2025 marks the fourth season for Lost Island Theme Park in Waterloo, Iowa. It is also the 25th season for their original Lost Island Water Park.
On Saturday, I visited in a group of six, which included four first-time visitors to this new park. Their most recent Iowa amusement park experience was with Adventureland in Altoona. They had gone to Adventureland on a very busy day and said the lines were so long they only got on a few rides. Long lines were certainly not an issue at Lost Island. Crowds still have not arrived, and the four newcomers were able to ride everything they wanted, multiple times, even during the short 10:30am to 6:30pm operating day.
They left pleased, and said they could drive the four hours for Lost Island (two hours there, two hours back) and ride more things than they could have just driving across down and trying to ride things at the much bigger, much older Adventureland.
Folks, cherish these early days. Eventually, either crowds will arrive and these “walk on” days will be gone, or the park won’t make it. Either way, the opportunity to do everything you want without waiting will eventually end.
New shiny…
New this year was the addition of the Fire Runner “single rail” roller coaster. This was the first time I’d ever ridden one of these, and it was quite fun. The seats are single file, and the loading procedure is completely different from any other coaster I have ridden. As the train pulls into the station, it slowly creeps through it, never stopping. One by one, the restraints pop up as that car enters the station. The rider exits to the left, while a new rider is sent to that site. It is a remarkable design, though sitting single file, it does mean each car will have half the capacity of a traditional roller coaster design.
Also new, though originally planned for opening year in 2022, was Nika’s Gift, the carousel. It was neat seeing all the custom paintwork on it. Each panel seemed different, and even the park’s logo was hand painted. Nice.
A few other things where new for 2025:
- A few rides now have shade coverings over them.
- Trees have been grown and/or transplanted, so the “barren” landscape of the park is becoming a bit less-barren.
- Alcohol has appeared at a second location. Formerly, only Thirsty Voyager had adult beverages. This year, a single option of Islandology beer (custom made for the park) can be purchased in the Udara (Air) second of the park at Udaran Delights.
The alcohol thing is interesting, since opening year the park listed alcohol available at the two large food locations, as well as Thursday Voyager, but if this happened, it had stopped happening by the time we visited in August 2022.
There were plenty of other small changes, from menu items to drink selections, but someone else will have to detail those (or you can check photos in my gallery and look at menu pictures and see for yourself).
Photos?
And of course, new photos have been added to the gallery. They are still being processed, but they will appear here shortly:
https://themeparks.disneyfans.com/LostIsland/index.html
What about Google Street View?
I am glad you asked. A few weeks ago I learned folks could submit 360 footage to Google Street View. I started doing that for various trails around Des Moines, and added updated footage around new local restaurant (Google was still showing the former restaurant there, from when they came through some years ago). Everybody needs a hobby…
I also found a few of my 2024 VR videos from Lost Island and got them updated, but since none of them were intended for Google Street view, they are just bits and pieces of paths and make for a crazy looking Google Maps overlay…
This trip, I intentionally walked the park with plans to upload that as a more consistent path through the entire park (at least on one path; there are so many back paths and bypasses, and areas of the park I did not cover with this attempt). I expect to start working on that later this week.
I will share more thoughts on Lost Island’s continued evolution when I have some time.
Until then…