Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 171

-N Tl NEXT WEEK I 7 TPTm 717 Novice traveler PM-S OMR BIG AIR Windsurfers flock to Washington's Columbia River PAGE 3K wTV 3- SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2Cfal Dayton Daily News section Vintage ri bH. I I I I ROLLER COASTER enthusiasts consistently rank Cedar Point's 205-foot-tall Magnum XL-200 among the best in the world. 1 fW'M -I Si THE BLUE STREAK is the old man of Cedar Cedar Point has been satisfying thrill seekers for more than century By Ron Cobb St. Louis Post-Dispatch ANDUSKY, Ohio Here's a suggestion for any engineers who might be designing roller coasters that will go faster, rise higher and drop more sharply than Cedar Point Amusement Park's Millennium Force: Don'tbother. Common sense suggests that with Millennium Force, they've gone about as far as they can go.

They've built a roller coaster 310 feet high, about as high as a coaster oughta grow. Millennium Force broke world records for tallest and fastest roller coaster when it opened last year. How thrilling is it? The two-minute, 20-second ride begins with a 310-foot ascent at a 45-degree angle, followed abruptly by an 80-degree plunge. By the time the coaster reaches the bottom, it's traveling 93 mph. From there, it's a pedal-to-the-metal, mind-boggling race to the finish line.

Millennium Force was such a phenomenon last summer, people came from hundreds of miles away and waited in line up to four and five hours to ride on weekends in July and August. Others those who weren't bold enough to ride visited the park just to gaze at this steel skyscraper towering over the shore of Lake Erie. For the past three years, Cedar Point has won Amusement Today's Golden Ticket Award for "best amusement park in the world." Which means Cedar Point was deemed the best even before it opened the $25 million Millennium Force. Amusement Today is an industry publica- MILLENNIUM FORCE stands 3 10 feet tall and reaches speds of 93 mph -making it the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the Western Hemisphere. GettingAway FROM WIRE SERVICES Florence favorite city in magazine poll For the first time, the art-crammed city of Florence, Italy, whose 400,000 residents play host to 5 million visitors a year, has been picked as the "best" city in the world by readers of Travel Leisure magazine.

Rome and Paris wererunners-up. The top city in North America, according to this survey, is New York City, beating San Francisco which had held that spot for the past five years. Everything to know about pets on the road Folks as devoted to their pets as Rover and Fluffy are to them have a new vacation resource. The Portable Petswekome.com: The Complete Guide to Traveling With Your Pet (Howell Book House, $19.99) provides a trove of options for faking pets on the road. The largest section lists U.S.

and Canadian lodgings and campgrounds that allow pets. Those that welcome animals are indicated with a dog-with-suitcase icon. Pretrip advice, pet sitters, kennels and emergency tets are provided. Information complements the Web site www.petswelcome.com. Rehab to restore shine on Roman Colosseum j( The Colosseum in Rome, completed in A.D.

80, has suffered quite a bit ofwear and tear over the centuries; its marble seats and nearly all its rich decorations are gone. Starting this year, through a grant from the Banca di Roma, the amphitheater is being cleaned up and restored. By 2003, 85 percent of it, including subterranean corridors used by gladiators and animals, should be open to the public (as opposed to around a third now), and the structure should recover its original golden hue. 'Consumer Reports' has vacation info on Web ConsumerReports.org, the Web site for Consumer Reports magazine, has launched an online Summer Vacation Guide designed to help plan a money-saving vacation. The guide will be available until the end of next month, and, unlike some portions of the Web site, is free.

'V pan Quayle museum gets tons of papers Former Vice President Dan Quayle has donated 8 tons of documents and other memorabilia of his political life to the Dan Quayle Center and Museum in Huntington, Ind. The museum (www.quaylemuseum.org) traces Quayle's life as well as the history of the vice presidency. "I think historians will have a field day with these papers," said Quayle, who was vice president in the first Bush administration after 'serving eight years in the U.S. Senate and two terms in the U.S. House.

"What they will see is someone who worked real hard at tvhat he did," he said. 'f The donation includes documents dating to 1976 and a formal gown his wife, Marilyn, wore. ONLINE UPDATES For more travel news: www.actlvedayton.com partnersddntravel CONTACT US V' Customer service: 222-5700. Travel fax: 225-2241. Travel editor, Ken Canfield: 225-2259, kencanfield3 coxohio.com Postal address: 45 S.

Ludlow Dayton, Ohio 45402. cars drive! tourists By Michelle Krebs A'rui York Times If your summer vacation entails a driving trip, you might consider a detour down memory lane. Many major cities in the United 'i States and some unlikely small -towns have museums that include vintage cars or have muse- urns devoted entirely to these clas- sics. The museums listed here have been chosen for the historic and artistic significance of the vehicles and automobilia they display and 1 for the way they are displayed, i HENRY FORD MUSEUM Appropriately, Detroit lays 'm claim to one of the country's best collections. The Henry Ford Museum sits in the shadow of i Ford's world headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn.

