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"It's good to be back!"
I didn't make it to Holiday World last summer, in spite of my best intentions. I swore I'd make it this season, but when I heard about the Voyage it got even harder to decide to go. It's about a 300-mile drive (one way) to get to Holiday World. That means it's further out than either Kennywood, Conneaut Lake,, or Indiana Beach (each is about 200 miles for me). So as much as I like the place, getting there is a bit of a chore.
Well, much to my surprise, a perfect excuse soon presented itself in the form of the CoasterBuzz Fall Affair. I had not expected any events at Holiday World at all this year, so when Jeff announced his event, I jumped at the chance. It's not that I need an event to send me to Holiday Woirld, but having an event there forces me to go on a particular date. I signed up, and on Saturday morning I got up early. I stopped in Cincinnati to collect "Coasterville" Dave Bowers, and we pulled into the Holiday World parking lot just after 11:00 local time. I grabbed the broadcast camera and sticks from the trunk of the car and we had a lovely chat with Pat Koch in the parking lot, taking some ribbing for not having Holiday World regalia. Something interesting about this...lots of parks have a mascot or costumed character at he entrance to greet customers as they arrive. At Holiday World, Hollidog stays back in Funtown, while the Queen herself handles the front gate greeting duties [Footnote 1]. Upon entering the park, I was carrying a lot more gear than I am accustomed to. I had a broadcast-grade DV camcorder [Footnote 2] slung over one shoulder and an aluminum tripod slung over the other, as Jeff "CoasterBuzz" Putz had asked me to videotape his Internet radio show. What was that I heard a couple of weeks ago on "A Prairie Home Companion" about a couple that had driven six hours to watch a radio show? Anyway, I was in no condition to do any riding at all, but I had about 40 minutes to kill before I had to meet up with Jeff. So I started by touring the park.
Holiday World is a nicely compact park. I walked through Christmas, stopped at Kringle's Cafe for a drink, and proceeded into Fourth of July. I noted the new concrete, the new queues (the bumper car queue has been just about doubled since my last visit), and yes, even the new rides. I didn't go into Hollidog's Funtown, but instead circled around and saw how the new Zero Gravity ("Revolution") fits perfectly in the space vacated by the old Round-Up ("Roundhouse"). The queue had to be reconfigured a little, but considering that the ride experience is quite similar between the two rides, many customers may never notice that it is a new ride, but I am sure the Operations and Maintenance departments notice the difference every day.
It was more or less here that my cell phone went off unexpectedly. It was Paul Drabek, who, moments later appeared from behind the Tilt-A-Whirl and said hello. We exchanged greetings, and Dave joined him for a ride on The Legend as I completed the loop and returned to the theater for the podcast taping.
The podcast was somewhat interesting, and Jeff has made at least a portion of the video available from his podcast site on coasterbuzz.com. When it was over, I handed him the tape, hauled the camera and tripod out to the car, recovered my usual camera gear, and started riding. I started my day with a back-seat ride on the Raven.
Things have changed a bit since my last visit, most obviously the ride now has two trains and a storage/transfer track in a new building between the station and the lift. Less obvious was the new (experimental?) hardware in the train: I sat down, fastened the seat belt, and pulled the lap bar back to its sixth notch, which put the bar right where I normally like it. Iiiinteresting. The operator approved of my configuration, and started the ride, my first on The Raven in more than two years.
The Raven is a memorable ride. Partly that is because over the years I have taken so many rides on it, so I can remember how it bounced around the station curve when it was new, or the pothole at the top of the second hill the night that ERT was interrupted by a massive storm, or the peculiar timing of the drop off the third turn. Every detail of the ride seems familiar even after a long absence. There is a harsh spot coming off the lake turn, then the airtime I almost forgot about coming off the fourth drop, into the shallow dip past the back of the lift hill. Then the famous fifth drop, followed by the wild S-curve finale, the McKenzie Curves, tearing through the woods on the way back to the station. And it was all there, all of it just as it has always been. The Raven is still a great ride. I remember it being a little wilder, but not by a whole lot. More important, it is good to be riding it again.
