A-Z Things to Do Around and About Alpharetta

The 2020 Atlanta Fair boasts a number of exhilarating rides and interactive games. Alien Abduction is back for an out-of-this-world experience, along with classic fair favorites such as the Towering Ferris Wheel and a variety of children’s rides and games. Fair food lovers are invited to indulge in all-time fair classics, like fluffy cotton candy, candy apples, funnel cakes and more!

WHEN:
Friday, March 6 – Sunday, April 12
Monday – Thursday: 5pm – 11 pm
Friday – 5pm – Midnight
Saturday Matinee: 1-5 pm
Saturday Evening: 5pm -Midnight
Sunday: 1-11pm

WHERE:
Turner Field – Grey Lot
655 Central Ave SW
Atlanta, GA 30315
404.913.FAIR (3247)

HOW:
Guests may purchase tickets online or at the gate. For online admission, visit
theatlantafair.com.

Fair Entrance Fees:
Opening Night Special: $1 admission for all
Every day (except opening night): $2 for guests under 42”
Monday & Thursday: $3 for guests 42” and taller
Tuesday ($2 Tuesdays): $2 admission for all
Wednesday (Whacky Wednesdays): Free admission for all
Saturday Matinee (1-5 p.m.) and Sunday: $5 for guests 42” and taller
Saturday Evening (5pm-Close): $8 for guests 42” and taller
Sunday: (1pm-Close) Admission $2 for guests under 42” and $5 42” & taller

Midway Ride Tickets:
Individual tickets: $1.25 each
Bundle tickets: 25 tickets for $25

‘Unlimited Ride Armband’ Fees are as follows:
Monday, Thursday, Friday: $25
Tuesday $2 Tuesdays (ride any ride $2 ea): NO ARMBANDS on Tuesday
Wednesday (Whacky Wednesdays): $25 Buy One Get One Free
Saturday and Sunday Daytime: $28.95
Saturday After 8 p.m. and Sunday After 7 p.m. (Twilight Special): $25
*Unlimited Ride Armbands are only valid on the day they are purchased.

Parental Escort Policy in Effect
Children under the age of 16-years-old must be accompanied by an adult 21 years or older on Friday and Saturday evenings. One adult may escort up to four youth. All guests must be able to present a valid Georgia or government issued photo ID.

About Atlanta Fair
Since its inception in 1980, the Atlanta Fair at Turner Field has brought the thrills, excitement and sounds of the Midway to Georgia residents. What was once only the dream of three carnival-loving brothers from Southeastern Kentucky has blossomed into one of the largest in-town fairs in the Southeast United States.

Autrey Mill Nature Preserve & Heritage Center

Check out their Children’s Classes and Workshops, Cooking and Crafts, After School Explorer and more!
Preserve Hours: Mon-Sun, 8a-Dusk
Visitor Center Hours: Tue-Sat, 10a-4p, Sun, 12p-4p & Mon closed

Center for Puppetry Arts

Chattahoochee Nature Center

Children’s Museum of Atlanta

In the exhibit, families will be transported to the underground home of the crime-fighting heroes to see what really happens in their secret hideaway. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brothers Leonardo (the tactical, courageous leader in blue), Michelangelo (the free-spirited jokester in orange), Raphael (the aggressive tough guy in red) and Donatello (the scientist and technological genius in purple) invite families to their New York City sewer lair to train together and learn about the Turtles’ comedic, skillful strategies.

The Turtles are known and respected for their teamwork. As the TMNT’s sensei and adoptive father Splinter often tells them, “Together there is nothing you cannot accomplish.” Through team-building challenges, collaborative games and mind-teasing puzzles, families and friends will learn skills to help them successfully work together. A few examples include:

• Building a “bridge” together and thinking creatively as a team to overcome challenges.

• Working together to fling pizza disks at arcade style targets using a ninja-powered pizza shooter.

• Planning ahead and using patience to navigate the rope maze.

• Practicing ninja speed while playing a dexterity-based reaction time game.

• Creating a sewer pipe together and seeing where it goes.

