Before I get into a recap of my day I’ll just give a brief explanation of how I plan to format my reviews.  I’ll review each, recap my experience, and state whether or not I agree with how the coaster is ranked.

I wake up at 6 am in order to get to Valley Fair as early as possible. Dickison, ND is on Mountain West time, but I’m not sure my phone knows that, as it reads 7 am while the hotel room alarm clock reads 6 am.  Either way I have 7 hours of driving to get to Valleyfair.  While Valleyfair is scheduled to be open until 10 PM, the rain and thunderstorms in the forecast may alter whether or not their rides are open.

I make it to Valleyfair at 4 pm and it is pouring.  My real priority is to get a ride on their best coaster Renegade .  I run in from the parking lot and go to the gift shop to buy an overpriced poncho.  I know my priority was to get to Renegade, but I don’t see a park map and I could see Steel Venom running in the parking lot so I book it over to that.

Steel Venom, Intamin Impulse Coaster, ranked 231 in North America

There was one other group waiting in the que for the front row, so I went immediately to wait for the back row.  If you’re unfamiliar with this coaster model it’s an inverted roller coaster with a launch and it sends you into a twisted spike, then you reverse and you are launched into a vertical spike.  There’s different variants of this ride, the most famous of which is the now defunct Wicked Twister which had two twisted spikes and ran at Cedar Point.  You go back and forth through the layout 2-3 times.  This is my first time experiencing this model and in the rain, I have to say it was quite fun.  Typically coasters ranked above 200 are hit or miss for me, but this was a hit.

Wild Thing, Moran hyper coasters, ranked 179 in North America

I rode both Wild Thing and Mamba (Morgan Hyper coasters) when I was a teenager and while fun they didn’t leave the most memorable impressions.  I vastly prefer the newer B&M hyper coasters that have been built.  When I got re-rides on Mamba at Worlds of Fun last year I was impressed as it was a vastly better ride than I remember it being.  A big part of this was Worlds of Fun turning off the trim brakes on the mid-course breakrun, resulting in more airtime in the bunny hills returning to the station.  My ride on Valleyfair was also more memorable than my rides from when I was a teenager.  Not because it a better ride than I remember, but because of the rain that was pelting me in the face.  For that reason, I can’t really give an evaluation of the ride, but I did learn a valuable lesson, avoid hyper coasters in the rain. 

Walking over to Wild Thing I overheard someone mention that the park was closing at 5 PM.  I pulled up the Valleyfair app to see if they made some sort of official announcement, but I didn’t see anything.  Regardless, they could choose to shutdown rides at any time and I still hadn’t ridden Renegade.  I wasn’t exactly sure where it was, but I started making my way to the back of the park in hopes of locating it. 

Renegade, Great Coasters Internationals wooden Coaster, ranked 62 in North America

I rode this once in the back, once in the front, and then I went around to get one more ride in the back and I had my first ever zen ride.  I have had the opportunity to ride many of Great Coaster International’s coasters over the past year, including: (Mystic Timbers ranked 31, Gold Striker ranked 36, Thunderhead ranked 68, Prowler ranked 75, and Zambezi Zinger ranked 104).  I’ve enjoyed every one of these GCI’s.  They have really good pacing, great airtime elements, solid intensity, but not so much intensity that you don’t enjoy re-riding them.  There are so many factors that go into whether a ride is maximizing it’s potential. In general, warmer weather, a full train, and later into the day (the trains have fully warmed up) make for the best rides..  My experience on Renegade was mostly empty trains on a rainy day, so take this with a grain of salt, but I prefer the other GCI’s I’ve ridden.  However, it was still by far the best ride at Valleyfair.

High Roller, Rauherhost Corporation, ranked 345 in North America

As I was heading back to the front of the park I saw this was still running.  I headed over and got in line and the ride ops told me I would be the final rider of the day, it was another zen ride.  I hopped in the back row and all in all this was a fine ride.  It didn’t really do anything too exciting nor was it overly rough.  This is the type of coaster you ride to get the credit, but revisiting it isn’t really necessary. All things considered, this was a mostly successful trip to Valleyfair.  They had 3 arrow coasters I didn’t have the chance to ride, but I wasn’t too terribly torn up about missing out on them.  Between Renegade, Steel Venom, and Wild Thing they have 3 decent fun re-ridable coasters.  If the park had remained open until 10 pm, that’s likely were I would have spent most of my time.  I could see Renegade being an awesome night ride, but that wasn’t in the cards on this day.  This is a great park to visit if you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t consider it a destination park.  If you like wooden coasters, you’ll definitely enjoy Renegade.