Wild Thing at Valleyfair! is a tube track coaster with a large launch hill.  It’s a fast coaster – but no record breaker.

    The lack of shattered records isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  The first hill is impressive and, in the back, you’ll get some air.  The trip out will give some of the most intense low acceleration you can feel while still in contact with the planet.  At the far end, you get a figure eight turnaround – a turnaround poised high for the most part.  With the law of conservation of energy being what it is, you don’t get much speed through the turns.  (On a personal note: the motorcycle parking for the park is under the turn, so you get to say to the folk on the ride with you, “That’s my bike down there.”)  The slow turnaround is the price you pay for a fast return – a fast return being common in traditional “out and back” coasters.  Wild Thing provides a lot of low g’s the return thanks to the retained energy.

    So, what’s the verdict?  This is definitely a tough one.  What this coaster does, it does as well as any coaster I’ve ridden.  The trouble is the only thing it does is give the rider a low force experience.  This makes it a very good coaster, but it fails to be a great coaster, which is a hard thing for me to say.  As I mentioned before, this coaster is very good at what it does.  It just doesn’t have a high enough degree of difficulty to be great.  Additionally, this would be a better coaster if it had flat road steel and a timber structure.  There is no physics reason that this ride layout be a tube track.  Despite the fact that I know the economic reasons why it is built the way it is, I still get off the ride going, “Why did they make this tube rails?”  For me, that really detracts from the ride.

    In the end, I’m going to give this coaster a split review.  For those of you out there (and you know who you are) who love low g, this is pretty close to a must-ride coaster.  I’m going to tell you it’s worth a two-hour wait.  For the rest of us, I say wait 45 minutes, or perhaps just a bit more.

Dreadnaut