Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Busch Gardens Williamsburg (formerly known as Busch Gardens Europe and Busch Gardens: The Old Country) is a 383-acre theme park located in James City County, Virginia, United States. Located about sixty miles northwest of Virginia Beach, the park was developed by Anheuser-Busch (A-B) and is owned by SeaWorld Entertainment. It opened on May 16, 1975, adjacent to Anheuser-Busch’s brewery and near its other developments including the Kingsmill Resort complex. The park is themed around various European countries, and as such was originally called Busch Gardens: The Old Country. In 1993, the park was renamed Busch Gardens Williamsburg before briefly being named Busch Gardens Europe in 2006 until it returned to the Williamsburg name in 2008. Similarly, its sister park in Florida was originally called Busch Gardens: The Dark Continent until it was officially renamed Busch Gardens Tampa Bay until a brief switch to Busch Gardens Africa from 2006 to 2008. In 2015, the estimated attendance of 2.78 million makes it the twentieth most-visited park in the US.
Colonial National Historical Park
Colonial National Historical Park is located in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia and is operated by the National Park Service of the United States government. The park protects and interprets several sites relating to the Colony of Virginia and the history of the United States more broadly, ranging from the site of the first landing of the English settlers who would settle at Jamestown, to the battlefields of Yorktown where the British Army was finally defeated in the American Revolutionary War. Over 3 million people visit the park each year.
Virginia Air Space Center
The Virginia Air and Space Center is a museum and educational facility in Hampton, Virginia that also serves as the visitors center for NASA’s Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base. The museum also features an IMAX digital theater and offers summer aeronautic- and space-themed camps for children. The museum’s permanent collection is housed in a three-story glass atrium accessible from two exhibit floors with an additional catwalk level available for viewing suspended aircraft from above. Volunteers maintain an amateur radio exhibit displaying modern and historic radio equipment. The exhibit also participates in the Space Amateur Radio Experiment where visitors can periodically talk to astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Virginia Living Museum
The Virginia Living Museum is an open-air museum located in Newport News, Virginia that has many living exhibits of Virginia’s indigenous species. The exhibits include aspects of an aquarium, science center, aviary, botanical preserve and planetarium. The first incarnation of what is now the Virginia Living Museum was the Junior Nature Museum and Planetarium, opened in 1966 under Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin, Jr. and cofounded by the Junior League of Hampton Roads and the Warwick Rotary Club. In 1976, the facility was expanded and a new focus on physical and applied sciences was added to the existing natural sciences; at this time it was renamed the Peninsula Nature and Science Center.