Is Holiday World the most universally loved small park in existence? Besides Knoebels I cannot think of another park that has as large of an adoring fan base with virtually no critics anywhere. I think a huge amount of that love stems from their guest relations department, as they’re experts at putting a human face on their product and coming up with more inventive ways to engage their guests, making them feel not just like customers but personal friends. Heck, on any random day there’s a decent chance you’ll have the opportunity to have a greeting, if not full conversation, with either the park owner Will Koch or his mother, Pat Koch.

Since I’m very likely evil incarnate, I’m going to do this review a bit differently and instead of simply providing anecdotes and observations about the park and reviewing the rides (it’s really just the three wooden coasters anyway, and their individual analyses can be found here: The Raven; The Legend; The Voyage) it will be slightly more… shall we say… contrarian. Brace yourself for an onslaught of biased, unfair, one-sided and all completely legitimate criticisms about everything that’s wrong with America’s most-loved small park… complete with Greek chorus! Let the vitriol begin!

First of all, some (minor) issues with nomenclature. They are the self-proclaimed “nation’s first theme park” opening in 1946, which historically is a bit of a stretch. For one, Knott’s Berry Farm also currently lays claim to this title and stacked side by side they might have the winning claim since they opened six years earlier. While I don’t feel like diving through all of my amusement park history books to find more specific examples, I’m somewhat incredulous that it took until nearly the middle of the century for a park to be able to call itself a theme park, especially when Coney Island established a trend as early as the 1900’s of intricately themed individual attractions (A Trip to the Moon and similar cycloramas, L.A. Thompson’s Scenic Railways). Are they sure they’re not the just earliest theme park that managed to survive to the present day? In that case, perhaps changing their claims to be the “Nation’s Oldest Theme Park” would be more accurate. But perhaps more importantly, while they did open in 1946, were they really a “Theme Park” back then? I thought they started life as a roadside attraction for kids to meet Santa that happened to include a few small, standard mechanical rides. I doubt there were news headlines proclaiming “Nation’s first Theme Park opens gates!”; they didn’t  become a fully-designated theme park until they became Holiday World in 1984, and the fact that they can trace their history several decades earlier is a bit of retroactive labeling. Not that this is too much of a problem, per se, but when they have such open guest relations I always feel like they’re trying to pull one over on us when they proclaim without qualification that they are the “nation’s first theme park”.

The hate train is now en route to its first destination of Putrescenceville!

Don’t forget your bile repellant, they’re currently experiencing an infestation!

What makes that even more troubling, however, is from walking around the park, I must ask: “Do they even qualify today as a themed park?” Yes, it seems as though the extent of a particular attractions themeing is generally limited to the name, logo and color scheme, and I could find not one—not one!—prop that was not part of a specific ride or shop to create a holiday atmosphere within a specific theme zone. Okay, there’s the obvious Christmas tree near in the Christmas section, which I believe they finally got around to adding in (correct me if I’m wrong) 2007, as well as their nativity scene, which I might call religious iconography rather than part of the secular ‘holiday atmosphere’ that has historically evolved after the 1700’s. Between Halloween, Independence Day and Thanksgiving, if it weren’t for the signage and paint there’d be nearly no distinction between one holiday area and another.

C’mon, Holiday World, you have so much to work with! Most real theme parks have to spend millions of dollars creating huge, elaborately detailed set-pieces that replicate historical or fictional panoramas in order to elicit an emotionally-connected sense of time and place with their guests, while you have an incredible advantage of working with themes that are capable of creating their respective mood and atmosphere with a minimum number of signifying icons. Unlike a Frontiertown or a Fantasyland, which require that guests be ‘transported’ to someplace unfamiliar and exotic, Christmas and Halloween are universal, their spirits evoked annually within our own homes, so it should be no problem connecting with guests on that level when the only limiting factor is just that you’re in the wrong month of the year for three of your four holidays (opposed to the limitations of not actually being in space or in Africa such as other theme parks are faced with). And yet no sense of these holidays are created anywhere in the park, I pretty much feel like I’m in an amusement park in the middle of summer everywhere I go when I visit Holiday World. Are Yule-tide decorations really that hard to come by? Are stars and stripes banners economically unfeasible? Has a competitor cornered the market on Halloween props? There’s a million possibilities out there to really give each section the proper holiday feel, and yet Holiday World’s modus operandi seems to be to keep everything as neutral as possible.

Bile, bile, everywhere!

There are a few architectural choices with a couple buildings that evidence some consideration, most notably the Raven’s elegant, Poe-inspired station house, complete with the cast-iron gate entrance. The inside is quite drab and not evocative of Poe, but it’s still perhaps the best found in the park; for some reason things went downhill after that. The Legend’s station house was pretty decent when it first opened, a re-creation of Ichabod Crane’s quaint schoolhouse (the hand-operated school bell one of the attendants would ring as the train returned to the station was a stroke of genius) but a lot of this feeling was lost when they expanded the station with the addition of the second train back in 2002. And the Voyage…? One gigantic blue pentagon box, with the same fishing nets and ship’s wheels nailed to the walls. Actually, this is a problem with most of the structures found in the park. Architecturally the buildings are boring to look at, the same wooden boxes and triangles replicated throughout the park, seemingly all built by the good people of Home Depot. There’s a lot of painted particle-board to be found throughout the park, and the construction of most buildings can only, at best, be called ‘functional’.

What hath wrought such loathsome malice upon thee innocents?

It doesn’t stop with the buildings, either; the entire infrastructure of the park is problematic. First of all let’s look at the Christmas section: If you’re under the age of five, this section, which should be the keystone of the entire park, is completely negligible. The primary attractions are Rudolph’s Reindeer Ranch and storytime with Santa. The area is a relative ghost town between noon and five o’clock, with nothing besides the cafeteria to pull any demographics outside of the narrow one listed above back after they’ve already passed through it on their way in. That said, it probably is preferred that the section isn’t home to any coasters or other high-profile adult rides; that’s what the other sections were built for. Christmas reflects the park’s family-oriented origins and should remain a relaxed, low-key area for children and families, as well as to establish a peaceful holiday mood for every guest when they arrive and leave the park for the day. The problem is, I got the distinct impression that today the Christmas section really is only a there to serve as a entry midway supporting the rest of the park and not something that could exist on its own. Besides the young children’s attractions, the other main features of the Christmas section are the cafeteria, the theatre, gift shops and other mandatory front-gate services. None of these are really Christmas themed, they’re “Holiday World themed”—yes, even the deceptively named Kringle’s Café, which might suggest a uniquely specialized yuletide fest house, yet in actuality serves only the most basic amusement park offerings, cafeteria-style. The emporium, Holiday Theatre and other structures are all quite generic, painted to compliment the front gates instead of the Christmas theme. There are a few actual “Christmas shops” hidden behind the Kringle’s Café (Mrs. Claus’ Cookies, the stained glass shop), but the majority of people will not see these when they arrive to the park because to do so would mean that they haven’t already veered left into the Halloween section and instead continued forward into the 4th of July, and who would want to do that?

To the left we have Halloween, with the Raven, Legend and Frightful Falls, the shortest route to Thanksgiving, with the Voyage and Pilgrim’s Plunge, and the massive water park. Straight ahead we have only the 4th of July with its signature attraction… umm… well, I’ve already been sold on turning left so let’s not bother looking up the map to see what happens if we continue straight. The only real benefit of making the 4th of July the first stop of the day is that no one else is there, and you can nearly have the entire section to yourself for the first hour or so… not that I’ve tried that myself recently because there’s nothing back there I want to do before the lines form anyway. If Holiday World were made up of sub-atomic particles, the pull between Christmas and 4th of July would be a gravitational force compared to the strong nuclear force between Christmas and Halloween.

Phlegm! Vitriol! More phlegm!

Okay, so we, as well as everyone else in the park are in the Halloween section. Now where do we go? Generally when you’re at a park and the crowds are all heading in one direction you’d expect that midway to be fairly clear cut, but the Halloween section is actually split into two midways, one a large clear midway on the upper level which is unclear what is built along it or where it leads to, and a narrow, winding midway downhill that leads to the Raven, Legend and everything else in the Halloween section. I will just say, I don’t believe I have ever been on the upper midway, and can’t even picture what it looks like as I write this. Looking at the park map, I think it really only serves as a shortcut to get from Christmas to the water park and Thanksgiving. I have never had an urge to go directly between those two locations and skip visiting Raven and Legend to find out for myself (again, what’s in the Christmas section that I would ever need to go there except for when entering and leaving the park?), especially when I’m uncertain if there’s anything even along that midway besides benches, lamp posts and trash cans (I just checked the map, there isn’t except for the “Big Crane Game”).

One of the park’s signature rides, the Raven, is the first actual attraction we’ll encounter on our visit to Holiday World, and being so close to the entry gate, with the Legend not that much further down the path, it’s a wonder that the park layout had any power pre-2006 to pull a significant number of guests (coaster enthusiasts at least) farther back into the park than the water park entrance or the explore the other areas once out of curiosity or a sense of obligation to see the entire park. While the Raven is sort of out there on its own with only the thematically-discontinuous high-dive show next door, the lower stretch of Halloween midway has turned into a pleasant anterior plaza for guests to visit before and after visiting the water park. The would-be dominance of the Legend is well equalized by the Frightful Falls, and the HalloSwings and Scarecrow Scrambler round out the mix by appealing to all tastes, and a decent collection of shops, games and food make it feel like a well-rounded self-contained area of the park. This stretch of midway lasts for all of 50 yards before its back to more awkward, confusing, sometimes empty pathways with unevenly-distributed attractions.

