Valleyfair

Valleyfair
Statistics
Location	Shakopee, Minnesota, USA
Opened	May 25, 1976
Owner	Cedar Fair
Size	125 acres (50.6 hectares)
Official Website	valleyfair.com

Valleyfair is an amusement park located in Shakopee, Minnesota. The park opened in 1976. Valleyfair, along with Cedar Point, was one of the original parks owned and operated by Cedar Fair.

History

An amusement park opened its gates for the first time in Shakopee, Minnesota on the 25th of May, 1976, and set out to bring traditional park thrills to a region of North America formerly without a major amusement or theme park. Going by the name Valleyfair, the park welcomed visitors in the first year to midways lined with flat rides, a carousel, a miniature railway, car ride, and the main attraction: High Roller, a classic out and back wooden coaster created by International Amusement Devices.

Just two years after opening, Valleyfair was purchased by Sandusky, Ohio's Cedar Point as its sister park, thus forming the Cedar Fair amusement park chain which would eventually expand to include a number of parks around the country. The year after the change of ownership, the Minnesota park's first steel coaster arrived, relocated from Cedar Point, named Wild Rails (later shortened to Rails), with a compact, twisting maze of track designed by Anton Schwarzkopf.

In 1980, Valleyfair gave thrill-seekers Corkscrew, which followed in the footsteps of a similar coaster at Cedar Point as a triple-inversion steel ride from Arrow Dyanamics containing a vertical loop and double corkscrew element. At the end of the '80s, the park introduced a fourth coaster track when Excalibur debuted as a second Arrow ride, this time one of the larger mine trains to be built in the United States, with a 105-foot drop.

With the 1990s came the addition of an adjoining waterpark to Valleyfair, Whitewater Country, containing dozens of water rides, slides, and attractions. Then, on May 11th, 1996, the $10 million Wild Thing was rolled out as the region's tallest, fastest, and longer coaster and the first hyper-coaster from Morgan Manufacturing (now Chance-Morgan), with green track rising to 207 feet in height and a 5,460-foot layout spanning the park.

After the removal of Rails in 1998, Valleyfair again worked with Arrow Dynamics to install Mad Mouse in its place the next year as a 1,257-foot long wild mouse-style steel ride. And the very next season, Power Tower was launched with three vertical 28-story towers from S&S Power either rocketing riders skyward or shooting them towards the ground at 50 miles per hour. Three years later, Intamin AG's Steel Venom struck as an LIM-launched shuttle 'Impulse' coaster climbing up two 185-foot spikes of track forwards and in reverse.

Location

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Present roller coasters (8)

Name	Manufacturer	Type	Opened	Status
Corkscrew	Arrow Dynamics	Sit-Down	1980	Open
Cosmic Coaster	Zamperla	Powered	2011	Open
Excalibur	Arrow Dynamics	Hybrid	1989	Open
High Roller	Rauerhorst Corporation	Wooden	1976	Open
Mad Mouse	Arrow Dynamics	Wild Mouse	1999	Open
Renegade	Great Coasters International	Wooden	2007	Open
Steel Venom	Intamin AG	Inverted	2003	Open
Wild Thing	Morgan	Hyper Coaster	1996	Open

Past roller coasters (2)

Name	Manufacturer	Type	Opened	Closed	Relocated
Rails	Schwarzkopf	Sit-Down	1979	1998	Jolly Roger Amusement Park
Mild Thing	Allan Herschell Company	Kiddie	1976	2010	No

External links

• Valleyfair official website
• Valleyfair at Coaster-net
• Valleyfair at Logopedia
• Valleyfair at the Roller Coaster DataBase
• Valleyfair at the Six Flags Wiki
• Valleyfair at Wikipedia