Apollo von Sol

Wow! These are amazing! I love that it's actually operable and are operating at a realistic speed, probably not to scale speed but that's how I like it. If you don't mind me asking, how much did you sell these for? I might be looking for some rides similar to these for an amusement park model I want to create in the future.

The ride renderings video posted on TPR twitter also shows the same thing, the belt being just between the ride vehicles and not a complete loop like an Larson Loop.

You're right, Lagoon's is the only park with one, BUT Carowinds will also be opening one next year too! There's also a Carnival in the US that has one, although I haven't seen it at my state fair for the last three years. It was the Space Roller Top Scan, and they are always a blast! Does anyone know if Sol Spin is a brand new Top Scan or this is another refurbished ride that Cedar Fair bought from their European trip? I know Carowinds is getting a refurb one that they did buy from Europe. Hopefully this is a sign that Cedar Fair is trying to put one of these at most of their park and I can hope Valleyfair will get one soon. I rather have one of these instead of a new coaster any day. I would get a season pass just to ride this all day long. They are that fun!

Thanks for that! I'm assuming it was tore down for Iron Dragon? From that picture it seems to go through Iron Dragon path, especially the station and partial of the lift.

Speaking of Skyrides at Cedar Point, A year ago, while doing some leisure time researching on the park for fun, I was surprised to find out that CP had another skyride from the Midway to Frontier Town. Does anyone have any picture or route map to show where it went on a park map somewhere? My research on the Frontier Town skyride has been almost been non-existent since there isn't much information on it. I would like to know more about it if anybody got some history on that skyride. Also, why did they choose to tear it down? Thanks!

Very interesting, I didn't know the underside of a inverted train were similar to a sitdown train. Thanks for that tidbit, I learned something new.

Wait, what? An B&M Inverted coaster brakes can be used on a B&M hyper coaster? Aren't the train different and the brakes latch on at different component of a invert train than a hyper train? I didn't know brakes were truly interchangeable with different coaster types?

I see a small drop shortly after the completion of the 180 degree turn from the station, but I also see a bracket mounted at a extreme height difference from the last one. If you look carefully on the fence line where the lift hill used to be, you can see a track bracket there. Notice the height difference between that one and the bracket just before it? Must be a steep lift hill or some kind of launch to get up that height difference!

Well the space above the arcade near the ferris wheel, opposite of Spongebob has been empty ever since they demo'ed that space a while ago at the end of winter, thats the only place I can think of to fit a coaster.

It's so weird seeing all the flat rides just sitting there next to a dirt road with no theming around it and no signs of any construction for pathways or theming. Also weird seeing trains just being laid there and not on a transfer track in a maintenance shed and seeing standing water on the jet skis, it just look like they literally built it just to build it then abandoned it.

Pft! The Star Flyer is one of the best additions at Cedar Fair this year! Consider yourselves blessed then, that you got something that would rate highly if you were a CF park! I rather get the Top Scan from Carowind. Heck I would trade the Wild Thing for it. That ride is the best ride a park could buy!

God... What I would give to have a Top Scan at my homepark. Hell I'll trade Carowinds a new coaster for one. They are my favorite flats and I could ride it all day long. I would get a season pass just to ride the Top Scan. You guys have no idea what a fun you are in for!

Fairly sure Excalibur isn't going anywhere just yet. The second Excalibur train is currently in the maintenance shop getting refurbished, don't think they'd want to remove it right after doing that. Do we have any proof they are actually doing anything with the second train? It doesn't take that long to fix a train. Yes, there's a picture of them fixing the train in the Valleyfair Backstage Tour Trip Report here on TPR.

I don't think Excalibur is going anywhere. I saw the trip report of Valleyfair backstage earlier in the year and there was a picture of the second train of Excalibur and the trip report implicitly said that Valleyfair is just doing maintenance of the second train and to expect it back on the track by next year. I don't think they would rehab the second train just to remove Excalibur.

You probably should check the headlines in the Carowinds park thread banner. It's old news by now, but they're getting refurbished carnival rides from Europe. Was announced a while ago to newspapers but not from the park to the public but we all know it's coming.

