"Hey dere, not TOO exciting now..."
I spent the night in Faribault, Minnesota. In the morning I actually drove past the place that gives a ride nut like me a reason to know about Faribault, MN, but I didn't bother to drop in and say "hi". I don't actually know anybody there, and it would be impolite to drop in unexpectedly. This is, of course, a ride-geek quiz. To see if you passed, consult [Footnote 1].
Garrison Keillor has made a career out of poking fun at the German and Scandinavian Lutherans who populate Minnesota around the Upper Mississippi. They're good people, but they're also rather bland and boring. Now, for all the time I spent in Minnesota I can't say for sure whether there is any truth to that stereotype about the people. But it just might apply to the amusement parks.
I arrived at Valleyfair! about an hour after the park opened, I noted the gorgeous neon sign at the parking lot entrance, and I paid the ridiculous $7 parking fee. One thing I did notice at Valleyfair! is that half of the parking ticket is a stub worth a $5 discount on the Challenge Park attractions. I wonder how much they get for a Go-Kart ride...needless to say I didn't visit Challenge Park, but such a discount deal may make the high parking fee slightly more palatable. These high parking fees particularly annoy me because I'm spending a bunch of money and getting nothing of any real value in return. At Valleyfair! I still get almost no value out of the parking fee, but at least the ticket stub is worth something.
I proceeded directly to the park's customer service counter which, like the one at Cedar Point, straddles one end of the park entrance plaza. I signed in with my Cedar Point pass and was shown the back door, right into the park. Just inside the door, one of the first things to attract my attention was the unusual carousel. Most carousels are constructed so that the whole machine is suspended from the top of the centerpole. Valleyfair!'s machine is no different, except that instead of a shelterhouse over the whole ride, this machine has an open shed around the outside, tucked in UNDER the machine's roof. A set of casters around the shed roof serves to support the outer rim of the machine, so when the ride is rotating, so is the center portion of the pavilion roof. It's a kind of a neat idea.
I headed to the left, past the Tilt-A-Whirl. From the length of the line, I guessed that Minnesotans like their Tilt-A-Whirls. I passed a pair of diners, one predictably called "Coasters" (more about that in a moment) and approached Wild Thing. To my complete lack of surprise, not far up the hill was r.r-c correspondent and Monday Night #roller-coaster Chat host Jerry Dorf. Jerry was to be my tour guide for the day.
We began
with a quick ride on Wild Thing. Wild Thing was the first D.
H. Morgan coaster to open, although I think it was the second one built
(after Bonfante Gardens'
Quicksilver Express). The strange thing is that while its cars are nearly identical
to the ones on Mamba, the ride seems to have a more solid feel to it
than Mamba does. That said, I think Mamba has the better overall
ride to it. Wild Thing has a similar feel, but the ride is just a little
bit less extreme than Mamba (which is itself not a terribly extreme ride...).
Wild Thing's turnaround is less extreme, but more interesting to me than
Mamba's endless helix. After the turnaround, Wild Thing slows
through a mid-course brake, then slowly bunny-hops its way back to the station.
The tall, narrow sheet metal building contains some nice head-choppers, and
then finally the train glides to a smooth stop on the longest final brake run
I think I have ever seen on a steel coaster. So Wild Thing turns out
to be a Minnesota hyper. It's plenty tall, but it's a little bit on the mild
side. Not a bad ride, certainly, but again, it's no Magnum.
We took
a few more rides on Wild Thing as the crowd built through the eary afternoon,
then we moved on to the Mad Mouse. Valleyfair! has the first Arrow Mad
Mouse I have ever ridden. Arrow's Mad Mouse is really a nice machine,
quite a lot like the Mack mice, but with much larger cars, and some banking
on the turns. At first glance you might think that this banking is a violation
of the classic Wild Mouse form, which features unbanked curves. But in
fact this is different. The banking on the Arrow Mouse isn't the "corrective"
banking that would "screw up" a Mouse, but rather it's an under-banking
that allows the train to go faster through the hairpin curves, and also some
effect banking...basically trick-track type elements...unlike anything found
on other Mice. The stadium seating is a nice touch as well. As mice go, Valleyfair!
has a nice one.
