Things to Do in West Seneca
Recommended Things to Do by Groupon Customers
Currently celebrating its 43rd season, the U.S. Sailing Association–accredited Seven Seas Sailing School of Buffalo offers landlubbers a taste of the aquatic life aboard sailboats manned by U.S. Coast Guard–certified captains. The team regularly exercises budding sailors' sea legs with certification courses and a seven-part Basic Sail program, and has also instructed students with multiple sclerosis and worked with the Sea Scouts to construct the world's first brick sailboat as part of a mission to take down rogue lighthouses. Seven Seas' headquarters on the Buffalo Ship Canal, complete with on-shore barbecues, a gazebo, and dockside gardens, hosts regular Friday-night family Sailabration events that combine food and fireworks with lively cruises and contests. When not sailing through their own programs, Seven Seas' captains and boats have been featured as crews in The Sullivans and Bruce Almighty.
Named one of America’s top 100 driving ranges by Golf Range Magazine in 2011, Broadway Driving Range & Miniature Golf invites golfers to launch towering drives under covered hitting bays toward a target field that stretches more than 350 yards. Golfers who favor a natural feel can hack through a bucket of balls at the range’s all-grass hitting areas; synthetic hitting mats cater to refined sand wedges that consider divots uncouth. Laid-back clubbers can practice pendulous putts at the complex’s miniature-golf course, where players circle around a barn built in 1932 through a farm-themed circuit of 18 miniature fairways featuring antique farm tools. Broadway Driving Range can cool down clients with soft-serve custard from Green Acres Ice Cream.
The Lackawanna headquarters of Phoenix Scuba and Water Sports is situated so that it attracts both Canadian diving enthusiasts who drop in from the Niagara Peninsula as well as divers from throughout western New York State. Recreational-minded beginners hop into the facility's indoor pool to build skills and underwater experience before venturing out to the open water on one of the company's scuba charters. Meanwhile, Phoenix's veteran instructors work with professional divers-in-training who are trying to become certified. Instructional programs are also offered in adaptive diving, which trains those with physical disabilities to safely enjoy the joys of scuba. Through the years, the resident community of adaptive divers has made trips to exotic locales such as the Cayman Islands, where divers explore the ocean's depths and play Battleship underwater.:m]
A massive glass dome reminiscent of the Victorian Crystal Palace and verdant plant life stretching their green leaves toward the sun attract visitors to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens. The gardens span 11 acres and include three glass domes and nine greenhouses full of re-created tropical and subtropical climates. In the Fern House and tropical rainforest, banana trees surround a 30-foot waterfall as large dinosaur topiaries roam across a backdrop of hanging ferns.
Called a living museum, the botanical gardens is dedicated to enriching lives with nature and teaching guests to appreciate the natural systems and diverse plant life the earth sustains. Visitors can soak up Mother Nature’s splendor in addition to manmade wonders such as the 67-foot-tall Palm Dome.
Development of the Roycroft Campus began in 1897 by author, lecturer, and entrepreneur Elbert Hubbbard, who sought to create a utopian society of artisans in reaction to the mass production of the Industrial Age. Drawing on inspiration by leaders of the arts-and-crafts movement in the UK, Hubbard founded the Roycroft Press to produce monthly publications, books, and elaborate conspiracy theories. After gaining international recognition for an essay he wrote in 1899, Hubbard was able to further expand and promote the Roycroft community, erecting 13 additional buildings on the campus over the next decade.
In its prime, the community was home to 23 presses and more imported handmade paper than all American printing institutions combined. More than 500 resident artists worked in wood, stained glass, and copper, and Roycroft became a thriving mecca for craftsmen, authors, artists, and philosophers. In 1986, the campus was designated a national historic landmark. Today it is home to 9 of the original 14 structures, preserved and restored throughout the last 17 years by the Roycroft Campus Corporation and open for exploration during guided walking tours.
