We visited Valleyfair on June 28th and were amazed by the flooding. The Minnesota River has completely submerged the parking lot, forcing visitors to park off-site and take shuttle buses to the park. Valleyfair has also set up a temporary gravel entrance next to Delirious, as the main entrance is currently inaccessible.

Once in the park, you feel surrounded by water. Riding Steel Venom feels different when all you see when you look down is water. There is one spot in the park, near Steel Venom, where there are sandbags keeping water out. They’re doing a pretty good job, but water is still seeping in. They also have quite a few pumps, pumping water back out of the park.

The views from the top of the coasters, or other rides, is amazing, though. To see so much water spilling out of the banks of the Minnesota river is unreal. Quite a bit of the back of the park, like where they store the Halloween decorations, are completely flooded. I swear I saw coffins floating in the water. Some of the decorations were moved up to dry land, but there’s still quite a few Halloween decorations underwater. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of that, as I could only see it while on the rides.

Even though things were surrounded by water, most everything in the park was open; except for Renegade, Excalibur, and Thunder Canyon. That whole back area is blocked off, so you can’t even wonder back there to look.

Our day in the park was amazing though. There were no lines anywhere. We walked right onto most rides. Not sure if it was the threat of rain that day, or the flooding, but it’s a fantastic time to go to Valleyfair.

Note: You should be able to click, and then zoom in, on all photos to see a larger version.