Michigan's Adventure — Attraction in Dalton Township

TO GROW-ONS: the bathrooms and shower-rooms, especially in the water park. Black mold and filth, rust, chipped and mold-ridden paint, and scaryness was everywhere. Men's and women's bathroom and shower-rooms in the water park were equally dilapidated. (As avid campers at campgrounds, we have no problem sharing the bathroom with bugs or spiders or dirt or mold, but these at M.A. were the most disgusting bathrooms I have seen since the 1980s. Including campgrounds.) For the price of tickets, I would expect the bathrooms to be current and up-to-date.... The lines to use the bathrooms in the ladies room in the water park were atrocious, and there were some of us with toddlers, kids, and special needs children and special needs adults had a HORRIBLE experience trying to keep accidents from happening... We shouldn't have to wait 20-30 minutes to get into the bathroom...

The signage in the water park bathrooms are severely lacking. Several people waited in a line for 30 minutes that they thought was the bathroom line, but it was just a changing room line....... Not acceptable.

Also, as expected on a busy Saturday, there were several emergencies in the water park regarding staff/cast members saving guests unexpectedly. All emergencies were all expertly handled, and it was evident that a lot of solid protocol and tons of training has gone into the repetition and PRACTICE of these protocols. My MAJOR suggestion would be to have part of the response team respond with the portable, lightweight, self standing "shields" to make a shield of privacy around the victim and their family to make their worst moment on vacation a private one. In one instance I saw patrons recording the incident on their phones regarding a small child. That's when I joined in to help make a human shield (with my back to the emergency), helping to block them. If you had the 3-foot tall, light and portable, fence or wall style response-shields you could literally just set them up and stay focused on the emergency at hand... Providing the utmost amount of privacy possible!! :-)

As for the app, we found it somewhat handy, especially for saying if rides were open or closed for repair. (However, ride wait times were often completely inaccurate or missing completely.)

I would love to see more large shade tents and more seating along walkways, especially to and from water park, especially for those with disabilities or small children.

I would also love to see more Cooling Stations (mist makers and water refill stations) to help prevent emergencies and overheating.

I didn't see any Baby Feeding areas or rooms or rest areas or backwards-facing benches (always in the shade) so mothers who are nursing/breastfeeding, pumping, or feeding their baby in any of their chosen ways can have a seat in the shade where they can have some space to do so with a little less distraction.... with power plug ins!!! Definitely need to fix that. Also great for parents of special needs kids or adults who have trachs or specialized medical equipment or need their power wheelchair recharged.

GREAT THINGS: the overall emergency response and knowledgeable, trained people responding in seconds of being alerted. As someone who has emergency response training, I recognize the work and constant practice that has been done in this area. I would feel safe having one of my family members being helped by any of the response team at Michigan Adventures, and that is truly saying something.

The app was great for location finding and navigation. Telling walking distance and estimated walking time between your location and the desired location/ride. This is very helpful when having heat/sun/weather sensitive people and/or those with other types of disabilities/different abilities visiting the park.

The entry experience was pretty great. It went much quicker than expected!

Every staff member we encountered was kind, considerate and helpful.

Also, the catering area and all staff were FANTASTIC!!!! (They SINCERELY cared about the quality of food and our overall...

Excellent midsized park! No question will return with our grandkids.

We raised 5 kids, now millennials & older, where they recall well their old jingle, "Let's go to Michigan Adventure," repeatedly playing over & over at park. Kids have great memories of park when they were little. So, years later, we returned with our 6-year-old granddaughter. THIS review will definitely comment on more PROS, than CONS!

PROS:

SIZE. Cedar Point & Kings Island 365 acres versus here 247 acres (Disney's Magic Kingdom 107 acres). When you have little ones, that makes a BIG difference whether their little legs can walk the park or you're pushing them in a stroller in the summer heat. "HALF PINT PARADISE" for the little ones keeps that age busy for HOURS, while parents get to RELAX, as kids have a ball. Same with rest of water park. Oftentimes all most kids care about is the wave pool & a few water slides, like the classic toilet bowl-looking water ride. Our 6-year-old granddaughter wearing vest did not want to leave the wave pool inside Half Pint Paradise with her standing towards front of wave pool since max depth was 3 feet there (see pic attached with Mom standing circled in yellow). Perfect training to jump waves for younger ones.

