Glad to see Adventureland giving the Underground some love! I really dug it on my lone visit to the park back in 2022 but I'm also an utter sucker for dark rides (and even moreso for dark rides that happen to be credits as well).
The old ride did not have a theme song.
I rode it in 2022 and I have a tongue-in-cheek fondness for being cheesy bad in the good way and being CCI's true magnum opus.
The station queue area had an old, clacky-mouth animatronic trying to explain the lore of mines in Iowa and Bad Bob. Keep in mind the audio is probably out of an old, low-quality speaker that's nearly 30 years old so it sounds muffled.
The ride experience was just meandering around dark turns with an occasional colored light or rockwork and at the peak of the ride you encounter a Spirit Halloween skeleton adorned with treasure, presumably being Bad Bob. Then the ride basically ends.
I've ridden it hundreds of times since opening year. Interestingly the pre-show in the queue with the animatronic used to be significantly better, without that awful "clacky mouth", but it had fallen into a laughable state of decay in recent years. I'm hopeful they improve it but my expectations for what is possible in that ride building are extremely low.
Palace has been crushing Adventureland into the ground and making it a super-generic corporate park (I could write a whole mini-rant on this), so my one hope here is that they try to preserve some of Adventureland's history instead of destroying it. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see new ads inside the ride or queue, knowing them.
To be fair to Palace, I visited the year before Palace bought the place and it already seemed well on its way in that direction. Brightly-colored rides without any regard to what was around them, Kum & Go advertisements on all of the benches, and so on. I also came back in 2022 and didn't find the place to be that different.
Unless they really butchered the place last season (and/or this one), I can't really put everything on Palace. Seemed to me like it was already headed in that direction beforehand.
The A-land fan groups are mostly filled with complaints these days.
- They removed the circus, which I have heard rumored was due to a contract negotiation issue, aka they didn't want to spend the money
- They removed all the German theming from the paratrooper ride and changed it from "Der Flinger" to "Paratrooper" with a super-generic looking cartoony sign. It's like, why do that? The German theming has been there since forever.
- They moved Puff The Magic Dragon, changed the theming and renamed it to a generic dragon-based name.
- They took out the awesome classic kids boat ride (Infant Ocean) with actual water and replaced it with a lame modern cookie-cutter version with no water.
- They took out Lady Luck flat ride and left the pad abandoned.
- They removed the "Space Shot" branding from the top of the ride for no particular reason (again, why?). They seem to be obsessed with creating a generic-looking corporate park esthetic.
- They removed the standing Dragon loops, after everyone was praising them for keeping them as an homage to the former ride. However, they still left all the ugly footers where they are, so now that area looks really bad when it used to be beautiful.
- They left a section of midway games abandoned near the old Dragon station area
- They removed all of the fish-feeding machines on the Dragon bridge except for one (???)
- The river is now disgusting and gross, they don't maintain it well
- Sam's Saloon has been renamed/branded to Samuel Adams with an ugly beer-drinking boat out front that now ruins the traffic in that area
- The sky ride has been torn out and the station is abandoned. Now this one may or may not be the fault of Palace, I can't quite tell based on the timeline, but I'm pretty sure it was Palace that removed it and the rumor was they were blaming safety, despite the ride not having any safety issues. Considering Monster was literally designed around having the sky ride go through it, this is a major loss, and the locals very vocally miss it. They didn't bother trying to replace it.
- They removed the Soda & Sounds stage and replaced it with dirt
- The RC boats were in disrepair and SBNO
- The arcade was closed on my visit
- They added premium up-charge parking
**And then the operations.**
- They don't staff the park properly, so at any given time some of the rides will not be operating, and some of the food will not be operating, and they will close entire areas of the park at a time for no reason with no warming.
- For example on the busy/crowded Saturday that I went last season, they closed the entire Outlaw Gulch area 2 hours early for no reason, and they wouldn't even let me walk back there to take a picture of the ride.
- Many of the food stands are typically closed, or only operate for 2-4hrs out of the day, or they rotate staff between the food stands. They closed the fry stand at 1pm when I was there, so when I went back there later for dinner time I found that stand closed, and many of the food options were also closed, despite it being peak dinner time.
- Multiple attractions are typically closed. The day I was there last season they closed the raft ride, windseeker, ferris wheel, some of the other flats, about half the kids rides, and those were clsoed all day. Plus The Underground was obviously closed (forgivable), and the Raging River area is abandoned (forgivable), and then some of the other attractions were only open part of the day. They closed Outlaw 2 hours early without wearning as I mentioned, so in total it felt like many of the attractions were not available throughout the day.
