Fun & Games >>

• Readers Choice
  BEST GOLF COURSE tie: Troon North Golf Club 10320 East Dynamite, Scottsdale 480-502-5360 and Tournament Players Club of Scottsdale 17020 North Hayden, Scottsdale 480-585-3428 BEST CITY HIKING TRAIL Camelback Mountain BEST CITY PARK Encanto Park and Recreation Area 2605 North 15th... More >>
• Best Surprise For The Kids
  Reptile Adventures
  If you're the sort of parent who blows your budget on your kids' parties, consider introducing your children and all their friends to T-Bo, the rhinoceros iguana. T-Bo is one of 500 creatures kept by Rich Ihle's Reptile Adventures. For $150, Ihle will cart a truck full of snakes and lizards to... More >>
• Best Video Arcade
  GameWorks
  Yeah, yeah, there's more to do at GameWorks than simulate genocide. But inspired killing is the foundation of any inspiring arcade. And with several dozen of the world's most realistically hyperviolent video games, GameWorks is just about as inspiring as it gets, killing-wise. If you tire of... More >>
• Best Advice For Kids
  Big League Dugout
  Before he became a Valley Popsicle, Ted Williams said famously that hitting a baseball was the hardest thing to do in all of sports. Keep that in mind the next time your Little Leaguer whiffs. If you'd like to do something constructive to help your budding all-star, take the kid over to Big... More >>
• Best Place To Play The Slots (The Other Kind)
  Terry's Performance Raceways
  What legions of us still have childhood memories of time spent in the game room, sitting cross-legged (back then we called it "Indian style") in front of a loop of plastic track, jockeying tiny magnetic cars to race our siblings for superlative titles -- the winner was "the coolest person on the... More >>
• Best Place To Contribute To The (Alleged) Delinquency Of A Minor
  The Original Hamburger Works
  The Music Man is a fine musical, but that Meredith Willson lyric "trouble starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool" has cast a dark pall on the upstanding game of billiards. We beg to differ, because words like "tenacity," "temperance," "tolerance" and "tertiary" don't... More >>
• Best Place To See The State Bird
  Old MacDonald's Ranch
  On this ranch, they have some chickens, E-I-E-I-O. With a donkey here and a billy goat there, you name the domesticated farm animal, you can pet it and make it your friend. After communing with farm life, go on a hayride, have a cookout, or take in the wildlife (like Arizona's "first bird," the... More >>
• Best Kids' Fun-For-A-Price Spot
  Fiddlesticks Family Fun Park
  Sure, there are plenty of places that can boast "Fun" as their middle name. But Fiddlesticks in Scottsdale can claim it as its first and last name as well. The main draw of this seven-acre family fun park is the 4,000 square feet devoted to Atlantis Laser Odyssey, a state-of-the-art laser tag... More >>
• Best Kids' Free Fun Spot
  Pinal County Historical Museum
  Nothing is free, especially where kids are concerned. "I gotta have," "I want it" and "You promised" are all familiar mantras heard by parents milliseconds after the car door shuts. So why not surprise your complaining juniors with a "scared straight" time-travel expedition to 1870 that's... More >>
• Best Weekend Water-Park Getaway
  Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort
  Arizona's best winter resorts have figured out they can make money in the summer offering local families a relatively cheap night and a day at a water park. Of these resorts, Pointe Hilton's Squaw Peak resort is best-known because of its sprawling lazy river. It's great fun, but our money goes... More >>
• Best West-Side Park
  The White Tank Mountain Regional Park
  A stunning stand of increasingly rare saguaro cactus welcomes visitors to Maricopa County's largest park, totaling 29,217 acres of rugged mountains with ragged ridges separated by deep canyons. Infrequent, heavy rains pouring down chutes and plunging over cliffs have scoured out a series of... More >>
• Best Short Hike
  Telegraph Pass Trail
  It's a quick jaunt, but it offers a little bit of everything that you're looking for when you're lighting out to the desert to spend an hour or two with nature. The Ahwatukee trailhead of South Mountain Preserve offers lots of options for the hiker -- from the flat Desert Classic (favored mainly... More >>
• Best Nearly Out-Of-Town Hike
  Pinnacle Peak Park
  There are a hundred reasons to hike up Pinnacle Peak. First, the scenery is breathtaking, high Sonoran Desert in all its glory. Second, there's variety. Besides hiking trails over 150 acres, there are three rock-climbing areas. Third, there's the feeling of victory if we make it to the top of... More >>
• Best City Hike
  Squaw Peak Summit Trail
  Who needs reality TV when you can be out getting a cardiovascular workout on Squaw Peak? We've traveled up other more vigorous hiking trails and found people too tired to dish the poo. We've tried easy walking trails where it's too hard to keep pace with a pack of gossiping secretaries. This... More >>
• Best Urban Park
  Indian School Park
  It easily could have wound up as just another 75 acres of concrete jungle, but instead the old Phoenix Indian School grounds now include a 2.5-acre lake and a neighborhood park with a playground and volleyball courts. The 1,500-seat amphitheater housed the city's summer concert series this year,... More >>