Things to Do in Meridian

As a lineup of second-run movies splashes upon the two screens of Northern Lights Cinema Grill, waiters deliver a diverse menu of pizzas, burgers, and salads to audience members comfortably lounging around tables. Customers arrive at the theater 30 minutes before the beginning of their chosen show to purchase drinks and place food orders before the lights dim and the night wolves come out. Waiters deliver orders during the show, and can delay the delivery of desserts or other food items at customers’ request. The theater’s matinee showings welcome guests of all ages, while shows after 6:15 p.m. are for patrons 21 and older due to their wine and beer service and dress code of clothes from 1991 or earlier.

As a PGA-certified pro, Jeff Thomsen's distinguished golf career began decades ago, when the 16-year-old Thomsen swung his way to the Idaho State Amateur championship, becoming the youngest player ever to earn that rarefied distinction. His early success would pave the cart path to a long career that included 55 PGA Tour events, participation in four major championships, multiple tournament victories, and once saving a course-side community from a feral golf cart. Today, Jeff showers pupils with golf wisdom culled from both his 35-year competitive career and a certification from the Nicklaus/Flick Golf School. The passionate pedagogue helps players sharpen their game, lengthen their drives, and fold scorecards into paper cranes with hands-on, comprehensive lessons conducted at multiple courses throughout the hills of Treasure Valley.

The Experience Dance & Fitness's instructor and owner Amanda Eames—a certified personal trainer and Zumba instructor—has developed rock-solid dance technique throughout her 20 years of dance training. Her skill and creativity blossomed under the instruction of such industry masters as Mia Michaels and Debbie Reynolds. Now, she and her staff help adults and little ones hone dance skills and shape up muscles through a diverse roster of group exercise and dance classes, which include cardio conditioning, Zumba, and core-strengthening Pilates. Kids’ dance classes foster a healthy lifestyle in little toe tappers as they learn such important techniques as leaps, shuffles, and the funky chicken.

Combat Fitness’s coaching staff boasts a number of professional pugilists, most notably UFC bantamweight fighter Scott Jorgensen. They each bring their own particular specialty to the table, filling up the roster of classes with seven types of combat training, including boxing, Brazilian jujitsu, and judo. They round out the selection with conditioning courses designed to get participants into fighting shape, using TRX suspension harnesses to provide full-body, low-impact workouts.

On the outdoor tactical playing field at True Paintball Adventure Park, players skulk behind burned-out cars and plan evasive routes to safety while under fire from paint-splattering combatants. That’s at just one of the facility’s outdoor fields. There’s also a hyperball field peppered with plastic barrels. Indoors, teams take to towers and take cover behind wooden sheds set up under a weather-neutralizing roof and overhead lighting. It’s an ideal spot for creating memorable birthdays, bachelor parties, corporate events, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Founded in 1970 by Tom Cade, a former professor of Ornithology at Cornell University, The Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey is a non-profit that strives to save birds of prey from extinction. Their efforts began nearly 40 years ago, when trying to save the Peregrine Falcon, which was eventually removed from the Endangered Species list in 1999. Today, at their 580-acre headquarter campus in Boise, Idaho, they focus on captive breeding of California Condors and Aplomado Falcons for the purposes of preservation.