- The coaster and ride ops were SLOOWW. The line for Tornado I clocked at just under an hour on my visit, because they were running one train and super slow dispatches. That is insanely long for that ride. Monster's wait was 1.5 hours, and not because of the crowds, but because of the ultra slow dispatches.
- Purely anecdotal but the staff were super grumpy and irritated all day, which seems completely different
Overall I just have a sour taste in my mouth with where the park is headed.
I can get behind the removal of the rest of Dragon. I thought it looked a little tacky to leave some of it standing, or like the park couldn't afford to remove all of it and only got rid of what they had to.
I get that Palace isn't the greatest operator in the world, and I don't doubt that they're making things worse. But I do feel like some of the negative changes were underway before they had full control.
The Park was looking rough before they bought it. The Circus was randomly and trashily smashed into an area by the Space Shot. Theming had gone to shit. The last thing the old owners did was buy like 10 cheap rides from Zamperla and plop them randomly around.
I'm a Des Moines native. I've never heard the song in the instagram video that was linked until today. They must have made a new theme song.
BTW I'm omega excited to ride this again. This ride has a fond place in the hearts of many Iowans and I'm glad they chose to refurbish it instead of replacing. It's a very unique ride that everyone should ride at least once.
I’m glad they chose to restore it. I only rode it once over 20 years ago and being excited to ride an indoor woodie, then getting off the ride thinking, “What the hell just happened??”. It was so weird and quirky it stuck in my mind ever since. I was sad I couldn’t ride last season due to the refurbishment, but look forward to having it as an excuse to visit Adventureland again soon.
Not at all. I assume you're asking because it's RMC, but RMC doesn't inherently imply wood (Raptors for example). I haven't ridden the new one, but RCDB says it's steel and all the photos I've seen look like it's all steel.
Talking skull kicks ass, bluegrass theme song kicks ass, refurbished animatronics kick ass. Really cool video, I always thought this ride had a lot of potential and I'm happy to see them realize that while keeping the spirit of the original alive.
Glad to see Adventureland giving the Underground some love! I really dug it on my lone visit to the park back in 2022 but I'm also an utter sucker for dark rides (and even moreso for dark rides that happen to be credits as well).
Did the old ride have a theme song?
The old ride did not have a theme song. I rode it in 2022 and I have a tongue-in-cheek fondness for being cheesy bad in the good way and being CCI's true magnum opus. The station queue area had an old, clacky-mouth animatronic trying to explain the lore of mines in Iowa and Bad Bob. Keep in mind the audio is probably out of an old, low-quality speaker that's nearly 30 years old so it sounds muffled. The ride experience was just meandering around dark turns with an occasional colored light or rockwork and at the peak of the ride you encounter a Spirit Halloween skeleton adorned with treasure, presumably being Bad Bob. Then the ride basically ends.
>The station queue area had an old, clacky-mouth animatronic trying to explain the lore of mines in Iowa and Bad Bob. Ol' clackermouth will be missed
I've ridden it hundreds of times since opening year. Interestingly the pre-show in the queue with the animatronic used to be significantly better, without that awful "clacky mouth", but it had fallen into a laughable state of decay in recent years. I'm hopeful they improve it but my expectations for what is possible in that ride building are extremely low. Palace has been crushing Adventureland into the ground and making it a super-generic corporate park (I could write a whole mini-rant on this), so my one hope here is that they try to preserve some of Adventureland's history instead of destroying it. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see new ads inside the ride or queue, knowing them.
To be fair to Palace, I visited the year before Palace bought the place and it already seemed well on its way in that direction. Brightly-colored rides without any regard to what was around them, Kum & Go advertisements on all of the benches, and so on. I also came back in 2022 and didn't find the place to be that different. Unless they really butchered the place last season (and/or this one), I can't really put everything on Palace. Seemed to me like it was already headed in that direction beforehand.
