Things to Do in Manchester

Abundant rides and games find their way into every corner of Tee Time Family Fun Center's indoor and outdoor playgrounds, which keeps guests of all ages enthralled throughout their visit. After entering the facility, it's not long before kids are hugging the racetrack’s turns from behind go-kart wheels, accelerating their bumper cars or bumper boats into fellow participants’ vessels, or parading their putting skills at an 18-hole mini golf course, voted Best Miniature Golf in 2009 by Riverfront Times. A 3-D maze coaxes puzzle solvers through its black-lit labyrinth, and a multi-level soft-play area accommodates crawling tykes with its tunnels, tubes, and crawling seminars taught by worms. After playing racing games in the arcade, patrons can re-energize with pizza, chicken wings, or a slice of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory at the snack bar.

Demolition Ball - Adrenaline Zone's inventive twist on team sports challenges players, daring groups of kids and corporate staff alike. In demolition ball, teams face off in a game that blends bumper-car crashing and lacrosse-like ball handling. As they veer into oncoming opponents and shoot goals to the beat of pulsing music and sound effects, live referees provide commentary on action-packed plays and each player's hairstyle. For a dose of on-foot competition, up to three teams can battle in the power-plant-themed laser-tag arena, where players target opponents with laser beams while darting between slate-gray barriers, hoping their foes will be disoriented by the flashing strobe lights. Players test their sneaking skills in The Heist—a museum-themed maze—dodging trip lasers as they attempt to steal a replica of the Mona Lisa without waking a sleeping Leonardo da Vinci.

The astronauts deftly dodge the oncoming trickle of rocks and debris from the meteor shower, and as the rubble clears they see the Moon up ahead. It is at this site that they’ll soon establish the first permanent human base. Though it sounds like science fiction, novice astronauts attempt this feat daily at Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis. Part of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education—a nonprofit founded by the families of the astronauts who died in the 1986 Challenger space-shuttle mission—the center educates visitors in science and teamwork with its space simulators. Whether navigating a spacecraft or abetting astronauts at a Mission Control modeled after NASA’s Johnson Space Center, student, community, and corporate groups must maintain a cooperative spirit while rocketing to Mars, assembling a probe, or stealing one of Saturn’s rings.