Scared Ostrich

We head to KC about twice a year and always come back with new things that we have seen or places we’ve eaten at. Here’s a few of our favorites.

Crown Center

There’s more than shopping here. Down on first floor is a free traveling kids area. These are normally geared up for the 3-9 year olds and should be 30-45 minutes if you take your time.

On first floor is the food court. Go to Fritz’s (http://www.fritzskc.com). It is a train-themed burger joint that has your food shuttled on lofted trains that drop your order right at your table (see video on their web site). Kids love it!

Kaleidoscope 

Free!

Technically part of Crown Center but you have to walk about a block

This is a free-for-all, highly stimulating craft zone. Kids get all of these Hallmark leftovers (ribbon, yarn, cardstock, etc.) and get to paint, draw, stamp, color, etc. There is a puzzle-maker, a black-light room, etc.

You have to RSVP for a session. No charge but need to get a session reservation.

Sessions last 45 minutes. You can leave early but you can’t stay longer

Hallmark visitor center

Free!

This is a 10-45 minute tour depending upon your crew. It is adjacent to Kaleidoscope so if you have a reservation there, this is a good time filler

Kids can make a Christmas bow with the bow machine

Interactive kiosk lets you try on “virtual” funny hats and e-mail the picture. Kids dig this.

Lego Land Discovery Center

Part of Crown Center complex

Kids up to teens love this.

There is the Legos to play with (regular Legos, Duplos, etc.) as well as rides, and a movie theatre with 3-4 different shows on a rotation. There is also a room with Lego creations of all of KC (land marks) and tons of Star Wars creations. Really cool!

There is a retail Lego store that actually has some of the best prices you can find (we’ve compared many times).

There is a Master Builder’s class that we like to do. It’s 15-30 minutes and you get to build a very unique creation exclusive to Discovery Centers. The class is free (beyond the $$ admission). Once you complete the build, you return the kit to the leader and receive a certificate that allows you to buy the manufactured kit in the retail store. It’s about $5 or so but only available to those who have completed the class and the proceeds go to charity.

Sea Life aquarium 

Part of Crown Center complex

We went once. If you’ve been the aquarium at Henry Doorly, then this will be a bit of a disappointment. It is still a good aquarium but not the same caliber as the Omaha zoo

I think we were there for 1-2 hours but I may be wrong.

You can get a combo pass for Lego Land and Sea Life and save a couple bucks

Union Station

There is a skywalk connecting Crown Center to Union Station. You can also park at Union (free I think) and walk the other ways

There are a few things to do that don’t cost but unless there is a traveling exhibit (we’ve seen fashion shows, city-wide science fair, etc.) this is maybe an hour or so of fun

There is a model railroad exhibit that is pretty cool

The Regnier Extreme theatre (basically an “I-Max”  but it isn’t called that) that plays first-run movies. If you go to the first show the tickets are pretty cheap. They have a great deal on pop/popcorn as well which includes free refills

There is a planetarium for a fee as well. It’s been years since we’ve been there

Science City (in Union Station)

Fun for all ages. Stuff that older kids and adults will like as well as young’uns. We usually spend 2-3 hours here but we’re museum freaks

If you have a Morrill Hall family membership ($50/year), you get into Science City for free (which has an admission of $13.50 for adults and $11.50 for kids or a total of $38.50 for a family of 3). You also get free membership to the Omaha Children’s Museum as well. See www.friendsofthemuseum.org for more details on this membership

Country Club Plaza

Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue (enough said)

Cheesecake Factory (ok. Now enough said)

We’ve also eaten at Tomfooleries. It was OK but I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless I had exhausted a few other places

Money Museum

This is located by Crown Center

This is the KC Federal Reserve. They have a small (20-45 minute) tour of a small part of their facility. You get to see pallets of money being moved around as well as educational exhibits. At the end, you get a free bag of shredded money.

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Modern art

Close to Country Club Plaza

Free museum

$8 to park in the garage (some free street parking is available if you want to walk)

We spent 6 hours there and saw maybe half of the museum

There is a 22 acre sculpture garden with some cool stuff including a glass maze (yeah a real maze!)

They have a mobile app or free iPads they loan so you can listen to certain displays (audio). The iPad app also has maps and lets you create guided tours by theme, by type, etc. It was well done.

 Places we've visited but haven't blogged about them yet

Steamboat Arabia museum (www.1856.com)

Patee House (St. Joseph)

Moon Marble Toy

IKEA

Great Wolf Lodge

Boulevard brewery  

There are also some places we haven’t visited yet but will some day

KC Zoo -  Kind of hard to drive past Omaha to this

Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue

City Market (downtown) (http://thecitymarket.org)

National WW I museum (also at Crown Center)

Chiefs stadium

Royals stadium

Brickyard race track

Wonderscope (Shanwee, KS) - Children’s museum

Deanna Rose Farm (petting zoo) - Olathe or Overland Park

Prairie Fire museum

Lastly, be sure to check out the official KC Visitor’s Bureau site at www.visitkc.com. Enjoy!

Read a good kickstart article on how to use TFS to build/deploy the VS Database Projects (http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/3584/introduction-to-team-foundation-server-tfs-build-for-business-intelligence-bi-projects).

My prior experience is that schema-related changes are the most troublesome to deploy when dealing with an existing database, especially when there is a chance of destroying data (renaming+recasting a column). These one-off issues can be handled by manually scripting. The manual scripts still need to be orchestrated (run in a particular order, verify only run once, deal with a script failure). However, for stateless SQL code (stored procedures, functions, etc.), the deployment of TFS works well.

Play around with the .DBPROJ publish option and you’ll find ways to exclude tables (along with other objects you may not want to promote) in your deployment pattern. Definitely potential there.