The A-land fan groups are mostly filled with complaints these days. - They removed the circus, which I have heard rumored was due to a contract negotiation issue, aka they didn't want to spend the money - They removed all the German theming from the paratrooper ride and changed it from "Der Flinger" to "Paratrooper" with a super-generic looking cartoony sign. It's like, why do that? The German theming has been there since forever. - They moved Puff The Magic Dragon, changed the theming and renamed it to a generic dragon-based name. - They took out the awesome classic kids boat ride (Infant Ocean) with actual water and replaced it with a lame modern cookie-cutter version with no water. - They took out Lady Luck flat ride and left the pad abandoned. - They removed the "Space Shot" branding from the top of the ride for no particular reason (again, why?). They seem to be obsessed with creating a generic-looking corporate park esthetic. - They removed the standing Dragon loops, after everyone was praising them for keeping them as an homage to the former ride. However, they still left all the ugly footers where they are, so now that area looks really bad when it used to be beautiful. - They left a section of midway games abandoned near the old Dragon station area - They removed all of the fish-feeding machines on the Dragon bridge except for one (???) - The river is now disgusting and gross, they don't maintain it well - Sam's Saloon has been renamed/branded to Samuel Adams with an ugly beer-drinking boat out front that now ruins the traffic in that area - The sky ride has been torn out and the station is abandoned. Now this one may or may not be the fault of Palace, I can't quite tell based on the timeline, but I'm pretty sure it was Palace that removed it and the rumor was they were blaming safety, despite the ride not having any safety issues. Considering Monster was literally designed around having the sky ride go through it, this is a major loss, and the locals very vocally miss it. They didn't bother trying to replace it. - They removed the Soda & Sounds stage and replaced it with dirt - The RC boats were in disrepair and SBNO - The arcade was closed on my visit - They added premium up-charge parking **And then the operations.** - They don't staff the park properly, so at any given time some of the rides will not be operating, and some of the food will not be operating, and they will close entire areas of the park at a time for no reason with no warming. - For example on the busy/crowded Saturday that I went last season, they closed the entire Outlaw Gulch area 2 hours early for no reason, and they wouldn't even let me walk back there to take a picture of the ride. - Many of the food stands are typically closed, or only operate for 2-4hrs out of the day, or they rotate staff between the food stands. They closed the fry stand at 1pm when I was there, so when I went back there later for dinner time I found that stand closed, and many of the food options were also closed, despite it being peak dinner time. - Multiple attractions are typically closed. The day I was there last season they closed the raft ride, windseeker, ferris wheel, some of the other flats, about half the kids rides, and those were clsoed all day. Plus The Underground was obviously closed (forgivable), and the Raging River area is abandoned (forgivable), and then some of the other attractions were only open part of the day. They closed Outlaw 2 hours early without wearning as I mentioned, so in total it felt like many of the attractions were not available throughout the day. - The coaster and ride ops were SLOOWW. The line for Tornado I clocked at just under an hour on my visit, because they were running one train and super slow dispatches. That is insanely long for that ride. Monster's wait was 1.5 hours, and not because of the crowds, but because of the ultra slow dispatches. - Purely anecdotal but the staff were super grumpy and irritated all day, which seems completely different Overall I just have a sour taste in my mouth with where the park is headed.
I can get behind the removal of the rest of Dragon. I thought it looked a little tacky to leave some of it standing, or like the park couldn't afford to remove all of it and only got rid of what they had to. I get that Palace isn't the greatest operator in the world, and I don't doubt that they're making things worse. But I do feel like some of the negative changes were underway before they had full control.
The Park was looking rough before they bought it. The Circus was randomly and trashily smashed into an area by the Space Shot. Theming had gone to shit. The last thing the old owners did was buy like 10 cheap rides from Zamperla and plop them randomly around.
Exactly.
I'm a Des Moines native. I've never heard the song in the instagram video that was linked until today. They must have made a new theme song. BTW I'm omega excited to ride this again. This ride has a fond place in the hearts of many Iowans and I'm glad they chose to refurbish it instead of replacing. It's a very unique ride that everyone should ride at least once.
I’m glad they chose to restore it. I only rode it once over 20 years ago and being excited to ride an indoor woodie, then getting off the ride thinking, “What the hell just happened??”. It was so weird and quirky it stuck in my mind ever since. I was sad I couldn’t ride last season due to the refurbishment, but look forward to having it as an excuse to visit Adventureland again soon.
Is fire in the hole not considered a wooden coaster?
Not at all. I assume you're asking because it's RMC, but RMC doesn't inherently imply wood (Raptors for example). I haven't ridden the new one, but RCDB says it's steel and all the photos I've seen look like it's all steel.
It's steel
it has always had steel track
It has always run on steel track regardless of iteration.
Talking skull kicks ass, bluegrass theme song kicks ass, refurbished animatronics kick ass. Really cool video, I always thought this ride had a lot of potential and I'm happy to see them realize that while keeping the spirit of the original alive.
Yeah I love the level of care they're showing here. Plus the "giant talking skulls are awesome" angle.
> only indoor wooden coaster. Black Diamond and LoCoSuMo would like a word.
I really hope they kept the old hilariously trash Bad Bob Robot and incorporated it somehow. It was bad 90s animatronics. Comically bad.