Arnolds Park

USA 2014 Blog Day 8

Evening all and hope you are enjoying the blog so far. Well it’s been a week since we first arrived and today we drove to Arnolds Park (home to the infamous ‘Point of no return’ lift hill sign) in Iowa just under 3 hours from the hotel. It’s been 15 years since we last visited this park with the coaster club and we were looking forward to spending some quality chilled out time at this small park situated beside Lake Okoboji.

Since we last rode the Legend rollercoaster the park have spent $1 million on a complete over-hall and only the original lift hill and first turnaround now stand with the remaining ¾ of the ride having had new wooden structure and track. With the new design the coaster now runs 10 seconds quicker than the original ride time. However, we felt that although they has removed some of the elements and airtime from this ride that made it a classic coaster, what they have ended up with is a very good family friendly ride for all ages to enjoy.

Being such a small park being mainly aimed at families, it has a really friendly and relaxed atmosphere and the ride operators were more than happy for us to take our camera and camcorder onto the rides – always a bonus! We had purchased wristbands so had unlimited riding which we of course took advantage of, and also took a ride on the log flume hoping to get wet and cool down, but hardly got a splash. Took a short break early afternoon to sit overlooking the lake with a very nice strawberry milkshake (as you do on holiday!) before our last couple of rides on the Legend before taking to the road for a long 5 ½ hour drive to tonight’s hotel in Kansas City, Missouri.

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