johnjniehaus Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 A friend of mine from ACE and I decided to meet up at Michigan's Adventure to check out what is often considered the worst legacy Cedar Fair park. I unfortunately had some delays during the 6 hour drive and arrived 30 minutes after park opening. My friend was able to rope drop the Mad Mouse coaster which was the only credit that I didn't get seeing as I refused to wait an hour+ for a wild mouse. I had already ridden the arrow mouse at Valleyfair and while it stinks to not have gotten the credit, I don't think an excessive amount of time in line would have been worth it. However,my friend said Mad Mouse is definitely one of the best wild mice she's ridden. I met her at the entrance after her ride on Mad Mouse and we got in line for Wolverine wildcat. I never realized that the park only has one train for certain coasters but this one was one train ops. Took about 30 min to get on. This was when we realized that while the ops at Michigan's Adventure are very friendly, they are not concerned with quick dispatch times. Which considering the park was pretty busy, became kind of frustrating. Anyway, Wolverine Wildcat was actually pretty good. Titan track first drop was glass smooth and the Gravity Group sections were also very comfortable. The Dinn sections definitely were rough but not uncomfortable (given we were not in a wheel seat). We came back later in the day and got a second ride on Wolverine Wildcat waiting nearly 40min and had a similar ride experience. The next coaster was Shivering Timbers. After about a 30min wait we got in line for the front row which added about another 15min to our wait time. This coaster does run two trains thankfully so the line did move a bit better than some other coasters in the park. I got 3 additional rides on Shivering Timbers throughout the day waiting around 25-40min each time. Rode in the middle and in the back too and it's a great ride no matter the seat. The coaster is slightly rough but not to the point of giving one a headache or being unrideable. Just had some healthy woodie bite to it. The airtime and sense of speed were amazing and there were also some very intense lateral sections. Definitely a top 5 woodie for me. I still prefer the Voyage and The Beast but I might have to put Shivering Timbers over the Pheonix at Knoebels and The Boss at SFSL. Definitely an elite rollercoaster and makes the trip to this park absolutely worth it! Up next was thunderhawk, the relocated Geauga Lake SLC.. I have ridden 3 SLC coasters (T3, Flight Deck, and Mind Eraser) and all 3 were a rather painful experience where I was just trying to defend my head from the restraints and survive long enough to get off the ride. So my expectations for t-hawk were rather low. I must say that the pain looked fresh and the purple trains were really eye-catching. After waiting 45min we got a row near the back and after we hit the final breaks I told my friend I thought that was the best SLC I'd ever ridden and she had to agree with me that while we both rode extremely defensively, there wasn't a single headbanging moment. I actually got to enjoy (can't believe I'm saying that word) the intense layout and inversions of the SLC and walked away thinking that it was actually not the worst coaster in the park. My friend got lunch with her all season dining (I wasn't hungry so I got another ride on shivering timbers). She said that the food service was abysmal and that the food itself was in fact terrible as well. I had heard a lot of bad things about the food at the park and she said everything I heard was true. Unfortunately there are no restaurants or infrastructure around the park so they kinda have you over a barrel so to speak on eating lunch. After lunch, we saw that the massive line for corkscrew had finally died down. We waited about 20min due to the one train ops. Corkscrew looked great, ran pretty smooth, and had two forceful inversions. The downside is it lasts a meer 26sec after it drops off the lift. Extremely short ride but it does pack in some good forces. Nice to see a classic Arrow still running pretty well considering it age. We waited about 20 minutes for Zach's Zoomer which looked like a PTC clone of Woodstock Express until I started looking closer and noticed a few layout differences. My friend informed me that it was built by CCI which got us both excited as neither of us had ever ridden a baby CCI coaster and we really enjoyed it. It actually rode like a CCI not like a PTC which just made us laugh the entire ride. After we got off, we decide to see if they would let us ride the smallest kids coaster Woodstock Express. After a 10min wait we were able to ride it and agreed that it was very janky for a kiddy coaster. Definitely some very rough transitions. After knocking out the coasters we decided to hit a few flat rides which surprisingly had minimal lines. We did the balloon ride in camp Snoopy which apparently adults are allowed to ride. Then we did the flying trapeze yo-yo model swinger. Finally we rode the trabaunt which of course brought back all those old memories of my childhood riding the trabaunt that was at Coney Island during the mid 2000s. They appeared to have a good variety of flats but we wanted shivering timbers re-rides and a opted to not ride things like the scrambler, Ferris wheel, and merry go round. It's worth mentioning that Michigan's Adventure has a pretty good looking miniature railroad train ride in the back of the park that connects both sides of the lake however we never got around to riding it. They also have 3 pretty good looking water rides (log flume, rapid ride, and boat chute). I originally planned to ride the water rides but when I realized the weather was going to be a high of 70 and cloudy the entire day, I didn't feel like getting cold and wet. So is it the worst park Legacy Cedar Fair park? Probably yes because of the slow operations and the horrible food situation. The coaster lineup is actually decent and shivering timbers is elite but other parks just have more to offer. To say all of that, Michigan's Adventure still provides a better experience than what I had at Six Flags America. Like Michigan's Adventure, SFA has horrible food and terrible ops but unlike Michigan's Adventure all the employees are super hateful and rude, many of the coasters are so rough they are just not enjoyable, half the rides are closed, and the park just looks and feels dirty with trash and half eaten food all over the walkways. Don't get me started on their bathrooms! Michigan's Adventure was clean, had good rides, and friendly but slow employees. If they could get the operations up to speed and improve the food, Michigan's Adventure would definitely become a more desirable destination. I don't see myself making the 6 hour trek up there again for a few years but it's definitely a park I would revisit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver2005 Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Shivering Timbers must have had more work done because it was a jackhammer machine last year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnjniehaus Posted August 12 Author Share Posted August 12 3 hours ago, silver2005 said: Shivering Timbers must have had more work done because it was a jackhammer machine last year. Interesting! It wasn't smooth but I didn't think it was bad. I've ridden much worse in terms of roughness Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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