Save your vitriol for elsewhere, it’s not going to work on me!

Evidentially we have moved on to the new Thanksgiving midway. This expansion, although ambitious, was unfortunately a textbook 101 park design example of how not to integrate a fantastic new theme zone. The actual Thanksgiving area is contained way out in the nether regions of Holiday World, connected by a midway that:

1): Has bottleneck connections to the original park, snaked in past existing landmarks along the back side of the park where it isn’t obvious that a large expansion should be accessible from.

2): Besides being a very long hike, is devoid of any attractions, shops, themeing, anything.

3): Is shoehorned underneath the water slide and between Raging Rapids.

4): Not only runs along the back side of the prop buildings on Raging Rapids, embarrassingly placing the artificiality of the themed experience on a pedestal for all to see, but also on a bridge over a maintenance road, making the “behind-the-scenes workings” of this theme park now a centerpiece of the park.

Furthermore, this only exacerbates the fact that the Thanksgiving section is a giant cul-de-sac, which is one long midway that dead-ends, trapping guests and forcing them back out the way they came in. In terms of theme park design, this is one of the top layouts to stay away from, probably second to having a one-way traffic section along an important midway (Cedar Point tried that once during Halloweekends when they turned the Frontier Trail into the Fright Zone; needless to say, that practice didn’t last long, and the Fright Zone now must accommodate two-way traffic). Thankfully this problem isn’t as awful as it could be since the Voyage is a huge pull and everything else in the Thanksgiving section is now fairly well self-contained (family dark ride, shops, a large food service area, and now Pilgrim’s Plunge) allowing it to survive on its own, but it still is hugely inefficient for the flow of guest traffic, stagnating in visitors during the busy parts of the day while remaining vacant near opening or closing of the park. There was also an attempt this year to “connect the loop” by making Pilgrims Plunge accessible also to the water park, although the way they did this reminds me of when I played RollerCoaster Tycoon and realized I built a ride’s entrance on the wrong side of the park, and then building a wacky, semi-random pathway underground and snaked through a coaster structure to get to where I needed it to be (the original plans for this pathway apparently involved building a skywalk through the support bridge in the lift hill, above one of the crosses on the return run.) This pathway takes guests underneath the Thanksgiving midway (not sure I’ve ever seen that sort of multi-layer infrastructure attempted at a park before), and also echoes the same problem seen in other parts of the park of having a long, empty pathway trying to connect two disparate section of the park with unintuitive integration points. In this case, you have to walk way back to the Pilgrim’s Plunge queue before you can turn around to go underneath the midway you came from to get to the water park, which leads around the back side of the wave pool.

Are these shameless scare tactics nigh through yet?

I could go on criticizing the layout and infrastructure of the parks… so I will. I left Splashin’ Safari out of this report so far because I didn’t visit it on this occasion (wasn’t open for the season yet), but for being one of the top rated water parks in the country, this one experiences even worse infrastructural problems than the dry park. This might seem surprising considering the park seems to announce a major capital expansion to the water park every year. That’s actually part of the problem, because while it has become very popular with visitors and Holiday World appears to be doing more than is necessary to match the demand with new capacity every year, they only do it in a way that builds further outwards. As a result, all the oldest and lowest capacity attractions are built right where the entrance is located (and therefore crowds are the heaviest, especially early in the day when everyone is streaming into the water park), and the newer, higher-capacity rides aren’t found until farther back in the park where crowds naturally disperse anyway. The mega-capacity Jungle Racers, as well as the popular Zinga and Bakuli are all at the farthest reaches of the park, while the minor, low-throughput AmaZOOM and Bamboo Chute are front-and-center. The smaller “The Wave” pool, Monsoon Lagoon and Congo River are the attractions hit by the crowds first before they’re forced to move on to the identical but newer, better and larger Bahari, Kima Bay and Bahari River, all located in the back the water park. And I haven’t been in the water park since 2005, before they ‘completed the loop’ with Bahari River the next year, but it appears as though the new expansions are each putting a new loop on the existing midway, with Kima Bay now also making its own loop back behind the old “The Wave” wave pool, and possibly the new for 2010 Wildebeest adding another loop behind the new Bahari wave pool. I can see where the need for the second entrance by Pilgrim’s Plunge came from, since the original entrance from 1990 must have become a horrible choke point for traffic today, not having received any significant upgrades to disperse the focal entry-exit point that it always has been since it was originally designed for a water park that only had four attractions.

This aggression will not stand! …man

This issue of aggressively expanding outwards (as Will Koch somewhat egoistically puts it, “to meet the high demand”) has resulted in another problem for this friendly, home-grown park… it doesn’t feel that friendly or homegrown any more. Search the internet archives for photo trip reports circa the Raven’s opening, Holiday World had a much different, more humble feel to it than the approaching “Destination Park” they’ve become since that time. Exploring the park today, no less than 75% of it feels like it’s been built or at least modified since the Legend was added in 2000, the sense of history and charm replaced by a sense of yearly capital expansions. But still, this is a small park, right? While they might be growing each year, these additions fit with the park’s identity and they aren’t blindly chasing after whatever world records they can get like Cedar Point does.

That is true; just compare the differences between the water flume rides from Intamin each park recently added. One was just a concrete channel built in a flat, cleared field, the only thing featured on the ride being an intimidating prototype lift with a singular, world record breaking drop built more for the media attention than as a well-rounded (or even entirely accessible) family attraction. Meanwhile the other is intended for families, including a long layout with two moderate lifts and splashdowns as well as other interactive features, plenty of themeing and of course a tunnel, signature of many of their attractions. And how about the most recent coasters added by each? One park repeatedly advertised several world records in their promotions for it (forces, steepest drop, one of the longest, tallest, etc.), even after another park stole the steepness record from them; meanwhile the other park’s press release stated that the ride itself “will not break any world records. However, the focus of building [this ride] was to create an all-around fun roller coaster.” That’s what you get when you’re dealing with large, corporate parks compared to the charm of family-run parks who know they don’t need to have world record breakers to be fun. And for those who didn’t know, the unnamed record-grabbing park is at it again next season with the phrase “World’s Longest Water Coaster” actually part of the ride’s logo. They definitely need to learn from one of those oft-repeated clichés said about Holiday World’s success of how the biggest doesn’t always mean the best.

Hark! The bigot speaks with sly cunning, but do not be beguiled!

Assuming you were easily able to cut through the thick irony above you might be asking “so what does that matter, if they have the budget to build big rides then good for them (and good for us!)” That would be true, however, for being a family park Holiday World has developed a conspicuous dichotomy between their accessible family rides and the big thrill rides. I remember a few years ago my relatives I mentioned in my Thunderhawk review (scroll down to the bottom) had visited a Six Flags park and complained that there was no middle ground; everything there were either easy family rides or 100+ ft. drops and/or loops. At the first sound of a family in trouble at a big corporate park, my ears picked up and automatically prompted me to suggest Holiday World as the definitive family destination. But I had to stop short when I realized that their problem wouldn’t have been solved. There was the log flume, they knew they could handle that. What was next? The Raven, which was the same as the rides they were scared to go on at Six Flags. Anything in between? Not really. At the time Liberty Launch was the only thing that might have worked as a go-between ride, but I think a launch tower might also be a bit too big of a step for them psychologically, even if it runs a weak program. Everything else were basic flat rides you could find at a carnival, and then you have to make the jump all the way up to three of the world’s top wooden coasters, the most recent of which is ranked as the best in the world among enthusiasts for its unrelenting intensity and huge scale. I instead suggested that they try Cedar Point sometime, where rides such as the Cedar Creek Mine Ride, Disaster Transport and Iron Dragon would be the sort of thing they would be looking for. (Although I should note that as I also mentioned in my Thunderhawk review, they did go from Zach’s Zoomer to Thunderhawk in the same day, so maybe for newcomers to amusement rides the jump from Frightful Falls to the Raven isn’t as big as I assume it to be.)

While part of this problem stems from their constantly chasing after world records making their few big rides bigger and more intimidating than they need to be, more of it comes from the fact that their family rides are all rather lame. As I mentioned, Liberty Launch runs one of the weakest cycles of any S&S Double Shot I’ve ever been on, especially when you compare it to their neighbor’s at Indiana Beach. Other flat rides are also either tame to begin with or run at half speed, their Eagle’s Flight flyers being a gentle circular ride with no prospects for snapping, the most intense flat being the Revolution. The Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride and Halloswings are fun but hardly anything more than specially themed versions of the classic carnival rides, same true of the toothless Scarecrow Scrambler and Rough Riders (I haven’t done the Turkey Whirl yet; there’s something wrong with having a tilt-a-whirl without the clamshell roofs). They have a decent sized collection of flats, but if there’s even one other park you live closer to than Holiday World (Kings Island, Beech Bend, definitely Indiana Beach…) chances are you’re only visiting for the coasters and waterslides, the rest of the ride collection pales in comparison no matter what dimension you measure it by.

Lies! All lies!

