National Geographic's new '100 Trails' guidebook highlights Minnesota's Paul Bunyan Trail

Pick up a copy of National Geographic's new "100 Trails, 5,000 Ideas" to inspire your next adventure. The guide offers routes for every experience level, suggestions for off-trail activities and convenient places to stay. In Minnesota, the Paul Bunyan State Trail is not just for hikers or bikers. The 120-mile recreational path between Brainerd and Bemidji also attracts skaters, snowshoers, snowmobilers and naturalists to the woods and watery wonderland of north central Minnesota. Explorers using manual and electric wheelchairs can also travel the nation's longest accessible trail. Families might include a visit to Paul Bunyan Land, a vintage amusement park near Brainerd that offers a miniature train, carnival rides, a pioneer village and a giant-sized lumberjack (paulbunyantrail.com).

FamilyTravel.com

Good news for those flying into or out of New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport: The long-awaited direct rail service connecting JFK with Grand Central Station in Manhattan is completed, making seamless rail trips from the airport in Queens to the Midtown train station a reality for the first time. The long-awaited Grand Central Madison annex opened in late January beneath Grand Central Terminal, a 700,000-square-foot, two-level concourse. From the airport, travelers can take the AirTrain to Queens' Jamaica station, as usual. But, from there, they now have the option to board the Long Island Rail Road's train bound for Grand Central Madison, as well as those headed to Penn Station.

TravelPulse

Disney World's highly hyped Star Wars hotel has seen demand cool so dramatically that the Florida theme park giant has been forced to offer steep discounts and cancel dates in the summer. The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel at Disney's Hollywood Studios has begun offering 30% to 50% discounts to select customers on three-day, two-night experiences that cost $5,000 to $20,000. The "galactic cruise" invites costumed passengers to hatch plots against the First Order, fall in with a band of underworld smugglers and sip space cocktails for as long as they can suspend disbelief and buy into the interstellar cosplay theater of the "most immersive Star Wars experience ever created." The hotel opened in March 2022 with three months of sold-out dates.

Orange County Register