Things To Do In SW Florida

SeaWorld Orlando has announced its first haunted house for its 2024 Howl-O-Scream event, and it’s named Farm51.

An email to annual passholders describes it as an abandoned farmhouse with “eerie rustling” in cornfields. Also, unfriendly extraterrestrials have crash-landed nearby.

SeaWorld’s website says there will be five haunted mazes at this year’s event, four of which will feature new content. There will also be seven scare zones (three of which are new) and five bars (two of which are new).

Howl-O-Scream again will feature the Jack the Ripper-themed stage show called “Monster Stomp” and “Sirens Song,” although the website hints it could be a finale for the latter. “Their song may be fading, but Hex has joined the call with a hunger to fill her swampy domain with fresh victims,” the site says.

This will be the fourth year for the after-hours, extra-ticket event. It will run on select nights between Sept. 6 and Nov. 2, skewing heavily toward weekend dates. Tickets are now on sale with prices varying with dates. A one-night ticket can be as low as $39.99, and there  are unlimited-admission options and bundles that include the sister Howl-O-Scream event at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay theme park. read more

United Launch Alliance needs to launch a second Vulcan Centaur rocket before it can begin its backlog of launches for the U.S. military. The hardware for that launch arrived to Cape Canaveral this weekend.

Teams began unloading the two-stage rocket Monday from ULA’s RocketShip transport vessel docked at Port Canaveral for transport over to ULA’s facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Vulcan first stage and Centaur V upper stage made the multiday trip over river, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean from ULA’s factory in Decatur, Alabama.

The rocket is designated for the Certification-2 mission whose payload was originally supposed to be Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft. ULA has not mentioned Dream Chaser in its Cert-2 updates, though.

First up for #VulcanRocket #Cert2 offload is Centaur V! With its pressure-stabilized stainless-steel tanks, the upperstage is 38.5 feet (11.7 meters) in length and 17.7 feet (5.4 meters) in diameter. The cryogenic stage features two RL10C-1-1A engines, each producing 23,825… pic.twitter.com/aab67sufTC read more

DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I recently flew from Rome to Palermo, Italy, on ITA Airways. Unfortunately, my luggage did not. I filed a claim immediately at Palermo Airport. I didn’t receive my luggage until the end of my trip a week later.

Since my luggage was missing the entire trip, I had to make purchases, including luggage. My coat was in my suitcase. Thank God another woman on my tour lent me her coat. The weather was cold with heavy rain.

So many things that I needed were difficult to purchase because we returned from tours late in the day. I think I did a good job of keeping my cost of purchases to a minimum, but I still spent $992. I have copies of my receipts.

ITA Airways wants to reimburse me $733. I’d like to be fully reimbursed. Can you help me?

— Jacqueline Bartolini, Bradenton, Florida

ANSWER: ITA Airways is liable for the entire $992. Under the Montreal Convention, if an airline loses, damages or delays your checked luggage, you’re entitled to compensation up to an amount of about $1,400 (unless there’s damage caused by an “inherent” defect in the baggage). read more

SpaceX is back at the launch pad Sunday with an updated rocket to finish off a Starlink mission it tried to send up earlier this month.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-2 mission is targeting liftoff at 1:15 p.m. during a launch window that runs until 5:03 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. Its payload is 22 more Starlink satellites for the company’s growing internet constellation that now numbers more than 6,100 satellites in orbit.

The launch attempt comes nine days since SpaceX last attempted to knock out the mission on June 14. That attempt had a rare scrub as the countdown clock reached 0 and the rocket was ultimately brought back from the pad to allow for last week’s ASTRA 1P satellite launch to go up instead.

But now the rocket is back with a new first-stage booster, which will be attempting its 11th flight with a recovery landing planned on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX did not reveal what was wrong with the original booster that was trying to fly for the 16th time. read more

Julie Baxter just faced the most agonizing decision a person with pets can face: whether to euthanize an ailing animal in the face of the overwhelming desire to keep a beloved companion alive.

Baxter’s pain was made all the more acute as she and her partner wrestled with wanting to do all they could for their dog Roscoe, while realizing there was a limit to how much they could spend on tests and hospital stays. The 50-pound mixed breed lived with them for eight years after his rescue off the streets as a puppy.

“My partner and I had a kind of rule that $1,000 is where we’re going to stop on vet bills,” said Baxter, who lives in Broomfield, Colorado. “It was really trying to take that pragmatic approach to how much can we spend. It stinks.”

They ended up paying $2,400 for medications, tests and trips to the emergency room, but decided against further treatment that could have been as much as $8,000. Roscoe, diagnosed with pneumonia, died in early June.

Baxter wonders if she should have bought pet insurance at some point. read more