The sprawling, 12-acre museum, in a building that looks like a 19th- century New England not only contains significant vehicles, including the 1909 Ford Modef that put Americans on wheels, but also chronicles the car's impact on American life. The museum is participating this year in Detroit's 300th birthday celebra-; tion with special automotive i events as well as displaying Henry Ford's first race car, Sweepstakes, to commemorate 100 years of Ford Motor Co. racing. ii Visitors tour a 1940s roadside diner and a 1960s Holiday Inn hoteL room. The vehicles on view run from Henry Ford's 1896 Quadricy-y cle to the limousine in which John F.

Kennedy was assassinated to the whimsical Oscar Mayer mobile. At the IMAX theater, Super, Speedway takes viewers along witlS the race-car drivers Michael and Mario Andretti. Information: Henry Ford Museum, 20900 Oakwood Dear born, (313) 271-1620; www.hfmgv.org. Open daily 9 a.m.-! 5 p.m.; tickets $12.50, seniors $11.50 ages 5 to 12 $7.50. The Michigan Cafe serves food found in the state, from fresh Great Lakes fish to sweet cherries.

i WALTER P. CHRYSLER MUSEUM This two-year-old automotive museum is Detroit's newest. A three-story structure of granite 1 and glass, it is on the grounds of i Please see MUSEUMS2K AUBURN CORD DUE SEN BERG MUSEUM THE ART-DECO, showroom-style 'gallery of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Classic autos without the long car trip You don't have to leave the Miami'. Valley to see a museum featuring vintage cars. America's Packard Museum, located downtown in a building that housed the original i dealership, features many automo-1 biles as well as artifacts from the Packard Motorcar Co.

Information: America's Packard Museum, 420 S. Ludlow 226- 1710. Open noon-5 p.m. weekdays and 1-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; tickets $5 adults, $4 students and groups.

i tion in Arlington, Texas. Voting for the Golden Ticket Awards is done by a database of fans who have experienced amusement parks around the world. They voted Millennium Force the No. 2 steel roller coaster in the world for 2000. 1 Their No.

1 pick was Magnum XL-200, and No. 5 was Raptor, both of which also belong to Cedar Point. Magnum is an exceptional roller coaster, rising 205 feet and achieving a speed of 72 mph. But make no mistake, it's a notch below Millennium Force, whose newness probably prevented it from being voted No. 1.

Cedar Point also was awarded its third consecutive Golden Ticket for "best capacity," which assesses how well the park moves guests through its queue lines. Clearly, Cedar Point knows what it's doing, in part because it's had a lot of practice. The amusement park and resort now occupy an entire sliver of a peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, about halfway between Cleveland and Toledo. Cedar Point began as a bathhouse on the beach in 1870 and opened its first ride, a water trapeze, in the 1880s. Its first roller coaster came along in 1892 the Switchback Railway stood 25 feet high and zipped along at 10 mph.

That coaster is gone, but the Blue Streak, which opened in 1964, is still there, along PLEASE SEE COASTER2K CEDAR POINT PHOTOS Points extensive roller coaster collection. PLANNIKG YOUR TRIP Tickets: One-day admission is $39 for' those age 4 to 59 who are at least 48 inches tall, 1 5 for ages 4 and under who are under 48 inches, $23 for seniors ages 60 and older and $23 after 5 p.m. Multiday passes also are available and include admission to both Cedar Point and the Soak City water park. Hours The park is open from 10 am to anywhere from 8 p.m. to midnight, depending on the night.

Guests who are in a ride line at closing time will be allowed to stay until they ride. Season: The park is open daily through Labor Day, then on weekends and some Fridays through October. On the beach: Diversions on the beach out-side the amusement park include kayak and jet-ski rentals and parasail rides. Other things to do: Visit Thomas Edison's birthplace in nearby Milan, (419) 499-2135, www.tomedison.org); take an Underground Railroad tour, (800) 255-3743; visit two nearby islands, Kelleys Island and Put-in-Bay by ferry; play golf at the challenging, Tom Fazio-designed Sawmill Creek Resort on U.S. 6, 1 5 minutes from Cedar Point (rates are $74 to $78 including cart for a course not quite as upscale, try Thunder-bird Hills a bit farther east).

For more on area attractions, call the Erie County Visitors and Convention Bureau at (800) 255-3743. Mora information: Cedar Point Amusement ParkResort, One Cedar Point Drive, Sandusky, Ohio 44870-5259; (419) ii emu..