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"Never WALK up that hill!"
Going to Cedar Point at 4:00am and staying until close took a lot out of me. Friday morning I slept in, but it was OK. I wasn't planning to leave for Holiday World until after lunchtime anyway. I had a couple of errands to run that took a lot longer than I had planned, but I finally managed to collect John and Brad. Two hours later, Dave Bowers joined the crew and we had a full carload for the trip to Southwest Indiana.
We were already running late, but I wanted to check in to our motel before going to the park. I'm glad we did. In three years it is the second time I've stayed at the Days Inn in Tell City, IN. It's a cheap place, and in 2000 it was clean and serviceable, but disgustingly ugly. The place has since been renovated and looks a lot better now. But some things don't change. Both times I have stayed there, I've booked a 2-double-bed room for one person, so that if my plans changed (for instance, if John and Brad decide to come along) we could be easily accommodated. Both times the motel has tried to put me into a king single. If I wanted a king single, I would have specified it when I booked the reservation! So check-in was complicated just a little. I was just glad we were taking care of it at 6pm instead of at 1am after ERT! They did manage to straighten it out.
The bad part about that was that by the time we got to the park, the ERT session had already started...in fact, dinner had already started. This year it was a floating pizza dinner, which was intended to reduce the overcrowding at Kringle's. Paula Werne, the Raven Maven and Park PR Diva pointed out that as a side benefit, floating pizza is lower in calories, too. While this worked out fine for me, I felt bad about arriving so late as I know Brad had been planning to bid on that Legend train front at the auction that we missed. Sorry about that, Brad! I'm afraid it was mostly my fault!
But no matter. I went down the hill and got in the long line for my first ride on the new Legend. Now, before I go any further, let me get something off of my chest. As I have recounted numerous times in this forum, I am not a little guy. To be precise, I am approximately 6' tall, I weigh about an eighth of a ton, and I'm between 38" and 48" around the middle, depending on where you measure. I'm about 22" across the shoulders. I'm big. I'm not huge. I can ride B&M coasters and have never ridden in the "big boy" seat. I can ride Wicked Twister. I'll even confess that I can easily fit through the tunnels on the net climb at Geauga Lake. Apart from a couple of stand-ups I haven't yet found a coaster where I couldn't fit. But at Holiday World I found myself wondering if I would be able to make it up to the coaster. That park has easily some of the narrowest queue structures in North America. I don't know what standard they were using when they put those in, but I basically have to walk the queue sideways. This means that Holiday World has these zig-zagging queue structures that pack lots of people into a really really TINY space, and for all the wonderful things I am about to say about this park, this is a particularly nasty problem. And on the Legend, they made it worse. See, the Legend schoolhouse...er...station...has been doubled in length, so now when you reach the top of the stairs, instead of immediately proceeding to a boarding chute, you are directed through a quadruple-switchback in what used to be the loading area, then back to the downtrack end of the station which is now the loading area. The old loading area is now a station approach braking area and a holding brake for the second train. It's set off from the rest of the station by a 4' high paneled wall, but the whole schoolhouse mood of the station is kind of ruined by the chicken wire extending from the top of the wall to the ceiling. Is it REALLY necessary? I realize this is Legend: The Netting Coaster, but really...
Okay. Enough of that. The other critical change in the station is that the pull-rope (now a wire rope!) for the bell is within reach of people waiting in the queue. I selected a seat at random near the back of the train.
The verdict? It's kind of mixed. The PTC trains are heavier than the Gerstlauer train was, and in general have a more solid feel to them. The ride is still an amazing experience, one where it just starts going like crazy and doesn't let up until the train returns to the loading platform. This is a ride where you have to remind yourself to breathe occasionally. But it is a little different. The trains have seat dividers, so the problem of "Legend legs" is gone now. I noticed that on the spiral drop the lap bar wanted to come down to the 4th notch, which meant a nasty gut-check midway through the double-up. Through the evening I noticed that lap bar retention straps (including the famous Locostrap!) were the order of the night. One other thing Holiday World did to the new PTC trains: They installed the same push-button seat belt buckles found on the Raven and on all the other seat belts in the park. This eliminates a lot of the confusion normally associated with PTC trains with the square lift-latch buckles.
