Adventureland Iowa Trip Report - 8/1/2015

Yesterday during my trip to the Des Moines area, I decided to pay my first visit to the local amusement park, Adventureland. It's a small family park located in Altoona, Iowa that has some fun rides, friendly employees, and a nice atmosphere that exceed my expectations.

Adventureland has a nice charm that is hard to find in most parks nowadays. For the most part, the park is clean and good looking despite being a little dated. The Main Street section of the park especially looks nice. The park's employees were very friendly. They always had a good attitude, and they were making an effort to fill all available seats on the rides. It was also nice that food prices here weren't that ridiculous here compared to other places. The rides were a lot of fun, with Tornado and Outlaw being the park's best. Adventureland isn't perfect though. There is a graffiti problem in most of the queues, and the coasters can only run one train at a time, however I very much enjoyed my time here, and I'm looking forward to coming back next summer to ride Monster, the park's new for 2016 Gerstlauer Infinity coaster. I will reserve final judgement until riding, but I think Monster will end up being the park's new best ride. Overall, I think Adventureland is an underrated park that I would recommend visiting if you're ever in the area because there really isn't much else to do in Iowa.

My thoughts on Adventureland's coasters from worst to best:
-Underground: This just barely counts as a coaster in my book since it is more of a dark ride. No real thrilling moments. It does have some okay theming, although the storyline is a bit confusing and hard to understand. More for families than thrill seekers. 3.5/10
-Dragon: It wasn't quite as bad as I'd been led to believe, but it was still a fairly rough ride despite riding defensively. I will give it credit for having some decent forces though. 4.5/10
-Outlaw: This was my first experience with CCI and I walked away satisfied. Nice first drop, fairly intense, very good laterals, and several pops of floater air. A little rough in spots, but nothing bad. 7/10
-Tornado: The biggest surprise of the day, Tornado has tons of floater air in addition to nice positive-Gs and good laterals in the turnaround. It's better than most other out-and-back woodies I've been on, and I'm a little surprised it doesn't get more attention. 7.5/10

Now for the photos:

This is what most of the drive to Adventureland looked like.

Arriving at the park.

Adventureland's small entrance.

The train station at the front of the park. It reminded me a little of Disneyland.

Main Street area.

Park map.

Walking down the street.

Our first ride of the day was Tornado.

Pulling out of the station.

Cornfields and coasters in the same picture. Only in Iowa...

About to experience some nice airtime.

Tornado's station has no air gates, the trains still have buzz bars, and it uses skid brakes. Pretty old school.

Entrance to the park's Outlaw Gulch section.

Height requirement for Outlaw.

Noted.

Pretty good first drop.

Outlaw train speeding by.

The last turn before the station.

Alright, let's get this over with.

Nerd shot.

Not horrible, but not very good either.

Semi-decent loops.

Took a ride on the Inverter.

Yep, it was a fun ride.

The train passing by the Inverter.

Up next was the Underground.

About to enter the station.

Old animatronics.

Took another lap on Outlaw after getting a bite to eat.

Dragon and Tornado.

Dragon in the figure-8.

One more lap on Tornado before heading out.

Space Shot. Didn't ride this, but everyone else seemed to like it.

Adventureland's Log Ride, which will be removed after Labor Day weekend to make way for Monster.

That's it for my trip report. Thanks for reading!

[Paradox]

No pictures of Storm Chaser?

^Wrong park

Paradox wrote:

No pictures of Storm Chaser?

I did take these two pictures of Storm Chaster, although neither are very good. I didn't ride it because I had ridden the Windseeker at Kings Island and wasn't really impressed by it.

Cool report. I'm really excited to ride Outlaw and Tornado, AND MONSTER =D Next year cannot come soon enough!

[Coasterkidmwm]

The mini Windseeker is awkward looking as hell lol

[Paradox]

How were the restraints on the Inverter? The one at Adventuredome uses tight lapbars that are pushed down by another bar to the point where the entire ride is painful and when you are being hanged upside down it hurts a lot.

[mkingy]

Paradox wrote:

How were the restraints on the Inverter? The one at Adventuredome uses tight lapbars that are pushed down by another bar to the point where the entire ride is painful and when you are being hanged upside down it hurts a lot.

Submission was the same at Alton Towers before its timely removal. Completely ruins the ride.

Good trip report though - looks like Monster will be a really good addition to the park!

Dragon actually looks cool among standard steel looping coasters.

Paradox wrote:

How were the restraints on the Inverter? The one at Adventuredome uses tight lapbars that are pushed down by another bar to the point where the entire ride is painful and when you are being hanged upside down it hurts a lot.

Inverter's restraints were a little tight, but not what I would consider painful.

Adventureland being my home park (yet still 2 hours away), I've been there quite a few times. Tornado really is a fantastic out-and-back woodie that is often overlooked. It's not very rough and is just always a fun ride. Dragon wouldn't be so bad if not for the horrible design of the seats. They used hard plastic "padding" that actually sticks out into your head, and it's awful. Outlaw is a great coaster of which I don't understand why so many people dislike it.

^
That's odd, I thought most people liked Outlaw. I liked it a lot myself. It is a little rough and it isn't anything mind-blowing, but it was still a great wooden coaster.

My wish is... hopefully the GPs don't mistake this Outlaw for SDC's Outlaw "Run".

VF15 wrote:

^
That's odd, I thought most people liked Outlaw. I liked it a lot myself. It is a little rough and it isn't anything mind-blowing, but it was still a great wooden coaster.

Most people I've talked to seem to dislike it because it "hurts," though I disagree. They're also from Nebraska so they don't know what real coaster pain feels like (The Boss at Six Flags St. Louis).

lol240 wrote:

My wish is... hopefully the GPs don't mistake this Outlaw for SDC's Outlaw "Run".

It'd probably happen pretty easily, though Adventureland's Outlaw has been around since something like 1993. If I recall correctly, it was CCI's first or second coaster.