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Picturesque Valley of the Sybarites 
It's America's most upscale theme park KID-FREE ZONE Leave the sniveling brats at home. NapaLand is a special place designed just for grown-ups. There's nothing for kids to do and we intend to keep it that way. NapaLand is a magical world where adults can do what they want without being bothered by, or even observed by, the young. No screaming babies, no obnoxious pre-teens, and no surly tattooed, pinned-through-the-lips-and-God-knows-where-else high school students. YOUR KIND OF PEOPLE While admission to NapaLand may be free (those jerks at the California Department of Transportation still won't let us put up toll gates), our attractions aren't. They cost big bucks. One of the many benefits of high prices is that they keep out the rabble. You'll find that your fellow visitors are the kind of people you feel comfortable with, just like at the club. The few others that sneak in are quickly escorted over the hills to Sonoma Valley where they can be with their own kind. PLAYGROUND OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS NapaLand is not only an occasional home for such luminaries as Robin Williams, Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, Joe Montana, and (maybe someday) Madonna, it's a favorite weekend retreat for many other Hollywood stars and jetsetters. Watch for them through the darkened, rolled-up windows of their 50-foot limousines as they speed by. BEAUTIFUL HOMES, GORGEOUS COUNTRYSIDE Verdant valley vineyards, palatial homes on the hillsides, forested slopes of the Mayacmas and Vaca Mountains. Just don't get too close, because it's all private property. Don't touch the grapes or step off public roads. NapaLand is a place of untouched beauty. Untouched by you. NO LONG WALKS BETWEEN ATTRACTIONS That's right. Unlike most theme parks, there's no need to trudge from attraction to attraction. In fact there's no way to trudge from attraction to attraction. Every place worth seeing in NapaLand is designed so that you have to drive to get to it. You'll move around in the air-conditioned comfort of your own vehicle—preferably a BMW, Mercedes or high-end SUV. No tired feet here. LODGING WITH COMFORT IN MIND The financial comfort of the lodging owners. Don't worry. If you can't get into the simple $5,525 a night cottage that Prince Charles likes to inhabit when he visits the valley, you'll find other lodging fit for a king—or for a prince-who-might-someday-if-he's-really-really-patient-become-a-king. NapaLand has a wide range of accommodations with bed and breakfast inns, hotels, and multi-star resorts. If you're looking for something basic, and we missed putting you on the Sonoma Valley shuttle, you can probably find a room for the night that costs no more than your child's monthly college tuition. FOODS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF At prices you never thought possible. If it's a food combination that you can think of, you probably won't find it here. NapaLand restaurants are for the truly jaded. Our chefs have been trained to take dishes from around the world, then mix them together into weird and bizarre combinations that we call "fusion", and you'll call "what the hell is this?" For those who remain stuck in the mundane, there are still some restaurants that offer quaint, but dated, Wine Country Cuisine. Fresh from their own vegetable and herb gardens, with their fertile soil barely, if at all, thrown off, these tender goodies will tantalize your taste buds. Meats are chosen from select portions of free range lambs, beef, fish and other creatures of nature who have nobly volunteered to sacrifice their own lives so that others (you) may live. All ingredients are lovingly assembled into one aesthetically exciting dish that will leave you crying for more. (As in, "Did you accidentally give me the child's portion?") If you have a hard time deciding what to order from a menu, you'll love our growing trend toward prix fixe restaurants. You'll find no annoying choices to confuse you. Just pay one flat, amusingly outrageous price and the chef will give you whatever he feels like. You''l like it or else. And of course you'll like it, because you'll look like a real hick if you say anything negative about such trendy food. Just sit back, enjoy the experience, pay the bill, and marvel at the ways of NapaLand. WINE. IT'S WHAT THE GOOD LIFE IS ALL ABOUT, ISN'T IT? Our good life is. We live wine, breathe wine, talk wine, walk wine. It's why we're here. And why you've come to visit us. We used to grow prunes. Can you guess how few visitors we had then? Can you visualize thousands of people lined up at a local orchard to buy the year's first release of its cult prunes? Can you imagine the excitement of opening your mail to find out which prunes were rated 99 in the Prune Spectator? Well, frankly, we couldn't either. So we ripped out the prunes and put in grapes. When wine sales started slowing down, we raised the prices. That worked. When other wine regions raised their prices, we countered by creating celebrity winemakers. When they did that too, we invented dirt. Only we called it terroir and announced that only Napa Valley terroir could grow the world's finest grapes. Let's see them beat that. NapaLand. Because we're better than anybody else. And some of that might rub off on you. Copyright © Mick Winter, 2003
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