As for a Legend play-by-play, the new switch is immediately downtrack of the station with the storage track parallel to the lift hill. It looks like they put a set of advancing wheels on the storage track so that it shouldn't take a whole lot of effort to get the trains on and off. Going up the lift hill, to your right you can see a big sign in the waterpark that says "WAVE", so I usually did. At the top, the audio ("DON'T LOOK BACK!!!") was not playing. Legend now has airtime on its first drop into the first tunnel, then races over the next couple of hills. At about this point you realize that you'd better breathe or you'll pass out. This is the leg that goes out to the waterpark, and features the spiral drop, followed by a double-up. The train heads over to Ravenswood to go through the double helix. As it goes through the dip leading back to the helix, the train makes a very strange scraping noise that sounds just like the noises the Gerstlauer train used to make. The train flies through the helix, then cuts back across for the "four corners of death" finale.
The PTC train is a lot softer than the Gerstlauer, and it feels faster. But the new Legend is in at least one sense a kinder, gentler Legend. The seat dividers serve to keep you firmly planted in your own seat, meaning that while the ride is no less aggressive than before, it is far less physically demanding, just because the train does a better job of holding on to you. I know there are some people who don't like this feature of the "new" Legend, but for me, the ride was more enjoyable. I had wondered if I would miss the side grab handles from the old train, but with the new train, the divided seats made lateral bracing more or less unnecessary. Personally, I think the new trains are a distinct improvement; two trains are an even greater improvement; but I'm not wild about the way they re-did the station.
The Legend is great for re-rides, though, with the entrance right next to and down the stairs from the exit, and with an Oasis booth right across the midway. So the pattern was to ride Legend, grab another drink, go back and ride again. Then find out about the disaster at <=Kennywood=<. The tragic news spread quickly through the crowd, all of us wondering how a park in such a sheltered location could bear the brunt of such a fierce storm.
Well, that kind of put a damper on the evening, more so than the very brief, very light, not-enough-to-cover-the-ground rain shower that I promptly blamed on "wxman" Jim Westland. But there was a bit more to do this evening. I did eventually have my slices of pizza, when I learned that the previous day, when I was at Cedar Point wondering why I hadn't met up with any other coaster nuts, I had, in fact walked right past Dana and Dooley Schwartz and their posse in the Millennium Force station and we had completely missed each other. Conversation rapidly made way for more coasters, though, and I took my first rides of the season on the Raven.
The most noticeable change on the Raven is the new sliding exit gate. I noticed that both coasters now have ASTM-compliant exit gates on them now; I don't know if that is an Indiana thing or just Holiday World gearing up for the inevitable requirement. The other changes on the Raven were a bit more subtle, far less obvious. We take off from the station. Wave at the operator as we approach the lift hill. Then from the top of the lift, start counting to five...
1. Down the first drop and roar through the tunnel.
2. Down the backside turn.
3. Dive down to Lake Rudolph and turn around.
4. What the hell happened here? Where did the train go? Isn't this the highest point past the lift? Wait a minute, did I miss something? I thought the big drop wasn't until Drop Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii--
5. --iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvveee! Good Lord! One of the wildest extended double-dips anywhere, and I was not at all prepared for it, having been so utterly shocked by Drop #4.
Then the right-hand turnaround and the double curve flying back up the hill through the darkness to the station. I always knew the Raven was a short ride, but in all the times I've ridden it I don't think it has ever been this short. I mean, it tears through the course in nothing flat! I exited the ride, and noted that my suggestion that Holiday World should install a sliding board on the hill from the Raven exit path just past the photo booth down to the midway adjacent to the Raven entrance gate has still not been implemented. 8-) [Footnote 1]
Of course, the way the Raven and the Legend run is due in no small part to a lunatic by the name of Jeff Hammersley who maintains the coasters with such a passion that he gave his right arm for the cause. Seriously! He was easy to spot all weekend with his right arm in a bright blue cast. I heard someone ask him what happened and he simply noted that that he got into a fight with the Legend and lost. It didn't stop him from riding, though! He's a nice guy, a real wood coaster expert, and he seems to have but one true passion: making Holiday World's coasters run just a little bit faster, just a little bit wilder, and just a little bit better. But his efforts don't just pay off in a faster, smoother ride. He commented to me that after this year's first night of SRM ERT the coasters required less repair work than they did last year. That's with Raven running significantly faster, and Legend running twice as many cycles using much heavier trains. So he may be crazy but he obviously knows his craft. And I hate to think how much crazier those rides will be once the cast comes off! Oh, by the way, he also verified that the bell is indeed a daily inspection point on the Legend. 8-)
Saturday morning we started just slightly later than we had planned, and ended up parked again at the back of the parking lot. We were later than we had intended, but still plenty early to attend the early morning waterpark ERT. I'd had my doubts about it, but the morning was already unpleasantly hot and sticky. I guess Paula and her fellow event planners understand the Southwestern Indiana weather better than I do. That or they made the proper arrangements just as they did for getting the moon turned off for the event. Where I come from it's usually a little cooler in the morning.