The coasters are world-class, though, right? No way I would dare argue against that. Individually each of their three wooden coasters are one of the best in the world. But the odd thing is, taken together I don’t think they add up to nearly as much as they should be capable of. Rather than complement one another with differences in design that each satisfy an alternative segment of a park’s coaster spectrum, all three coasters at Holiday World are basically the same fundamental idea redesigned three different times, each instance with a bigger budget and newer techniques. It’s a fantastic ride to begin with, but after the Legend tried to nearly identically recapitulate the Raven’s formula and was not as successful at it, followed by the Voyage’s attempt to take the “sort of air-time-y but really just laterals-intense terrain coaster” approach originally defined by both Raven and Legend but blow both of those out of the water with a scale not possible ten years prior, I get the feeling that they’re competing for my affection rather than collaborating to make the day a really complete one. Where’s the diversity? The lack of a steel coaster is widely mentioned, although for some reason most enthusiasts can’t get over themselves and are perpetually requesting Holiday World to build either an Intamin Megacoaster or a B&M Floorless. It’s family steel coasters that would perfectly “fill that gap” I alluded to in the paragraph above that I’m surprised Holiday World has managed to avoid year after year despite what I’d imagine to be incredible market demands, and there are so many great options out there. I personally think an S&S Free Fly would be a fantastic addition for their July 4th section, but there are also Gerstlauer, Maurer, Vekoma, Premier and others that have a great portfolio of innovative family steel attractions that Holiday World refuses to buy in favor of collecting everything in their ProSlide catalog (at least as of this writing), and frankly I think both they and their guests are missing out big time from this gap.

I beseech thee to cover thy eyes and ears while in the presence of this heretic!

But it’s not just the rides that visit Holiday World for, but the great customer service you can’t get anywhere else. Yes, they have a great PR department and are open to talking with fans rather than hide behind office desks. However, the actual employees running the rides and food stands I’ve never found to be such a spectacularly well-trained group to the degree that they need to be awarded best in the world every year. They’re friendly, they do their work, and they’re just local teenagers with a summer job. Their human resources department knows how to organize the work so they’re not surly or despondent, but most other parks I’ve been to have been getting better at that as well and I’ve never had any experiences with any of their workers that stood out above an average day at Cedar Point (unless I count the time a bored Raven operator leaned on the control panel and accidentally triggered an e-stop, causing everyone a fifteen minute wait to call the mechanic to reset the system). Coaster capacity I’ve not found to be huge either, despite adding transfers for multiple trains on Raven and Legend they’ve not used them any of the times I was there… except in 2005 when they had both trains on the track but cycled one of them empty, citing “current attendance levels”; this of course slows the blocking down more than if they were to just run one train. One train on the Voyage in 2009 led to an uncomfortably stagnant station later in the afternoon, thankfully it was walk-on throughout the morning and evening. Their continual win of “Friendliest Employees” in the Golden Ticket Awards I’m sure refers more to the management than the employees. (If you think they are, go to Dollywood, their Thunderhead crews are the best I’ve ever found)

Then there is their popular free, unlimited soft drinks campaign. Yes, I will even take issue with this. While it’s certainly always a positive feeling associated with not having to pay for soft drinks when you normally would, there are some not-so-positive consequences that go with it. It creates an incentivisation structure that encourages you consume more soft drinks than you otherwise would. Family of four, normally buy the kids healthier beverages such as milk or juice? Not at Holiday World you’re as likely to; why pay for those (even if they’re normally priced) when can give them unlimited Mountain Dew for free? But water’s always free, right? Yes, that’s the problem, it’s always free, and therefore you don’t feel like you’re taking advantage of their free soft drinks promotion whenever you fill your cup with water instead. I’ve learned the hard way on a hot summer day, do not be tempted to fill up on carbonated beverages just because they’re free, in the end you’ll always become dehydrated and miserable. At least some non-sugary energy drinks were among the selection on my last visit.

The stench of his putrid deceitfulness is starting to overwhelm.

Oh, and there’s another problem with free unlimited soft-drinks I forgot about but my mom was kind enough to remind me of before I went to publish this article: the waste. When we visited in the middle of August a few years ago, the trash bins near any of the Pepsi Oasis stations were almost always overflowing with small paper cups. Just imagine how much more they contribute to the local landfill from paper cups in the time since the free Pepsi program’s implementation. So much for their “Cleanest Park” award; cleanliness isn’t anything I generally pay too much attention to just as long as not distracting (i.e. mustard and coke spilled over every dining table… as long as basic measures are taken and the average park populace knows those trash bins aren’t there for decoration, it’s rather hard to judge one park as being more clean than another), but I do sometimes think the reason Holiday World wins the award for cleanest park is caused more from a self-fulfilling prophecy by always declaring themselves as having the “Queen of Clean” and placing banners up congratulating themselves for winning the award again. I for one sure as hell can’t think of any park I would deliberately say is cleaner than Holiday World, I just vote Michigan’s Adventure because I’d like to see my home park rank somewhere else besides the wood poll and as far as I can tell they have all the same cleaning procedures in place that Holiday World does.

Clean your mouth of these vile defamations first!

Okay, so I’ve already managed to devote two paragraphs to ripping on one of those sacred untouchables that contribute to Holiday World’s customer satisfaction. Any other freebies I wish to rip the angle wings off of? As a matter of fact, yes. The same dilemma that presents itself with the free soft drinks is also present with their free suntan lotion (“normally I’d use a higher SPF lotion, but this stuff is free so if I don’t take advantage of that offer my mind will actually register it as a loss”). Inner tubes in the water park are free, but so are they at a lot of other places; it doesn’t cost them anything for people to use tubes they already have, so a charge would be something people would complain about anyway. Free parking? Always welcome, but I should note that Holiday World’s parking lot appears to be some sort of compacted gravel.

And actually, even if these free features are nice (food, while not much better than standard amusement park fare, are priced more reasonably), I have to wonder if they’re covering their costs by hiding them in the admission ticket. For the 2009 season, if you were to buy your Holiday World ticket at the gate with no extra discounts, you’ll save all of $3 than if you were to buy a ticket at Cedar Point’s front gate instead (CP has since announced that they’re raising their admission prices by $1 for 2010). No wonder they have to emphasize how much stuff they give away for free, without it Holiday World might appear to be a bit of a rip-off.

By Zeus, you can’t put a price on happiness! Ignore these treacherous claims!

Then there are the hours; Holiday World has had some of the most difficult hours to work with of any park their size in the region. Opening nearly a month later than other parks along the same degree of latitude and closed weekdays by the middle of August, if you’re hoping to score rides on all three of their amazing terrain coasters after dark, you be ready to deal with summer crowds and long lines for maybe an hour or so of dark because the latest they ever close is 9:30pm only on peak season Saturdays. They post advisories on their website to avoid those days, and yet what am I to do when the schedule indicates that the only time to enjoy these coasters after dark is during those same Saturdays? (The answer, I guess, is to attend Holiwood Nights, where I can also experience the joy of joys of riding on trainloads filled with nothing but coaster enthusiasts…) I was able to work a solution in 2006 by buying an evening ticket for the Saturday and then a full day ticket the next Sunday, but not only does this cost more out of pocket for about the same amount of time spent in-park, but I doubt I ever would have gotten rides on all three anyway had a huge thunderstorm not swept over the area a couple hours prior to park closing and my dad and I had to wait in the car as we watched hoards of people streaming out of the park from the downpour; we still had a half-hour wait for the Voyage.

Other parks should take note of this business model: greet your guests personally at the front gate, have a few really kickass coasters and waterslides, give some things away for free your competitors don’t that would just be artificial price mark-up anyway, play the role of the underdog amid hostile corporate parks, and you’ll be able to get away with stuff even Six Flags under Premier Parks couldn’t do.

So in conclusion (wow, that Greek chorus gag wore thin quickly, didn’t it?)…

Holiday World is one of my favorite parks. I’ve driven all the way to southern Indiana three of the last five years, and I’m disappointed I’ll have to wait until at least 2011 before I can visit again. For every negative point I’ve listed about the park above, there are always at least two positive points to counter it.  Holiday World is perhaps one of the only parks in the world that manages to simultaneously feel homegrown and personal while also striving for a grandeur that would rank them toe-to-toe with Cedar Point or other regional giants. However, the fact that those negative points do exist and are not being addressed indicates that the park is becoming complacent after nothing but glowing praise over the positives from every single fan of the park. Hopefully I can effectively play the role of the gadfly to stir the majestic but inert horse that is Holiday World into action. Just please don’t make me drink the hemlock afterwards. </bad socrates jokes>

Now then, how about some ride reviews? Most of this sunny, early May visit was spent on the three coasters, however I did get to sample a few other attractions that are worth a note. First is their log flume, Frightful Falls. Despite being one of the smaller log flumes I’ve been on, it’s also one of the best, thanks to the good terrain and rather creepy, clausterphobic (and very dark!) tunnel that starts the flume with. The splashdown is one of those ‘perfect level of wetness’ splashes, at least for an early season visit, maybe they can adjust it to be larger on really hot days.

Later in the day was the Howler… yes, I finally got around to doing the Howler. I actually was sort of proud that I was able to resist the temptation to credit it to my list on earlier visits, but the small crowds, me wanting to explore every area of the park to get photographs, and the fact that I was anticipating to not even get to the double-digits for new coasters this year (Diamondback, Greezed Lightnin, and then a few Chicago rides new to me) meant I wanted to pick up every new coaster I could. I even liked the version at Dorney Park somewhat for the intense laterals. This one was just sort of weak, also lacking the nice landscaping that surrounded the Woodstock Express.

