Ups and downs in Middle America
The room is dark except for a few orange wall torches throwing a dim light down the curtained hallway. It’s hard to make out, but ever so often I catch a glimpse of the macabre: skeletons shackled to the wall, a corpse hanging from the rafters, the velvety lining of a partially opened coffin leaning in a corner, a painting of Whistler’s Mother holding a bloodied axe. I feel my way along the stone walls to keep up with the rest of the group.
Suddenly our guide throws the switch for the fluorescent lights overhead. Much of the magic and mystery evaporates, and I find myself in a room filled with latex and foam props awaiting the next October.
“Over here is a harness,” the guide says, gesturing to the corner where an elaborate rope swing is docked, “where the talent can swoop in and scare folks coming around the corner. You can see the spot on the floor where he lands.”
It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m at World of Fun in Kansas City, Mo., with my roommate and his two coworkers, all employees of Valleyfair, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the park’s Halloween Haunt accommodations. We’re in the vampire chamber, which sits unobtrusively in the middle of the park in an old roller coaster docking station. Caleb and Dave ask tons of questions, taking mental notes of designs and concepts to borrow for their own ValleyScare creations. Kara snaps tons of photos. I drink in the theatrics of it all.
We made the six-hour drive the night before, stopping for chili dogs and burgers at Sonic (at Kara’s giddy request) and loading up on liquor and mixers at a nearby grocery store. Ostensibly this was a business trip for the park employees to check out the facilities and gather ideas to take back to Valleyfair and improve their guests experiences. Really it was a chance to ride some bitchin’ coasters and gorge ourselves silly on overpriced food. And ride and gorge we did.
I do love me some roller coasters, but I’m in no way a connoisseur like my compatriots. For one, I am an unabashed screamer, much to the amusement of anybody stuck sitting next to me. Two, I can count the number of different parks I’ve been to on one hand, so I don’t have the largest frame of reference for comparing thrills. The big hit of the day was definitely The Patriot, a hanging coaster with steep drops, loops and barrel rolls. That and the Finnish Fling — and old-school centrifuge where the floor drops out. Evidently, there aren’t that many still in operation around the country, and we had the privilege of seeing two. More on that in a bit.
We took a lunch break and headed over to a nearby casino to load up on piles upon piles of fantastic KC barbecue and beer. With a pound of meat per person, it was kinda hard to walk after lunch. But after stopping by the cabin and cracking into the liquor, we were ready for more park punishment.
Now, I hate to say it, but I’m a bit of a weenie, and I fell asleep shortly after we retired for the night. Evidently I missed some shenanigans. All I’m saying is when I woke up, Kara had shoved herself into the cabinet under the sink, convinced it’d be a good place to spend the night. Her bottle of vodka was nearly empty. I did the math.
In the morning we grabbed some sobering Waffle House and hit the road to come home. Or so I thought! We ended up at Adventureland just outside of Des Moines for another day of ride hopping and midway games. Adventureland is, well, interesting in that I’ve never seen an amusement park run entirely by geriatrics. Seriously, all the ride operators were retirees in their 60s and 70s. I suppose it saves on security, since it’s hard to act like a total toolbag in front of somebody’s grandparents. In any event, the big winner here for me was the Outlaw, a winding wooden coaster that crushed my cigarettes on the first drop (no joke), and another Finnish Fling, which went by some other name which I can’t remember because the operator left us on it for a full six minutes.
All in all, a great weekend. Although I’ll be happy if I don’t see another corn dog or Icee for a couple of weeks. Check out the rest of the photos here and here.
Tags: amusement park, travel