equipment designed to help students get the most out of the core-strengthening and posture-aligning movements. The precision-barre teachers, meanwhile, tap into dance backgrounds as they lead groups through limb-lengthening workouts inspired by ballet classes and Stretch Armstrong’s exercise tapes from the '80s. They also offer Zumba, reformer, equipment, cardio chair, and Barre Reformed classes.

The newly renovated Arrowhead Stadium might initially impress visitors with its upgraded sound and scoreboard systems, expanded concourses, and 360-degree video-ribbon board. But during the Chiefs 5K Run, its most salient feature is the 50-yard line, which doubles as the race’s finish line. Sponsored by the Kansas City Chiefs, the race’s after-party also brims with football-inspired touches. The team mascot, KC Wolf, makes a guest appearance, and locker-room tours put fans in the spot where many a pre-game pep talk has taken place, along with the private changing room where the football puts on its laces.

At Screenland, campy and classic are rarely mutually exclusive terms. The movie theater serves as a cinematic time machine, transporting spectators through the history of Hitchcock's mysteries and straight into the heyday of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Though it also shows current titles, its schedule is often beholden to audience whims—the Crossroads location hosts new independent films that are uniquely screened at this sole location. This dual devotion to cherished and modern flicks helped Screenland earn the 2012 Readers' Choice award for Best Movie Theater from the Pitch.

Even outside the projection room, nostalgia rules. More than 40 games, from Donkey Kong to Missile Command, test dexterity at the Crossroads location's retro arcade, where guests can purchase passes to play indefinitely or until Frogger finally flags down a cab. Photographs taken by former Kansas City mayor Dick Berkley accompany historical trivia in the adjacent gallery, and celebrity handprints mark the outdoor patio. Greeting cinephiles out front is a marquee salvaged from the Isis Theatre, just as it once greeted a young Walt Disney when he shared his early animations there.

Wedding receptions and corporate meetings alike have taken advantage of the theater's capacity for private functions. At both exclusive and public events, however, a full-service bar supplies guests with libations, cracking open bottles of Boulevard Pale Ale and Tallgrass Velvet Rooster.