Consolidated Gold Mine  Dahlonega 

Largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. Travel 200 feet underground and hear tales of miner’s struggles to uncover gold deep within large quartz veins. Your tour guide welcomes interaction from the group as you experience life as a miner at the turn-of-the-century.  They also offer gemstone mining – find colorful gems in every bucket!

Dave & Busters Alpharetta

Come and play at Dave & Buster’s newest location in Alpharetta ~ the one and only place you can enjoy great food and play hundreds of awesome arcade games! The restaurant’s mouth-watering, chef-crafted menu and beverage items, combined with the latest games and attractions provide the perfect setting for kids parties, corporate and group events.  Guests can play more than 150 of the latest games including the Walking Dead, Tailgate Toss and Justice League!

Fernbank Museum of Natural History

OUR SENSES: AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE:  Riveting New Exhibit Includes Interactive Experiences that Reveal

How our Brains Make Sense of the World

In the highly experiential exhibition Our Senses: An Immersive Experience,Fernbank Museum presents a series of funhouse-like experiences that dare visitors to rely on their senses—and then reveal how and why what they perceive may not actually be what’s happening. Inspired by extraordinary diversity of sensory “super powers,” Our Senses invites children and adults alike to play with color, patterns, sounds, scents and textures to explore the science of our senses from through May 3, 2020.

Visitors can experience interactive spaces designed to test perceptions and illuminate the complex relationships between sensing and perceiving. Guests are presented with an intriguing proposition that the five senses we most commonly know are not the full story; human sensory perceptions may seem like windows into the outside world, but actual perceptions are created in the brain. Every sight, sound, smell, taste and touch is detected by specialized sense systems that send signals to the brain. The brain then decodes signals into perceptions through detecting, selecting, correcting and balancing to influence the experience of “reality.” Not to be outdone, our inner senses, like hunger, thirst and tiredness, detect what our bodies need and team up with our outer senses, like vision, hearing and smell, to find things in the world that our bodies need to stay alive.

Throughout the exhibit, guests can put their senses to the test as they encounter challenges, interactions and technologies that help “make sense of their senses” while revealing the secret sights, sounds and smells that only other species know.

Interactive experiences include:

• Shine a white light on colorful decorated walls to reveal hidden images that show how different the world can appear when illuminated in white, blue, green, or red.
• Analyze an audio collage to track individual sounds, such as an individual instrument within an orchestra.
• Explore a garden through the eyes of a bee or a butterfly, where flowers appear like enormous targets, with ultraviolet marks that identify a meal.
• Use an infrared viewer to hunt like a snake using heat to detect prey.
• Dial into animal sounds normally outside the range of human hearing—including the calls of a whale, elephant, mouse and bat.
• See with your brain as you experience how you are able to interpret incomplete or inconclusive imagery.
• Discover what happens when your senses disagree in a balancing test, where your feet feel a flat floor but youreyes see curves, dips and ripples.
• Get hands-on in a touch zone that engages multiple types of nerve endings to feel different patterns, temperatures and textures.
• Sniff out fragrance notes to identify individual scents in a symphony of smells.
• Test a computer’s learning abilities by arranging puzzle-like pieces to create pictures then challenge the computer to get better at guessing what they are.
• Participate in a live show that explores why humans have senses and what’s unique about human perception (show times are limited and will be posted in exhibit)

Our Senses is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (amnh.org).Our Senses: An Immersive Experience is on view at Fernbank from Feb. 8-May 3, 2020. Tickets are included with general museum admission: $20 for adults, $19 for seniors, $18 for children ages 3-12 (no charge for ages 2 and under), and free for Fernbank members.

New Giant Screen Film, Narrated by Claire Danes, Brings Amazing True Wildlife Comeback Stories to Life in 3D at Fernbank’s Giant Screen Theater

BACK FROM THE BRINK: SAVED FROM EXTINCTION, a stunning new 3D Giant Screen film adventure narrated by Claire Danes, captures remarkable comeback stories of endangered species from around the world—which are rebounding thanks to human efforts to save them.

