Flooding results in a visit to Valleyfair by kayak

In March 2023, someone on the Quirky Minnesota Places Facebook page posted a picture of a Target shopping cart on a giant snow mound, an image that became viral because it seemed to capture that year’s long winter in Minnesota.

Quirky Minnesota Places struck again last weekend with a viral image that seems to sum up our soggy summer: A picture of guys kayaking past semi-submerged roller coasters at the partially flooded Valleyfair amusement park.

“Parking was a breeze!!! No long lines for Excalibur or Renegade!!!!!” was the way Andrew Proball described his kayak paddle into the park with two friends, Justin Berg and Karl Semeja.

Proball’s posted photos on Facebook of his excursion paddling over a waterfilled parking lot, past entry booths and floating next to closed thrill rides on June 29.

By July 1, the images had generated nearly 6,000 reactions, had been shared by nearly 2,000 people and spurred more than 600 comments, ranging from “I see they really expanded the water park!” to questioning the safety of the stunt.

“It’s all over the place,” Proball said.

Proball, a 37-year-old Shakopee resident, said he and his friends began their paddle at about 4:30 p.m. June 28, launching from Shakopee’s Memorial Park where the waters from the flooding Minnesota River reached nearly to the parking lot.

Then they headed downstream to the nearby Valleyfair amusement park and floated in on the swollen floodwaters covering an employee parking lot.

They cruised past three of the park’s rides that have shut down by the flooding: the Excalibur and Renegade roller coasters and the Thunder Canyon white-water rafting ride.

“We didn’t go through any gates. We just floated right in,” Proball said.

Proball said they also paddled on water covering some of the haunted attractions where Proball used to work when he was employed at Valleyfair’s ValleyScare Halloween attraction, first as a monster then as a lead haunt tech.

He said at one point a Valleyfair employee asked the paddlers to stay away from the rides, but they weren’t asked to leave. Though the rest of the amusement park was open, Proball said the closed part where they were had a deserted, post-apocalyptic feel.

“All you hear is the distant rumbling of pumps pumping water,” he said.

Proball said he doesn’t believe what he did amounted to trespassing because he entered the park by floating on a public body of water and he never touched land.

He said he and his friends took safety precautions that included wearing life jackets, keeping a phone in a dry box and staying together.

“I didn’t want anyone getting hurt and also didn’t want to make Valleyfair angry,” he said.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Valleyfair said they were aware of the kayak trip, but had no further comment.