This past weekend, my dad and I took a visit to my grandparents house near Lacrosse, Wi(which is about 2 1/2 hours from Valleyfair!). I have never to Valleyfair!, so I thought that this was a great opportunity to do so. So we went to the park on 6/21/04 and paid $23(because of Taco Bell's discount of $10) and went inside of the park at around 10:15.
Let me just say that park was empty all day. The weather was around 70 with a few clouds. Now on to the rides.
Wild Thing- I got a total of 9 rides on this. 8 of them were walk-on and the other was a half-hour because of a breakdown.(A lap bar wouldn't un-lock.) This was a lot of fun. Not as good as Raging Bull though. I just floated in my seat. There was 6 operators checking restraints and it was more than enough. They had 2 trains running. They also had the Ride it and Drive thingy still going with 3 girls left. They looked really tired. I believe that they were going to add a twist to the contest that wouold've made it end yesterday. A helicoptor was flying around throughout the day. 9/10
Steel Venom- I got 6 rides on this with all pretty much walk-on or 5 minutes. There is not much of a difference between this and V2 but that Steel Venom is very close to the midway and adds to the experience. They also had 6 ops checking restraints on this too. 8/10
Chaos- I got 1 ride with a 5 minute wait. I actually enjoyed it. It wasn't too rough. 8/10
Looping Starship- 1 ride with a walk-on. The restraints are odd to say the least and it was a pretty much tame ride. 6/10
Power tower- 2 rides on space shot and 2 on the drop towers. Waits were walk-on to about 15 minutes. These are just fun, but they didn't give as much floating as the ones at Cedar Point did. 7/10
Hydroblaster- 1 ride with a walk-on wait. This is a dark flume ride where you sit on a tube. You don't get too wet. 7/10
Log Flume- 1 ride, walk-on. Just your normal log flume ride with a big drop at the end that got you partially wet. There is, however, a waterfall in the middle that gets you drenched, so I came off pretty wet. 8/10
Thunder Canyon- 1 ride, walk-on. This ride also gets you drenched and is a lot of fun. It is also pretty long too. 8/10
Excalibur- 3 rides, walk-on. They only had one train running and that was enough. It wasn't too rough, but still rough. I didn't have too much fun on it though. 5/10
Corkscrew- 3 rides, walk-on or 5 minutes. Again a 1 train op. This ride isn't really rough but wasn't totally fun. It was neat with the lagoon nd everything though. 7/10
Antigue Autos- 1 ride, walk-on. This was just a peaceful break in the middle of the day. 7/10
Ferris Wheel- 1 ride, 5 minutes. Ride this if you want a decent view of the park. 6/10
High Roller- 5 rides, walk-on to 10 minute waits. 1 train running. This was a very fun wooden coaster that has a few trim b rakes throughout the ride. It still packs a punch though. It closed around 5 for mechanics to inspect the ride.(they did this on other coasters as well). 9/10
Mad Mouse- 7 rides, all pretty much walk-on. This was a lot of fun. It had decent capacity and runs 8 cars. The front was a little rough compared to the back. 8/10
Overall, I had a blast at this park. The parking lot was only half-full and the food that I ate was good. The park is clean and definately worth another visit in the future. 8/10
On 6/22/04, on my way back home, my dad said we could check out the construction of Hades and Avalanche. A lot of work was ebing done to Hades and the turn around is taking shape.
Avalanche, however, looks amazing! Thsi ride looks like a lot of fun. And the 1st drop and turns are very steep. I took a lot of pictures and I talked to the General Manager. He said the ride isn't open yet due to the rain and the issues of getting the parts for the ride. The ride was currently beign tracked in multiple places. He told me that is should definately be open in a week. The train is currently locked up in storage right now. Testing should start in a couple of days. I can't wait to make a visit soon to ride this thing!