The Gobbler Getaway dark ride needs to be experienced by everyone that visits Holiday World, if not because it’s all that successful but just because it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve been through. The historical 1870’s Thanksgiving setting at once clashes and yet is oddly complementary of the 1970’s psychedelic blacklighting effects. However, I think Sally Corporation works better under creative constraints, such as with the Den of Lost Thieves at Indiana Beach where they needed to thread the scenes very tightly together in a pre-existing building, with the loading platform on the ground level but the rest of the ride on the second floor. Gobbler Getaway, for all its mind-bending colonial-psychedelic charm (the pilgrims had to be doing something over the long winter, right?) feels a bit too clean-cut, a four foot buffer maintained at all times between the ride vehicle and the 2D cutout scenery in each of the perfectly squared-off scene rooms. Being Holiday World the interactive laser shooters are harmlessly themed as turkey calls, and (spoiler alert…) at the end of the ride they decide to order a Thanksgiving pizza to be shared with all of our aviary friends. In most cases I might critique the overly sanitized attitude people always have to assume whenever kids might be involved, but in this case the PC touches are all strangely perfect.

Lastly, there’s the Pilgrim’s Plunge. Uh huh, that’s really the best name they could think of? Whatever happened to their great literary-based names of the Raven and Legend, names that had significance, why are we now stuck with one-dimensional monikers like Voyage, Turkey Whirl and Pilgrim’s Plunge? I guess holidays founded by Calvinists don’t attract as rich of an intellectual, artistic following as holidays that celebrate despair, horror and death are inclined to do, so Holiday World is stuck with broad historical references for these new rides instead.

I already complained enough about the ride’s odd location far away from the rest of the park as a concrete trough in the middle of a cleared (and at the time of my visit still dirt and mud) field earlier in this article, so I shall skip to the review of the ride proper. I got to it later in the day as it became a bit overcast and threatening of rain, so I was one of the few people at the ride and when my boat arrived the attendant asked me to sit in the middle as I was the only person on it, presumably to balance the weight on the elevator lift. The boat leaves the continuously moving station and starts with a basic groundlevel flume section. A few minor splashes before the turns, but missing both the elevation changes, tunnel and themed setting of its predecessor the Frightful Falls. This ride actually shares more in common with Frightful Falls than I might have guessed, they both have nearly identical layouts, Pilgrim’s Plunge just has slightly larger boats and a much larger drop.

So we finally get to the elevator. Forget the Voyage, this is probably the scariest shit in the park (noting that ‘scariest’ is a very different concept from ‘most intense’). One thing I hadn’t anticipated is that the second platform that’s ascending the lift as we approach is carries a lot of water up with it, creating an Angel Falls re-creation with our boat approaching the base of the falls. The front got a bit wet, but I stayed mostly dry by the time I got to be positioned under it. There’s a creaky, dangerous mechanical feel to the way we get to the lift, making me half think Six Flags Magic Mountain and Holiday World would be better off swapping themes for each of their new for 2009 attractions. We ascend the lift, me leaning over slightly to try to sneak a unique view of the Voyage’s lift from behind the flume drop. The lift does that for me, slowly tilting outwards before bending back in. We get to the top, and the time it takes to lock the elevator in place to shoving us over the drop is much shorter than one might think. The drop is almost a bit anticlimactic after this lift, being long and flat, letting us build up a good amount of speed, however the water from the falls effect whipping up over the boat so we can’t see anything (good thing I wasn’t in the front). 131 feet goes by fast even at only a 45 degree angle, and just when it seems to really get going it pulls out for the splashdown.

I think the park wanted some dramatic 60ft. tall wall of water, but for some reason they got a long hydroplane instead, skimming water against the sides while passengers stay dryer than they did on the drop itself. It lets us sustain our speed for a bit longer, and once it’s slowed down enough the boat dips in and ends up swamping the front of the boat (again, good thing I wasn’t in the front). The turn back to the station is pretty dull, taking place around a small concrete island filled with woodchips and a few shrubs that would look more than at home at any Cedar Fair park. The pathway runs along this stretch as well, so presumably family members that elected not to ride can get an immediate impression from those who did. For me, at this point I’m just glad they had a cubby in the station for me to store my shoes, socks and cellphone… even though I didn’t get that wet. I’m one of those wusses when it comes to water rides, although I’ve been getting better in recent years.

I’ll wrap this article up with one of the reasons I really love Holiday World. After spending a mostly full day in the park my dad wanted to rest in the car while I needed to do the coasters more (why leave early when this is one of my few chances to ride them with no lines, I ask?) So we got one more ride together on the Raven before he left with the assumption that I’d try to finish up within the next hour… hour and a half… two hours. Two hours and fifteen minutes to get back to the car. Yeah.

The Raven station is nearly empty, and after switching spots between the front and back row to accommodate new riders, I found a seat I liked in the middle and stayed there without ever needing to release my lapbar. Even better than the ride itself was the ability to just sit and watch different people come and go from the train and enjoy a ride seeing the different reactions they had. I planned to stay until I found someone waiting for my seat, but that never happened, so after twelve or thirteen rides I finally had to get off just because I was starting to become slightly nauseous and needed to walk around a bit more. So I amble over to the Legend and find the same situation; after switching up between different rows for five or six rides, I find a seat I like in the second-to-last car that no one ever comes to ride, so I stay there for at least another six or seven rides until I again need to get off. Going over to the Thanksgiving area I got my Pilgrim’s Plunge ride I described earlier, just as the skies were turning a bit dark. Over to the Voyage to dry off in the front row, there was slightly more of a crowd there, but it cleared up after circling the queue once, after that we just had to pick a different seat on the return of the station. It starts drizzling eventually, and just that perfect amount where it doesn’t sting the face or force you to shield your eyes on the high speed sections, but with only one train the rails were always well-lubricated by the time we were sent out again. Probably fourteen to fifteen rides total on the Voyage as well, ending the last few minutes the park was open by being one of only three people on the entire train, getting what could have been unlimited re-rides in the front seat had the park not had to close at 6:30 that day. All-in-all those last three hours endlessly re-riding the coasters and also sampling the Pilgrim’s Plunge were probably one of the highlights of my… year (not that there was too much competition at least for theme parks, although Beast night rides in the middle of summer always make for a good year, as do Magnum re-rides at the end of the night on the last day of the season). As I said, I definitely plan to return to Holiday World as soon as I can and advise anyone that hasn’t been to do likewise. While 2010 is out for me, 2011 will be five years after Voyage… Legend only came five years after Raven…

Ride progression does not seem to be something that’s often in the collective consciousness of the mainstream enthusiast community. However, if there is a roller coaster that’s universally famous for having strong progression, it’s probably the Raven. The only other coaster I can think of that uses progression as powerfully as the Raven is Kennywood’s Thunderbolt; not coincidentally, both of these coasters were at one time ranked as #1 in the world, at times when there seemed to be bigger and better contenders for the title but there was something about these rides that just made them special enough to hold that number one spot. While I’m sure there’s as many reasons unique reasons for loving these rides as there are people that love them, I would argue that the underlying progression in their layouts is the biggest factor in their lasting appeal.

Before moving on, a quick defining of terms, just in case you’ve been wondering what the heck I’m talking about and why I’m not discussing the Raven’s airtime or use of terrain instead. When I look at a coaster’s progression, I’m looking at how the experience manages to evolve over the course of the layout; how it “tells a story”, which I think is the most popular way of putting it when progression is discussed amongst enthusiasts. I’d generally like to stay away from that term, since “telling a story” implies narrative and those rules of structuring and so on, all of which is a slightly different category of aesthetics than what I think we’re looking at in the coaster realm.

The most common form of progression is natural to nearly all coasters, and that’s the tightening of a ride’s pace, timing and rhythm as the elements become smaller throughout the ride due to the loss of speed from friction. Some rides manage this form of progression very well, others just get more boring as the ride goes on, but with few exceptions, all traditional forms of coaster design are bound by this rule.

Another example of common forms of progression is what I’d call the two-part or three-part ride form (not many coasters go higher than that). Denver’s Lakeside Cyclone contains an example of the two-part ride structure in its most simplified form. The coaster begins as a twister layout, and then midway through it switches to an out-and-back. There’s not much more subtlety to the ride experience than that, and psychologically I’m fairly certain that simply changing from one style to another doesn’t accomplish much (that ride has a million other charms regardless to make it one of my favorites), but the simple nature of the progression is indisputably there. More complex forms of progression exist in rides that use tightly structured patterns to organize what’s normally coaster chaos, perhaps at first reiterating a simple theme, then from that creating a brand new theme, and finally returning to the original theme but expressed in an altered form. (Read my Fahrenheit analysis for an example of this)

The Raven uses a two-part progression pattern. To put it simply, the first half features a more classicalist segmentation of up-and-down hills and curves, the second half is the ground level flight through the woods. There are many more distinguishing characteristics that make this progression more advanced than simply stitching two separate halves together (not least of which is the pivotal role played by the famous fifth drop, but we’ll get to that later…) What I find most impressive about the Raven is that it’s able to contain a fully-realized example of progression despite being a very short ride. It made it through ten years of operation with only one train before the second was added in 2005 and for the most part it handled crowds adequately with just that load; it only takes about 45 seconds for the train to go from the crest of the first drop to the brakes, and yet in that time frame it manages to complete an entire narrative arc… although as I said earlier narrative analogies to a ride’s progression I don’t think hold up very well once you start analyzing it very deep; perhaps an arpeggio or movements in music composition are better analogies? (And to put the ride’s size in proper perspective, while it may appear diminutive compared to the Voyage it’s actually the same as the average GCI creation: SFMM’s recent Terminator Salvation coaster only racks up 77ft. more track on a single run compared to the Raven’s 2800ft. long layout)

This is all starting to read as being a bit too single-minded, what else is there to appreciate about the Raven? The setting for one, the airtime for another; read any other review of the ride and you’re likely to encounter a good deal of superlatives about each of these elements, so I won’t dwell too much on either of these aspects before starting the play-by-play ride description. I will say that on my last visit, neither of these elements were true stand-outs in defining the Raven against other coasters.