Thanks for the comments everyone, I appreciate it and I'm glad everyone enjoyed my trip report! My first of many here on TPR. Thanks, The Monster was a blast and well worth a trip to check it out! I did sit in the middle of Outlaw and the back of the Tornado, so perhaps you're right. All I know is that the Tornado gave me pains at each of the valleys and I'm a healthy person who works out 3x a week. Never had a coaster give me that kind of pain before even on Arrow corkscrews roller coasters. Bummer that you were only able to get one ride in, there's always next time! I've rode the Falling Star at Mall of America for years before it was removed this year, but when I went to Adventureland, it was inoperable with no staffing nearby to open it up all day (Even though they post staffs at the ferris wheel all day and never opened it once). I also did ride the breakdance in the arcade, it spun more than what I expected out of it, again if you were able to control the spin of the ride, I think it would've been a lot more fun. Yeah, after one ride, I was done with it, wasn't willing to give it another chance since it was that bad. It had a nice out and back layout, the only thing I'll compliment it on. Thanks! Honestly, I didn't think the Dragon was that bad, I was more nervous about something breaking on the ride than the headbanging. It's a shame that downtown Des Moines isn't more active after hours beside the bars since I saw a tons of new luxury condos/apartment near Zombie Burger and looks like the area is going through a period of gentrification, but it needs more life to it! It's just dead, doesn't motivate anybody, especially the residents in the new apartments/condos, to walk around and enjoy the downtown area. You're welcome! And yes I did notice this and commented on that in my TR. As I read in the main Adventureland thread, the older workers are Work-Camp residents, meaning they get to camp at Adventureland for a discount if they also work at Adventureland for the summer period. The only "young crew" that I saw was the crew operating the Monster. I suppose it saves on labor costs and allows Adventureland to staff the waterpark using locals since I can't imagine the work-camp residents would want to work at the waterpark or are physically capable of it. Pretty cool that a park like Knoebels has the same tea cup ride as Adventureland and it's in the middle of Iowa. You definitely don't see these type of rides anymore and when you see them, you just have to ride them because who knows how much longer they'll last. As for the Underground, I agree, I didn't care if it was a coaster or not, I rode it for the experience and I did enjoy it, I thought the theming was great for a "dark ride". There were some animatronics and theming element that needed touching up, but netherless, it was a good fun! I did, we (Me and my GF) didn't want to get wet so we opted out of it. I believe it, the Dragon didn't feel like it was riding right when I rode it, definitely made me a lot more nervous about it! Both wooden coaster was rough for sure, but the padding helped a lot more on Outlaw than Tornado in my experience. I'm sure if both coaster didn't have the padding and opted for the traditional seating, a lot more people would be complaining and not riding both coasters for sure! We didn't have a chance to do the skyride, it was closed all day unfortunately!

