Things to Do in Mansfield

North Coast Parasail lofts guests high above the freshwater majesty of Lake Erie with gravity-defying parasailing excursions. Drift kite-like through the atmosphere during a 10-minute parasailing experience, which safely suspends adventurers at the end of an 800-foot towline. Breeze cruises deliver picturesque panoramas of Sandusky, Cedar Point, and the rarely seen tops of tall beachgoers' heads. Participants snag a complimentary T-shirt as well as a disposable camera good for capturing images of your feet dangling several hundred feet above the water.

Splat Paintball provides a fun and exciting outdoor environment where brave paintslingers of all skill levels can practice their marksmanship, relieve the stresses of everyday life, and alleviate the guilt of midnight refrigerator raids. With your mask securely in place, your eyes will be safe from blindness and your secret superhero identity protected from inquisitive minds. Sneak stealthily through purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, and blue-bespeckled tree trunks as you attempt to capture the enemy’s flag. As you crawl on your belly over rocks and dash between bunkers with the whiz of small paint-filled capsules humming past your ears, open fire while tucking, rolling, and shouting in slow-motion until your enemies, best friends, or coworkers have all been decimated in a splatter of color. The game ends when a flag has been captured, despoiling opponents of the bragging rights guaranteed them by an early, paint-flecked draft of the U.S. Constitution.

Your hands wrap around the grip of a Tippmann marker. Multicolored spheres fly past you, spattering the trees and cutting air inches from your mask. Through the foliage, you can see half a plane buried nose-first in a clearing, one of many obstacles concealing potential foes. At SplatterPark, this good-natured combat sprawls across the adrenaline-soaked turf of 12 outdoor fields and 40 wooded and open acres adjacent to a lake. Warriors battle through capture-the-flag, base-defense, and other scenarios in themed arenas with adventurous names including Fort Buckeye, Snake Pit, and Dark Forest. Each field is suited to at least three types of play, but only the regular type of physics, and shouts of camaraderie echo off paint-flecked cover such as a broken-down school bus and a wooden-slat fort. In preparing for battle, combatants strap on rental or purchased gear under covered staging shelters, happy in the knowledge that their biodegradable paint ammunition will be harmlessly washed away by the elements or bears doing community service.

The arena's surreal terrain was featured in the intense combat of Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball, a video game from Activision, but the real park caters to players of all abilities and ages. At an onsite café, hot dogs and burgers refuel warriors and allow them to tell if their nemeses are actually target dummies with no appetite, and the pro shop's staff bustles among markers, accessories, and spare parts.

Every summer, the double-decker Good Time I forges connections between mainland Ohioans and their island-dwelling neighbors to the north. En route to Put-in-Bay and Kelleys Island, captains divulge each island’s history and point out popular attractions such as Marblehead Lighthouse and their reflections in the water. To further prime passengers for island revelry, the _Good Time I_’s weekend tours regale guests with live DJs and mixed drinks.

Stretched across 77 acres, the Waco airfield launched in 1997 on the wings of the Waco Historical Society, a nonprofit organization on a mission to tote the Golden Age of Flight safely into the future. Today, continual upgrades and improvements, plus countless hours from volunteers, have packed the site with more information than ever before. Vintage Waco aircraft, displays, and the history of the Waco company pilot museum visitors through time inside the museum hangar, which joins forces with other buildings—such as a 150-year-old barn¬—to bridge the past and the present. An onsite gift shop stocked with mementos helps soup up memorabilia collections, and, instead of trying to squeeze information from the museum's tightlipped biplanes, visitors can attend the historical society's lectures and workshops throughout the year for extra doses of education.

Gravity loses its grip near the shores of Sandusky, Ohio. Here, certified instructors strap customers into a water jetpack's five-point quick-release harness, which uses twin streams of high-pressured water to elevate adventurers up to 30 feet in the air. Attached to a nearby boat, the system's 200-horsepower engine pumps water through a 30-foot hose and churns through a staggering 1,000 gallons per minute. This allows jetpack pilots to run along the water, speed through smooth turns, and dive below the surface. Back on the shore, instructors can remotely control the jetpack's throttle, which allows beginner pilots to stay focused on games of extreme Marco Polo.