ariznglori

Humorous speculation, nothing more...but who knows... It's made it through most of the winter pretty clear. Wouldn't take more than a handful smeared across the lens...

The webcam is covered in slush...wonder if it's on purpose as it looks like they're putting up supporting for the slide tower.

The sign is the best part. A new Excalibur would be cool, especially if they did up the station like a crumbling castle. If Valleyfair were to ever get into theming, I'd love that back part of the park to be like medieval ruins in the woods, even around Thunder Canyon.

Would love to see a regular blog with plenty of posts throughout the off-season to get us through this long wait. Maybe even have different posts from different departments covering what's new, even if it's just little stuff like tweaking a barbeque sauce recipe for one of the food stands. I'd be sure to find it and buy some just to have a part in the conversation. There is so much potential here.

Good to see them starting to take advantage of their website and reaching out to their fans.

I don't know how to contact them, but if you have a way to let them know, that plan has my vote. Valleyfair with an exciting hypercoaster for only a couple mil sounds like a bargain to me and would be a great strength to the coaster line-up.

I wouldn't count Valleyfair out for something thrilling. Renegade is a fun ride after all. Steel Venom's holding brake makes it better than most shuttles. Those are the two most recent coasters, and to me suggest a lean to the more intense; I hope the trend continues. And the rest of the line-up is great support. Corkscrew has a beautiful setting and delivers a good thrill in its short duration. High Roller brings the tradition and is a fun ride in any decade. We have a wild mouse, as a regional park should. Excalibur is...unique and, even better, easily replaced. Wild Thing is not so easily replaced, especially considering how much it cost to get. The best they can do is retrofit and reprofile, but as many have told me, that is unlikely at this point.

Kings Dominion has Volcano, which is unlike any other coaster in the world. Additionally, any new invert Kings Dominion puts in would have to be better than Alpengeist at nearby Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Kings Dominion must compete with one of the best theme parks out there, and invariably those parks will be compared to each other by prospective guests. Not to mention there's Six Flags America closer to the Bal/Wash metropolitan areas and Hershey Park a couple hours north. Totally different ballgame for Valleyfair, which competes with an indoor mall park that has even tougher space restrictions...but the mall can be open all year round and Nickelodeon Universe benefits from the tourists that flow there for shopping and the aquarium. All Valleyfair needs are a few high-quality rollercoasters and a fun, thrilling waterpark to keep locals from wandering off to the Dells three hours away. In addition the metro is growing and Valleyfair's potential customer base is growing. Steel Venom is actually great, especially with the holding brake. It's awesome the park still uses it. But I'm going to disagree with you and say its awesomeness doesn't discount the need for a full-circuit invert. And on the subject of Wild Thing, it's not great, it's not terrible, and its lack of an impression is its biggest problem. Its low gravity zone is fun and the first drop is too, but then you have a mile of wasted track (except that turnaround above entrance, my favorite part). The best I've heard from others is it's comfortable. I don't ride a rollercoaster to be comfortable, I ride it to be thrilled. And I feel that the trains are a big part of the problem because they inhibit my ability to feel the ride's speed. Again, that is my opinion, but I am certainly not alone.

Lovely shots, VF15! Reminds me how welcome the colors of the new waterslides will be in the park alongside Mad Mouse. We need that brightness to fight off the gloom of our long winters. They can be on the same level even if that level is higher than current Dorney--I certainly don't want any park held back. It will take quite a bit of waterpark growth and another two coasters at least for Valleyfair get to current Dorney level, let alone future Dorney level. And it's not like Valleyfair's market will want such different things. Right now I'd say Dorney's three inverts are putting them in the category you'd prefer Valleyfair be in. And with the rumors that Valleyfair is holding out for a custom coaster, we may see Valleyfair get more customs than Dorney, especially with our unique building challenges.

Would love to see that as well. Looking forward to the day when Valleyfair and Dorney are at the same level!

From watching the Vortex POVs and imagining my feet dangling from floorless seats, I think that the ride will be quite awesome, whether it comes here or stays in Carowinds.

A coaster doesn't have to be the tallest or the fastest to deliver a great experience. I just hope whatever we get is designed with love and brings on the thrills. That's honestly why I wouldn't mind getting Carowinds's Vortex...the era it was built in was a great time for B&M, I believe the first Batman ride was opened as SFGAm in the same year--and that is a feisty invert. Vortex would likely have a similar amount of intensity as a floorless conversion, just due to the designers at B&M at the time. It would be like getting a run-down muscle car and souping it up with comfy seats.

Cool ride, I like how elongated it looks compared to the HUSS. How large a space might it need?