This is my first trip report on these forums and I hope you enjoy it! I had a day off from work on Friday, June 24th so I planned on a trip to Adventureland, Iowa from Minnesota with my girlfriend mainly to check out a new theme park I’ve never been to and to ride the new coaster, the Monster. We arrived in Iowa on Thursday night. We checked in at the Comfort Inn near Adventureland since their rates were super low at $105 per night. The hotel was very nice, the rooms were a bit smaller than most hotels but since we were only there to sleep in, it wasn’t an issue; the rooms were clean and had nice interior design. It wasn’t a “budget hotel” feel at all which was what I was expecting so it was a good price for me. ImmelMatt from this forum suggested Zombie Burgers for dinner, after an online look up of the restaurant; I knew I had to check it out, so after checking in the hotel, we drove to downtown Des Moines to Zombie Burgers for dinner. I had the Planet Terror (BBQ sauce, bacon, Cheddar cheese, ranch dressing, caramelized onion) with the Zombie Unicorn (vanilla ice cream, marshmallow cream, Fruity Pebbles) shake. The burgers were good, not the best I had but they were better than decent, I think the shakes won it more for me. After dinner, I and my girlfriend took a short walk around Des Moines thinking we could shop a bit for some souvenirs, but within ten minutes in our walk, we realized every shop in Des Moines closes at 5-6pm, we even saw one shop post a close time of 4pm, before the end of a normal work day! So needless to say, we just walked around for a bit taking in the scenery since the town was dead after the normal work day. We stopped at the local Hy-Vee store to get some craft beer to drink in our hotel on the way back and that’s what we did for the rest of the night. Look closely at the movie posters. Our meal! Brains!!! Delicious Shakes! Local craft beer which we drank at the hotel! Adventureland! The next day, we woke up around 9am (park opens at 10am) and got ready for the day. We arrived at 10:15am and got in line for the tickets which wasn’t too bad, only was a 15 minutes wait, they move the line fast. Also apparently one of the 4H clubs there was having an event day at the park on Friday, but I didn’t notice the park being crowded anyways. As we entered the park, we made a beeline to the Monster since that was the star attraction we came here for. The line stretched out to the midway by the time we arrived. They were running two trains all day on the Monster, but despise the two train operation; it only took us 30 minutes of waiting in line to ride. All day they had operations set up so that a train would be leaving the station as the other train was on the brake run, in some rare cases; they had a train on the lift hill as one was on the brake run. Speaking of the train design, I personally love the train design, I know others here don't like it but I think it's very retro and 80's. It reminds me of the movie, Gremlins, and for that, I love it! I think it's an fantastic design and is memorable. You would recognize what coaster it's from if shown a picture of the train alone, and that's a good thing. While waiting in line, I observed that the Monster restraint was a bit sensitive to people who were on the heavy side, being in Iowa, this occurred quite a bit early in the day than later at night. In one instance, I saw a couple take the “walk of shame” only to have the next two people in line take the walk of shame again, then the following two people were able to get the restraint locked. My only gripe about the queue line is that they separate queues for the two cars inside the station. The majority of guests were waiting for the front and people behind in the queue had no idea that the back row was occasionally empty which could’ve saved time waiting in the queue. Later at night, the ride ops were not allowing the train to dispatch unless they had people waiting for the back row (once waiting for 5 minutes for people to get in the back row queue before forcing people to go to the back row queue), but people had no idea this was occurring since the station area queue was so cramped and small as well as hidden out of sight of the main queue line. Entry of the station queue, hard to see the split queue for front and back rows from the outside. After a while, I made it on the Monster, and I must say it was a fantastic ride, for me to compare something with; it was like Spongebob Rock Bottom Plunge coaster at Mall of America, only much longer and bigger. The Monster first drop was extremely smooth and amazing, the first hill turn-around jerk element was the best if you rode on the outer right seat, and it just jerks you out of your seat. I’ve tried riding on the left side of the train but the jerk element was a lot less noticeable on the left than the right. The sideways oval loop quickly became my favorite element after many re-rides. The hang-time you have on the loop is intense. Imagine a normal coaster loop, you’re upside down for less than a second, but on the Monster, the loop element makes you stay upside down for a solid 2 seconds before returning you downwards. It feels much longer than two seconds that you’re upside down and that’s why I love it so much! Going through the block brakes before the sideways hang time element really does kill a lot of momentum that the train has, Mako style, at first, I hated it, but then after multiple re-rides, I’ve slowly accepted it as a good thing. The sideways hang time element is best in the right seat as you can lean in more to the right and become inverted. Next up was the slow corkscrew roll, again, just like the oval loop, you have a solid 2 seconds of hang time than the normal less than 1 second hang time on regular corkscrew rolls. It does give a nice ending to the coaster and if there were no block brakes slowing the train down, the experience would be much different and going through these two elements at the end was better slow than at if it was going at a normal coaster speed. Overall I was impressed with the Monster and is a solid great addition for a park like this. The sideways oval loop is probably my favorite roller coaster element now, the hang time was insane and there was no other feeling like it. The slow sideway hang time element. The right seat was the best for this element! More sideway hang time! More hang time to be had at the slow corkscrew! Love the hangtime as can be seen here! Weeeeee! Next up we went to Storm Chaser, my girlfriend’s favorite flat ride when we went to Cedar Point. Storm Chaser had some nice view of the entire park property and I thought the ride cycle was quite generous; we were up there for a good 30-45 seconds at the top. Next we tried to go on Tornado, but the line for the ride was all the way to the bottom of the ramp, so we opted to come back later in the day. Next up was the alpine bobsled ride. The ride cycle of this thing was so long I was ready to get off halfway through the ride! Seriously, we were on that thing for what must felt like a good 5 minutes just going round and round. After the bobsled ride, we decided to go on the Dragon. I was surprised by the lack of air gates that I was so used to after years of going to other corporate amusement parks such as Valleyfair, Cedar Point, and Mall of America. I guess it comes with the small private amusement park company mindset that people should take care of their selves and behave. Riding the Dragon felt like the train was going to fall apart, I could feel the wheels grind against the tracks and it did not feel right or safe at all. Neverless, we all made it through the ride and I did like the second half of the ride was better after the loops. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was better than standard Arrow corkscrew models, but it was barely re-ridable for me. One of the best entry-way I've ever seen at a amusement park! Kidding! Station wait or two line length all day. They offer free gum at the Tornado while waiting in line, don't think anyone took up the offer though! Afterwards we walked to Sidewider and got into line. I was expecting something such as Max-Air at Cedar Point, so I was very surprised when the restraint came down and clamped me in against my shoulder blades. I’m a tall guy at 6’3” but I never had a issue on Max-Air and had plenty of room to move in, but not on Sidewider, I could not even move at all and made the ride uncomfortable for me the whole time, I could not even move my arms since it was that tight with the restraints. Better hope nobody throws up over the queue! There's no cover over the queue! Next, I wanted to try the only water ride they had, Sawmill splash, but the line during the entire day stretched to the start of the queue, so needless to say I skipped it since I didn’t think it was worth a 30 minutes wait. So we headed to The Outlaw. I must say, if there were no padding on the seats, I don’t know if I could’ve survived that ride without padding on the seats. The padding helped keep the bumps and jostling to a minimum, but there definitely was a fair amount of bumps and jostling on that ride. I enjoyed the tight curves and turns, I wouldn’t say the rides felt out of control but it had some solid speed throughout the ride and didn’t slow down once until the brakes. For a small park like Adventureland The Outlaw is a good ride to have, but if it was placed at other parks, it would be mediocre at best. Knowing it was a small park however, I did enjoy the ride, it isn’t the best wooden coaster I’ve been on by far but it’s a good fit for the park. By the time we got off, it was 1pm, and my girlfriend wanted to go to the water park, so we took a long loop in the park on the way to the parking lot to retrieve our swimsuits. On the way we hit up some random flat rides since during our visits there was only a station wait. During our way on the back I noticed the oddest thing, there was a couple of rides that weren’t running but there would be staffs sitting in the queue line, and when I asked if it was running they would tell us no but come back in a hour or so and it’ll be running by then. The ferris wheel was another example, there were two people manned at the ferris wheel all day just to turn back people saying it was closed. Why not simply put up a sign saying the ride was closed instead of wasting two staffs sitting and doing nothing giving off the impression that they could run the ride but didn’t want to. Before going to the water park we decided to eat some lunch we stopped at the Iowa Café for lunch. I must say, wow what a deal for foods here, you get a lot of food for a very reasonable price. I was waiting to be gorged for food inside the park and planning for $14 meals such as Cedar Fair parks does, so imagine my surprise when lunch was a reasonable $8 for more food than you’ll ever get at a corporate park! That’s one thing Adventureland got right here, reasonable prices for food, everywhere in the park I went to, all the prices for food were cheap and reasonable. I don’t have any pictures of the water park, but it was packed with people. We didn’t go on any tube slides simply because the lines were overflowing that all tubes slides had lines at the bottom of the slides of people waiting to retrieve a tube. One thing I didn’t like was that you had to “rent” a tube for the lazy river, I’ve never experienced this before, I guess I’m too used to the Wisconsin Dells where they give away tubes for free to use. I believe Valleyfair, my local park, does as well so it was something that I disliked and we didn’t do at Adventureland. After the water park, we returned to the park to ride the Monster once more, it still does impress, the first time we rode it was in the back row, and the second time was in the front. I must say there isn’t a much difference between the back and front. There is a more difference on which side you sit at and in my opinion the right side (you get on the train last) was far better than the left. After that, we saw the line for the Tornado was non-existent, so we headed for it. Big mistake! I’ve never wanted to get off a ride after the first drop so bad ever in my life and I absolutely love roller coasters! We rode in the very last car in the back seat, and at the bottom of the valley of the first drop, the car banged so bad on the track that I felt my back compress a bit and got hurt from all the bumpiness and jerkiness it had. Every valley on that coaster was pain filled and it even had padded seats! It was the roughest coaster I’ve ever ridden in my life by far and my girlfriend agreed with me and we both swore never to ride it again. We rode the Monster again after that experience, then headed over to the Underground. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this ride from mixed reviews online. After riding it, I must say, if you consider this ride as a “dark ride” instead of a coaster, I enjoyed it and it did feel like I was going underground in the caves. Purely from a coaster standpoint, it barely could be counted as a coaster so I can understand where some people are coming from on this ride, but if you think of it as a dark ride, I think it helps make the ride experience be better in my opinion and I enjoyed it. No lines at all The flat ride collection that Adventureland had was decent, I did enjoy the tea-cups ride, never saw that type of ride before and I was mildly disappointed that it wasn’t one of those control your spin type of ride since I absolutely love to spin extremely fast on the manual ones. The Paratrooper was super fun as well, my only gripe with this ride was that it took almost 15 revolutions to stop when it was fully retracted to the ground and be able to get off, I kid you not! This part kind of killed the fun of the ride since at the end, all you want to do is to get off and you can’t, you have to stay seated for 15 more revolutions! Yes, we played bingo, but no we didn't win, it was all in good fun while escaping the heat! Overall I did enjoy my experience at Adventureland and see what a non-corporate park was like. I did enjoy the work-camp folks who operated the rides since they were so friendly and pleasant. On the Outlaw, the worker E-Stopped the train 3 times as it rolled out the station to ask the riders if they truly were ready to go! I thought it added to the ride experience and made it more personable, an corporate park would never allow this to happen. I did also enjoy the collection of carnival rides including the Inverter, a ride I remember riding nearly 10+ years ago at our state fair! The ride did look at it’s age as well, most of the flat rides didn’t have any touch-up paint and looked beaten up, but it also contributed to the atmosphere of the park. The lack of air gates was also surprising to me since I’ve never seen this at a park before and really did also add to the experience that this was a non-corporate park. Adventureland ran one train operations on all of their rides except the Monster all day, I shudder to think about the lines on a normal crowded weekend, but it makes sense with their work-camp staffings. Ironically enough I could see where the park puts their local hires, in the water park, literally every staff in the water park was at least 14-early 20’s (I think I even saw a 12 year old lifeguarding! (Yes I know that's too young but he looked that young!)) while in the main park every staff were 50-80’s and I did not see one young worker besides the arcade alley and the ride ops at the Monster. Would I come back here in the future? Probably not, the Monster alone isn’t worth the draw for repeat visits, but it was worth checking out the park and getting that non-corporate feel that fewer and fewer theme parks have nowadays. The Monster is truly a game changer for Adventureland and I cannot wait to see if they keep up with the renovations to the park by adding newer rides. Dippin' Dots guy says there will be a B&M Flyer coming next year! Stay tuned for the announcement from Adventureland! Thanks for reading my long trip report!

