Valleyfair!

USA 2014 Blog Day 7

Tuesday, 10 June 2014 Ian

We are greeting you today from Minnesota, where we had a leisurely 5 hour drive over to Valleyfair. We arrived at 2pm and the park was closing at 10pm so this gave us a good few hours to chill out in the park. The weather was glorious all day (mid 80’s) and there were hardly any queues for any of the rides, so we headed over to their steel hyper coaster ‘Wild Thing’ for our first ride of the day.

Half way up the lift hill the train came to a halt, and a few minutes later a ride operator harnessed up to the evacuation walkway came up to tell us there was a technical fault and they hoped to get us moving ASAP. We were hoping we were going to get evacuated so we could climb out and walk down the lift hill but it wasn’t to be as 5 minutes later the train started to climb again and we were on our way. Still riding as good as we remembered, although not quite as fast as the brake run almost brought you to a halt on the return journey.

All the other attractions in the park were running well, although the staff were not as free and entertaining as they were in Canada’s Wonderland even though they are part of the same chain. During the evening I somehow lost Adrian, and whilst wandering around heard a voice shouting my name - and spotted him riding in the front seat (of an empty train) of the children’s Cosmic Coaster in the Planet Snoopy section of the park – big kid !!!

We decided to spend 8-9pm on Wild Thing, and then the last hour on their wooden coaster ‘Renegade’ which was running well during the day, but just comes alive and out of control in the dark and is just a fantastic ride. They have a strange operating policy where you are allowed to stay in your seat and re-ride once – but then have to get off the ride and walk around again for another 2 rides! We must point out that the staff on this ride were great and full of fun. On the last train of the night at 10pm Adrian and I were the only 2 people left on the train and had the very back seat for a final moonlit ride – just brilliant!