One of the first things that struck me about this course is the variety of shots needed. No two holes look anywhere near the same. There are large amounts of elevation change on a few holes and small amounts on most.
There are at least a couple different pin placements for each hole here, so make sure you find out where it is before you throw or you could be adding a few strokes.
The signs are somewhat informative, they have distances and pin locations but they're a foot off the ground.
Nice ammenities, picnic area nearby, restrooms.
There's a good amount of trees that force you to choose your lines carefully. The amount of trees plus the elevation change make for very interesting shots.
Very beautiful park.

It is a little complicated to navigate around the course if it is your first time playing. This includes trying to find where the next tee is as well as where the hole you're trying to throw at is.
Very crowded if it's a nice day. Good luck finishing in less than an hour and a half if it's crowded. Along with having a lot of people use the park, there are a lot of really bad players that play, which increase your chance of getting hit by errant throws.

There is some really nice natural beauty on a few holes. Behind the 8th tee I think is a spectacular view of the Mississippi.

Many fun shots under a canopy of mature oak trees. Elavation changes add alot of flavor. Great view of the Ole Miss.
#10 is a great signature hole. Very fun course and easy walk. Good beginner course as there is no losing discs and plenty of reachable holes.

Tee pads are way to small and slippery with gravel. Most of the holes are very dangerous and FORE is rampent out there. Crowded especially when school is in session.

Very fun course, wear a hard hat.

-This park is almost similar to Calvary, with the elevation changes, just not as wooded.
-Cement tees that are pretty well maintained.
-Baskets are is pretty good shape for the frequent use this course gets.
-Signs for every tee and holes. (They appear to be on stainless steel and are lazer engraved)
-Practice / Putt Basket
-Multiple pin placements (up to 3 on most holes)
-Hole 10 similar to hole 5 at Calvary (nice downhill slope, so even little arms get distance), but you tee into a valey, and have to go up a small steep incline to the basket.
-A few holes could be a challenge for lefties, as they play along a fence that leads to the Mississippi below it.
-Great work out climbing up and down the hill.
-Variety of shots can come into play here, under trees, around them, short (one hole plays over a service road thats OB), long.

-Pretty crowded, many people yelling fore, as some baskets are grouped close to eachother and a few errant throws or people wandering into your fairway to get their discs.
-Could have some confusion on the signs and pin placement, especially on a few blind shots.
-Parking can be a hassle, especially on busy weekends.
-Noticed lots of trash at the tees, did pick some of it up, but only had a small Wal-Mart bag that filled up after about 4 holes.

-Close to a garden and conservetory.
-Plus SCSU is on the other side of the river from the park, so lots of college kids.
- #10 wont forget it, as I tee'd off the disc drifted left, down the hill and bounced off the tree's and back into play resting on the upslope to the basket. And a great view from up there.

-Very beautiful park. Hundreds of mature trees scattered around the entire park give the place a very comfortable and cozy feeling.
-Signs at every teebox.
-Most holes have 2 or 3 pin placements.
-Cement teeboxes.
-Good use of elevation and especially trees to make some difficult obsticals. Some holes have baskets near cliffs, forcing you to throw short or wide for fear of losing a disc.
-Well maintained park, very little litter. Even just from my one visit there, it seems like the locals have a little more pride, a little bit more invested in their course than most.
-Wide variety of holes. Up, down, left, right, long, short, guarded by trees, etc.

-The layout is a little bit goofy. At one point we weren't sure which basket we were shooting at, because there were 3 within 120 ft or so of each other. Also annoyed me how one hole (13 I think) you have to walk up a hill just to throw right down again.
-Directions to the next tee box would be nice, but for the most part you can figure it out. The hole I just mentioned was an exception.
-Some teeboxes are shorter than usual.

Overall, I really love this park. I feel right at home playing here. Any complaints I had are superficial. Bottom line is I had a lot of fun playing here, even though it was a miserable drizzly day. If I lived in St. Cloud I would play here several times a week.