I was here to ride coasters, so I proceeded down the hill to The Legend. There was a bit of a wait, but nothing serious, even with single-train operation. In accordance with Paul Drabek's suggestion, I took my first ride in the second row. On my last visit, I did most of my riding on The Legend because it had the shorter wait. Like the Raven, the Legend is a memorable ride, but for me it doesn't leave the same kind of discrete impressions as the Raven. Instead, it leaves the overall impression of a ride that is simply out of control. The "Don't Look Back!" audio is missing from the top of the lift, and the dead branch that used to hang over the first drop is long gone. But the ride is as wild as ever, with a series of twisting elements that almost don't give an opportunity to breathe. The Legend remains an extreme, aggressive coaster. If the Raven seemed a little pokey, the Legend made up for it easily.
I did notice that new Philadelphia Toboggan hardware has shown up on The Legend as well as on The Raven. This time, the lap bars are entirely conventional, but the seat dividers are not: a few of the seats now have the new-style open-frame seat dividers as I first encountered on the Kennywood Racer. I never rode in any of those seats on The Legend, but I remember giving those things mixed reviews on the Racer. The opening gives a little more space, but the rail is thicker, making the seat a little tighter.
It was as I was exiting The Legend that I spotted Dave and Paul, and rejoined them. We took a trip on Frightful Falls, which for my boat was just barely dry enough to keep me happy, then I broke for deep-fried Oreos. I was hungry enough that I wasn't feeling well, but a little bit of nourishment quickly solved my problem.
The day would be short, and it was disappearing fast. I decided to concentrate on riding the stuff that wasn't coasters. That meant a ride on Liberty Launch, which is a significantly milder ride than the Double Shot at Indiana Beach [Footnote 3]. I like the Double Shot, in fact I think it is my favorite of the S&S tower rides, and I am happy I finlly got to ride Liberty Launch, as I missed it on my last visit. I opted to skip the bumper cars, as those had quite a long line and are known to be...shall I say...less than outstanding. Instead, I opted for Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, easily the second-best-running Spider I have ridden [Footnote 4]. Unfortunately, the necessarily-long cycle time meant not enough time to do much else before the construction site tour.
You cannot begin to imagine how the Voyage is coming together. None of the published materials even come close to explaining the site. To look at the drawings, it appears that the Voyage is an out-and-back coaster, something like Shivering Timbers but with a steel structure and with the return track weaving from side to side under the outbound leg. What is not clear from the drawings and renderings is what the ground is doing beneath the ride. From the employee gate behind the rapids ride there is a steep path that leads down to the employee parking lot. Down there is where the foundations for the station are under construction, and a tunnel has already been laid for the creek that runs past the site. At this point it begins to look a bit like the Son of Beast construction site, but it seems the station might not be up quite so high. From the station site, we walk along the gravel road alongside the lift hill and the final curve. The structure is tall and narrow, since the steel framing doesn't require as much bracing as wood. It's hard to get a feel for the location of the lift hill because it hsn't been built yet; most of the work so far has been done on the drop side. I was surprised to see that as the structure goes up, the tracking is already being done. Of course there are no steel rails in place yet, but where the structure is complete, the track is already laid. That shows off some of the surprises the Voyage has for us. As extreme as the 90-degree banked curves are, for instance, what is even more extreme is the approach to the one 90-degree turn that is already built. The train is going to be roaring through at high speed, at a non-trivial bank to the left, when it will suddenly roll through at least 120 degrees to get to the 90. And in the midle of it, there is a noticeable hump in the track which will probably produce airtime in a most unusual direction.
Much of the drop is already built even though the hilll hasn't been topped off yet. Structurally, the first drop looks a bit unusual because the bents are so close together. It's not because the dynamic loads are that extreme; if they do the rollover right, the road wheels should barely touch the track. It's just that it is so steep. Apart from Intamin's IKEA-coaster at Great Adventure it's the steepest wood coaster drop in North America, and it needs that structure just to support itself. At the bottom of the first drop, the structure hasn't been built yet, so it takes some mental gymnastics to follow the footers for the second and third hills. The lift hill and drop are generally on the "far" set of footers while the return track is on the near side. Upon closer inspection, the second hill is going to be on the near side. It gets weirder going back into the woods and up a very steep hill into which a deep slot is being cut for the track. It's almost as though the Gravity Group has taken a cue from the Kennywood Racer in ignoring the topography, putting the lowest part of the ride through the highest part of the ground. Deep dark tunnel, anyone? There weren't any footers yet, but as the obvious track path went down, we hiked up. I understand that the top of this hill is about a hundred feet above the base of the lift hill. It's a steep climb to the top, and I was completely unprepared for what I saw on the other side. It isn't exactly a cliff, but it is darned close, and the ravine may be even deeper than the lift hill elevation. The turnaround is to be built in the ravine. No footers yet, but the land has been cleared for the footers and I could get an idea of where the ride is going to go. Coming off the turnaround, the ride scales the hill once again, then runs downhill all the way back to the station. This ride is going to be long, fast and isolated. The train will take off from the station and go up the lift, and it won't be heard from again for a couple of minutes. The Voyage is going to be a spectacular ride. Is it May yet?