Jerry
then led me on a winding path back into the far back reaches of the park. He
showed me the unique Barr
rapids ride, which, unlike the Barr rapids ride at LeSourdsville Lake, actually
looks like a rapids ride [Footnote 2]. We didn't
ride; instead we took a couple of rides on the very strange roller coaster across
from it. The ride is Excalibur. It's about as tall as Gemini,
and shares its wooden construction. It's every bit as steep as Magnum XL-200
on the first drop, except that it features a series of trim brakes on the top
of the first drop. What sets this ride apart is that its layout is that of a
very traditional Runaway Train coaster. It isn't a classic figure-8 like Gemini
or an out-and-back like Magnum; it's a ground-hugging flat curves and
helices Runaway Train layout. Trim brakes on the first drop are still a Bad
Idea™ in my book, but Excalibur still hauls through its layout.
The things this ride does just aren't right for this kind of coaster. The result
is a violent ride that is the sort of complete antithesis of Wild Thing.
I generally liked it, but the lateral action was a bit more violent than I generally
like.
We returned
to the park's main loop, past the waterpark. As we walked past the High Roller,
Jerry noted that the line would probably be getting shorter, so we skipped it.
Instead we rode the Yo-Yo and the Monster, and took a spin on
the Corkscrew. It looks like Valeyfair! has completely replaced the seat
molds, completely covering the Fiberglas seats with urethane foam. The result
looks good, and rides decent. The layout of Valleyfair!'s Corkscrew is
unusual as well with a quick helix leading into the station.
High Roller had to be one of the last rides built by International Amusement Device (yeah, I know, Colossus was later...). It's a nice out-and-back coaster, with entirely too many trim brakes on it. It feels like there is a fantastic Blue Streak-like coaster in there crying to be let out, but not in Minnesota where the park's motto seems to be, "Not too fast now...!" It's frustrating because the ride profile is so promising, the ride has these beautiful classic trains, but it just fails to do much of anything.
Speaking of not doing much of anything, Jerry talked me into riding Power Tower. As at Cedar Point there is a choice of either a Space Shot ride or a Turbo Drop ride. Personally I've come to prefer the Space Shot because the ride shoots you to the top of the tower, but drags the carriage back down at the top, yanking the seat out from under you, giving that nice "Wile E. Coyote" moment at the top where you're just sort of hanging there until the shoulder bar crunches into you. At least that's how it works on the good ones. Unfortunately the one at Valleyfair! really isn't one of the good ones. It just kind of goes up, then comes back down. Eh.
I rode Wild Thing again and decided that the park has a nice collection of rides, but is afraid to let them run wild. Ironically, the Mild Thing, an Allan Herschell kiddie coaster, may be the wildest coaster in the park. Well, no, that's not fair, because Excalibur is much wilder. But why is the Arrow Runway Train the most intense ride in the park? And it's hidden away in the far back corner as though the park is ashamed of it. The park also has almost nothing in the way of decent merchandise. What it has is all of the trappings of being Cedar Point North, but without the attendant charm. Jerry was careful to point out that except for the park logo, the Pepsi machines have the same Lexan fronts on them as the ones at Cedar Point, with the composite photo showing Raptor, Magnum XL-200, and Millennium Force. He was also careful to steer me into Coasters and point out the photographs hanging on the walls...poster-size black-and-white photographs of Mean Streak. It's almost as though Valleyfair! makes a concerted effort to not have an identity of its own, but rather to be a bland, generic park that tries to look like Cedar Point. The result is a park that is clearly quite popular with the locals, but which offers very little to serve as an incentive for anybody else. The place just isn't spectacular enough to justify a trip out of the way for anybody but a diehard coaster nut.
And maybe that's the point. Who, other than coaster nuts, visits the twin cities in the summertime? The park isn't any kind of resort, it's a local amusement park. It's not a regional attraction, it's a local park. And that probably explains both the tepid ride operations, and the perpetual lack of dramatic capital improvements. Cedar Point has Lake Erie, Michigan's Adventure has Lake Michigan, Knott's Berry Farm has Southern California. Each of those parks is an attraction at a major vacation destination. Even Dorney Park isn't that far from Philadelphia. But Valleyfair! is basically a local park. It seems to have found its audience. It's a very nice park with a good ride collection, albeit a ride collection run in "not too exciting now" mode. It's a good place to have a little fun. It's just not the most exciting park around. I spent a half a day there, then proceeded to Knott's Camp Snoopy, not quite sure what I would find there...
--Dave
Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Faribault, Minnesota is the home of Sellner Manufacturing, the company that brought us the Tilt-A-Whirl and a whole family of spin rides. If you knew that already, you passed the quiz. [Return to text]
Footnote 2: Recall that the Barr ride at LeSourdsville Lake looks like a log flume... [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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