After a series of failed attempts I was finally able to get my three best friends together for a trip out to Muskegon and Michigan's Adventure. It took about 3 hrs to get there from the NW side of Chicago, not stopping once and going 80 almost the whole way.
First off, I love the location of the park, in the woods along side lake michigan. I also loved entering the parking lot, as you drive right alongside shivering timbers. Needless to say my eyes were not on the road.
The parking was $5, not bad, and the lot was pretty empty. Entrance was only $20, also not bad....... or so it seemed at the time.
To put it simply, i was pretty much paying $20 to ride shivering timbers (not that that's a bad deal in itself).
This is about as bland of a park as I have ever seen. There is no theming, hardly any landscaping, no shade, and not a whole lot of rides. To put it in perspective, they have just about as many rides as holiday world, but I would rather go to HW about ten times more than I'd want to return here again.
Not to say this is a bad park, the lines were short, everything was clean, and its inexpensive. The park just has no character to it. The layout leaves a bit to be desired as well, as rides are just placed sparaticly and a lot of the paths are not well connected (kind of reminded me of one of my RCT parks).
As for the trip itself, we got going in the park around 11:30, rode most of the rides besides shivering timbers, grilled out in the parking lot until around 2, then returned to the park and pretty much rode Shivering Timbers until we left around 6.
A few comments on the coasters-----
corkscrew-- this has to be the simplest layout for a full circuit coaster i have ever seen. And i thought CP's corkscrew was short. I was also extremely troubled by the crew on this ride as they didn't even check anyone's restraints before dispatching the train. Ride is as follows--lift, drop, turn, 2 corkscrews, turn, end. Still, at least it wasn't rough. 1 time C
mad mouse-- I am a fan of wild mouse coasters, as they give such a different ride from your average coaster. This one was an arrow and had the standard wild mouse design, it was fun, in fact I actually rode it three times. B
Wolverive Wildcat-- First off, the name of this coaster really bothers me, couldn't they just have picked one or the other? What the hell is a wolverine wildcat? If the ride were any good i prolly wouldn't care. It has a nice layout and a decent first drop, and the double up/double down hill was unique, but thats about all I can say about it. The pacing was not that great, there was little to no airtime, and no laterals either. Also, even for a one train operation the line moved especially slowly. I rode it 2 times....and thats just because i wanted to give it a second chance. C
Zach's Zoomer- Fun for a kids coaster, even mini cci's are fun. 1 time....B-
Shivering Timbers- Ok, why else would anyone even go to this park right? Shivering Timbers is a great ride.....but at the same time it does not make it into my class of elite coasters. It barely beats out Viper and Beast for the #3 spot on my wooden coaster list.(behind Raven and Legend). As u prolly know, ST is a simple out and back coaster of very large proportions. I found it to be unique in that the front gave the best airtime. Anyway, the outbound trip makes this an A coaster, you fly over some massive hills and absolutely FLY out of your seat. Never on a coaster has a seatbelt saved my life, but on this ride it did. There is a sign as youi go up the lift hill that says if you undo your safety belt you will be ejected from the park. I didn't realize how true that was, because if you have your lapbar high up (the ride ops didn't even care how high up I had it), and you undo your seatbelt, you WILL fly out of this ride, literally. So i guess ST gets the honor of being the first coaster to make me really fear for my life. After the first set of hills comes the turnaround, and then a bunch of standard bunny hops back towards the station, followed by a final double helix. The return trip was fun, but nothing special. Overall though, this coaster gives as much air time as any other one I've been on. However, it didn't have any kind of element of surprise or real setting, and that kind of took away from it a little, and kept it from reaching the class of Legend or Raven. None the less, if u are an airtime whore u will love this ride. I lost track of how many times I rode it. A
Overall, I had a fun time, at the same time i wouldn't recommend coming to this park if you are more than three hours away, cause it prolly wouldn't be worth it. Still, this park has a ton of room and potential if CF knows what its doing. The park has tons of space and is surrounded by trees, which I think could be well utilized in the future with a beast/raven type coaster which goes out into the woods. If they make some improvements and add some top notch rides this could be a great park in a few years.
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I dinna cry when me own father was hung for stealing a pig. But I'll cry now.- Willie