The airtime is there and I can see how longtime friends of the Raven will appreciate it, but a word to any potential newcomers to the Raven experience: know that the airtime probably won’t strike you as the first, or even the second or third things that stand out in the ride. There’s the first drop air, which like any first drop can only be experienced in the back of the train. There’s a bit of air over the next hill or two depending on if you’re getting it at the end of a hot summer day or at the beginning of a warm, early season morning (as I did). And then there’s fifth drop air, which officially is considered to be “legendary” although I’ve heard reports from many others saying they didn’t find much of any uplift. Me, I must confess I didn’t pay much attention to if there was or wasn’t, I was more interested in other things going on, such as the use of terrain.

The old story goes that Holiday World owner Will Koch was so invested in saving as many trees in the park as possible that sections of the coaster underwent last-minute design changes in order to save a few extra tree (that’s what’s responsible for the little s-curve zigzag at the very bottom of the fifth drop). Which is interesting because the last time I rode the Raven all I noticed was a huge parking lot on the out run and a huge cleared field on the final ‘terrain’ portion of the run. It only seemed to enter the woods for just a split second after both the fifth drop and just before the brakes, but the wide right turn that makes up about half the trackwork in the second half of the ride has nothing but grass and weeds off to the left side of it. Looking over some older videos I noticed that was always part of the land since it first opened, but it felt very noticeable on this most recent visit.

But then there’s the ride at night. Because the park generally doesn’t keep late hours I’ve only ever had the pleasure to ride the Raven after dark on two occasions, once in 2000 and again in 2006. Both times were magnificent experiences. Provided there aren’t too many lights from the parking lot seeping into the area (which is why I should probably think about attending a Holiwood Nights event one of these years) once the train crests the lift until it returns to the station house, you are suffocated by complete and total darkness. Will Koch stated his inspiration for building the Raven was to make a small scale versions of the Beast; while many enthusiasts believe the Raven far exceeds the Beast by virtue that the Raven actually does stuff, the one regard that does see the Raven stand as equal peers with the Beast is in how they are completely transformed by the nighttime setting. As I write these words and reflect further on those two after dark rides I’ve had, I’ve realized just how much higher I should make it a priority to get to Holiwood Nights because I’ve had the Raven sitting comfortably in my top ten mostly by the virtue of its daytime rides, I can’t imagine what it might be if I could savor it through repeated night rides with the lights flooding the parking lot turned off.

The Raven begins in much the same way as the Beast, by giving us an ample amount of time to think about the ride we have ahead of us; also like the Beast, not much of the Raven besides the lift can be seen from inside the park, although depending on where you parked your car you might pass by quite a bit of it on the tram into the park. We slowly make a tight left turn out of the station and over the queue, rumbling through the transfer shed that’s run parallel to the station since it was added in 2005 to accommodate a second train, before there’s a quick left dive under the returning brake run and engaging the lift. The lift climbs up the side of a well-forested hill, and if you look to the right you can catch a unique perspective of the forested s-turn final, the geographical nearness yet appearance of greater distance highlighting just how far down the terrain difference is for that final portion of the ride; the first drop is only 85 feet and yet the total height difference yields about 35% more vertical distance with this finale.

We crest the lift overlooking the Holiday World parking lot and make a small pivot to the right before angling down the first drop. CCI’s method of profiling a hill such as on the Raven can easily be contrasted with the newer, “improved” method seen by the Gravity Group on the other side of the park: the curvature to the maximum steepness is very tight, and most of the drop consists of perfectly flat track until the pullout. While in theory the approach seen by the Voyage should produce greater amounts of airtime because the outward curvature produces both centrifugal forces that translate into airtime for the rider that a flat downward slope such as the Raven’s is unable to achieve, in practice the tight pullover contributes to far more intense ejector forces which are able to be sustained by the gravitational acceleration downhill; if you compare the two approaches to first drop profiling side-by-side, the reason the Raven is able to produce the stronger forces is that it fits that same pullover in 1/4 the space.

We pull out and into the tunnel. Despite appearances this flat stretch of tunnel is actually angled slightly downhill, so not only is the high rate of speed contrasted with the acoustic reverberations and fast parallax with the walls sustained for a moment before pulling back up into the clear air, but the speed actually continues to push forward even more so the maximum speed on the ride is achieved just before the exit. The next hill isn’t one I ever attribute as being particularly forceful, but it’s a good exercise in sustaining speed over the entire rise and fall, the slight righthand turn at the top making for a harsh little interlude between the graceful airiness on either side of the pullover. We dive down and back up once more over a gradual, rounded little hill, the lake coming into sight as we pull over the top of this slightly airy crest.

This leads directly into the turn over Lake Rudolph, done with a typical CCI-styled swoop at either end as it curves close to the water, slowing down the timing between elements while maintaining the strong rate of speed as mildly persistent laterals are thrown into the mix for the first time in the ride. Instead of transitioning back into a set of more tightly paced hills, the train continues to sweep back up towards the direction it originally came, starting to sacrifice some of the sustained speed and pacing before the wide elevated turn to the left matches up alongside the second hill. Many of CCI’s later designs would continue to include this moment (normally after a midpoint in the ride such as a turnaround) that momentarily curbs the generated excitement before it kicks back in with another steep drop into more of the same high-level pacing. In the Raven’s case, instead of diving down the only thing that drops off is the excitement level even more as there is only a small dip (no forces) set next to the second hill structure as it turns back away from the outward bound track again to face into the woods, rising a second time to the loss of most of the trains energy.

Think of one of your favorite coasters, and then think of that singular moment along the course of the ride that best captures the reasons why you love it, the moment that always causes a mental snap of the fingers when you realize “now this is why this coaster will always be better than the rest!” For me, that moment on the Raven isn’t getting hit with the sharp ejector into the first drop nor is it that tricky little s-curve at the bottom of the fifth drop. Nor is it the fifth drop itself, which would appear to be the next element I ought to cover in this progression analysis of the ride. It’s a flat stretch of track about three feet long that separates the small curved rise after the fourth small dip, and the sharp plunge down into the 61ft. tall fifth drop. It probably isn’t even intentional, probably this was intended to be a continuously curved crest, but the apex would have been in the open air between ledgers so it just flattened out from point A ledger to point B ledger instead. But this singular moment is where the progression factor I praise so dearly about the Raven is not simply some abstract concept you have to think about over the course of the ride, but right there, in the moment, sitting in front of you. It’s just a lull by itself, so you’re not thinking about the ride in the moment but instead of where you just came from (a diminuendo in pacing after a ‘traditional’ coaster experience) and what’s immediately to come.

A 61 foot drop not much gentler than the first, down the hillside and into the cavern of trees. Lots of coasters out there use lulls followed by big moments, but none have ever been nearly as effective as on the Raven, at least relative to the original context of the ride. This drop effectively reboots the coaster anew, tossing away the classical hills and curves approach used by the first half and changing into something never really seen before or since in the history of coasters. We pull out hard at the bottom and quickly dodge to the right, the left. From here to the end the train relentlessly powers ahead at full speed, never experiencing more than a 20 ft elevation change so that there is no loss in forward momentum. Just the pacing by itself would make this section unique, forgoing the fast-slow-fast-slow pattern found on most coasters including this one for the first half and instead keeping it perfectly consistent all the way until the brakes. I always found it odd that the Raven was championed for being an airtime lover’s coaster when the best part about the ride was just sustained ground level speed and laterals. We make a long transition anticipating the wide righthand turn, it hitting hard and sustaining the g-forces for what feels like twice as long and as strong as the previous lake turn. Sit in the back row and watch the cars arrange themselves in a fixed arc as they navigate the curve, the only movement being the shuffling back and forth and the rapidly shifting mosaic of greenery in the background, indicative of both our precarious velocity changing through the woods and the complete control the Raven has over its flight path. The ride shifts back upward, scooting over a small crest before diving back down to the left, touching close enough to the ground we can count the individual ferns as they whiz by. The track curves upward to be greeted with the brake run. The ride may not last long but it hardly seems like it when it’s actually over.