After the construction tour, it was time for dinner. I divested myself of my camera, and returned to the banquet hall for some pizza, chips and fudge. Mmm. They have moved the banquet hall, and the new facility (actually a repurposed old facility) is a little lacking in atmosphere, sound-deadening, and apparently in food service capability. I suspect that very little of the park's catering gets done in the banquet hall anyway, given the extensive picnic grove. As we ate, we were greeted by Jeff Putz, and by the Holiday World team, most notably Pat and Will Koch. Paula was there, but her laryngitis prevented her from saying much, and besides, Will was positively giddy over the Voyage. He's excited now, I wonder what he is going to be like when it is ready to ride. On a more serious note, he gave us the instructions that I'm certain nobody in the group really needed, and they tried to auction off some of the park's scrap items in a charity auction. They got through a little bit of stuff and raised a non-trivial amount of money before the radio call came through that we had all been waiting for: The park was clear and the rides were ready. Moments later we were all heading out to the wood(ie)s.
With one train running on each coaster, the group was just about the right size. For me, it resulted in an interesting dynamic. On my last visit, I ended up doing most of my riding on the Legend because two trains made that a much shorter wait than the Raven. This time, the Legend's longer ride meant that I spent most of the evening over on the Raven, which, of the two, I think I like slightly better. To put that into perspective, the Voyage looks like it might have been designed especially for me, so you can see where I am coming from. Both rides were running all-out, and the Raven in particular has picked up some rough spots, especially at the bottom of the lake turn. On a couple of rides, it felt like the wheels were coming off down there or something...it was a sudden kick sideways followed by a hundred feet or so of rough running. But even at that, the fact that I noticed that speaks volumes about the Holiday World coasters. Even where the Raven was at its worst, I've been on other wood coasters this season that ran rougher than that at their best. So a rough spot or two on The Raven and The Legend is pretty subjective. Both rides ran well enough that I was able to ride them both, even double and triple rides on each. I even had the end of the evening planned out so that I could get a last ride on the Legend, then get back to the Raven just before the ride closed so that I could avoid walking up that hill between Halloween and Christmas, when disaster struck. I was about to board the Legend when the train pulled into the station and stopped, then unloaded. Then...nothing.
Still nothing.
After a few minutes of delay, a lot of button pushing, and a lot of head-scratching by the available managers and mechanics, the entrance gates simply refused to open. A little investigation revealed that the computer was still happy about the rest of the ride, so someone opened a service gate at the downtrack end of the station and we all filed through and loaded the train "the old-fashioned way." Oh, well. It was the end of the night, everybody was having a wonderful time, and we weren't going to let a balky gate control ruin our fun. It was my last ride on the Legend until at least next season, and the delay meant the Raven was done before I got to it. That's okay. It's not as if I hadn't taken more than enough rides to make up for a year and a half hiatus. All good things come to an end, and the CoasterBuzz Fall Affair ended gracefully. CoasterBuzz and Holiday World teamed up to provide a wonderful and unexpected treat this fall. As usual, Holiday World went well beyond the expected to show us a good time. They showed us once again why, though they are a small park, they are easily among the best in the business. They reminded me again why I wish they weren't so far away. And when all is said and done, it truly was good to be back.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Either that, or it's a greeter with the most convincing costume I have ever seen... 8-) [Return to text]
Footnote 2: Spare me the lecture about DV-25 being a less-than-broadcast format because it lacks those lines in the VBI and uses 4:1:1 encoding...this was a 3-CCD camera that makes really pretty pictures at a lower compression ratio than Betacam SX, and a better chroma resolution than Beta SP. [Return to text]
Footnote 3: In this case that might actually be a good thing! [Return to text]
Footnote 4: After the one at Camden Park. It's a close call, and the Holiday World ride is definitely in better condition. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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