Trip Report: Michigan's Adventure
Muskegon, Michigan - 08/09/2002
"A whole...........summer of fun!"
It had been a grueling night, and I was happy to dodge the orange barrels and
Jersey barriers to pull into a cheap even-numbered motel in Hammond, Indiana.
I'd been sitting in a traffic jam for what felt like hours, the gas gauge was
hovering around "E", I was totally exhausted, and quite frankly I
didn't care that while the room was clean, the location literally stunk. Given
my physical and mental state when I arrived it's hardly surprising that I slept
in in the morning. Then when I got up I checked my email, and learned the good
news about Great America's Whizzer. I got up, I gassed up, and I prepared
to take the Lake Michigan Circle Tour.
For
most of this trip, the drive has been long, boring stretches of Interstate highway.
Today, that all changes. I finally get into a state with a 70 MPH speed limit,
and have to do much of the driving on 50-MPH US and State routes. It just figures,
doesn't it? On the other hand, it did work well for me when I was driving through
Grand Haven, MI. There, right at lunch time, I spotted a little walk-up food
place called "Ray's Beefburgers." I stopped there for lunch and had
the lake perch sandwich. Nothing spectacular, but it was this neat little 1960's
eatery, the kind of place that makes US travel interesting.
I finally arrived at Michigan's Adventure where there is now a big sign at
the parking lot entrance. Okay, Cedar Fair, Michigan's Adventure has a sign,
Worlds of Fun has a sign, Valleyfair! has a sign...When does Cedar Point get
one? It looks like work is in progress to shift the parking lot entrance even
further to the left, closer to Shivering Timbers, and to install real
tollbooths for the parking lot attendants. For the moment, the attendant had
a folding chair, an umbrella, and a 2'x2' slab of concrete. I paid my almost
reasonable $5 and found myself a parking space within walking distance of the
park gate.
Once through the surprisingly-complicated comp admission procedure, I took
a quick look around. The mammoth arcade just inside the gate is now a mammoth
Snoopy shop a lot like the one at Worlds of Fun, complete with a performance
space/meet-and-greet area for Peanuts characters.
I headed straight for the Big Dipper. This is Chance's attempt at re-creating
the old Allan Herschell kiddie coaster. It starts with a very cramped train
and a curving tire-drive lift, and finishes with a nasty kink in the track along
the back side that feels like somebody drove a truck over the track section
before installing it. I'd think that was exactly what happened except that it
was exactly the same as on the Big Dipper at Wild Adventures; I think
it must come from the factory with that kink in it. Maybe the Morgan guys (now
that it's Chance-Morgan) can straighten that out in future installations.
Next up for
me was the Mad Mouse. Very similar to the Mad Mouse at Valleyfair!,
this was my second Arrow Mouse. It, along with the Big Dipper, was here
during my last visit, but because of the rain that day (both rides use rain-unfriendly
friction drives) was shut down. Today, on the other hand, is a beautiful day,
a little on the cool side, which may drag a few more people than usual out of
the waterpark. The Mouse was good for a tic-ride; it was also my first
exposure to The Michigan's Adventure Tapes.
The Tapes are simple enough...it's about a 60-second music bed ending with
a jingle button. Basically like a radio zipper, you know, where the DJ plays
a music bed and backsells his set, gives you the weather report, reads off the
latest station tagline, and just as he finishes the music bed swells into the
station logo. Well, Michigan's Adventure has just such a tape, and they've filled
the hole with the standard safety spiel. The spiel ends with "Enjoy your
ride on ______ at..." just as the Michigan's Adventure logo comes up. It's
all very nicely done, but it's repeated endlessly, all day long, without any
delay between repetitions. It got really old, really fast. I was wishing I hadn't
left my knife in the car; one quick slice from a wire cutter and I could put
the speaker out of my misery. Not that I would actually do such a thing, of
course, but it did seem like an attractive idea...It wasn't quite as annoying
as the screaming CHR DJ on Lightning Racer. But I did get the distinct
impression that somebody had hollered out, "We paid a lot of money for
this music bed and jingle, by God we're gonna USE IT!!
Still in the entrance corner of the park, I took a ride on Zach's Zoomer.
Zach's Zoomer is CCI's copy of PTC's Scooby Doo coaster, which
is itself a copy of John Allen's Flyer junior coaster, which is a copy
of Herb Schmeck's Little Dipper. Heck, who knows, it probably goes back
even further than that. Point is, it's the basic 36-foot-tall figure-8-plus-oval
junior wood coaster design that has been done and done and done and done again.
Which is fine because it's a good design with a mild double-dip on the second
drop. What I don't understand is why Zach's Zoomer seems to be so much
faster than the seemingly-nearly-identical PTC versions. Maybe it's because
it was built by CCI, and that's what CCI coasters do.
Right in the middle of the midway is the most shocking scene in the park. The
entrance to the Corkscrew now sports a structure of three overhead truss-frame
arches that look suspiciously like the ones that used to be over the door to
TCBY Treats in Sandusky. The ride has a new sign. The station has been painted
yellow. The ride has been painted yellow and orange, with teal supports. It
sounds unbelievably garish, but it actually looks decent. More important, it
still rides decent as well. Still a totally manual operation, too. I don't think
it even has a pedal-counter.
