GCI Wooden

I'm going to recommend Comfort Inn River's Edge. It's actually really nice for the price point.

It really says something about a park when they are currently selling tickets for $5 today on their website, and it's still considered to be overpriced. Good choice. Avalanche is an awesome ride.

This past Sunday, we made the 4 hour trek down to the middle of Iowa to get to Adventureland! It’s no question that the main draw of the park is the newly installed Monster, a crazy infinity coaster mixed with Euro-fighter, but the park was so much more than that. They ran all of their flats for good, long cycles, the paths were shaded (HUGE plus, as it was pushing 90 degrees the day we went), and the staff was some of the best I’ve seen, but more on that later. I will start this immediately with this disclaimer: I didn’t plan to write this trip report, so there aren’t many pictures in this. So, all I’ve got for you is a wall of text and a few of Monster pictures. Well, after our long journey from Minnesota, we arrive at the park just a few minutes after opening and headed straight to Monster. As soon as we entered the gates, we momentarily found ourselves at Disneyland. After that, passed under the train tracks, and I quickly decided that the park was one of the prettiest I’ve seen as soon as we got to Main Street. The street is lined with beautiful shops (All reasonable priced, I saw some shirts for $6), and an arcade that I only went in because they put a Huss Breakdance inside (Awesome ride). After going through Main Street, we were greeted with plenty of shade along the pathways, and then we saw glimpses of that bright green track. See, Disneyland When we arrived at Monster, we must’ve just beat the crowds, because when we came back, the queue was completely full. Probably waited about 20 minutes, not too bad. The station looks really nice from the outside, and the inside has a bunch of ceiling fans to keep it cool, it’s the little things that make these parks great. We boarded, pulled down are lap bars, and then pulled forward towards this massive tower. The lift engaged, and the we began by going straight up. It was then that I noticed the the backs are indeed angled backwards a little bit, because it felt like I was about to slip out the back thanks to the lap bars. The beyond vertical drop came next, making for a great start to a fantastic ride. Then the ride just continued to get weirder. I have no idea what that first element is, but it worked! I was thrown all over the place in that element thanks to the plethora of forces exerted onto me. This would be a trend for the rest of the ride. The train then headed towards what looked like a hill from the ride, and then quickly inverted into a dive loop. After the dive loop, we went through a loop, but a loop unlike the others, this one is slightly elongated so that you’re upside down for a really long time, and you actually get some weightlessness at the top. The train rushes into an overbanked curve and an airtime hill, the two most normal thing about this ride, and into what looked to be an immelman, but felt unlike any other immelman I’ve been on (Remember what I was saying about being thrown around?). It then went into a bit of track, that was banked to the point where it could be called an inversion. The train goes through this so slowly that it provides some nice hangtime. Into a corkscrew and a little airtime pop into the brakes. Adventureland has a hit on their hands with this ride. Not my favorite coaster, but it definitely had me thinking “What just happened” once it pulled into the brakes. I don’t rank my coasters, but it’s definitely up there! After that, we decided to ride Storm Chaser. I’m a sucker for Windseekers, so I loved this thing. This is also where I noticed the awesome staff at this park, and that the park will actually have somewhat of a personality. All the employees at the park seemed to be enjoying their job, and it was nice to hear a calm voice saying “Alright, you can go ahead and take your seats now" instead of the typical "Oncoming riders, please step quickly but carefully into the train remembering to place any loose articles in the bins located across the station. We are not responsible for items lost or damaged on the ride and you accept full responsibility for items left in the bins. etc.". We noticed this both entering the ride, and when we were coming down the tower and when we about 15 feet above the ground they were telling us that we could unbuckle our seatbelts, so they could let us up immediately when we were on the ground. I was just thinking, this would never happen at a chain park. Why can’t more parks operate like this park does? About the ride, as I said, I love Windseekers, so this was naturally a hit with me. I prefered Cedar Point’s because the view of the lake and beach was beautful, but this was still a lot of fun. The smaller model really made the ride seem a lot faster, so that was interesting. At this point, I felt that we needed to ride something weird and different, and what ride fits that description better than Underground? I purposely went into this park not knowing much about it, but I did learn that Underground was an “Interesting” ride, but didn’t quite know what to expect. They definitely win mystery points, with the queue actually being pretty awesome. All of the outdoor sections were shaded, the station (And actually the entire ride) was air conditioned, and the station was never over-crowded (In fact, they let in just enough people to fill one train at a time). I also think that there’s something up with that animatronic in the station, the mechanics of it’s mouth was so loud that you couldn’t hear the words he was saying, but that wasn’t a big deal. I’m not going to say much about the ride, because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but it was one of the most hilarious rides I’ve been on. I couldn’t follow the storyline on my first ride, but the second time sorta pieced it together, sorta… I really like that this