Valleyfair has a great flat ride collection for a park its size. I think the only thing they're really lacking for me is a tall swings like Windseeker/Star Flyer, and a Windseeker is the more affordable of the two by several million. What the park truly lacks is one or two big coasters that deliver serious thrills/airtime/inversions, an entertaining dark ride, and a sizeable high quality waterpark--and the space for all these things without costly changes. And gosh are those things expensive anyway! I know my 50 mil proposal felt like it went too fast... But on the plus side, any of these additions should increase attendance and the likelihood that the rest get done sooner. It's just a question of what comes next and how it fits. Which is seriously tough. Let's just push the highway further away.

If Valleyfair were given $50 million like Carowinds for development, how would you like to see it spent? Here's how I'd break it down: $15 million toward a Talon-like invert in the Dinos spot $20 million for a custom Intamin to replace Excalibur, something akin to Skyrush that doesn't have issues with the height restrictions and that is worth the walk back...the park's new signature coaster for the next few decades These two rides would cement Valleyfair as a must-visit destination in Minnesota. Okay, only 15 million to go... I'll throw five of that at a Windseeker in Wild Thing's turnaround and the other ten at additional waterpark expansion and infrastructure improvements including moving Mad Mouse, Wheel of Fortune and Looping Starship to make room for more slide complexes and space for sunchairs. Paths would be rerouted, but the backstage facilities would not need heavy adjustments. Other projects that are a good idea, perhaps in lieu of the Intamin: High quality dark ride where bumper cars are (relocation of bumper cars to field by Corkscrew) New RMC in the place of the amphitheater (because coaster-knot epicness and an excellent collection of woodies) Launch coaster to replace Excalibur, something like Xcelerator or Rita maybe New trains/reprofile Wild Thing, including steeper drops of at least 75 degrees and removal of MCBR. But that's me.

Dinos should leave in 2019 I think--then the front of the park can really be optimized for a good coaster. I suspect the next coaster (invert) may be coming sooner than that...so then it's back to the amphitheater space/Wild Thing helix, Excalibur's spot, or the backstage buildings gotta go...or some brilliant curveball we won't see coming is on its way. There is no obvious good solution with the current set-up.

That fits so well it's spooky. What would Patriot look like in the same spot?

In regards to accessing a theoretical new ride in the parking lot area that was coned off...would a path have to be built over Dinos Alive, or could the backstage access by High Roller's lift hill be utilized instead? I haven't done the Dinos walkthrough, so I'm not sure of the attraction's extent.

Been looking at Google Maps and got an idea. What if Mad Mouse was relocated and the path to the Renegade area followed the ending turnaround of High Roller, then met up with the back path on the spot of Wheel of Fortune? It shouldn't cost the park too much in the way of lost buildings and it would open up a massive chunk for future waterpark expansion. It wouldn't be hard to find a new spot for Mad Mouse and Wheel of Fortune either, so no loss...it's the only thing I can see being done to add a substantial amount of land to the waterpark in the future.

SLCs have great layouts honestly, and the trains have been getting tweaked and redesigned for comfort for years. A new SLC should be miles better than the old ones. The Flying Dutchmans are great--not B&M great, but great nonetheless. I've ridden Batwing, it's thrilling. If anything, poor maintenance on the part of Six Flags is the problem, not the design of the ride.

I heard Wild Thing derailed once. So scary, never gonna ride it

The same goes for the amphitheater space, doesn't it? It seems like a lot of Cedar Fair parks have their amphitheaters adjacent to the entrance or shoved in a far corner away from the biggest rides that make the most noise. Wasn't noise from Wild Thing part of the reason the current amphitheater is no longer in use? Building a new one on the opposite side of the park makes sense in that regard. The current amphitheater site would be great to create a coaster-tangle effect with Wild Thing's swooping helices.

Valleyfair is also on the cusp of becoming a major park. With the growth of the Twin Cities, demand on the park for bigger and better things is increasing. We already have had major upgrades in the past few years...an exciting wooden coaster, a great Planet Snoopy--larger than Cedar Point's--the removal of upcharge attractions to make way for more regular no-charge rides and upgraded catering facilities, a waterpark essentially doubling in size this year, a multimillion-dollar educational animatronic walkthrough for the schools to use as an excuse, and the mystery of the parking lot cones to top it off. The park is poised for extensive and exciting future development, no doubt about it. Could the cones in the parking lot have been outlining the site of a potential new amphitheater, one further from the noise of loud rollercoasters?

Fantastic, thanks! Having one doesn't necessitate the elimination of another. If we get an SLC, we can still get a B&M.

We'd all ride an SLC at Valleyfair, let's be honest. Not ideal, but still an addition that would bring new elements to the park lineup. Is there a park with both an SLC and B&M invert?