The gate was opened, and various park directors were collecting our entrance tickets. I paid an early morning tribute to the German heritage of the region by entering through Brandon Berg's gate [Footnote 2]. We proceeded immediately all the way back to Splashin' Safari and gathered at the base of ZoomBabWe, the tallest and fastest family raft ride ProSlide has ever built. Breakfast was Continental, housed in an Oasis building. Most of us began the interminable hike to the top of the tower, 100' in the air and towering over the Legend's spiral drop. The climb is largely shaded, a feature scarce in most waterparks and most welcome here.
At this point I feel I should point out some important facts about the situation.
Fact #1: While ZoomBabWe had operated a few days, this would be its first real full-scale operation.
Fact #2: While ZoomBabWe had a posted capacity of "five riders, no more than four adults per raft", it should be pointed out that statistically coaster enthusiasts tend to be larger than average.
Fact #3: Apparently ZoomBabWe has a weight limit of 800 pounds per raft.
When we reached the top of the tower, we formed a foursome. Clockwise from the leading edge of the circular raft it was John Peck, his friend for the day Mellissa, me, and Dave Bowers. We all sat facing the center of the raft. The raft appears to be an inflated tube with a vinyl floor stretched across the bottom. A series of openings around the inner perimeter causes the raft to fill with water immediately. An attendant pushes the loaded tube into the deep dark purple opening.
Observation: It is very dark inside. I had sort of expected the tube to be a dim purple inside, the sunlight filtered incompletely through the purple Fiberglas. In fact, it's pitch black in there except for these odd little designs seemingly pin-pricked into the ceiling.
The ride's path is impossibly twisty and the drops are completely unexpected. To my incomplete surprise, the circular rafts do very little if any rotation. I was facing forward through the whole ride. This is probably why when the raft folded up, with my legs as the fulcrum, I didn't even feel it. In the darkness, of course I didn't see it. In fact, the best sign I had that something wild had happened was when I heard Dave Bowers using language I don't normally associate with him. He and Mellissa managed to bump heads in the tunnel. Some time later we finally emerged from the bottom of the tunnel, somehow still clinging to the raft. It felt like it was going to simply flip over and dump us all out, but I think that was when it just folded briefly. ZoomBabWe was fun for me, but we clearly had waaaaay too much weight on board. John went back for more, but I decided I'd had enough. I spent the rest of the morning ERT conversing with other non-combatants and veterans who had stopped riding for the moment. By and large we were all feeling called by the clatter of those two purple PTC trains that we could see and hear, but until the waterpark opened to the public we could not ride.
Finally, the waterpark opened. We coaster nuts proceeded to impersonate salmon, boldly crashing our way upstream and uphill through the crushing mob of overheated Indianans trying to get INTO the waterpark. That led, naturally, to a couple of rides on the Legend, and into a tour of the entire park. In fact over the course of the day I managed to ride just about everything at least twice.
The Scrambler runs remarkably well, but it's one of very few Scramblers I have seen where the timing shifts during the ride. In theory, on each pass through the center, seats on adjacent unit poles should pass each other at their closest point, and since everything is geared, that transit point should be the same on every rotation. For some reason on this Scrambler, it isn't. Odd.
The Raven saved us a climb up the hill between Halloween and Christmas, and we went down the hill to Independence Day. Paul Revere's Midnight Ride is probably the second-best Spider I have ridden. The tubs spin very easily, and in fact on each of my rides I would have it spinning slowly, then the operator would bring the sweep around to unload, and my tub would just go nuts. I didn't have to do anything, and it would just take off spinning. The only other Spider that rides like this one that I have ridden is the one at Camden Park.
