Adventureland
Adventureland in Altoona, just outside Des Moines, has been open since 1974 and is Iowa's largest amusement park. Monster is the steel coaster with the beyond-vertical drop, Outlaw and Tornado are the wooden coasters, and Phoenix, Storm Chaser and Draken Falls add more variety, with a large section of family rides. In the autumn it runs Halloween haunts on select dates.
Summer weekends and the weeks around the Fourth of July are the busiest. Weekdays early and late in the season are usually much quieter. Check the live queue times before you go and use the crowd calendar to find a good day.
Adventureland live queue times Carowinds
Carowinds sits directly on the North Carolina / South Carolina state line in Charlotte and is best known for Fury 325 - one of the world's tallest and fastest full-circuit roller coasters at 325 feet. The rest of the line-up is strong too: Copperhead Strike, Intimidator, Afterburn inverted coaster, and the newer Top Gun: The Jet Coaster. A separate Carolina Harbor water park operates in the summer.
Carowinds' peak crowds come during US summer school holidays, Scarowinds (Halloween), and Charlotte-area weekend visits. Weekdays in May, September and October are much quieter. Check live queue times for Fury 325 and Copperhead Strike first thing on arrival, and use our crowd calendar to pick a lower-crowd midweek date for shorter waits across the coaster line-up.
Carowinds live queue times 