The Perfect Day at Arnolds Park

Photo courtesy of Arnolds Park

Last year, for the first time, really, I finally felt what it was like to lose a traditional park I cared about. The closure of Elitch Gardens several years ago was sad, but I had not been to the park in several years and had high hopes, at that time, for the new location. But last year's closure of Americana came as a shock to me, both because I had just visited it for the first time the year before, but also because the park didn't seem to be in any immediate danger of closing. The announcement that the park had been sold, followed by subsequent rumors that it would not reopen, were unsettling to say the least. The slow, reluctant realization that the park had, in fact, closed, was almost impossible to believe. I don't think there's an enthusiast I know who could make themselves believe the rumors were true. And yet month after month went by, with halfhearted attempts to gain information and rallies to save the park, all yielding little success. To this day the painful reality that Americana has closed, quite possibly for good, has yet to fully sink in. The optimist in me continues to hold out hope, but it would seem the current owner's actions do not include plans to revive this charming little park. This year, I feel that same sting again. Whalom Park has closed its doors. I was lucky enough to visit Whalom three times. To this day I continue to sing its praises for having the best Whip, the best jumbo hot dog and soft drink (Cranberry Dry), and the second best set of flyers in the country. Whalom was clearly struggling, though, so its closure doesn't come quite as shocking to me as Americana's. The loss, though, is the same. The thought of never again experiencing the wonderful flat rides at Whalom, or Americana's giant slide and Screechin' Eagle coaster sincerely depresses me. I don't think I'll ever be able to fly to Cincinnati or New England again without feeling some measure of sadness. So it is with immeasurable pride and joy that I return to Arnolds Park, one year after a remarkable community effort that quickly spread nationwide and resulted in the preservation and guaranteed survival of this tiny traditional lakeside park. Think about it: the owners deliver an ultimatim to the community that $5 million dollars must be raised in six weeks or the park will be sold to a group of condo developers. $5 million dollars from a community that couldn't possibly number more than 10,000 people! And how much did this community raise? $7 million dollars!!! The story of Arnolds Park's survival is nothing short of miraculous, and to me it is THE ultimate amusement park triumph. Bigger than any Disney expansion, bigger than any new coaster, and bigger than any Six Flags takeover, because this involved a true, old fashioned American underdog, grass roots rally, raising an impossible amount of money in an impossible amount of time by a community with limited resources and no discernable population base. The closest nearby major metropolitan area is three hours away! What Arnolds Park did was a miracle. So I come to celebrate this park, as I did last year, with an enormous amount of pride and joy. Pride that I participated in its preservation, and joy that the endeavor was not only successful but that it preserved a park that now appears to be flourishing. Last year I organized a trip involving about a dozen fellow coaster enthusiasts. Some, I think, appreciated the park and understood its significance more than others, but I was happy to show it to everyone. I think the more people who come to this remote corner of northwestern Iowa and see a successful park preservation effort for themselves, the better the chance they'll be able to help other parks that one day might face the same uncertain future. Arnolds Park deserves to be seen, as a testament to what a community can do when its people are faced with the question: are we going to support this park or not? Last year I sensed a change, more inward than outward, from the year before. Gone was the pervasive air of gloom and doom that hung over this park and everyone who worked there. In its place was a renewed sense of pride, an enthusiastic attitude that was evident right away. You could really feel the pride people took in having saved their little park. This year the change is more outward and visibly apparent. WOW! Arnolds Park is not only surviving, it's thriving! Everywhere we looked we could see upgrades and improvements - wonderful new landscaping both inside the park and along the midway grounds. Brand new construction of the pavillion. All new tubs on the Rock-o-plane - in fact every single ride looked either newly painted or replaced. Brand new signs hanging over freshly painted buildings. Throughout the park you could not escape the dramatic sense of progress being made - two separate landscaping projects, workers pounding their hammers into new wood for the pavillion, land being cleared for a crane that would come in the next day and begin hoisting supports for a new log flume (donated by Hunt's Pier). The transformation this park has undergone over the last year and a half is absolutely amazing! There is SO much optimism here and it's pervasive