In summation, my thesis for the Raven is that the coaster’s success is mostly accredited not simply to the airtime in the first half or the terrain use in the second, but from the way it progresses from the first half to the disparate yet complementary second, with the diminuendo/pause/fifth drop being an effective bridge between the two. While hopefully anyone that’s familiar with the Raven can easily see that it progresses in this fashion (because this is a fact anyone can obtain just from looking at the POV video), it might not be immediately clear that the concept of progression in a coaster makes any impact in its effectiveness. One might object that while things like progression can be nice extras in a ride and can be interesting to speculate about online during the offseason, when it comes down to it all that people respond to are more physical, tactile dimensions such as the amount of airtime or great night rides. We might even be able to take this further and state that it’s impossible for anyone to derive any additional satisfaction from a decent progression structure; what we really are responding isn’t the progression but the fact that we get a wider variety of experiences in a single ride, and any coaster that includes this variety will therefore also have ‘progression’ as it switches from one experience to the next. In other words, progression isn’t a contributing factor to a coaster’s success, but merely a necessary condition that always corresponds to this other factor of diversity of elements which is what actually makes a coaster great.

To answer these objections, I will first concede that, yes, you can’t make anyone appreciate progression in a ride, each person’s brain responds to different stimuli (either through genetics, historical conditioning or underlying beliefs and bias) and for some people things like progression might never cross their subconscious let alone their conscious. And that’s perfectly okay, it’s not their fault. Some people also enjoy movies such as Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe and believe that the radio top 40 refers to the musical quality, and living in a modern society we should recognize that all of these preferences are completely subjective to each individual and every opinion is just as valid as the next…

More seriously, I think if there is any debate to be had on whether these more intangible principles such as progression ought to have a place in roller coaster aesthetic theory, allegiances will be formed with strong correlation to whether or not one’s underlying attitude towards coasters is more passive and treats it as a sensational-input device (i.e. “All I want is to maximize the quantity of airtime or other sensations I find pleasurable”) versus those that take a more active, intellectual approach to rides where psychology can be more important than physics (i.e. “What am I thinking during the ride, how does it play with my expectations and then change the outcome, is this a layout I can admire from a designer’s perspective?”) To defend the later position, I will note that this position (that the coaster is something thought about rather than just experienced) is pretty much the standard for all other art forms… theater, music, cinema, visual arts, even culinary arts… coasters borrow many of the same aesthetic principles as these mediums, and yet I frequently get the sense that many people think the only part of the body they ought to affect is the adrenal gland. And that’s by no means saying that progression by itself is a sufficient cause for a great ride; if the airtime in the first half was weak or the forest missing from the second half of the Raven, then the ride would suck no matter how it’s arranged. However, I think progression is one of the best ways to start looking at and appreciating a coaster beyond instantaneous sensory feedback, and the psychological effects of a good progression structure are very real, compared to a coaster that could be said to have progression but only highlights its weaknesses by concentrating the dull sections at the end instead of using them to set up an exciting moment.

Or maybe I’m reading popular opinion all wrong and most fans of the Raven already agree with me about the role of progression (differences in opinions about the specific details are always encouraged, however). What do you think? Why is the Raven so popular despite being such a small coaster? Or, alternatively, why is it overrated and the weakest of the three wooden coasters in the park? Anyone that can write their reply in the form of an Edgar Allen Poe styled poem will be awarded two free internets.

(Additional photo credits to Anthony Harrison and Freddie Ross. Used with permission.)

Holiday World – Santa Claus, Indiana

It can be tough being a middle child. Such is the case for the Legend, always being upstaged by its older and younger siblings the Raven and the Voyage, at least when it comes to where enthusiasts tend to throw most of their love for Holiday World’s coasters. There could be any number of reasons for this, such as an inferior layout, not quite as much airtime as its siblings, moments of weak pacing, a less effective use of terrain, frequently the roughest tracking of the three, repressed mother issues…

Let’s look at a couple of these issues one-by-one to see if the problem can be identified (sorry, won’t have time to touch on the last one). When it comes to layouts, the Legend is indisputably the most unfocused of the three, and has long been regarded as a chaotic, frequently meandering, laterals-focused contrast to the simple, poetic airtime-laden beauty that is the Raven.  Simply compare the Legend’s layout to that of the Raven to see how different they are:

Cresting the lift hill, there’s a quick right-hand turn before diving straight down a sharp plunge that’s world-renown for offering supreme airtime in the back rows. Greeting us at the bottom is a tunnel that heightens the impact of the ride’s maximum speed. Out of the tunnel is a slightly bent hill that almost sets us up for some sort of cockeyed out-and-back routine. However it is only followed up by a singular rise before transitioning into a signature, right-hand turnaround maneuver. At first tracing back alongside the initial outward bound track with a second, smaller hill, the ride seems to let up pace for just a moment at the apex of the next hill. No wonder why, as it sets up the coaster’s centerpiece moment: the fifth drop, a deep, dangerous dive that surprises by going down further along the ground than it was on the way up. Pulling hard out of this drop we are greeted with a fast ground-level s-curve that switches to a stretch of prebank that empties us into an long right turn that makes up the majority of this second half of the ride. After clearing this long finale the layout finds its way back to the station.

I think the above clearly demonstrates the Legend to be the inferior coaster, although I can be more certain when I figure out which of the two rides I just described…

I remember way back during the winter of the Legend’s construction, and Will Koch was basking in the glow of the Raven’s success over winning the Golden Ticket for best wooden coaster in the country, he speculated during a helicopter fly-over of the construction site that their chances of taking the #1 spot with the Legend were about fifty-fifty. That was ten years ago and I doubt I’ll be able to find that broadcasting again (many thanks if someone out there can!), but I remembered that one line because he seemed so confident in it and then it never came close to true. While certainly a great ride that would even see the light of top ten lists on multiple occasions, no matter what poll results you look at the Legend is always found somewhere beneath the Raven’s name, even if they happened to occupy the #1 and #2 positions. I always dismissed Koch’s original confidence in his ride as simply not having a firm understanding of what exactly made the Raven so great, choosing to string together an arbitrary assortment of popular wooden coaster parts, each suggested from their enthusiast feedback campaign, on a ride twice as expensive and calling that an improvement. After looking at their layouts a second time I now realize he knew exactly what the Raven’s success formula was and tried to carbon-copy that on a more impressive scale as closely as possible. Where else did the Legend go wrong?

Honestly, when I first visited Holiday World in 2000 the Legend was far and away my favorite ride compared to the Raven. So much so that the late night ride in the rain we had at the end of the day caused it to become my number one wood for a year (displacing even my home state favorite of Shivering Timbers) until I got an even more epic night ride on the Beast the following year. So what happened in the intervening time? The replacement of the single Gerstlauer train with two PTCs certainly didn’t harm the ride quality, although the alternations done to the station to accommodate the change in blocking I don’t think were a positive one; it used to really look and feel like a schoolhouse that Ichabod Crane once taught in, now it’s just this sort of long claustrophobic structure with metal roofing, no school bell and only a chalkboard to indicate the school theme which I swear hasn’t been touched in years (fairly sure in 2009 it was the same drawing I saw back in 2005 or at least ’06… not saying that as a complaint but out of amazement that no one ever once accidentally brushed their sleeve against it). One of the more critical factors might be a change in surroundings. The Legend used to be ‘out in the woods’ like the Raven, now, while it’s set out along the woods, the waterpark heavily encroaches on the initial out-and-back run, the spotlights for some reason still on full power even though Splashin’ Safari had long since closed for the night. The second half of the ride never quite gets there as a terrain ride either, any elevation differences having a minimal effect on the ride progression and are completely unnoticeable by riders onboard; the more compact nature of the layout with taller structures meant more trees had to be cleared around the lift and helix so it’s always been pretty exposed after the partially subterranean tunnel as well with no attempts to replant trees in this area really evident. The crossovers with the helix and lift also dilute the terrain coaster experience, as does the fact that the finale isn’t set deep in the woods as the Raven’s is but rather in the infield between the lift/Frightful Falls and the ride’s station and queue area.

This is starting to sound petty; the Legend still has much better setting than any of Cedar Fair’s recent attempts at preserving the rugged woodlands around their terrain coasters (ahemProwler ahemDiamondbackahem). What about the coaster itself? Probably the most obvious distinction is that, while the layout features a strikingly similar series of elements, the Legend’s were designed in such a way that highlights the coaster as being a lateral-g-force-centric ride, while the Raven is all about airtime. One only needs to look at the Mitch Hawker Coaster Poll to see hard evidence that enthusiasts prefer both floater and ejector air over laterals. But even then I’m dubious that the Legend really falls behind in this category. I only count three, maybe four moments of air on the Raven (first drop, second hill, sort of the third, then the fifth drop) while Legend matches that count fairly well (first drop, shorter waterslide hill, fifth drop), it’s just that the Legend also has a longer total track, the rest of it dedicated to hard laterals.

And while we’re talking about laterals, I need to point out that these aren’t just your everyday, run-of-the-mill laterals on a wooden coaster. The Legend is probably the preeminent coaster in the nation for aggressive, sustained laterals (yes, even above the Voyage’s strong turnaround and return run). Look at the banking, especially in the helix. Half the time it isn’t there at all. While the Voyage might feature equally strong lateral forces in places, Gravity Group knows how to adjust for these and the constant computer-controlled shifting of the banking pitch can spoil the illusion that the ride is genuinely out-of-control, while on the Legend it becomes obvious that CCI didn’t feel like overworking their track bender and so you truly don’t know if the next part of the four corners finale will be dangerously underbanked in a way that could threaten your safety (don’t worry, it’s not… though you will definitely feel it the morning after a marathon Legend riding session).

