Northampton, MA Indoor Activities

Fun Time Lanes sends patrons back in time for candlestick bowling sessions that predate traditional tenpin rounds. After fitting feet into rental shoes, participants launch 3- to 6-pound balls down one of 20 polished lanes toward huddled masses of slim pins. Automatic scoring, ball returns, and cash prizes to pins that fall the fastest keep frames moving swiftly along. Glow bowl sessions awash vintage orbs and lanes in radiant neon hues every Saturday night during atomic bowl. During breaks, customers can stop fantasizing about marinating a duckpin and instead recharge at Fun Time Lanes' snack bar with bites of burgers, hot dogs, or chicken tenders.

Each instructor at Evolution Pilates is certified through Stott Pilates, which requires a minimum of 200 hours of training. Backed by this certification, the instructors lead private and group classes for all types of exercisers, from beginners to experienced athletes. The classes incorporate equipment such as reformers, which help exercisers build lean muscles.

Founded in 1903, New Britain Museum of American Art was designated the first museum in the country to be dedicated exclusively to American artwork. Upon its founding, wealthy industrialist John Butler Talcott endowed the museum with a hefty sum of gold bonds and bottled phoenix tears with which to purchase modern oil paintings. The collection blossomed to include other artistic media over time, and it now consists of more than 10,000 works spanning more than three centuries of American creative endeavor. The museum's permanent collections showcase works by noted American artists ranging from Norman Rockwell to John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt to Georgia O'Keeffe. Along with rotating exhibitions and borrowed collections, the museum showcases work by emerging artists.

In 2006, the NHL's San Jose Sharks moved their eponymous AHL affiliate to Worcester. During their brief time in Central Massachusetts the Sharks have helped foster some of the game's best talent, highlighted by Stanley Cup champions and first-round draft picks. Nearly 40 players, including Claude Lemieux and Thomas Greiss, have donned the Worcester sweater before getting the call to clean out their lockers and playoff beards and head to San Jose. The team has even been represented on an international stage, as several former Sharks competed during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Every Friday and Saturday night as the light begins to fade, cars cruise through the dusk into an empty field, where images begin to flicker on the giant screen at Hathaway’s Drive-In Theatre. Moviegoers prepare for double features of new and classic films by positioning one of the drive-in’s special speakers in their car's window or by tuning their radio dials to the affiliated FM station. Picnic-basket packers can choose to bring in their own snacks and drinks for a small fee, while those who like to travel light can patronize the theater's snack bar, which stocks hot dishes and snacks such as house-made fries, Hebrew National all-beef hot dogs, veggie burgers, candy, and ice-cream treats.

J.D. Legends nourishes entertainment-hungry families with a massive facility stocked with bowling, a restaurant offering Southern-style fare, a bar, and an arcade. The 24-lane bowling alley features a new-and-improved scoring system to better capture lane-skipping curveballs and light-speed strikes. During open-play hours, shoes gently cradle the feet of their temporary masters as lanes brace themselves for the hurtling of bowling balls down their slender midsections. The lanes frequently host themed parties and events, including cosmic bowling every Friday and Saturday night.

The facility’s art-deco carpeting and citrus-colored decorations invigorate bowlers with game-enhancing visions of early 20th-century French heydays and afternoons spent lazing about under yellowed skies.