in both the people and the atmosphere! Cindy Stout and I drove down from the Twin Cities under cloudy skies, with the forecast calling for an all day rain. However once we arrived in the resort area known as the Great Lakes region of Iowa, the sun started to peek through the clouds. By the time we arrived at the park's entrance, we would be treated to sunny skies and comfortable temperatures for the rest of the day. A sunny day is the perfect way to describe our time at Arnolds Park. Forget about Disneyland, THIS is the happiest place on Earth! Everything looks so cheery and the people here are genuinely friendly. They also have an attitude very different from the typical traditional park. When you tell them how much you love the park, instead of looking at you incredulously, they smile and nod in agreement. There are very few parks of this size that share this kind of civic pride - DelGrosso's and Waldameer parks in Pennsylvania are the only two I can think of. Everyone here is genuinely proud of their park, and they're happy to have you here! I made more than one passing comment to Cindy that this place now reminds me of DelGrosso's (formerly Blands). The grounds and buildings and rides are so pristine - everything looks brand new! Well, not entirely new. The Legend coaster is so obviously historic (built in 1927 by John Miller, it's the 13th oldest roller-coaster in the world), along with the tilt house and wacky shack, that the park now looks timeless. In addition, we stopped to admire the lake this park is built along. I don't think I've seen cleaner looking lake water! You could actually see the bottom of the lake for at least ten feet from the shoreline. Whatever you choose to focus on - the park, the midway or the boardwalk - everything is in mint condition. This is one happy looking park! Cindy and I walked through the gates, under the Legend's station, and up the coaster's entrance ramp. We proceeded to do the Legend "Let's Go Again! " dance ten straight times - get off the coaster, run ("WALK!") down the entrance ramp, run ("WALK!") right back up the entrance ramp and get right back on the ride. There is no other coaster on Earth that generates a feeling of "Let's go again!" quite like the Legend. This coaster is so fun, so full of all the elements that make a wooden coaster great - an unforgettable lifthill, great speed, deep drops that go all the way to the ground, and enormous airtime in every single seat. The variety of airtime is great, too - some hills produce a nice, high lift, while others induce pure fear and dread. The final two hills are drop dead serious, so much so that one of them is known as "the nutcracker," and you are guaranteed to come back into the station knowing you've just ridden a wooden roller-coaster! To say the backseat is brutal would be an understatement. Not that it's rough, mind you, because it isn't. But it is violent - SO violent that I have to gear myself up for it. The airborne throw and slam at the bottom of the second hill is an oh-my-god-help-me moment. The ground level stretch of flat track in the middle of the ride might be seen as a negative for some enthusiasts, but to me it's a psychological ploy to set me up and psyche me out for the insane ending to follow. Particularly from the backseat, I've come to dread that flat track because of the fear it inspires - everytime I braced myself for that final, awful, deliciously evil ending. Seat one is where the airtime is the most gentle. Not weak, but gentle. You get thrown out of your seat at the top of every hill, and while the throws are definitely major ejections rather than floaters, there's still none of the violence associated with riding in the back. That is, until the ending. No one escapes that ending. And then there's seat three. This is my favorite seat. You get the best of both worlds - you get ejected at the top of every hill, and slammed in your seat at the bottom. It is absolutely violent, and there is no way you can ride it much without feeling a bruise in your thighs for the next several days. And so it's a little baffling that this coaster would inspire such a compulsion for repeat riding. And yet it does, more than any roller-coaster I've ever ridden. Part of it, of course, is the location of the exit and entrance ramps being located so close to one another. Another part is tradition - *everybody* does it! But nobody would do this if the ride didn't deliver the goods. And the Legend is an addictingly rerideable roller-coaster. There's something to be said about a ride that's violent without being rough - it kicks your ass at the same time it thrills you. And the thrill is so great it supercedes any reluctance you might have about riding it again. The Legend is a fairly short ride, but it packs so much into its layout that any accumulative damage from repeat riding seems minimal. That is until the next day! And so we rode the Legend, over and over. One of the ride ops, a really nice guy who would stay throughout the day, had a water bottle and would squirt the little kids on the train as they left the station. I felt like a little kid myself. Cindy asked me if I wanted to go ride the Rock-o-Plane and I said "let's ride 3 more times and then we'll go ride it." She laughed and said we sounded just like little kids. We rode the Ferris Wheel, which has the most beautiful view of the Great Lakes region, walked through (tried to anyway) the Tipsy House, then did the mirror maze, Bug House and all the rides at the back of the park. The Rock-O-Plane was like a brand new ride - these are not the same tubs from two years ago! The Tilt-a-Whirl was *outstanding!