Mdcastle

Probably the ideal would be to have the dry path go all the way back to the parking lot, but have an immediate gate into the waterpark right at the parking lot gate. That way guests could still walk from their cars to the waterpark in their swimming suits, but you could also close off and secure the waterpark before the main park closed. Otherwise you'd have people that used the waterpark gate and then went into the main park cut off when the waterpark closed, or else you'd have to let people wander through the area and probably post staff just to watch them. Also something like a roller coaster would be easier to build in a wetland than something else since it just requires isolated footings, so a dry path going all the way back could also lead to that.

I noticed the brake missing on Steel Venom too. Rode Delirious for the first time and loved it. The "Roulette Waterfall" is working on Thunder Canyon for the first time in a decade. The one facing away from you as you're looking at it from the observation deck. One person in the raft gets it and then the other three laugh it him or her.

Three things I noticed: The Snoopy Bouncy house next to the bridge is gone. At the wave pool they finally just put down a concrete slab over the former London Terror / "VIP seating" / grassy overflow area / sand volleyball court and bought a bunch more lounge chairs so they have something close to enough now. The new lights over the path at Route 76. The acorn lights weren't bad, but these are better. They need to get rid of the remainder of the generic shoebox lights that replaced the original incandescent faux streetlights in the early 1990s. I'm assuming they can't because it's an outside company, but I'd really like it if you could get a season pass for locker rentals. $13 or $15 a pop gets expensive fast when you go once or twice a week.

Suppose things go like this: 2018: Delirous Opens. Heavy machinery comes in and starts scooping out dirt from behind the parking lot and dumping it into the swamp next to Excalibur. Farewell party help for Excalilbur. The return of Enterprise is announced for next year 2019 The new employee road is open. Excalibur is leveled and work switches to flattening the area and the area of the former road. Announcement is another cheap flat 2020 The new parking lot opens with a temporary gate to the back Next years announcement is a huge waterpark expansion 2021 The back of the waterpark is completely redone and the slides are scrapped. Paint isn't expensive and Valleyfair gets three seasons of it looking nice.

Why not just put a dark ride in the helix and leave bumper cars alone?

The cynic in me says it's to make people walk by more merch and food stands, but I think the real reason is opening it would cause circulation problems. All the people heading into the waterpark towards the bathhouses to change into their swimming suits would mix with all the people milling around at the back of the wave pool, which is already pretty crowded.

And they had problems keeping Renegade operating and eventually just shut down Steel Venom. Normally a lot of people leave after 11 but it was especially pronounced last night, once people had done the mazes they saw no reason to stick around in the cold. Parking lot was more than half empty when I left at 11:20 As for the waterpark painting, if they were planning the big expansion next year they'd knock the slides down instead of painting them.

My thoughts: Way out back is a good, spooky place for the new Dark Harvest, but now we have three of the mazes on a long dead-end. The old picnic grounds is another good place for a haunt but how permanent is that Beserkers tent? Could that or it's eventual replacement be moved inside the park proper, along with a permanent building for Bloodshed or it's replacemen? With the loss of two scare-zones, I'm thinking they exepect a repeat of the staffing issues last year. I noticed they had very few people outside the zones, to the point where I wouldn't have even needed my "immunity necklace". Is Cedar Fair going away from upcharge attractions? The FearVR concept is really good. My own thoughts was they could have an old prison theme instead of an asylum. I also like Knott's Scary Farm's new "Trick Or Treat" concept where you go through in the dark with a "temperamental" flashlight. Permanent haunt possibilities: Wild Thing Turn-Around? Old Scrambler Spot? Old Tilt-A-Whirl spot. Old Corkscrew Tot-Spot? Wouldn't it make sense to due prop sharing between parks once a maze has completed it's run?

They brought in light towers to mow the lawn?

Walking around the dry park in swimming suits seems to be kind of tolerated in that I don't see park employees trying to clamp down on it and they don't have the dress code police stationed at the entrance like I've seen at Six Flags. And once someone took my shirt in the waterpark so I had to walk out to my car shirtless and no one bothered me (although I did kind of wrap myself in my towel). But you can't enter the park or go on rides that way. There was a 20 minute delay at Riptide once, turns out a girl wanted to go on in her swimming suit and was arguing with employees and wouldn't leave. One thing they could do is just connect the existing path to the new parking lot and not enforce the dress code at that gate. This would allow people to go from the dry park to Thunder Canyon or a future coaster, or from cars to the waterpark in swimming suits. And they could do it without knocking down the old waterpark. Not that they shouldn't do it anyway but they could wait a year or two after the big parking lot work.