Roughness is another potential factor, although I don’t like to use roughness too much as a case against a coaster since that’s generally only a chronic condition compared to acute factors such as layout deficiencies. Nevertheless, reading park reports from Holiday World over the years the Legend is the one coaster of the three in which on more than one occasion I’ve heard the R-word thrown out there. I didn’t have a problem at all with roughness in 2009, it ran exactly like it should have; 2006 was a bit slow and shuffling, but not rough; 2005 was fast, a bit more rough, but after a few rides I adjusted to it and didn’t mind at all by the end of the day. Perhaps roughness can describe a few individual biases that result in some reduced poll rankings, but it shouldn’t be a universal factor especially for people that have had the chance to visit the park on more than one occasion.

The last explanation for why the Legend seems to not quite live up to the standard of the Raven might be a bit more esoteric but might come the closest. My thesis in my Raven analysis was that its success was primarily defined by the exceptional use of progression, creating a logical flow between the classical wooden coaster first half and sustained speed terrain flight in the second. While the sequencing of the elements is similar between the two rides, and if you are to measure the absolute quantity of forces and other positive dimensions of both rides the Legend will probably outweigh Raven, there are also moments along the Legend in which bad pacing does a disservice to any potential sense of progression, and as a result the ride feels less disciplined and with more filler than the tightly-wound, potent Raven. That is to say, the Raven and even the Voyage have the ability to exceed the sum total of their parts, while the Legend is only to equal to the sum its parts. Thankfully, it has a lot of really good parts.

Deciding where to sit? Because the Legend focuses so much on laterals it doesn’t matter as much, front row, back row, middle, they’re all quite good. However first drop connoisseurs should find a lot to savor in the back of the train. I also found that sitting on the right side of the train produces a slightly more intense riding experience, there only being a seat divider instead of a full-sized, padded wall to lean against during the spiral drop, helix and the four corners finale. We round the bend after departing the station and climb the 99 ft. tall lift. This lift structure is actually quite massive, it’s hard to get a proper perspective on it from inside the park; wide enough that the lateral braces come together to form a vertical column of wood in the center of the elevated turnaround at the top. It’s a tight turn, though, even offering a small taste of the laterals (it might even tip outward a little bit) that are to become a very big theme with this coaster. A werewolf howl and voice calling “Don’t look back!” reminds us of the supposed story behind this ride (with the Voyage in place I now just think of these rides as ‘wooden coasters’ irrespective of what themed section of the park they’re in); these can be heard from all over the park, and as soon as the sound cuts, there’s a moment of complete silence as the train hangs over the sharp edge looking down the 113 ft. first drop.

Tremendous pull-over and power. If there’s one area that the Legend beats both its younger and older siblings it’s the first drop, and given the reputation each of their initial plummets have that’s no small praise. We don’t get as long of a downward ramp to sustain the negative-g’s as the curved pullout hits somewhat early, but I don’t mind too much because the speed is so rapidly accelerating and feeling the laterals grow stronger as we approach the tunnel is intimidating enough by itself. The train hits the tunnel. Back in 2000 I remember feeling like as soon as we entered the darkness the roar of the trains and wind caught in the tunnel wanted to rip my face off; now it’s just a tunnel but still a very impressive addition. Some people might chide the fact that Holiday World feels it necessary to add multiple tunnels to all their rides, but I say keep it up (well, except for the tunnels on Wildebeest which is already a partially enclosed slide, I’m still scratching my head over the logic behind that one).

Out of the tunnel the first element is a very long, extended hill. No airtime to be found here, however not only is the speed sustained really well over the entire arc but there’s a jazzy back-and-forth movement, first to the left on the way up, then to the right over the top, and then mirroring itself with another jog to the left on the pullout. Strong laterals on each of these turns, I always forget that this is just a single element and not two or three separate maneuvers.

The train pulls high up the next hill, pausing for a moment at the top as we eyeball a 77 ft. spiral drop ahead of us. Back on my night ride in 2000, I remember getting to the top of this hill and finding that the entire vista ahead of me was just a pure black canvas; my only night ride since then had the waterpark flood lights all turned on. The laterals stay fairly consistent around this bend, strong, but they will get stronger. One thing that interests me about this curve is the non-constant radius is one of the few examples by CCI where the overhead footer arrangement was not aligned as either a perfect line or circle. The dive underneath Zinga also required that a tunnel of netting be installed, which helps enhance the speed and visuals along this stretch.

Remember how I said I actually thought the Legend was not that far behind the Raven as far as quantity and quality of airtime is concerned? We’ve already covered the similar first drops, but this next hill that threatens to skid our knuckles across the underside of Zoombabwe might be where you can find the best sustained air in the entire park… yes, even despite the Voyage being next door! The crest is mostly circular which means there’s a strong pop just after the pull upwards, and this mildly forceful ejector is sustained over the entire hill for a couple of seconds as the train keeps its speed up nicely. Another straight bottoming out and the train pulls up again into another hill as if anticipating a second pop of airtime.

Here’s where the progression structure starts to fail. Not that there really was any clear progression to be found in these beginning elements, but they’re all fun just as elements by themselves and the same is true of the Raven; the contrast only becomes evident later in the ride after the midcourse drop. This fifth hill was clearly an attempt to emulate the fifth drop on the Raven, instead of settling for another strong airtime pop, it eschews any immediate forces to instead climb as high as it can so it can set up a similar big midcourse drop, even using a partially underground tunnel on the other end as a way to further exaggerate the height difference. The problem is both that it wasn’t set-up properly to allow the mind to register it as a “big midcourse moment after a lull”, the pacing was going strong all the way up to this point, and then suddenly it stopped as it had to make it up farther than it had momentum for. The result is a hill that feels forced, and somewhat of a dud. There’s a bit of air in the back rows on the way down, but that brings up another problem with this hill, it’s only 64 foot deep… admittedly slightly larger than the Raven’s fifth drop, however this is after a 77 ft. spiral drop and 113 ft. first drop. Unlike the Raven that uses the terrain to surprise us with a huge fall after only a small upward rise, there isn’t any terrain advantage, so we only fall as far as we already expected. Rather than act as a midpoint, it’s just a missed opportunity and the ride has to work hard to make up for the lost pace.

The second tunnel is quick, and on the way out we start a similar left-to-right s curve that the Raven has after its big drop, only this one has much longer timing between transitions with some sustained strong laterals in either direction. The banking for has long prebanks that can make this stretch of track feel rather uneasy; going into the second part of the s-bend you slowly tip to the left from the prebank before being thrown hard to the right, and then you suddenly fall back out of it when it passes the curve and you slowly tip back to level. I won’t try to figure out where this fits within the context of the overall progression since the sequencing of elements has already been fairly haphazard, but this is probably the Legend at its most out-of-control thus far.

We slowly tip sideways again with another long prebank leading us under a layer of helix as we anticipate entering both the third tunnel and the clockwise double helix. This maneuver was directly inspired by the Beast’s finale, and while it might come close as far as lateral intensity, these helices are really two different animals. The Beast sustains huge laterals and speed in the tunnels, only breathing for air in the middle open-air section, while the Legend’s is more of a carousel, alternating between fast and slow, coming and going through tunnels without any real plan or order to mayhem, nothing but constantly sustained laterals that slowly increase over the entire duration of the helix, the second layer not even banked at all. Also, the Beast uses it’s helix as a finale after a huge setup, while the Legend’s just sort of ‘happens’ after an upward climb, and ends up working as a great centerpiece to the second half of the layout.

After the helix, the pace once again lets up, a very wide hill that turns us slightly to the left to line up with a shallow dip through the lift support structure. Many critics of the Legend will likely cite that the layout is meandering, and they most likely have this stretch of track in mind as a particular. I must concur. After the helix it always feels like the ride momentarily runs out of ideas and makes us wait as it tries to figure out how to get back to the station and end things. A couple years ago I would have said that it never figures out that problem and just randomly meanders back to the station without much of a goal other than to throw in several more odd moments of laterals. However, today I now recognize what comes after this let-down in pace as one of my other favorite things about the Legend: the four corners finale.

So this is basically a long lead-in into one sharp turn sequenced after another each sharp and boxy enough that the term ‘corner’ seems highly appropriate. How are the laterals? Hang on tight, is my reply. The effect of these final corners is a syncopated stop-start intensity structure, where 2/3 of the time is spent just sitting and waiting to anticipate the next turn, which occupies the remaining 1/3 of the time, which is a second or two of total lateral g-force brutality, repeated over three times. It’s quirky, intense and unlike any effect I’ve ever had on another wooden coaster. The last of the corners holds the moment out a bit more with a 180 degree turnaround instead of just a 90 degree switch. It’s too bad it can’t take place in the thick woods as the Raven’s finale does because this is a uniquely innovative way to end the ride.

Back to the original question: where did the Legend go wrong? I realize now that this question was definitely framed in the wrong way. The Legend is one of CCI’s top rated wooden coasters, near the same leagues as coasters such as Shivering Timbers, Boulder Dash and Tremors. If there is a question along those lines that can be asked, it should be “what doesn’t the Legend do perfectly right?” I guess the layout is still a bit unfocused, never clear if it tries to be a terrain, twister or airtime ride, without an obvious progression and a couple of moments of bad pacing… plus the night rides aren’t at quite the same level as Raven and Voyage. However, based on my experiences from my last visit, where I got no less than twenty rides each on Holiday World’s wooden coasters, while the Voyage may have been the most ambitious and the Raven made the most of its short track length, I truthfully found the Legend to be the most consistently satisfying of all three, the eclectic mix of elements such as the first drop, waterslide hill, helix and four corners always promising another fun ride, one in which I could stop trying to analyze every moment and just enjoy the damn coaster for what it is. And isn’t that what it’s really all about?