ride exists, though. I love quirky attractions. One of the quirkiest attractions I've been on. Once we got off Underground, we headed over to the Skyride because Skyrides are amazing. This one is especially interesting because it goes directly through a couple of Monster’s inversions (I wonder how much trouble this caused Gerstlauer in the design and construction process). This one kept stopping in the middle of the ride for whatever reason, but that just meant more time on the Skyride. My friend noticed that the park had a Top Spin by the name of Splash Over. I sat that one out because I think they look really uncomfortable, and I just don’t really see the appeal. But my friend seemed to really enjoy it. Sorry Huss, just not for me. Next up was Der Finger, the park’s paratrooper. It ran a good, long cycle, and it was made a little more interesting with incredibly competitive rock paper scissors battles. I really like Paratroopers, so I was happy to see one of them here. We then headed over to the food court, passing by a closed Inverter. Decided to get the pulled pork which was surprisingly good for “park food”. I also noticed an amazing knock off Subway, the famed “Sub Land”. Once we finished eating we crossed the lake, passing by the hundreds of fish fighting for food (Seriously, there are hundreds of fish that want you to feed them, and they’ll fight each other for the food). Once we were across, we decided to go for Dragon, a ride that I had personally been dreading because of all the reviews of it being one of the worst rides ever, but really it wasn’t that bad. It was weird that the roughest part of the ride was the pre-lift section (How does that even happen?), but the loops weren’t bad and were actually pretty forceful, and the figure 8 wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. I don’t see why this ride is almost unanimously hated when it really isn’t much worse than any Arrow. This ride also gave us a taste of “small park quirkiness” with the interesting “Mirror maze” exit. Seriously, sometimes the fish were completely out of the water because they were climbing on top of each other. It's pretty ridiculous. Next up was the frisbee, and I think I prefer the Giant frisbees, but this was still a lot of fun. There was some pretty strong forces, mixed in with some pops of airtime. I also noticed that the ride has a few thematic elements to make it fit into the western theme of the park. It’s a really good flat ride for a park of this size. Despite the size, all Frisbees are really fun! Now, apparently this park has a circus, so we popped in to take a peek, and saw a person climb into a small fish tank and a few people who were way too comfortable on a tightrope. It was an interesting experience, as I had never been inside the big top, and I actually enjoyed it! The people on the tightrope were fascinating and incredibly impressive. After going to see the circus, we had coasters to ride! Took a ride on Outlaw, and it was an “alright” ride in the back, but it was a lot better in the front! Thanks to the buzz bars, I was able to come quite a ways out of my seat on some of the stronger moments of airtime. Not rough, either, just a really fun ride. One of the tamer CCI coasters I’ve experienced, though. This is the only picture I got of Outlaw. I don't think I could've gotten farther away from the ride for that picture, sorry about that! We then headed back towards the front of the park, and grabbed a ride on Lighthouse. This thing looks like it would be really amazing, with the arms that rise and fall pretty fast, but it just didn’t live up to it’s impressive appearance. It was spinning so fast that I didn’t really notice that the cars were changing elevation, and I had expected to get some air when it changed elevation, but it really just doesn’t seem to add to the ride experience, at all. I really like S&S Doubleshot towers, so we made sure to ride this. It rides just like the others, has one really good moment of airtime at the top of the tower. Not much else to add here. Then we decided to try out the parks bumper cars, which I’m not gonna lie, were some of the worst bumper cars I’ve been on. It was weird that a park that runs their flats so well had such a tame set of bumper cars. This is one of the taller single S&S towers, right? I really like these things, After some bumper cars, we headed to Tornado, the last coaster we haven’t ridden yet, and it was a great classic coaster! It was pretty smooth for a nearly 40 year old wooden coaster. There really isn’t much else to say about it, just a really fun, classic wooden coaster. I know that I rode G-Force, the Huss Breakdance inside the arcade building on Main Street, but I honestly can’t remember when. That ride had some fairly intense spinning, and is now one of my favorite spinning flat rides. Why aren’t these things more common? They’re tons of fun. We spent the rest of the evening grabbing re-rides. I’m now going to drop a whole bunch of pictures of Monster, so enjoy! Thanks for reading! Vertical lifts are a little more scary when you only have a lap bar! The trains are really open, and you get thrown around quite a bit over every elements. Makes it feel a little more "Out of control" when there's nothing to lean against when the laterals push you to the side of the train. The first drop is WAY beyond vertical! Very good way to kick off a ride! This first inversion was really fun! Coming over the top, and then quickly twisting into an inversion. After the dive loop, you get thrown into a vertical loop featuring 0-G's. It felt like you spent a long time up-side down, but it was never uncomfortable. It felt like perfect weightlessness. This is such a photogenic coaster, I love it. These people all just experienced a very, very weird overbank/inversion (It's banked far enough where some people may consider it an inversion). I have no idea how they thought of this element. It's so wrong that it's amazing. The two newest rides at Adventureland. Thanks for the fantastic day, Adventureland!

