You're viewing the US edition You can switch to the UK or AU homepage at any time using this menu. 'Quite appalling': The UK's WORST airport revealed - with two-hour queues, nowhere to sit and'excessive' walking distances Best foot forward: The UK's best late-summer walks - from an expert who's hiked across the country for more than 50 years Paws for a pint: Britain's most dog-friendly pubs revealed, from'bark bangers' to kibble machines and canine menus Beyond the Mid-Autumn magic: The electrifying festivals that prove Hong Kong is Asia's most vibrant cultural capital The'walk of shame', fish-bowl cocktails and 5am airport runs with a hangover: Holiday reps from the 80s and 90s reveal what really went on The world's longest ever cruise sets sail on epic 371-day voyage - with stops all around the globe including Zanzibar, Alaska and even Japan Where should Brits move to in 2027? The £16-a-night youth hostels that beat five-star hotels hands down on location...from the Yorkshire YHA that overlooks Whitby Abbey to the 800-year-old Norman Castle in the Wye Valley As the back-to-school blues kick in, what's the best holiday you've ever had? A nightmare property with a killer view: Couple snap up 18th-century Lake Como home before realising the 300-year-old property needed'more work than we ever imagined' 'Unsettling... then incredibly cool': Self-driving taxis can now be booked in the UK, and we've had a first ride - this is what it was like (and why it's not completely driverless) Tourists in Spain brace for 38 degrees this weekend after late summer heatwave hits - with night temperatures no lower than a'torrid' 25 degrees One of Spain's most expensive homes - with its own bowling alley, 42-car garage and hair salon - goes up for sale for £60million You might actually get some sleep on this plane! Ranked by our travel expert, Britain's best to worst holiday parks: From the'perfect' posh lodges no one seems to know about to the only Center Parcs worth considering - and'tired' resort to avoid like the plague We've tested the best baby travel accessories - here are the parent-approved products you need when travelling with a newborn, from carriers to cots Social media is sucking the life out of our holidays - here's how to travel without Instagram and TikTok ruining your next trip Social media is a huge driver for tourism - it's an easy and instant way to share, view and find popular spots to visit.

The robots -- one modeled after a rockhopper penguin and the other after a gentoo penguin -- are exhibited among real penguins at the theme park, the world's only facility to house 10 species of penguins. Visitors looked amazed to see one of the robots deftly move its flippers to change direction and dive deeper into the water as it swam next to real Humboldt penguins. "I thought it was real," one visitor said. The robots were created by Ikuma Okada, the 34-year-old leader of a group within the Adventure World operator. The robot penguins were created by Ikuma Okada, the 34-year-old leader of a group within the Adventure World operator.

Could robots be the future of theme parks? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Could robots be the future of theme parks? This is Galway Robot Park, a 16,500-square-meter venue that's opened near Seoul in South Korea . The company behind the park says their aim is to bring artificial intelligence and robotics into the world of entertainment.

Three theme parks will be built near Paris as part of a €6bn (£5.13bn) deal agreed between France and Saudi Arabia. The new development is expected to include a manga-themed park, inspired by the popular Japanese franchise Dragon Ball Z. French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the move as on a scale not seen since Disneyland Paris, and added you know my interest for manga. An opening date for the parks - which will be built near Cergy-Pontoise - has not set by the Élysée Palace, but they will open in stages and construction is expected to take years. The project was given the green light during a two-day state visit to France by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It stemmed from a previous discussion between Macron and bin Salman about their shared passion for Japanese comics, in particular Dragon Ball Z, advisers to the president told reporters on Monday.

Lego has a long history in the video games sector between licensed titles that feature digital brick versions of iconic movie characters and physical sets like the new Mario Kart one. But after decades of third-party studios making games with the Lego name on them, the company is taking more of a hands-on approach. "We can definitely say as long as we're under the Lego brand we can cover experiences for kids of all ages, digital or physical, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told the Financial Times. To that end, an in-house game development division "is something we're building up." Per the publication, Lego plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into tripling its number of software developers to more than 1,800. "We have made quite a few investments in the future -- I'd almost rather overinvest.

Dust off your pickaxe because Mojang Studios and Merlin Entertainments are building a new series of theme park style attractions called "Adventures Made Real" that will bring the world of Minecraft to life. Merlin Entertainments will create two permanent Minecraft theme park locations including one in the US and another in the UK with a plan to open them between 2026 and 20277. The new Minecraft parks will have interactive attractions from the top-selling video game, along with all the usual experiences like rides, gift shops and restaurants and plans to "expand these experiences to other destinations globally," according to Merlin's statement. Of course, the parks will also involve some level of digital perks. It's not clear what they'll involve specifically, but Merlin claims the parks will include "touchpoints that will allow guests to unlock exclusive in-game content to continue their gaming journey."

Traditionally, visitors to Kyoto in October come for momijigari, the turning of the autumn leaves in the city's picturesque parks. This autumn, however, there is a new draw: a Nintendo museum. The new attraction, which opens on Wednesday, is best described as a chapel of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo's many video game consoles, from 1983's Famicom through 1996's Nintendo 64 to 2017's Switch, are displayed reverently alongside their most famous games. On the back wall, visitors can also peer at toys, playing cards and other artefacts from the Japanese company's pre-video-game history, stretching back to its founding as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in 1889.

Last month the games company Take-Two Interactive announced it would reduce its global staff by 5%, laying off 580 people to reduce costs. It was one of many such announcements in 2024, but this case is especially egregious because Take-Two ownsRockstar Games, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, AKA the most successful game in the history of the world, and is definitely not short of profits. Last week, Bloomberg () reported on internal documentation showing the likely victims of these cuts: studios Intercept Games in Seattle and Roll7 in London are set to close. Both are part of Private Division, the giant publisher's indie game label. I spent some time with Intercept's Kerbal Space Program 2 last year, when they were gearing up to launch.

I've always written about the intersection of games and real life – that's where the interesting stories are often found – but rarely do I get the opportunity to do so quite so literally as I have this week. Yesterday I visited the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka, where the world of Mario has been reconstructed in the real world. You walk through a green warp pipe and, when you come out the other side, through Princess Peach's castle, you emerge into a primary-coloured, crowded Mario-scape, all green grass, yellow blocks and brown brick, with critters moving back and forth across banks of question-mark blocks and the yawning maw of Bowser's Castle across the way. I've been dying to see this Nintendo theme park since it opened, but I wasn't prepared for how impactful it would be to walk into a physical manifestation of my eight-year-old self's dreams. Super Mario World is constructed in such a way that you can't see the outside world when you're in there, helping you to disappear into the fantasy.

VR technology has come a long way from the early Virtuality systems that inhabited our local malls in the '80s and '90s, with modern headsets offering 4K resolution, Dolby Atmos surround sound, and motion-sensing controllers. "If you want to feel these big sensations, you've got to have the infrastructure first," University of Chicago PhD student, Romain Nith, told Engadget. "You've got to go to theme parks, ride roller coasters, or you need bungie cords pulling you from the ceiling." And while the sensations are really like what they're simulating (because you're really being thrown around), "you can't have that in your living room." The JumpMod Haptic Backpack prototype, on the other hand, can effectively fool its user's sense of proprioception to make jumping in VR feel much more lifelike with a device the size of, well, a backpack.