Didn't we discuss this whole SLC thing last year when Valleyfair put out their advert for this year and it had a generic SLC track and people took that as a sign we're getting a SLC? Beside in that picture, I think the artist just simply screwed up the drawing for corkscrew and inverted the track by accident.

Use this, http://www.adventurelandpark.com/funclub/ . I used it when I went last week and it worked. Only takes $2 off. Nothing else is more than $2 and I've looked. It's the best that you can get.

Do we have any word that Guy Koepp was at Dollywood today? He did threaten to burn down the coaster after all... #itllneveropen

There was never a chairlift at SDC Oh my apologies, I thought/assumed this building was a chairlift building from the TR, What is this building for if it's not a old chairlift building. Thanks!

I've enjoyed reading your TR's I've been considering a trip to SDC this summer and these TR are helping my planning. Just out of curiosity, what happened to the chairlift? I've tried to Google it to see what happened but I couldn't find anything about it. Thanks!

Did they run over every single bolt on the track with that POV? So bumpy! The other upstop pov was much better!

Great, I'll have to check out Zombie burger for sure now! That looks fantastic! I'm staying at the Comfort Inn near the park, but I'll definitely make the trip to downtown for those burgers! I've had been on a windseeker and Frisbee's since I've been to Cedar Point and rode those, but I'm still looking forward to those rides when I go to Adventureland and will hit them up. G-Force sounds interesting, is it one of those bobsled carnival rides? Also from google maps, I see an big indoor ride, is that the indoor wooden coaster that I've heard about? Is it any good?

I will be going to Adventureland for the very first time on June 24th to check out the park and mostly for the Monster. I'm very excited to be visiting a new and different park than my home park, Valleyfair, and will be making the drive from Minneapolis! I plan to stay at a hotel at the night of the 23rd, spend the whole day at the park on Friday the 24th, and perhaps visit the water park if it's warm enough then make the drive back to Minneapolis at night. Any advice for my trip about the park that I should check out anything special at the park? I see some unique flat rides I haven't done before such as the Paratroopers and I do enjoy flats in addition to coasters. Also are there any discount deals for the gate prices? Thanks for the help!