Filmed on location in three unique regions around the globe, BACK FROM THE BRINK 3D uses the immersive giant screen format to plunge audiences into a wild world of breathtaking natural beauty and captivating wildlife behavior. Through a spectacular 3D experience, the film brings to life the amazing true story of three animal species whose numbers recently dwindled to near extinction, but were rescued from the brink, including California’s enchanting Channel Island Fox, China’s fabled Golden Monkey, and the wondrous migrating giant Red Crabs of Christmas Island, off the coast of Australia. The film also introduces people around the world—scientists, researchers, park rangers and students—who are working passionately to preserve these endangered species.

CHANNEL ISLAND FOX

Audiences discover how California’s enchanting Channel Island Fox has been rescued from an invasion of predatory Golden Eagles. In the fastest recovery of a species in the history of animal conservation, scientists helped solve the mystery of the fox population’s severely diminishing numbers and devised and executed an ingenious plan to save them—which included returning an iconic raptor, the American Bald Eagle—to the island to restore the ecology’s balance. Fox numbers have since rebounded from less than 100 into the thousands, allowing them to be removed from The Endangered Species List.

GOLDEN MONKEY

In the fabled mountains of China’s Yunnan Province, the film follows one of the world’s most endangered primates, the Golden Monkey—a creature so elusive it had never been photographed until the 1970s. Hunted nearly to extinction, this mythical society of primates was on the verge of collapse, numbering about 1500, when the efforts of one intrepid researcher changed everything. The revelations convinced the Chinese government to turn the region into one of the country’s first nature preserves. Now, the one-time hunters are becoming park rangers and are the biggest champions and protectors of the monkeys. In just a few decades, the population has gone from near extinction to more than 3,000.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND RED CRABS

Audiences can also witness the wondrous migration of the Red Crabs of Christmas Island and marvel at their recovery from a Crazy Yellow Ant infestation in one of the most successful bio-control experiments ever undertaken. The intruder ants arrived as a few stowaways on cargo ships—but swarmed into an invasion horde numbering several billion, which became a super colony that threatened the entire web of life on the island—especially the red crabs. In a daring experiment, Malaysian micro-wasps were imported and hoisted into the treetop canopy on makeshift elevators to counter balance the ant infestation. Dazzling giant screen filmmaking vividly captures the insect warfare being played out on a grand scale, as well as the red crab hatchlings emerging by the millions.

Ultimately, the film aims to engage and inspire audiences to take action and connect with nature. BACK FROM THE BRINK 3D shows that positive change is possible. Problems created by humans can be solved by humans.

Hidden Pacific features the histories, science and human stories of Palmyra, Midway and Rose Atoll—from the WWII Pacific Theater to their present environmental recovery and ecological research initiatives. Joining a team of scientists, conservationists and volunteers on a mission to explore and preserve a rarely seen ocean wilderness, the film highlights the critical role that these marine monuments play in the face of environmental threats such as climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, overfishing and pollution.

Audiences will journey to the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean, where blue-green islands, atolls and corals reefs are thriving, largely untouched by humans and currently protected as marine national monuments. Hidden Pacific features never-before-seen footage of these remarkable places, sharing the splendor of such pristine environments and their important role in safeguarding our planet. As audiences embark on a journey beyond the horizon, they’ll encounter several iconic animals, such as dolphins, fish, sharks, crabs and whales, as well as a variety of protected species, including the Laysan albatross, green sea turtle, Hawaiian monk seal, blacktip reef shark, humphead wrasse, giant clam and more.

Hidden Pacific will show daily at Fernbank’s 3D Theater from February 14-June 25, 2020. Tickets are $13 for adults, $12 for seniors, $11 for children ages 3-12 and $8 for members. Combination tickets, which also include admission to all museum exhibits and 75 acres of nature adventures, are the best value at $23-$27. Tickets are available online at FernbankMuseum.org.

Fernbank is located at 767 Clifton Road NE in Atlanta with free parking.