Michigan’s Adventure

We did not have a good time at this park, but a lot of the experiences we did have were backwards of expextations.

The rides (in no particular order):

Corkscrew

This classic Arrow corkscrew ride is still the perfect ride to get smaller kids into a looping coaster. The drop had some good airtime in the back, and the inversions were fun with minimal pain. We even encouraged this young girl to ride, and she came off the ride smiling. Arrow loopers are classic, and still very much have their place in parks.

Side note: It’s crazy how barebones this ride is. Only a few friction brakes and a lift. Completely manual restraints. A concrete box for a station. Wish parks would improve these old rides with niceties like auto restraint release, but I understand that the trains might not work with that. The new paint scheme looked really fresh though. Glad that there is still some care being put into this ride. Only one train in sight though

Zach’s Zoomer

Restraint overheated and started smoking during our first attempt to ride. After that was fixed, we enjoyed a small woody that has even less forces than Little Dipper or Woodstock Express, KI flavor. Good for kids I guess. One train here but that’s fine

Wolverine Wildcat

Somehow I didn’t realize this ride was named after Michigan’s school mascot until riding. As much as Michigan is one of my school’s rivals, at least the ride is decent now. The Titan Track did wonders for this ride. Smooth all around and some great floater airtime. Only one train here as well. My second favorite ride in the park.

Thunderhawk

Third SLC and first with the OG restraints. Honestly, preferred these restraints to both T3 and Nopuko. The restraints were soft and the forces were great. Rode back row, which I have found is the smoothest and most forceful experience on these things. Was my favorite ride in the park!

Shivering Timbers

I have been pretty conscious about not overhyping rides. Only a few rides have met or exceeded the experiences I have heard about from friends, mainly Steel Vengeance and Skyrush. Shivering Timbers was awful. We sat back row, which was a wheel seat mistake. My friend and I were shaken so much to the point of genuine pain and headaches, which takes a LOT for me. I could tell there was a decent layout, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the pain pain pain. This experience is cemented as my most painful rollercoaster rides I have ever endured, a spot formerly occupied by Zeus (pre retrack) and Grizzy at KD. This thing needs some help. Or, a wheel had to have been replaced

Mad Mouse

I haven’t talked about the ops at this park yet, but once again IROC ruins the day. A few of the ops I met and talked to were really nice, including the op of Wolverine Wildcat. But, I had one of the worst experiences with operators that I have ever had at Mad Mouse. We had ridden the ride (which was fine, not as good as TDK but still solid). The ride broke down once we rolled into the unload platform, but our restraints popped up, and we started exiting the car, thinking we dodged a bullet. But then the ride op SCREAMED at us to sit down. Restraints were fully open, fully parked in the station. NO REASON WHATSOEVER that we couldn’t get up. I asked why and they gave the generic “the ride is broken down and you need to stay where you are spiel.” It took 15 minutes of baking in the hot sun for maintenenace to arrive and tell us we could leave. It had to have been one of the worst customer experiences I have ever had at a theme park, if not anywhere. I don’t totally blame the ride ops. They are working a tough job, and have to deal with a lot of shit. But the training and protocals that they follow should account for something like this, and not make a mediocre day turn to shit right before we left.

As an aside, I always hear about how “bad” the capacity is of these Arrow mice. Why is that? They have plenty of cars on the course, and should seem to be able to run the ride at a pretty decent clip. But both at Valleyfair and MiA, they only let one car on the course at a time. Why? Is it a controls issue? Why haven’t they fixed that? A wild mouse should not have double the line of a 5000 ft long wooden coaster.

Tl;dr: Not a great experience at this park. I hope they get some more love, because the park is promising. I had a rough day there with ride breakdowns (more other than just Mad Mouse), but you could go and have a very solid half day there no problem with a few management improvements