BEST CHILDREN'S THEATER

Established in 1983, this theater is housed in a beautiful, renovated downtown church. With a repertoire of more than 50 different fairy tales and original puppet plays, the Great Arizona Puppet Theater tours throughout the state, performing shows and teaching workshops for kids and teachers. The troupe serves more than 400 schools and preschools in the state, and offers private parties for groups and birthdays.

We love the theater because of the amazing skills of the puppeteers. Each puppet is meticulously created and manipulated to be incredibly animated and lifelike, often to the point of making us forget that they aren't moving on their own. Our favorite is the Peter Pan series -- the Peter puppet is just about the coolest thing we've ever seen on strings. Yeah, the kids love it, but you'll enjoy it as much as they do.

The theater's on-site gift shop offers a selection of puppets from complicated to simple, as well as how-to videos and books -- in case you get the puppet bug yourself.