Valleyfair opens this weekend. Who checks to make sure the rides are safe?

John Dodson strode to the massive swing, his neon construction vest nearly as bright as the colorful Planet Snoopy rides that towered all around.

Charlie Brown’s Wind-Up needed a once-over, and Dodson, a certified ride inspector who has scrutinized Valleyfair’s attractions for nearly two decades, was just the person for the job. He popped into the ride’s base, sweeping a flashlight over the power source that makes the swing tilt and twirl. No frost damage. No leaks.

“Just a routine check,” he said.

Every spring, out-of-town inspectors, in-house mechanics and ride operators-in-training descend on the theme park in Shakopee to ready its more than 75 attractions for opening day, which this year is May 11.

For adrenaline junkies, options abound. Steel Venom hurls passengers down a 185-foot drop at 90 degrees. Renegade thrills wooden coaster purists. And the Power Tower showcases stunning, stomach-churning vistas of the Minnesota River.

But before riders strap in, Valleyfair must comply with state law requiring that an employee of the park’s insurance company, or an independent inspector, take a hard look at every theme park ride in Minnesota at least once a year.

At Valleyfair, that’s where Dodson comes in. The 67-year-old veteran inspector, who said he was once simultaneously licensed to scrutinize rides in 14 states, flies to Minnesota each spring through a third-party company for one turbocharged week of tests and tuneups.

That’s on top of the daily inspections Valleyfair crews conduct throughout the spring and summer, a critical and highly choreographed process that’s largely concealed from the public. Dodson said that’s the point.

“If people know who we are, that means something’s happened,” he said. “If we can go through our daily lives and our routine and no one ever knows we exist, that’s fabulous to us. That means it’s a good day.”

On a recent day, the park buzzed with preseason activity.

Workers spruced up wooden shacks that will soon sizzle with the smell of chicken tenders and fries, the sound of their drilling drowned out by the tick-tick-tick of empty coaster cars inching up steep hills and descending with a whoosh.

Valleyfair employees charged with daily inspections had been working since 5:30 a.m. Bob Renner clutched a clipboard with a list of attractions that mechanics were examining — from the towering Wild Thing to the winding High Roller.

“It’s a lot to keep track of,” said Renner, a self-described Valleyfair jack-of-all-trades who began as a ride mechanic before working his way up to welder and manager.

The mechanics’ first task is simple: Checking the rides for power. Renner said outages affecting all or part of the park occur about three times a year.

A few weeks ago, a squirrel gnawed through a cable and caused a section of Valleyfair to go dark. That’s been fixed, and workers have a plan if a brownout disables rides during the season.

Backup generators can sustain the Ferris wheel long enough for riders to safely disembark. Should a coaster car stall on the ascent, operators are trained to walk passengers down steps that run alongside the tracks. Some thrill rides have the natural force of gravity on their side if the power goes out.

“If the coaster is already down the hill, it will keep going,” said Melissa Ferlaak, Valleyfair’s public relations manager.

Mechanics also devote part of their morning to “walking the rides.” That means traversing the steep steps alongside coasters — 333 stairs rise parallel to Wild Thing’s most daunting hill — to scrutinize the mechanisms that propel cars.

Dodson’s annual work is similar. He and other independent inspectors “crawl” the coasters, looking for missing bolts and overhanging trees.

Then they operate the rides, taking stock of everything from revolutions per minute to the way a lap bar locks in place. Inspectors’ best tool, Dodson said, is usually their senses. A burning smell or persistent thumping sound can be the first sign of trouble.

Once the evaluation is complete, inspectors file affidavits with the state Department of Labor and Industry. A spokesman for the department described it as a “repository” for the reports.

“We do a cursory review of the affidavits to ensure they are complete when they arrive, yet we do not examine them,” he wrote in an email.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reviewed four years of Valleyfair ride inspection reports shared with the state. They indicate many of the attractions are holding up, but that’s where the details largely end: Each document is printed with a ride’s name, manufacturer and signature of the professional certifying the ride passed inspection. Over 40 attractions earned that designation in 2024.

As Renner put it, “The amusement industry is really self-regulated.”

Dodson, the ride inspector, has found work across the country, at county fairs in Ohio and a sprawling Six Flags in South Carolina.

Minnesota’s largest amusement park, he said, comes with its own regional quirks to which inspectors must be alert.

There’s the frost, which can damage steel. Workers disassemble Valleyfair’s more delicate rides in the fall to avert winter wear-and-tear, even stripping the Ferris wheel of its 18 gondolas.

Then there are the beavers. Two years ago, a group of them scampered up to the park from the nearby Minnesota River and chewed through trees that toppled onto a water ride.

“I’ve never seen so many beavers in my life!” Dodson said.

In Minnesota, amusement parks must alert the state labor department and local law enforcement agencies of any serious rider injuries.

Valleyfair had a string of mishaps in the early 2000s.

More than a dozen people sustained minor injuries in 2007 when one of the cars on Wild Thing derailed. The same year, an electrical fire broke out at the Xtreme Swing, temporarily shuttering the ride. In 2010, chemical exposure at the Soak City waterpark sent 16 visitors to the hospital.

Dodson said newer rides often present the most complications: “With all the electronics and the limit switches and the safeties, you can get a whole lot of stuff that can go wrong with those.”

But mechanics are schooled in their complexities. And operators, the employees who let the rides fly, add another layer of back-up.

Mason Theis, an operations supervisor working his fourth season at Valleyfair, huddled with a group of trainees at the base of Wild Thing days before the season started.

He clutched a checklist that detailed everything they had to master “before any of the ride operators can even touch the rides,” from screening passengers for loose clothing to ensuring they’re tall enough to ride.

Dodson, meanwhile, was preparing to fly home to Ohio after wrapping up his work at Valleyfair. He’s slowly easing out of his hands-on career, working six months and relaxing the rest of the year. But he insists he’s never truly off.

That, he said, is the life of a ride inspector.

“Our cellphones are on 24 hours a day,” he said. “We never know who’s going to call us if they need us,” but “when we go to sleep at night, we gotta know that whatever we did, we did our best.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune uploaded four recent years of Valleyfair ride inspection affidavits to a searchable database. Browse them here.