Tornado at Adventureland!

^Thanks, and that's good to hear! I'm not a waterpark person, so that should hopefully mean that there won't be much waiting. I'll just shoot for the 1st row of a car and hope for the best on Dragon. I've just heard so many bad things about that ride, if it's anything like Corkscrew it'll be a pleasant surprise. Thanks for the help!

... every single time we go to Dorney.

I want to say I got the last train of the season on Renegade in 2014 alone, and that was a really fun experience.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good plan-of-attack for this park? I know Monster first, but are there any other popular rides with deplorable capacity here? If you guys have any other tips (Good things to eat, best place to not kill myself on Dragon other than the exit ramp, etc.), that would be great! Thanks!

What on Earth is that flat ride? That is one of the weirdest looking rides I've ever seen! I would say that this is a solid addition, something substantial for both the dry and wet side of the park.

I've actually never had problems with Steel Venom, it has long trains and a fairly short ride cycle that make up for the single train (According to RCDB it has better capacity than Renegade, not sure if that's accurate or not). Extreme Swing can get long, though (And by long I mean like 20-30 minutes). I would recommend starting off with High Roller, Mad Mouse, Renegade, then wrap around and do Extreme Swing. The rest of the day can be taken at your leisure.

This. I can't think of many rides that don't have seatbelts at Cedar Fair parks.

That's a stupid policy when you have Dragster. Also, I haven't seen this angle of Gatekeeper before, nice picture:

You will be fine without FL, the park doesn't draw huge lines in the summer months. Please note that the park closes at 5 for a private event, which is both a good (Should be mostly empty) and a bad thing (No night rides on Renegade). Unless you have kids, not much new here. I would say that the best addition other than Planet Snoopy has been the flyers, and they're the Larson type. Oh, and if you haven't ridden one before, ride Charlie Brown's Wind-Up. You may all be wondering, "Why is this guy suggesting I go on a Planet Snoopy ride? It's not even a credit". Trust me, it's one of the very few rides I actually need to hold on the whole time. Just do it, there's never a line.

I definitely prefer Coke. Not shocking in the least bit. I also just saw this.

So, this one could go for Spirit Mountain in Duluth (They have an alpine coaster and one of those Soaring Eagle Ziplines, so it counts as a park). Blackwoods Grill & Bar in Duluth has some of the best meatloaf I've ever had. Seriously, it's amazing. It's at the intersection of 35 and London Rd/61. Here's the link to place on Google Maps

I remember that Iron Horse thing being discussed a few months ago, and someone said that it was a drink somehow themed to the CP and LE Railroad. EDIT: Found the post.

^From the poster himself:

Yeah, it was posted here yesterday. It's pretty cool to be able to look around in that area, where guests aren't allowed. I love Google Street View.

Nice Trip Report! It's always fun seeing other people's perspectives to your home park. And for Wild Thing's tunnel, I would think that they didn't go underground because of the close proximity to the river, but I really have no idea. I think it adds a fun little element to the ride, though.

I've had this happen to me, as well. I think it started when someone decided to send a bunch of spam messages back in April. If it can't be fixed (For whatever reason), when you get a new PM, it just says "2 New Messages" instead of "1 New Message", so it still notifies you when you get a new message. The feature still accomplishes it's task, so it's not a big deal.

Nice trip report. I've been wanting to get on Goldstriker for a while, looks like a fantastic ride. Just one thing, I have a feeling that you didn't take a Delorean to the park, and therefore didn't go on October 12.

I love that page so much. Those 16 supporters will definitely make KD rethink their plans...

If you're talking about the view count, hover over the picture. I know that works on Windows (Not sure about other operating systems).

Those coasters did open in 2006...

Thank you so much for your help. One last question. I haven't been able to keep up on Valravn. How is the ride? Does it live up to the hype? I really liked Valravn. I would highly recommend trying to get front seat on the far left or right (It makes the ride feel like a wing coaster with 2 amazing vertical (or near vertical) drops). I'm not sure how Cedar Point handles seat requests on rides with assigned seating, but just ask politely and hope for the best. I think the front seat, hanging and staring down that drop, is extremely effective, and I just didn't get that feeling in the back. I will say that any seat still provides a really good ride, it's just that front is a whole different thing (Sorta like Dragster). I don't know if we just caught it on a bad day, or what was going on, but our ride in the back row right side was awful. It was so rough it made Mean Streak feel smooth. Like I said it could have been an off day, or the train could have had a "bad wheel." But it was awful. We got back seat far left, and it was glass smooth. Looks like you caught it on a bad day.