We got a bit nicer splash pad recently but a giant play area is one of the things Valleyfair is missing. Geuaga Lakes has one, but I don't see it fitting where the old splash pad is. My prediction is Valleyfair gets at least two of the four waterpark staples it's missing (family play area, tornado, matt racer and body/tube slide tower that it's missing before a new coaster or anything else major, and Looping Starship doesn't move because they really don't have to now. That they bothered to put a permanent queue in for Raging Rapids tells me they aren't going to remodel and expand the waterpark this year but perhaps the year after. My prediction is that they'll have the new road ready by the end of the summer season. Then they can 1) Dig out the dirt for the new wetlands north of the parking lot and use it to build up the end of the parking lot that always floods, and 2) Use the dirt from the old road to fill in the wetlands around Excalibur. The probably don't want to shut down any of the parking lot during haunt, but they could get a start at the back of the park as soon as the summer is done.

1) Valleyfair using stock footage is nothing new, and they're not going to use this method to spill the bean on what they have planned. 2) The last thing they should be thinking about is new drop slides considering we already have four good ones and we don't have any tube slides, matt racers, family play area, or Tornado.

I'm thinking they put the sword back to make a good photo op for the press when they announce the permanent closure for "future attractions" at the end of this year.

I don't see the one above as we already have four trapdoor slides. Here's Wildwater Kingdom's. We could get this one or a similar new one.

The standard for waterparks nowadays includes: 1) A matt racer slide (inexpensive, two persons can staff it, large capacity) 2) A tornado (visually awesome looking) 3) A family play area (another large capacity thing) 4) A body / tube slide complex. Valleyfair has none of these. All of these are available (unless some have been spoken for) now that Wildwater Kingdom is closed. I'd suggest looking for pictures of these because Cedar Fair added them and Valleyfair could get one or more of them. They would all just about fit in the planned waterpark area without having to move Looping Starship or anything else. However they're apparently building a permanent queue for Raging Rapids. That makes no sense if they planned major modifications this year. The only think I see is the WIldwater slide complex can fit where the existing slides are, so they could do that as a fairly low cost mod before the big expansion in a few years when the parking lot is paid off.

Permanent queue?

Is there any reason whatsoever to think that Valleyfair will be getting a Frisbee? People here personally liking them not being a reason... I can still see a marketing campaign if they build nothing but the new gate. They managed generic campaigns for the years they put nothing in. How about "Expressway to the Wet Way". "Speedway to Soak City". There's a lot of people that just want to go to a pool on a hot day but are deterred by how big of production it is to get themselves and their kids in and out of Soak City currently. Or with the observation that Riptide and StupidCat didn't get automated announcements maybe they're going to move Excalibur to where Riptide is and re-brand the area is "Chiropractor-Land".

The local Indians threaten to sue anyone that uses the name "Mystic". Obviously Valleyfair has more money than a local small business but it's something to keep in mind.

So like they did with Chaos and the Imax theater? Seriously I wouldn't necessarily bank an announced closure. With the scope of the parking lot my prediction is their going to build nothing else. With building nothing else they're not going to make a big deal about tearing out a ride if they have nothing big and exciting to announce to replace it. Excalibur will close without fanfare in he fall about the time it normally does and then someone will notice an excavator ripping it apart a week later.

Where are these "quite a few places" it can go. I can't think of any.

If they wanted to mess with us they'd dump a few sections of B&M track in the field by the front gate.

Also of note they put in LED light bulbs in a lot of the shoebox pathway fixtures in the off season. They didn't bother with the ones at the very back.

Does security care if you bring in empty water containers, like those Naglene bottles?

There's nothing stopping them from opening the black gates now if they really wanted to. My speculation on why they don't is. A) Make people walk by more food stands, like the Red Garter Saloon and Dipping Dots, or B) It would cause circulation problems to have traffic going between the park proper and the changing rooms mixing with traffic going between the changing rooms and the pool or the pool and the splashpad. C) Other parks have a "Shirt, Shoes, and Shorts" enforcer on the long walkway from the waterpark, so maybe that though it Valleyfair might get one D) Employees want to look important and be seen opening up the gate for themselves. With everything else to do I don't see them spending money to move Looping Starship. Have there been any confirmations about where Wildwater Kingdom's stuff is going?