(1) Course design is excellent. Nothing too tricked up, but the layout is a good mix of holes, a majority of them that require navigating lightly wooded areas and modest elevation changes. Because of the variety and lack of redundancy, it is easy to close your eyes at the end of the day and bring up a mental slideshow of all the holes you had played earlier in the day.

(2) Decent mix of discs and throws required. This is due to the fact that on many holes you are given two or three throwing options. You can navigate the air left or right around the obstacles or alter the height of your throws lower or higher, for example, to go under or through branch openings of the large leafy hardwoods. If you are a traditional back-hand thrower, be it right- or left-handed, you'll do well on this layout to practice sidearm throws. Rollers are useful throws on several holes and long-range skip shots -- for example, on #11, off the out-of-bounds "lake" (asphalt surface of now unused parking space) -- can come in very handy as well.

(3) Excellent courses all need memorable holes. The signature hole for Riverside Park is obviously #10, the long downhiller from atop the start of what I trust is a sledding hill during the winter. (Apologies: I've never been here during the winter. Wish I had grown up across the street as a kid, though!) It's always good to have at least one crank-arm toss from the heights. Other above average holes, due to their challenge are the heavily tree-lined #6 (unless you have a Gorilla arm and can RH hyzer it over 350 feet), #11 over the asphalt out-of-bounds, #13 (downhiller to a hole that is fronted by an out-of-bounds footpath and backs up to a steep ledge that looks over the mighty Mississippi) and the #18 when the pin is placed far back in the trees.

(4) Tee pads are all cement and in very good condition. They are all aimed properly toward the general vicinity of the various pin placements.

(5) Course layout flow is excellent. The first 9 holes finish at the starting area, which makes a mid-round rest at the top of the hill possible. Hole #18 finishes about a 100 yards to the parking area and park building. Not too bad a distance as it allows a bit of recovery time (and to forget the bad shots of the completed round!) before heading out for another round or giving up for the day.

(6) High player traffic. While this could be viewed as a negative, I see it as a plus as it provides positive exposure to disc golf to those who come to Riverside Park for other purposes. The fact that the course is friendly to beginners and advanced players alike is a big positive. It is an excellent course to introduce novices to the sport as it will provide them with an appropriate dose of enjoyment and challenge, absent the kind of frustrations that could be experienced by a beginner on an overly tight course with tall weeds and other hazards in which discs can be easily lost.

(7) Two practice baskets by the starting area.

As this is a very good course, there are not many areas for improvement that come to mind. Yet the following factors -- admittedly nit-picky -- prodded me to lean toward a "4" rating rather than a "4.5." If there were a way to do a 4.25 star-rating, I would have.

-- Length. Riverside Park is basically a par 3 DG layout for the advanced level players. This point is both a "plus" and a "minus." It is a plus for those in the beginner to intermediate stage of developing their DG skills. It's a great course for those new to the sport to practice and advance their skill level, so for them I'd be tempted to rate the course a 4.5. The following comment, therefore, pertains mostly for those a bit more advanced in their play levels: While some of the holes were noted on the signs as a par 4, there are not any "championship" par 4s - i.e. holes that require two long throws. The longest hole (#5) demands a long drive, but in a wide open area to a slightly less open landing area. For those able to throw over 300 feet, it is an easy 3 and for those who throw upwards of 400 or more feet (not me!), I'm sure it is not too unusual to post a 2.

-- Signage. This is another "plus" and "minus" aspect of the course. The durability of the metal signs and the seeming accuracy of the distances noted to the various pin placements are both plusses. But for the player navigating the course for the first time, it would be nice to have signs with clearer lettering that you don't need to bend down and squint to see. The quality of signage is always a moot point for regulars who know the course inside and out, but for aesthetic reasons as well, it would be a nice touch to have slightly more colorful signs with larger and easier-to-read lettering.

I suppose I could place the following comment in the Con section, but I think it relates to more of a personal preference of mine. For this reason, I'll post these comments as "neutral" ones in this section:

Except for the hilltop drive from the #10 tee pad, Riverside lacks a bit of the OMG factor. It adds a bit of excitement to face a few "oh my god, now what do I do?" situations during the course of a round. But overall, that's not what Riverside is about. Rather, it is a fairly straight-forward layout --without too many surprises -- that offers enough of a challenge to keep you coming back for more.