There
has been a bit of a re-arrangement of the main midway. The Flying Bobs
has moved down to the end where the You Know What [Footnote
1] used to be, and a brand new bumper car building now sits where the
Flying Bobs were. Apart from the fact that it is painted bright yellow,
the new bumper car building looks almost exactly like the one Cedar Point tore
down last winter. Yeah, sure, all the mechanical parts...the ceiling grid, insulators,
floor plates, power supply, controls, that kind of thing...all came out of Cedar
Point's Dodgem I. It looks like they also salvaged the railings (which
is interesting since those railings are not "42-4" compliant). The
cars, of course, came out of Cedar Point's Dodgem 2. What is really interesting
is that while the building structure is different (concrete block pillars instead
of wood-clad steel columns) and it is painted bright yellow instead of beige,
it is the exact same late-1970's design as the old Cedar Point building. They
even retained the sideways-vertical "DODGEM" sign. It isn't what I
expected, but then, it fits right in with the Corkscrew station across the midway!
Further down
the midway is another important change for Michigan's Adventure. The Wolverine
Wildcat is actually giving decent rides now! It took a few seasons, but
I think the brake fins finally have the clearance they need, the track has been
tweaked and tightened and trimmed and whatever else it needed. It's still a
not-as-good copy of the Phoenix, but even though it isn't as good as the original,
it's now a passable ride. Much better than a few years ago.
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Of course, the big question, the big worry, is, "How is Shivering
Timbers holding up to Cedar Fair?" I am pleased to announce that
while there are telltale signs of Cedar Fair on Timbers, notably the added-in
vertical supporting structure as seen on Blue Streak and Mean Streak.
For the moment, Timbers runs like a gigantic Blue Streak, and so long
as that remains the case, I think the Timbers faithful can rejoice. There
are a couple of rough valleys, but nothing bad enough to worry about.
Timbers remains an amazing ride, certainly one of the best if not the
best wood coaster operating today. I just wish it wasn't an 8-hour drive
from home!
In front of Shivering Timbers is a nicely landscaped lawn. Next to Timbers'
exit is a simple railway station. A new Chance CP Huntington train now
winds its way through the scrub, overgrowth and underbrush alongside Shivering
Timbers. The new train ride must be intended specifically for Timbers
fans as it offers some neat views of Shivering Timbers, but not much else.
Actually I'm kind of surprised they didn't take a cue from LeSourdsville
Lake and use the train to complete the park loop by running it between
Shivering Timbers and the end of the midway near the Shoot-The-Chute ride,
basically running a loop between Shivering Timbers and Wolverine Wildcat.
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Continuing down the midway, a new Go-Kart track has been added beneath the
Corkscrew. It sits right across a midway from Be Bop Blvd., the
Morgan sports car ride that has been under construction for the past three years.
That ride is finally open. Where that midway meets the main path back to the
waterpark, they're doing another neat thing. That's the picnic grove, and the
park is offering a flat-price picnic lunch cookout. It's the closest thing Michigan's
Adventure has to a restaurant at the moment, and it looks like a neat concept.
Of course, when I visit Michigan's Adventure, what I tend to see is an under-landscaped,
under-developed amusement park. The reality is that the under-landscaped, under-developed
ride park is in fact merely a component of a larger, complete park, because
Michigan's Adventure actually has an extensive waterpark inside. Not much in
the way of slides, but there are lots of action pools and related attractions,
and the waterpark actually absorbs the bulk of the park population. Given the
meager ride complement, this is in fact a Good Thing™. It means that even
on a busy day the lines for Shivering Timbers stay manageable. I actually
wandered through the waterpark, but wasn't interested enough to spend much time
there.
Having scoped out the waterpark and the catering area, I returned to the main
part of the park. I noted how the wood-frame-and-netting fence is fully compliant
with the ASTM fence standards, but I cant help thinking it seems rather unpleasant
to have a long, straight, narrow midway so rigidly fenced in. My Mom would no
doubt blame the German influence over the local culture. I went down the other
side of the midway and took a ride on the Flying Trapeeze, a Chance Yo-Yo.
There I was disappointed when the head did not tilt. I don't know if that is
normal for Michigan's Adventure, or if this was merely a symptom of the operator's
latent brain damage caused by him being whacked in the head with a flying shoe
on the previous cycle. The worst part about that incident was that after it
happened, it seems it became a game for certain riders on my cycle to repeat
the stunt. The operator didn't get hit again, but I saw about five pair of shoes
go flying, and one sneaker took out the operator's umbrella. I'd think at that
point if I were the operator I'd institute a "no shoes" rule for the
ride!
I returned to Shivering Timbers and took a bunch of rides in a bunch
of seats. There isn't a bad seat on that ride, and of the recent major wood
coasters, it is the one that seems to be the best. This is the kind of ride
John Allen had in mind when he designed the PTC trains. I kept riding until
the waterpark closed, dumping a large number of people into the already busy
dry park. I took that as my cue to leave. Michigan's Adventure has come a long
way since the last time I was there. But it's still undersized, underlandscaped,
and underequipped. I'm happy to see them moving in the right direction. I headed
for Valparaiso, Indiana where I would spend my final night on the road.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Next: Indiana Beach
Footnote 1: Chance Chaos. The one
that demonstrated conclusively that you cannot visually check a bolt for proper
torque. Yeah, that one. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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