Park 3: Michigan’s Adventure

If you just want pictures, check out these links:
Day 3: Michigan’s Adventure

Michigan’s Adventure in Muskegon, MI was the third stop on our roller coaster tour. We arrived fairly early, just before 10am on Wednesday, only to find that the park didn’t actually open until 11. Whoops! It’s a smaller park, and based on the operating hours and license plates we saw in the parking lot, it must draw a lot of local residents as opposed to being a tourist attraction. So, we waited around for an hour checking out the crowd and the park map, scouting out the rides we needed to tackle on the day.

Upon entering the park we found that it was really as small as we thought, although was filled with a surprising number of rides. The layout was more or less an out-and-back, versus a loop like the other parks we have seen so far. It was a quaint little park, with a large lake right in the middle of everything. The reflections of the rides in the water was really cool, and made for some nice photos.

The weather on Wednesday was fairly hot, and after riding all of the roller coasters (with the exception of Zach’s Zoomer) we decided to check out the water park. The way the park is setup, most of the roller coasters and carnival-type rides were in the front of the park, and the water rides and water park were in the back. It also seemed like the majority of the people at the park that day were at the water park…not a bad idea with the sun beating down like it was. We rode two of the large raft rides, and one smaller single-rider tube ride, which were all very fun.

The coasters that Michigan’s Adventure offered were not skyscraper high, and I’m not sure they broke any records, but they all were a lot of fun. Thunderhawk was very cool, and the announcement at the front of the park said that it was Michigan’s first (or only?) inverted looping coaster, so that’s pretty neat. The ride itself actually reminded me a lot of Maverick at Cedar Point, except inverted. The track area was contained in a relatively small area, and was intertwined with itself as the train twisted and turned and flipped upside down five times. This was one ride we definitely rode more than once, and was also one of our favorites on the trip.

One thing we noticed about Michigan’s Adventure was both the inclusion of Snoopy and lack thereof. The only thing Snoopy-related that we noticed was the Snoopy Boutique store near the front of the park. The park itself didn’t really have a designated kids area, which could be part of the reason we didn’t see more of him. There also was no Camp Snoopy since there was no kid’s area, but there were a handful of kid’s rides, and we saw plenty of little smiles.

One of our crazy goals with this trip is to ride all of the roller coasters that we possibly can at each park…but up until now we haven’t been able to ride most of them because we are too tall (over 54”) and/or we don’t have children to ride with. However, at Michigan’s Adventure there were no such stipulations, so we were able to get on the two small coasters, thus keeping pace with our maximum possible coaster count!

Michigan’s Adventure has a train with two stations, which earns bonus points because it is actually used to transport people to different places in the park. The train itself as well as capacity was pretty small, and our first time in line, however, the train actually filled up and we had to wait for it to come back. The ride was pretty cool, and offered some views of Shivering Timbers that can’t be seen from anywhere else in the park.

Overall we had a great time at the park, and this time we were actually able to ride all of the roller coasters. We also had time to ride a lot of other rides as well, which kept us pretty busy all day long, even though the park opened a little later than we were used to. We had a lot of fun, and it made a great stop on our adventure!

Ride List (* indicates roller coaster)

• Adventure Falls
• *Big Dipper
• Bumper Boats
• *Corkscrew
• Carousel
• Cyclone Zone
• Falling Star
• Flying Trapeze
• Grand Rapids
• Lazy River
• Loggers Run
• Hydroblaster
• *Mad Mouse
• Mammoth River
• Mine Shaft
• Scrambler
• Sea Dragon
• *Shivering Timbers
• Timbertown Railway
• Trabant
• Thunderbolt
• *Thunderhawk
• Tilt-a-Whirl
• *Wolverine Wildcat
• *Zach’s Zoomer