* We whirled the entire time we rode, the tub never once stopped rotating! And we discovered an attraction I'd never noticed before - the Treasure Island Jungle Gym, which I suppose is really for the kiddies but has all the elements of an outdoor fun house! We asked the ride op if adults could come aboard and he said "Of course!" It had some wonderful features - a row of punching bags you have to walk through, a rope catwalk with a very steep incline, several mazes and a wonderful slide to end the ride! We also opted to do some shopping. The shops are located just outside the park along the midway, and I cannot believe how friendly these people are. We went in one shop to purchase shirts and the two women there were delighted to talk to us, asking us all kinds of questions about our travels and genuinely wanting to know our opinions about the park, all the while helping us pick out the very best shirts. And their attitude wasn't the least bit phony, it was typical of ALL the people we encountered in this park, employees and guests alike. All the ride ops, concessionaires, adults, kids - everyone here has a friendliness that is really quite extraordinary. (Later that night we got stopped by the police for speeding, and rather than give us a ticket, the police officer "just wanted to let you know how fast you were going and that you need to slow down just a bit." He was so unbelieveably nice we thought he was going to hand us a homemade pie!) The shirt shop didn't have any of the golf shirts I like to wear, so we were directed to the Maritime Museum, which serves as a history center for Arnolds Park and the Iowa Great Lakes region. Sure enough, they had some *wonderful* merchandise! I chose three golf shirts with the Arnolds Park logo embroidered on the pocket while Cindy got a really nice Arnolds Park jacket. This is the kind of park where I am happy to shop till I drop, and it's really quite remarkable that a park this size would have such a nice collection of quality clothing and merchandise! Finally, we decided it was time to eat lunch. Last year Arnolds Park featured a treat called "Roller bites." They were basically hot dog shaped hamburgers, and even though they looked kind of funky I wanted to try one this year. When we got to the concession stand and saw that they weren't on the menu, we were told that they weren't very popular because they looked like turds! Instead the park offered some new menu items and we sampled nearly all of them. Texas Toothpicks are fried onion and jalapeno strips and they are very good! We also tried three fried cheese items - quesadilla triangles, pizza-filled cheese balls, and regular cheese balls. They were all very good - Cindy liked the quesadillas while I liked the pizza balls. We then went back outside the park and had an ice cream cone along the boardwalk. Cindy once again displayed her knack for putting more food on the ground than in her mouth. I suggested she put little placards at all of her food stops so people would know what in the world happened at this spot - "a gift from Cindy." After lunch we went back to the coaster, where we would remain for the rest of the day. We didn't intend to limit ourselves to riding just the roller-coaster, in fact we were having the *perfect* day taking in the entire park! But we had a goal of 30 coaster rides and thought we should keep riding until we'd reached that number. While riding we struck up a conversation with two little girls behind us. Their names were Briana and Sarah, and they were *very* impressed to learn we were on a coaster vacation! Finally when we got to thirty rides we were so excited! But Briana and Sarah told us they had ridden it 40 some times that day. They didn't say it like they were bragging though, in fact they made it clear they were there to have fun and not compete with anybody to get the most rides. "You see that girl up there?" one of them said. "She's ridden over a hundred times today!" "WHAAAAT?" "Yeah, she's going for the record." "What is the record?" "They say it's 204." Holy cow! Cindy and I decided to keep riding. Surely we could stand to ride another ten times! By the time we got to forty rides we were becoming "known" in the station. We opted to go for 50 rides. 