Nickelodeon Universe, Mall of America

Visited: May 10, 2019

Attending: Brian, Squid, and Fish

After some success with combining work conferences with amusement parks in 2018, I started actively looking for opportunities in 2019. I was excited to be selected to speak at the NDC Conference in St. Paul, because the European NDC conferences are pretty prestigious, but also because I hoped I’d get to see my friends who live in the area. The conference was scheduled for May 7-9, and because the conference had arranged for my travel, and I had the very last time slot, I was scheduled to fly home on Friday the 10th, in the afternoon. I did check, and noted that ValleyFair opened on Saturday the 11th, but I was reluctant to mess with the travel plans after I’d already changed them once. Squid and Fish were kind enough to host me on Friday morning, and took me to a few tourist locations in Minneapolis, including Minnehaha Falls and the Mall of America.

I wasn’t an avid enthusiast when we were all in college (although I think Squid was on one of the Great Adventure trips), but once I explained my new hobby, they both thought I should take advantage and ride the coasters in the park, although they themselves declined. The lines were extremely short at noon on a Friday, so I was able to ride three coasters in less than 20 minutes. Although the park sells all-day and half-day passes, they also sell “point” wristbands in set increments, the smallest of which carries enough points for the three major coasters. I might have ridden Pepsi Orange Streak if I’d had had a pass rather than a wristband, but I chose not to. It’s a family coaster, but not a kiddie coaster, so I don’t really mind having skipped it. Overall, the indoor environment was quite pleasant, and I could have spent more time there if I’d had it, but there wasn’t a lot of time before I had to be at the airport. Squid told me that the park gets quite crowded in the winter, and I can definitely see that.

SpongeBob SquarePants Rock Bottom Plunge

If nothing else, this coaster now takes the title for coaster I’ve ridden with the longest name. It’s a Gerstlauer Eurofighter, which I’ve only experienced once before -- Mystery Mine at Dollywood, which has a unique layout that isn’t representative of its type. I learned later that the drop is 97 degrees, as opposed to the 90 degrees I thought it was, but it’s still a pretty steep drop. It’s not terribly tall, but it does come quite close to the roof, which isn’t something I’ve experienced before. The loop is just standard, but I really enjoyed the overbanked turn, and the heartline roll was slow enough to give some good hangtime feeling. The rest of the ride is a helix followed by some dodging of the footers, but it’s over quite quickly. Quite a satisfactory ride, if a little short.

Avatar Airbender

I wasn’t too sure about riding this one, as I think it’s right on the edge of “not a coaster” territory. But it’s an Intamin ride, and RCDB says it’s a coaster, so I decided to roll with it. In addition to its qualifications, coasters that stop and reverse direction mid-ride, like Intamin impulse coasters or Vekoma boomerangs, aren’t my favorites. I’m not too sure about coasters with spinning seats, but I’d only done one of those to date (foreshadowing!). However, I love the Avatar: The Last Airbender TV show, so I was willing to give the ride a shot, even if it was grammatically questionable.

Because the ride was a walk-on, like everything that day, I didn’t have a chance to watch the operation while waiting in line, so I didn’t realize just how quickly it gets up to its full speed and height (very quickly). For some reason, my seat always seemed to be pointed upward when my end of the car was on the high side, so I got a very close look at the brakes at the end of the track. The spinning is entirely random, and I prefer knowing where I’m going on a ride, so I did grab the restraints for a bit. Shortly after I felt comfortable enough to let go, the ride ended; it’s not very long. I’d ride one again, but there aren’t many of these in the world, so I may not get the chance.

Fairly Odd Coaster

I rode this coaster last, purely by chance, but I’m really glad I did. It’s a Gerstlauer spinning model, which I’d never ridden before. I’d ridden a spinning wild mouse (Ragin’ Cajun at Six Flags America), and I was pretty disappointed with it. This ride isn’t like that one at all. It doesn’t have a wild mouse layout, and the cars start spinning as soon as they come off the lift hill. There’s no big drop, but this style relies on swoops and turns to keep the car spinning, which works quite nicely. The banked spirals were particularly fun to slide through sideways.

The intensity of the spin varies depending on the distribution of weight in the car, and I apparently had just the right distribution on my ride. It was OK for most of the ride, but during the last section, the spinning was pretty intense, and the car kept spinning at a good clip even as we sat on the brake run. Squid and Fish, watching from the side, noticed that my car was spinning notably faster than other cars they’d seen, so yay for me, I guess. I was a little wobbly when I got off, which is unusual for me. I would’ve been happy to ride again, just not immediately, and time didn’t allow that. Three coasters in quick succession, two of which involved spinning, required a break on my part. Given that we had only a little time before I needed to get to the airport, I was happy to collect the credits and call it a day. That’s probably the shortest amount of time I’ve spent at a park, edging out Mt. Olympus from last year.