Select Attraction 
Tidewater and
Hampton Roads
Is for Sun
and Fun Lovers
Busch Gardens, Williamsburg offers a feast for the senses.
To
experience life in the early days of Virginia or to enjoy a stroll along the
wheelchair-accessible boardwalk of Virginia Beach, travel to the Tidewater and
Hampton Roads region located on the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay.
Virginia Beach, famous for its long expanse of pearly white sand, offers ocean-side fun including fishing, sunbathing, dolphin watching and nightlife. The state’s largest aquarium awaits visitors to the Virginia Marine Science Museum. The rough exterior of a sand shark in the touch tanks filled with small sea creatures allows hands-on exposure to this underwater world.
Do you want to experience the sights and sounds that the first explorers encountered in the early 1600’s? You can at First Landing State Park. A wheelchair-accessible trail wanders through moss-draped cypress swamps. This park offers camping, picnic areas, and tactile exhibits of plant and animal specimens native to Tidewater.
Other recreation opportunities abound at Chippokes
Plantation State Park in Surry. Site of a working farm for over 360 years, this
facility boasts an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a wheelchair lift for access,
as well as accessible bathhouses, cabin, and campsite.
A short drive across the James River at Jamestown
Settlement, visitors see smoke rising from cooking fires at the Powhatan Indian
village and a reconstruction of the first permanent English settlement in America.
Almost everything at Jamestown Settlement’s museum, theater and outdoor
exhibits is on one level and wheelchair-accessible, and interpreters encourage
participation in corn grinding or basket weaving. The archaeological remains
of the original settlement, along with a living-history Colonial glass-blowing
exhibition, are next door at the Colonial National Historical Park. Once thought
to have been washed into the James River, the excavation site can be accessed
from the Colonial Parkway.
The historic triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg
and Yorktown offers a smorgasbord of activities and sights. Being one of the
oldest parts of the United States, it is a land of Colonial taverns, horse-drawn
carriages, elegant plantations, battlefields and victory monuments.
Explore Colonial Williamsburg, where historical
interpreters bring the 18th century to life with Colonial music, trades demonstrations
— such as blacksmithing and wig making. A captioned orientation film and
hands-on activities at certain exhibits enhance the experience of persons with
disabilities who visit here.
A short distance from the historic locations, Busch
Gardens Williamsburg features European-themed roller coasters, rides and attractions.
Consistently voted the “Most Beautiful Theme Park” by the National
Amusement Park Historical Association, Busch Gardens Williamsburg also offers
preferred seating and amplified handsets to accommodate visitors with disabilities
to their top-rated shows and amusements. Nearby is Water Country USA, an exciting
water park with a 1950’s and 60’s surf theme.
The third side of the triangle, Yorktown serves
as a reminder of where the American Revolution ended and the United States began.
The Yorktown Victory Center presents the Revolutionary War with a recreated
Continental Army camp and 18th-century farm. Signed tours can be arranged with
advanced notice along with tactile tours of colonial and military life. The
National Park Service administers the actual battlefield site, where British
General Cornwallis surrendered to the combined forces under French General the
Marquis de Lafayette and the American General George Washington.
The lifeline of the colonies was the sea. The Mariners’
Museum in Newport News, tracing three thousand years of maritime adventurers,
features a world-renowned collection of boats from around the world, carved
figureheads, miniature ships and nautical memorabilia. Visitors with mobility
impairments will enjoy the accessible exhibit areas, and travelers with visual
impairments learn how to tie the complicated knots sailors used aboard ships.
Northern Neck is just the place to experience Virginia’s
Colonial charm. While Robert E. Lee’s name is synonymous with the Civil
War, his ancestral home, Stratford Hall, dates to Colonial times. This historic
home has a wheelchair track for visitors who can transfer from their own chairs
and offers sign language tours with advance notice.
Although Tidewater relishes the past, you can travel
to the future at Hampton’s Virginia Air and Space Center. With twelve full-sized
aircraft, the Apollo 12 Command Module, over a hundred hands-on exhibits, plus
IMAX theater presentations, this attraction showcases the tomorrow’s air
and space travel.
No matter what your interest, Tidewater and Hampton
Roads offers fun-filled attractions. Civil War exhibits and weapons, along with
Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s prison cell, can be seen at Hampton’s
Casemate Museum at Fort Monroe. Fine art galleries abound: African and African-American
art at Hampton University Museum, exhibits with amplified audio units and hands-on
activities at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, the Contemporary
Art Center in Virginia Beach or the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, hailed
by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 20 top museums in the country.
If you relish hands-on experiences and are young
at heart, the Children’s Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth allows you to
put yourself into a giant bubble. Visitors with visual impairments can enjoy
a fragrance garden of plants with distinctive scents and markers in braille
at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. This spectacular garden has one of the largest
collections of roses, azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons on the East Coast.
Shopping addicts can shop-’til-they-drop at
Prime Outlet Mall’s 80 designer stores. Trek west of Williamsburg to Lightfoot,
home of the Williamsburg Pottery Factory, with its 32 buildings of bargains
from around the world, and the Williamsburg Outlet Mall, featuring over 60 stores.
With its pristine beaches, historical landmarks and fun-filled diversions, Tidewater and Hampton Roads has something for everyone.
Chippokes Plantation State Park
Virginia Marine Science Museum
Chesapeake Bay Area
Tidewater and Hampton Roads
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