REST OF PARK. Think about what you'd pay if the state fair came into town for those small 2-5 ticket rides. Here you are getting TWO parks for price of one, including a few large coasters. No it's not Cedar Point, but there, you have to pay $50 twice to access both parks. Yes, Kings Island similarly priced as Michigan Adventure, BUT you can't drive a few min to a GORGEOUS, flour soft sand BEACH off Lake Michigan as you can in Muskegon where Michigan Adventure Park is located (no shark nor jellyfish bites, nor salt water to taste since it's a freshwater lake).

STAFF. Shout out to Dylan Mason who went above & beyond to help us when my phone ran out of charge. Thanks to Dylan I was able to charge my phone while at water park. There are electrical outlets near First Aid inside of Half Pint Paradise, next to wave pool.

WEATHER: Our oldest son would only go to Cedar Point on a Monday or Tuesday when weather prediction was lower 80s, cloudy all day with 50-60% chance of rain less crowded/lines always shorter. We did same here with granddaughter max line wait time 10 min for our 3-8 pm park experience.

CONS:

EXPECTATIONS. If you're with a teenaged+ aged crewexpecting a Cedar Point or Kings Island Cedar Fair park ride level, you will be disappointed since this is a traditional midsized park with a few great roller coasters and rides. For us traveling with younger ones, it is a GREAT trial for coasters, starting with Woodstock Express, then Zach's Zoomers, closing our day with Madhouse as finale with our 6-year-old granddaughter. "Can we ride that again?" was a common request with each coaster experience. We did this when our 5 now millennial aged kids were little (as soon as youngest was 6 years old & able to ride), then, they all have been to Cedar Point once older. It has the classic bumper cars, Ferris wheel, pirate ship, kids rides, fairway of game booths, etc. that may be found at most amusement parks, along with a few steel & wooden coasters. I disagree with the review that this is a "ghetto" park; it's all in expectations. Best experienced in summer 'cuz with the water park AND amusement park AND 20-min drive from Lake Michigan beach location, it is far from a "ghetto" park experience.

PARKING & FOOD COSTS. $20. Same as other Cedar Fair, Disney & Six Flags...

I loved this place as a kid, but I will genuinely NEVER come back here. They don't allow food or drink-not even WATER to he brought in, and once inside there are not enough water fountains. I saw two in the whole park and i did drink out of them even though they were the dirtiest fountains/bathrooms i have ever seen. I'm not picky with public space-i get it, but these bathrooms were disgusting, truly. The prices are crazy, it's 5.50 for a vending machine drink...they told us the catering pass was the best deal for food, and assured us we still had plenty of time to eat even though the catering area closed in 15 minutes. Well, once we walked up the sidewalk and around the corner- where they were keeping the food out of sight- we saw that everything was gone besides 1 tray of burgers. No sides, a few chips, 1 tray of potato salad? Nothing else. Sitting in the sun, supposed to feed at least 100 more people. My kids got no food and I was charged $76 dollars for 3 tickets. I asked the workers if there would be any more food brought out and they said no, it was all gone. So I went back down to the gate immediately to ask for a refund, to which I was told no. After the gatekeepers for the scam catering area KNEW the food was gone because I'd just told them, I heard them selling more tickets to others, despite knowing everything was gone. They never refunded me, so I spent a week of grocery money on 1 burger and a handful of chips. The drink stations only had kiddie cups and there were no lids or straws, or napkins. The "catering" area was disgusting with food and trash everywhere and only a handful of staff trying to keep up with hundreds of diners. I've never been ripped off so horribly in my life, and the experience was so awful I will be warning anyone and everyone away from this park.

Awful dining experience aside, the park hasn't been updated since I was last here 20 years ago. Handful of the rides in camp snoopy were down as well, so my little kids were really bored and hot all day, with no access to the food/drink area after 2pm because that's when they close it. I ended up not eating or drinking anything the entire day just out of spite because I'll never give this park another dollar. The parking was $25 and you're only allowed to leave once per day (to force more people into their awful food services I'm sure.) I'm disgusted that a place can get away with treating park goers this poorly and charging the prices they do for parking/tickets/food as a family of 4 was over $500. We waited an hr and a half for a ride on the Mad Mouse (maybe 1min ride). They can definitely speed up the line process if they wanted to, they're hoping to get even MORE money for fast passes (an extra $50 per person) these are more expensive than DISNEY WORLD fast passes. And for the money I spent I could have actually had a day at Disney world lol. Big...