Coaster Community

First I want to apologize for the delay between entries. I haven't felt like writing much lately, and sitting out on the back deck has made for a good diversion. Three weeks ago Valerie and I took a trip up to Altoona, IA (just outside of Des Moines) to go to Adventureland Park. We left town on a Friday evening after work, and after a hitting some construction, going through a few detours, and stopping for food we made it to our hotel around 10pm. The most exciting thing within sight of the hotel was a Casey's General store so we just watched TV that evening. The next morning I got up around 9am with the intent of getting to the park when they opened at 10am. But, after I looked out the hotel window all I saw was dense fog. The entire town was covered and visibility was maybe 100 yards. Since the fog was going to make any pictures I would take look bad, we decided to take our time getting ready. We ended up getting to the park around 11am at which point the Sun was out and the fog had burned off.

 

After stopping to take a few pictures we headed to the back of the park to ride Dragon. I had heard from a lot of other enthusiasts that this was a painful ride. While we were in line I heard the ride operator say some odd things. One of which was that she was encouraging people to hold their arms up during the ride. Usually you are instructed to hold on to the safety harness. As it turns out, I am glad I listened to everyone's advice. Dragon was really rough. I didn't feel sore afterwards, but I attribute that to holding on to the harness and putting my head against the head rest as tightly as I could. It was also really short and neither one of us felt the need to torture ourselves with that ride again. Another thing that struck me as odd, was that we had to take our back pack with us on the ride. We weren't allowed to leave them at the station, and there were no security bags to put our belongs like I have seen at other parks. To me this seemed like a safety issue, but I came out of the park unscathed so maybe my concern is unwarranted.

 

Next up on our list was Outlaw. It has a fun, but slightly jerky banked first drop. I was sitting in the inside seat and I inadvertently elbowed Valerie in the head with my outstretched arms. There were a few pops of air and the criss-crossing track made for a fun ride. On our first ride it seemed like it had burned off a lot of speed toward the end. On the second ride, it still lost speed at the end, but it seemed a little faster than our first run. Until I rode this for the second time I really liked the restraints on this. There was a single lap belt for each row, and the lap bar didn't come down on my gut like most restraints do. Instead, it seemed like the bars were a little farther back than most and the restraints were on my thighs. Unfortunately, I hit my knew on the pivot point for the lap bars on our second run so they do have some drawbacks.

 

The 70th coaster on my ride list ended up being Tornado. It had the same style of restraints as Outlaw, but with individual seat belts for each rider. This coaster is similar to a High Roller design in that it has large up and down hills, and a high turnaround to return back to the station house. There were a few pops of air, namely between the 2nd and 3rd drops. While it was a little bumpy, it wasn't backbreakingly bumpy. It was definitely acceptable for a coaster that is 30 years old. Valerie also seemed to enjoy this coaster. She sometimes has problems with coasters that simply go up and down hills through the entire ride, but this one didn't seem to bother her.

 

I wanted to take a short break outside of the park so we got on the sky ride next to Tornado. I hadn't been on one of these since I was a kid. The chair was more like a ski lift chair versus an enclosed car. For me it was a little terrifying. I have a fear of heights. More accurately, a fear of falling from high places. In a coaster I feel safe because of the restraints. This was only held up by a 1 inch or so cable and at times was a little bouncy. Although I got a few good pictures, it wasn't exactly my favorite. I would say it is doubtful I would ride this again unless I was extremely tired and didn't feel like walking back to the front of the park.

 

While I was outside of the gates taking a short smoke break, Valerie browsed around the shops looking for our obligatory shot glass that we buy every place we visit. When I met back up with Valerie we decided to take a ride on the train while we were at the front of the park still. The train was kiddie sized and you could only fit two adults per row. The train makes a figure-8 through the left side of the park. On its return path it takes you past the train station where there is a turn around that takes you through a shed. It was a relaxing ride and all of the children riding it seemed to really enjoy it. Not the best train ride I have been on, but certainly not the worst either.

 

After riding the train we headed to the center of the park to ride the remaining coaster on our list, Underground I had heard a lot of jokes about this ride, and now I understand why. It is more of a dark ride than it is a coaster. The closest comparison would be Fire in the Hole at Silver Dollar City. The difference is that the Underground has very little elevation change and it is a roller coaster in the loosest form of the term. Meaning, it has a coaster train and tracks, but the resemblance ends their. Unfortunately, the story line wasn't all that engaging either. Unless my next ride would be a walk-on, I will probably skip this in the future. I needed to get the taste of this coaster out of my mouth, so this is when we headed back for another ride on Outlaw as I mentioned previously.

 

After that we mainly just wondered the park for the rest of the day taking pictures. We scooted out of the park around 3pm, and shortly thereafter it started to rain. We ended up beating both the fog and the rain, which made for a more pleasant experience I'm sure. This was a nice park, but it is not anywhere near one of my top ten parks. However, I can see that this would be a great place to bring younger kids. There are plenty of family friendly rides for them, probably more than any other park I have been to with the exception of Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. However, one thing that bothered me throughout the day was the midways. They were always crowded, and the park really wasn't all that busy. There seemed to be a lot of bottlenecks in the park, but the worst were around Dragon, and in the Western/Outlaw area. The midways seemed more than wide enough, I think it is probably more of an issue with crowd control. At Worlds of Fun the Orient/Americana side of the park is always much busier than the Africa side of the park (of course that will probably change in 2009 with the addition of Prowler). At Adventureland the left side of the park seemed to take the brunt of the traffic. I have no suggestions on how to improve this, but it was probably our greatest annoyance at the park. Even though we did have some complaints, we did enjoy ourselves. I am off to Elitch Gardens this weekend. Look for that update soon. Until then, if you would like to see more pictures of this trip you can see them in my Gallery or on Facebook.

 

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