Last year, or was it two years ago, the huge disappointment was the Rough Riders, the park's cleverly themed horse and bison bumper cars. They had taken out a set of really decent European bumper cars and installed these new things that were big and slow and absolutely awful, and even worse had these ridiculously small looped belts on them that were so awful I actively refused to use them on the grounds that they were dangerous. Well, that was then. This year, the ride has received another makeover. It's still the big, cute horse and cattle cars. But for starters the tiny loop straps have been replaced with a belt that fastens near the outboard side of the car...still not great, but not actively dangerous either. When the operator hits the go button, something else becomes obvious: The power supply is different. The cars jump to life and moove at a decent clip(-clop?) now. What had been a lazy roundup now looks a bit more like a stampede, and the ride has a bit of a kick once again. In fact, it's now quite a decent ride, at least equal to the last year before they changed the cars.
On down the way is the Freedom Train, Holiday World's original ride. The statuary surrounding the ride must have a hundred layers of paint on it by now, but it all looks brand new. Though it now has Hollidog's Funtown as a backdrop.
Speaking of Hollidog's Funtown we could not fail to ride on the Howler. I can just about fit in the car on that thing. In some ways these kiddie rides are wilder than the big rides for someone like me because they require that I contort myself in odd ways to fit into the car, ways that make it very difficult to brace for that twisting first drop!
On around the park the next stop is the Flying Scooter. Holiday World's Flying Scooter has these gigantic Fiberglas tubs that look like birds hanging from a portable-model ride center. Quite frankly, the ride action is disappointing. It made me want to get back to Kings Island for their Scooters. Paul Drabek claims that he can get some decent action out of these, but I've watched him in action. He gets action from rocking the tub, not from flying it.
The Roundhouse is a Hrubetz Round-Up, and this one runs very nicely. One thing I should say about a Round-Up is that the boom on a Round-Up is not supposed to go completely vertical, in fact if it does it can be impossible to bring back down again. It's not a problem on this unit, though this unit goes up pretty darned high.
The day would have been incomplete without a ride on the Virginia Reel, which is not a Virginia Reel, but rather a Tilt-A-Whirl. A cable drive unit, this one runs pretty nicely.
This finally led to the Banshee, a Chance Falling Star. I think the Falling Star is a more forceful ride than a Rainbow, but the same basic idea. Holiday World allows no single riders on the Banshee, which is probably not a bad idea, though I was surprised to see three small kids in one seat.
For lunch, at the suggestion of Paul Drabek, I tried the Frito Pie. It's a concoction kind of related to the Macho Nachos found in some other parks. A bag of Fritos is sliced open on a plate and the chips are covered with spiced meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. It's a neat combination, but I was reminided that this is Southern Indiana (as if the use of Fritos instead of tortilla chips wasn't obvious enough) when I realized that my taco sauce options were "mild," "mild," and "mild." It was an interesting concoction, though, and I suspect unique to Holiday World.
At the end of the day, we all gathered in the picnic grove for dinner. Rather than a pizza feast as we have come to expect from Stark Raven Mad, this night's dinner was more of a traditional amusement park outing picnic. The Legendaires provided entertainment and Paula made a few announcements. She noted that we had a celebrity in our midst. Proving once again that we coaster nuts are on a slightly different plane from normal people, my first reaction to that statement was, "That's right; Tom Rebbie is here." Well, after all, he supplied Legend's new trains...wouldn't that make him a celebrity? But Paula was referring to Mick Foley, a coaster enthusiast whose significance is unfamiliar to me, but clearly not to the fans who were orbiting him just before dinner. Even more special, Holiday World's own Pat Koch is now, if I got the details right, Pat Koch, M. D., having just received her Master's degree, I believe from Loyola University. It apparently took a little longer than she had hoped because of the difficulties in explaining to the academics about how her work is a full-time ministry. Odd that Loyola would have any doubts about that; it seemed pretty obvious to me a few years ago, and I don't even know her that well. This was, of course, the cue for Mamoosh to launch the onslaught of coasternuts bearing cards for Operation:Graduation. The operation appeared to be a complete success.
Of course that kicked off a second night of coaster riding on two of the wildest, most aggressive wood coasters operating. This was what we came for, from all over the country, and Holiday World delivered, as usual. Holiday World is a great park to visit at any time of the season. But they truly pull out all the stops for Stark Raven Mad, making it truly a "don't miss" event. Add to that the opportunity to spend time with a nationwide cross-section of coaster nuts, and it's an insanely great event. The only thing I can think of that would have made it better would have been for LeSourdsville Lake to have opened the next day, since Kings Island was closed. But that's another story.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Seriously, I wonder how many people honestly would go down a slide like that there...it just seems like such a wacky idea...[Return to text]
Footnote 2: Don't feel bad if you didn't get a chuckle out of that one; it's pretty obscure.... [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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