Adventureland (again) & !Worlds of Fun

Day 1 of our August Extravaganza involved nearly 11 hours of driving, and a last minute plan change. The day was going to involve Adventureland Iowa, Powerplay Family Entertainment Center, and Worlds of Fun, spending the night in KC. Originally, when we had planned the trip, WoF had planned on being open on a Friday in mid-August from 6 pm to 10 pm. This seemed rather odd when we booked, but weren’t going to question it. WoF isn’t an incredibly notable park, but has plenty of coasters that we were interested in riding, so we purchased our tickets.

The day before we were going to leave for the trip, I was double checking the hours for everything just in case, and yeah turns out that WoF changed the schedule on us, and decided not to open for the day. This caused a last-minute replan, but thankfully it all worked out. We were able to get refunds for the tickets (something that they “don’t normally do” but did “because we changed the schedule on you”). We kept Adventureland and Powerplay in the schedule, however we chose to shoot all the way down to Branson, giving us a chance to hit some of the smaller credits in Branson and having a nice early start at SDC on Saturday.

Adventureland Iowa

As I had visited the park about a month before this, nothing much was different. The park was a lot busier than last time (very warm day, and kids aren’t in school yet). We ended up getting a lap on all of the operational coasters except for Phoenix, which had an hour and a half line and no option for a pay one time fast pass. I really enjoy those Maurer SC2000s, but their capacity is abysmal, especially at a park that isn’t really known for speedy dispatches. Otherwise, this park was just as enjoyable and beautiful as I remembered, and Monster was still great. It was running slightly slower because it hadn’t warmed up, but it is still one of my favorite new credits of the year regardless. Really, an excellent ride all around. Not too much else to say though, great park as always!

Powerplay Family Entertainment Center

This neat little FEC has a nicely themed Miler junior coaster, with some neat lighting effects and an awesome sign. Nothing else really notable, just an overall solid visit!

Schlitterbahn Kansas

While we were in town, I wanted to go check out the location of the former Schlitterbahn park. This infamous park had a well-known incident on a waterslide known as Verrückt where the son of a Kansas state House member was decapitated after the ride vehicle went airborne. This tragic incident has been well covered by the media, and led to the park closing in the years after, and overall spiraling the Schlitterbahn parks into bankruptcy. Nothing left of the park exists, other than the vague shape of some of the landscape. The site and surroundings are being taken over by commercial development, and eventually there will be no further evidence that a water park ever existed on the site.

Historical Google Street View from 2019 vs 2023. My 2023 picture was taken from the end of the road that can be seen in the street view.

Runaway Mountain Coaster

After our long drive and checking into the hotel in Branson, it was time to ride some new coasters! The first of the day was Runaway Mountain Coaster, a fantastic mountain coaster on the south side of Branson. Being my first mountain coaster, I was very excited for this experience, but knew next to nothing about the ride. Turns out, this ADG contraption is one of the best mountain coasters out there, and was one of the craziest experiences out there! The ride is one of three mountain coasters in the Branson area, and has the most standard layout with one large lift hill at the start then a lengthy downhill section. Riding this at night meant that they had a ton of multicolor lights and music playing on the lift hill. It made for a bit of a sensory overload, but was overall pleasant. The downhill section was lengthy, and quite rambunctious. I had known how a mountain coaster works, i.e. you have a brake on your vehicle that allows you to control your speed. As an insane person, of course that meant no brakes for me. However this mountain coaster was so fast that I was really tempted to use my brakes in a few points. The laterals on this were some of the most insane coaster forces that I have ever experienced. The track work looks janky, but ran incredibly smooth. Zipping through the trees was highly reminiscent of mountain biking, except way faster. And, even though there were no gravity-driven uphill sections (we’ll get back to that), there were some dips that gave legit pops of ejector airtime. Overall this was probably one of the craziest rides I have ever experienced in a long time, and the last time that I was actually kinda scared for a ride since I305. The whole experience is a 10/10, must ride! Worth every penny. Though make sure you leave all (and I mean all) of your belongings in your car because you don’t want to worry about losing your phone on the mountainside, no way you are getting that back!

A note on mountain coasters

Given that this was my first experience with a mountain coaster, I was not sure if I would count them as credits. They are very coasterlike in their mechanics, however after this ride I chose to not count them as credits. There are inherently no gravity-powered inclines, due to the choose-your-own-brakes mechanism to prevent vallies and collisions. The ride also didn’t really feel like a coaster to me. It felt more like you were on a true runaway mine cart, careening down a mountain. It felt like a combination of ski lift, roller coaster, water slide, and unique forces that I think separates this category from any other amusement ride.

Track family fun park

Hey look an SBF spinner! Got like 10 laps, only needed 1. At least it wasn’t a wacky worm?

Branson (not a) Coaster

Our last stop for the day was this quirky mountain coaster on the main Branson strip. It was interesting that this coaster was located right on the strip, but had no line, where as Runaway Mountain Coaster had a 45 minute line and was a decent way out of the way for most people. This was probably not a good sign. This Wiegand model has a funky layout, with the station at the top of the hill, and then two lift hills, one in the middle of the experience, and one at the end. Overall, this coaster had far less vertical to work with compared to Runaway, hence the dual lift hill. Contrasting Runaway further, the layout was quite sterile and boring. Automatic trimming limited the forces, and the trackwork was almost too good, providing none of the fun forces of Runaway. Overall this experience, while convenient to get to, was far inferior to Runaway, and something I don’t ever need to ride again. 5/10