New ride(s) for michigans adventure?

I know what the park should get for 2011: a new website.

Hopefully this park doesn't turn into another Geuga lake, by getting rid of the rides to become only a water park. Does Michigan Adventure need new rides?Frequent local visitors may believe so. Does Michigan Adventure need a Camp Snoopy? Not really but to keep up with the rest of Cedar Fair park it seems logical and would be a good idea since the "kid" rides are sporadically placed around the park with very few together. Does the park need a starlight experience or HallowWeekend event? Nope there arent enough trees or sections where have an area with midway or walk path that could support it and the park doesn't stay open even close to darkness except for Timberfest, plus the area becomes a ghost town after labor day and with the water park being the main drive of this park, hallowweekends just doesn't make sense.
If they are going to any major expansion of this park, it needs to have accommodations. Duck Creek RV resort from what I gather is doing great right across the street, but its not a cedar fair owned property. I think they would have to do Castaway Bay type Hotel to make it worth building accomadations then followed by new attractions or building smaller flats, adding to the waterpark, and building the accomodations at the same time then going for something big that could draw more people in.
By far I am not an expert, this is a water park with rides added, even though it started as a deer petting zoo, that added rides, then the water park. Many people probably wont remember the competition that drove the water park to be a such a draw. Musekegon Had Pleasure Island water park that was the sole waterpark in the area, even though Michigan Adventure(at the time it was called Deer Park Funland) and Pleasure Island were like 10 miles apart, they complimented each other. Then Michigan adventure built Wildwater Adventure, starting billing it as two parks for the price of one, Pleasure Island then aggressively tried to draw people back to it park they were noticeably losing to Michigan Adventure by building a river country section, then got into finical trouble and eventually went out f business sold it's lake front property to become apartments. Thats when Michigan Adventure went stagnat also, nothing new was added to the water park, it was getting attention for Shivering Timbers, and not too long after that like 3 or 4 years Cedar Fair bought them up.
There is currently a Indoor Water park Just north of Michigan Adventure, double j ranch, about 20 miles. The place is not kept up that well, It's where the Rothbury Festival is held, but it went bankrupt, then was reopened, I can easily see a Castaway bay Hotel putting that place back in bankruptcy and out of business for good this time.

crazy horse said:

And Michigans adventure is within a 2 hour drive from chicago, and a 3 hour drive from detroit.

The difference being most people are not likely to drive farther to go to MiA when they have Great America or Cedar Point available and closer.

SFKK, on the other hand. . .

Captain Hawkeye pointed out that Holiday World is an hour from Louisville and three hours from Indianapolis and Nashville.

Louisville is...
...an hour from Holiday World
...two hours from Beech Bend, Coney Island, Kings Island and Stricker's Grove
...three hours from Camden Park

Nashville is...
...an hour from Beech Bend
...three hours from Holiday World

Indianapolis is...
...two hours from Kings Island, Stricker's Grove, Coney Island, Indiana Beach
...three hours from Holiday World
...four hours from Six Flags Great America

Crazy Horse pointed out that Michigan's Adventure is two hours from Chicago and three hours from Detroit. (Two hours from Chicago? Only if you drive across the lake!)

Detroit is...
...two hours from Cedar Point
...three hours from Michigan's Adventure

Chicago is...
...an hour from Six Flags Great America
...two hours from Indiana Beach
...three hours from Wisconsin Dells
...three and a half hours from Michigan's Adventure
...five hours from Adventureland, Six Flags St. Louis and Cedar Point

Realistically, Michigan's Adventure is drawing from Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Detroit, South Bend, Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo. And even South Bend and Fort Wayne would probably rather go to Indiana Beach. Chicago? Even with Shivering Timbers, Michigan's Adventure has a long way to go to compete with Great America, Indiana Beach and Wisconsin Dells.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

MunchumProductions said: also mamoosh do you work with cedar fair or anything cause u seem to know wht yer talking about...

cedar fair works 4 me!

While I agree with Jeff that they may be as grown as the market around it can support. I also agree with most everyone else that they do need something else in the thrill ride category. I think they will get something new in the waterpark before anything else. It seems to me that the water park is busy most of the summer and is the park's major draw, when the weather is above 70 degrees.

When talking about populations around the area nobody has brought up anything north of Muskegon. Michigan's Adventure draws mainly school groups and church groups from alot of Michigan. I live in Muckegon at the moment and go to MIA reguraly. I was there last week and there was a large church group from Traverse City, Mich, which is about 3 hours away. You could also include people from Wisconsin as there are 2 ferries that go across Lake Michigan all day long. One is here in Muskegon that links to Milwaukee. And the other is in Ludington that links somewhere over there. Green Bay, Maybe? I don't really know.

Also about the path between Thunderhawk and Shivering Timbers. Alot of that path was built when Thunderhawk was built and never finished. I don't know why. Mainly, I think the park just needs a little more TLC. Granted the park looks so much better now then it did with the prior owners. I don't think the park will ever get bigger then Dorney or Valleyfair.

Michigan's Adventure as stated draws from the Grand Rapids Metropolitan area primarily which is over 1.3 million people. I addition, they're are multiple towns in the area that bring it to over 2,000,000 people. The park also draws heavily from the Detroit metropolitan area (Detroit, Flint, Ann Arbor) which is almost 6,000,000 people. So the park has a great audience, the addition of more rides/attractions will only persuade more people from those areas and the area's in between to attend the park, especially with it's pricing point, many people go to both Cedar Point and Michigan's Adventure in the same year.