All that said, I'll still share my slight bias: In order for a course to rank as truly exceptional, I enjoy having a few holes where I'd like to experience, at least to some extent, that risk-reward, heart-racing sensation of threading the needle through a tightly wooded area or the worrisome decision about not under-throwing or over-throwing a drive due to penalizing hazards or out-of-bound areas. On these two points, I would admit that #6 modestly covers the first variety of heart-rate-raising challenge (thread the needle) and #13 covers the second variety (critically important distance control). #6, as regulars well know, is rather heavily wooded, but there's always the safe option to throw a RH hyzer to the far right into the clearing for a relatively open approach. #13 does get the juices going since it is so tempting to go for the birdie, but here again, there is the safe option - that is, to lay up in front of the footpath and go for the sure par "3" rather than go for broke on the drive and risk the chance of your fave plastic platter going down the slippery ledge toward the Mississippi.

In other words, unless I'm trying to birdie #13, there are no holes that cause a fear of potential doom, thus getting my heart racing too heavily. Given my mid-50's age, maybe that's a good thing.

HIghly wooded, challenging for all players and great scenary of the Mississippi and SCSU.

The didn't have the baskets up till middle of may this year. Sometimes parking is hard with a splash in the park.

If you like flowers there is a nice garden right across the street.

A very good course for a wide variety of players. Riverside offers a large variety of shots in a very nice looking multi use park. Holes generally have multiple teepads and pin placements. Tees are concrete and in good shape.

This courses layout is nicely varied with some long straight holes (including the long downhill hole) a bunch of reasonable midrange or fairway shots, including both hyzer and anhyzer doglegs, and some shorter holes with high risk of OB. Fairways are in very good shape given the hard use the park sees. A typical hole would be around 300 feet through or around some trees on a clean fairway on the side of a hill. A fun place to refine your midrange/fairway driver game.

Signage is only so-so but really it isn't that needed since you can see the pin on most holes from the teepad. The last 8 holes were a little confusing the first time I played there. OB areas can make recovering your disc hard on a whole new level.

Generally there will be lines to play, but that is getting to be true everywhere in Minn these days.

Parking is adequate. There will be general park users around the course but it is designed well enough that they rarely will wander into a fairway. There is, however, a walking trail near the river bluff so occasionally you do have to wait for the fairway to clear.

This course presents a wide variety of shot options, excellent elevation changes and rotating pin placements.

They pull the baskets in the late fall. This course should be open year round.

It has been a while since I've played this course, but I do recall several holes with relatively small windows to throw through to reach the target.

-Large mature trees.
-Very Scenic.
-Elevation changes on many holes.
-Very well groomed.
-3 pin placements and nice tee boxes.

It was sometimes hard to tell which hole you were shooting at even though each hole had a map due to the 3 different pin placements. It seemed to have a lack of variety; no tunnel shots, no real hazzards, playing all 18 holes was somewhat repetetive.
-This course is very busy

I actually prefer the course at Cavalry Hill. That one and Hidden Lake south of town are more fun than this one. This one is beautiful and scenic but not challenging enough to get any higher than a 4 on the rating.

Well groomed park. Majestic oaks cover the entire park making a great disc golf setting. Offers shade in hot summer days. All cement tee off's and there are three different pin placements per hole. There is a map on each tee off with distances for each pin placement. Course is different every day. Layout is outstanding. Flows well from hole to hole offering every shot imaginable. Park runs next to Mississippi River. Elevation changes make for unique holes. (I think hole number ten runs down a hill with woodchips creating a fairway. Beautiful)

One hole was down all summer due to soil erosion on a hill. Not much can be done except take the traffic off the hole. Can be busy on weekends.

Beautiful course in a very spacious park. Course able to hold major tournaments. Definitely worth the drive from the cities to play this and others in the area. Challenging for everyone. Very fun course to play!Chalenging for everyone.