50 rides on a roller-coaster! This would be by far the most rides I'd had on one roller-coaster in a single day. The girl who was going for the record, Tara Hanson, had been riding non stop since the park opened. She'd only missed one ride the entire day - never even stopping long enough to eat or go to the bathroom. I couldn't help but wonder where her parents were. At some point the ride ops allowed her to stay on the coaster without getting off. She chose a middle row seat, which I thought was nice as she could have picked any seat she wanted and instead allowed those of us waiting in line a chance to ride up front or in back. By the time we got to ride no. 44 we thought we could hit 50 in a matter of 15 minutes. But then the line began to increase and we had to wait one or two trains before getting on. By the time we reached ride no. 46 Tara had upped her ride count to 199, a full 153 rides ahead of us. Finally, we hit ride no. 50! WOO-HOO!!! Briana and Sarah were amazed that "old people" would ride so many times! Tara was now up to 203, and we decided to stay on and ride while she broke the record. By this time several park officials had come over, including the general manager. Tara was becoming a celebrity! Cindy and I, too, were gaining notoriety. We were told by the ride ops that we now had the "old people's record" and we achieved some measure of respect from the ride ops and all the kids riding the coaster. Briana and Sarah would provide updates for everyone in line, first giving Tara's total and then "the old people's" total. Finally when Tara made her record breaking ride of 205, everyone on the train and in the station gave her a rousing round of cheers and applause. Well, we're up to 52 rides. We can't end on a weird number like that! So we decided to keep riding. We'd go for 60 and that would be that. We still had a three hour drive back to Minneapolis waiting for us and had thought the park would close at 7:00. Instead they announced they were closing at 10:00! But considering we had to be in Chicago the next night, we thought it best to stick to our original plan to leave the park as close to 7:00 as possible. If we rode 60 times we'd still be able to leave the park at a reasonable hour. And so we rode. 60 came and went. Um, what are we doing still sitting on this train? Are we going for 70? Okay, we agreed, 70 and that's all. OH MY GOD WE'VE RIDDEN THIS ROLLER-COASTER SIXTY TIMES! SIXTY TIMES!!! And all we were *hoping* for was thirty! Someone ran up to the station and announced that Tara's record was mentioned on the radio. Apparently word was filtering out into the community that something special was happening at Arnolds Park. Pretty soon more park officials arrived and said the radio station wanted to set up a live feed and broadcast a live interview with Tara. Ride no. 70. Cindy and I looked at each other. 75? The General Manager of the park came up to the station and got in and rode with Tara. He asked her all kinds of questions about her day and seemed shocked that anyone could ride a roller-coaster that much! By this time I was shocked that her parents hadn't shown up. Where were they? Did they just drop her off at the beginning of the day and say "we'll be back to pick you up at 10?" The park manager congratulated her and continued to hang around the station for several rides. It became very apparent to me that nearly everyone here gets along. From the top brass down to the bottom, no one seems to be above talking to the next person - this place is full of "good people." Cindy and I reached ride no. 75. We didn't even look at each other when the train overshot the brakes and passed through the station for ride no. 76. Oh my God. WHAT ARE WE DOING? I turned to Cindy and said "are we actually going to ride this thing 100 times?" Cindy got a broad grin on her face and didn't dare say a word. And so we rode. We rode and we rode and rode. When we got to ride no. 85 the ride ops said "you guys don't have to walk around, you can pick whatever seat you want and ride for the rest of the evening." Cindy nearly died when I jumped in seat no. 3. "Oh my God, are you CRAZY? I'm never gonna be able to walk out of here!" We had our most memorable rides after that, thanks to a golden sunset that framed the ferris wheel, the lake and the Legend's final two hills. It was picture postcard perfect. The rides were insane. The coaster picked up a noticeable intensity once the sun set and our legs were battered mercilessly from being thrown into the lap bar. Poor Cindy had to hold onto the seatbelt to keep it from digging into her thigh, while I had to take, um, defensive measures to protect myself from "the nutcracker!" Finally, we reached our 99th ride. For ride no. 100 we were given the front seat, and amid screams from the other riders being sprayed with the water bottle and cheers from the ride ops upon our return, we joyfully formed our hands into a "100" as we pulled into the station. Tara was well on her way toward 300 rides, but I can tell you setting the "old people's single day riding record" felt mighty good. It was 9:30 and time to go. Neither of us wanted to leave. I don't think it's possible to accurately describe just how perfect this day really was. It wasn't just the sunny skies or unforgettable sunset that made the day so memorable. It wasn't just the 100 rides or being part of a record breaking day. It wasn't just the roller-coaster that I've come to love. It wasn't just the people we met who are so genuine and kind. It was the fact that all of this is a miracle. Were it not for the miraculous effort of a community that banded together to save this precious park, none of this would have been possible. I am so grateful for this perfect day. And I would encourage everyone to come and see for yourself the miracle that is Arnolds Park!