The parks location is actually an advantage. Once the park becomes an even larger draw, plenty of companies as well as Cedar Fair themselves can capitalize on the land by making the area more of a resort type area (i.e. Cedar Point/Sandusky). And those resort/hotel additions will only draw more people to the park. The park has enormous potential (especially being Michigans only surviving amusement park), and Im sure the people at Cedar Fair realize that, which is why they acquired it.

As for me, I'd like to see the midway by Wolverine Wildcat and Thunderhawk finished, and I'd like to see the addition of an S&S tower, or some sort of tower dropping attraction, and maybe a smaller Frisbee ride. They are in desperate need for more flat rides.

HOWEVER, just think of how successful this park would be if located near Ann Arbor/Detroit! It may be making money now, but it'd be making even more!

Acutally it probally best its not near Detroit or even Jackson for that matter, both are not the best treasures of Michigan.

For what it's worth, while in line for Skyscraper at Cedar Point this weekend I heard a little girl ask her mother whether or not they had done Ripcord at Michigan's Adventure. I'm assuming they were from Detroit.

cheerguy100 said:

HOWEVER, just think of how successful this park would be if located near Ann Arbor/Detroit! It may be making money now, but it'd be making even more!

If they were closer, Cedar Point would have put them out of business just like Edgewater & Boblo Island.

Cedar point had nothing to do with boblo island closing.....greed did. And that has backfired on them badly.

Backfired on whom? Boblo?

There were 3 investers that ran boblo island. Two of the 3 owners wanted to turn the island into condos even though the park was making decent money.

The 3rd(and largest) invester wanted to keep it as a park and invest money into the park.

Just after the park closed for the season, the 3rd invester died in a car accident, and the other 2 investers were left in charge of the park. Well, they did not want to deal with an amusement park, they wanted the condos.

So the park closed, everything was sold off and they began building the condos. They only sold a handfull of the many condos on the island. And that's how it still stands today. Besides a handfull of residents, the island is more less a ghost town.They lost money hand over fist.

There are still plenty of signes that a park was once there. There are a bunch of buildings, the space spiral ride, the boat docks, the ball room,a few fountains,some of the mini golf course is also still there in dis-repair.

That's it in a nutshell....

It kind of reminds me of what happend to opryland theme park.

Anybody have pics of what Boblo looks like today? Never had the chance to visit this park, only drove by it once when I was a kid.

Google is your friend!

Corkscrew Follies said:
Anybody have pics of what Boblo looks like today? Never had the chance to visit this park, only drove by it once when I was a kid.

This is the best site for the most recent Boblo island pictures.

http://www.waterwinterwonderland.com/amuse.asp?id=300&type=2

They also have a bunch of pictures of past parks in Michigan as well. I would recomend checking them out, as Michigan used to have some really nice parks long ago.

OK here is a quick update for Michigan Adventure. I was there today. Shivering Timbers was really smooth, with no wait, sending the single train running with at times only 1 person on it. Wolverine Wildcat, I will say this ride is now rougher than mean streak. The bebop boulevard cars, now lack audio on the ride, small flaw, but that was part of the "draw" to the ride.Only one waterfall working on Grand Rapids, and the action portion of the lazy river was closed yet again.We also had the extremely short cycle on the falling star but a very long cycle on the Sea Dragon. One big noticeable thing missing from the park besides a crowd, maybe 500 people in the park at best, was the fact in the past there was a lot of advertisements in the park for Cedar Point, examples the bill boards on bebop Blvd, advertisements to get the platinum season pass, and other things through out the park. This year there is no advertisement whatso ever for Cedar Point and there is NO mention of the Platinum season pass. I will say this was by far the smallest crowd I have ever seen at the Park, we had some downpours which all the rides and coasters never shut down which hopefully had something to do with the attendance, but it was a nice 83 degree day for a vast majority of the day with lots of sun.

Talonstruck, the Air Fair and Summer Celebration was going on in downtown Muskegon on Saturaday and Sunday. Plus, the Toby Keith concert was last night which was packed. Not saying this is the cause for how dead MA was, I too have seen light crowds out there all year. Also, I thought Shivering Timbers is quite rough in the back of either train towards the turnaround section.

People say MiA is a waterpark with a few rides added to it. I never felt that way. Maybe because I'm not really a waterpark fan - I can't handle more then a couple of hours and waiting 30-60 minutes for a water slide just seems wrong. I just went to HolidayWorld. THAT is a waterpark with some rides. That park totally revolves around the waterpark - the dry side is packed with long lines during the hour before and 2 hours after when the waterpark is closed but even the roller coasters are walk on when the waterpark is open. MiA has always felt more balanced - the dry side has just as much to offer as the wet. Adding an interactive dark ride or a large thrill ride would help keep that balance (preferrably along the new midway, but I'm repeating myself). On the water side, I would love to see a ProSlide bowl. Or even a watercoaster - Wildebeast was great fun.

PS - Funnel of Fear really needs a raft conveyor belt - those tubes are just too cumbersome to carry. I find that ride isn't exciting enough to justify carrying that impossible raft any time the line gets longer then 2 or 3 rafts. It would be nice on the family raft rides too. But I can't see them being able to find the ROI on adding that now.

The funnel of fear definitley needs a conveyer belt. Most of the funnel of fear type rides that I have been on has had one. I wonder how much of a problem a retrofit like that would be.