(Additional photo credits to Anthony Harrison and Freddie Ross. Used with permission.)

Besides trying to establish the roller coaster experience as a credible artistic medium while also attempting to present contrarian viewpoints that occasionally aim to challenge conventional enthusiast axioms, the third goal of this webproject of mine was to be as personally truthful with my writing as possible. Reading others journals of trips to parks foreign and familiar to me, I always hope that I can sample wearing their shoes and live through their life for just a few moments, but am ultimately always let down when I realize they choose to keep me at a distance with rhetoric and cliché replacing any genuine mining of the emotional core of the ride experience. Too much time was spent feeling alienated from fellow enthusiasts, wondering what it really feels like to look at the world through a different set of eyes, that I swore when I started Roller Coaster Philosophy I wouldn’t let that happen to my readers. While this site is still in its relative infancy as I write these words, I can already say that I’ve failed miserably at this third goal.

Some of it is through my own fault… mistaking ‘length’ for ‘analytical complexity’, or using rhetorical devices to stand in for actual critical thinking, and churning out mind-numbingly repetitive moment-by-moment analyses that do little to illuminate any larger issues at hand. But part of it comes from a much larger, epistemological dilemma that, as a part-time coaster reviewer and amateur philosopher, I am constantly faced with whenever I sit down to write my next analysis. Namely, what is truth? When you break it down in terms of what we know about the actual fabric of the universe, to try to apply any sort of rationalist method to determine if something is ‘true’ or not seems to be based on purely human abstractions that have no fundamental relationship to the actual world we are describing. Or perhaps truth doesn’t need to be based on what ontologically is but only on the mathematical, logical relationships between distinguishing characteristics whether they be completely imaginary or not. In either case, are all attempts to describe what we perceive as truth equally deceptive, or is there a way to at least approach truthfulness even if we may never actually get there. And even if we do happen find some sort of ultimate truth, how will we actually know that we have found it, because doubt can always seep in unbiased to whether something is actually true or not. In this case it seems our understanding of truth is much more dictated by passions than by logic; it is easy to become wrapped up in a rationalist, Platonic ideal, and look at a coaster progression structure and declare, “yes, the sequencing patterns are mathematically beautiful and the experience does tap into a key emotional core of our being, therefore we have uncovered a higher truth about this ride that clearly demonstrates it to be more perfect than other, lesser designs!” But these elated feeling of understanding based on romantic ideals of what is structure or beauty eventually disintegrate with doubts over whether these ideals are merely human-crafted illusions that fail to describe the actual nature of the universe as it moves ever further towards higher states of entropy…

I stand in the middle of the Thanksgiving plaza, the Voyage stands beside me as an impossibly powerful presence, the final switchbacks wrapping over and under track and paths in what one senses is a mathematically perfect pattern, soothing the eye with its rolling oceanic curves, engulfing the midway and yet not haphazardly dominating it. Armed with the knowledge that these curves constitute only the final fifteen seconds or so of a coaster that takes several minutes to complete, looking forward at the impossibly tall lift hill shooting straight up into the heavens before venturing into what is perhaps the most ambitious wooden coaster project ever envisioned, all hidden from sight until the very end, well, that’s just something you have to get in line for.

The queue is housed entirely indoors, main bulk of the switchbacks on the lower level of the enormous light blue station house. They’ve included a neat feature whereby one of the final tunnels that runs parallel to the station has a Plexiglas siding so that way people waiting in line can watch as a train suddenly thunders by, one of those neat creative flourishes similar to what was tried with Thunderhead or Troy, but in all honesty I forget that the Voyage even has it because the three, seven car trains run so efficiently that only on a Saturday night might the line ever be long enough that this lower floor is necessary. The queue momentarily leads us back outdoors but still under the roof shelter along a stairway that takes us to the upper level. A recorded voice, soothing and yet in control, prepares us for the ride and then finishes with a quatrain Voyage poem as we enter the loading platform. Plenty of empty floor space to pick whichever row we desire, the back with plenty of extra airtime and intensity, the middle offering greater control and evenly distributed forces, but there’s something about a ride this imposing and majestic that calls us to the front, at least for our first time.

The ride attendants check our belongings for us in a free locker system as we climb into the cars, combining both load time efficiency with security as we don’t have to worry about our stuff getting damaged either on the ride or stolen by guests getting off a different train before we arrive back in the station. The lift appears at first to be along the same line of parallel as the station, but it’s actually angled to the left by several degrees, allowing those looking out from the loading platform to view it straight on as if they’re about to ride, while those on the train waiting to dispatch look at it from oddly off-center. If all trains are running and operations are efficient we might catch fleeting glimpses of another train crisscrossing back and forth underneath the lift hill before suddenly roaring into sight over our heads as one of the switchbacks flies over the stretch on the way to the station. There’s a straight stretch of track out of the station as we slowly approach to greet the lift, before making the quick s-curve dive that causes the skewing of the lift from the station, engaging the base of the chain. The lift is very quick without feeling fast at any particular moment, appearing to allow us the time to think about the ride ahead of us as any conventional chain lift will, but then suddenly finding ourselves at the precipice in about half the time we expected. Curving over the top, there are the first few magnificent airtime hills ahead of us, the return track crossing back and forth along these outward bound hills like it’s a DNA coil, and we look down and realize we can’t see the track all the way down the first drop.

While it may fall short of El Toro’s record-snatching first drop, the steepness is still number two in the world and at this moment we feel more like we’re on a steel hyper coaster than a wooden coaster. The curvature of the pullover is long enough that we keep on falling at a steeper and steeper angle until reaching the pullout. Don’t expect too much air in the front seat, which is pretty much impossible to achieve on any first drop with the possible exception of Maverick or Griffon (or similar species) but that’s what the back row of a seven car train is for. The speed on the pullout is huge, the foliage surrounding us on all sides turning into a blur of green in our peripheral vision as we stay focused on the track directly ahead. It never once feels rough or like it’s not in control, it’s just a tremendous demonstration of the power carrying us along these rails, as if it could destroy us at any moment if it wanted, but it’s too dignified to ever allow for such a thing.

Case in point, the first airtime hill. Long, sustained beautiful floater. If the train were moving too slow this element might not work, but it’s always sailing over the top with nary a loss of speed, the surrounding trees giving a fantastic sense of perspective as we peer over the tops of them at the endless sea of green chlorophyll, and then diving deep underneath them within moments whizzing past the trunks at ground level, the canopy now seemingly a hundred feet above our heads. We surge up again for second sweeping camelback, again slicing over the treetops before naturally falling back down, a slight curve to the right on this one that can hardly be felt. This double repetition of elements is an integral part of understanding how the Voyage’s pacing structure works; short periods of repetition are used throughout the ride to be able to highlight the sudden dynamics contrasts that the Voyage is renowned for, which is not as effective if it were a string of solitary, independent elements one after another, context with other elements before and after the current element is necessary for these dynamic shifts to be apparent.

The first major dynamic shift hits riders head on, the narrow maw of a darkened underground tunnel signifying the start of a violent change in pace from the gentle freefall we approach it with. Within seconds of entering the tunnel were are thrust back out, slammed hard up out of our seats and to the left as the train navigates a sharp right turn, plunging back into another underground tunnel without even turning back downhill (it’s carved into the side of a steep hillside), all in about half the time we spent floating out of our seats on just one of the previous airtime hills. In the dark we pull up fast again for a second hill situated between tunnels, this one more rounded with sustained floater (similar to the first two camelbacks) than the sudden jolt of a hill that preceded it. Again, notice the repetition with minor variation along this stretch of track. Diving in and out of tunnels between airtime hills is just one of the Voyage’s many creative touches that I think were designed with the enthusiasts in mind, and the fact that these inspired moments continually reoccur throughout the ride with hardly a moment to breathe between them is testament to the Voyage’s status as possibly the best wooden coaster ever built. Back down into a third underground tunnel, the out run is now over and we’re approaching the spaghetti bowl turnaround.

The first of what will later become many s-curve switchback hills, our cars almost seem to dance as they rock back and forth over and then back downhill in what feels like 4/4 time, to the left, to the right, to the left. We are now officially in the second act of the Voyage, the straight airtime hills of the out run now replaced with an experience that focuses heavily on sustained laterals and changes in direction. This first left turn holds close to the ground while dipping a bit downhill; the speed is sustained and the laterals experienced here are increasingly forceful, a few positives from the inward pitch around the curve but for the most part it’s only a solid push against the right side of our seats that we notice at this moment (as well as the surrounding woodland, this is probably the darkest and most remote moment of the entire coaster during night rides). There’s a quick, anticipatory hop just before finishing this turn, and then the forces let up for just a moment as the train transitions to a slight righthand curve, but instead of rotating the banking in the other direction, we remained tipped to our left, which is now on the outside of the curve. Read an accelerometer while tracking through this maneuver and you’ll notice the laterals are not much stronger in this opposite direction than they were on the left turn before it, but this time the positive g’s that had just been pushing us slightly into our seats are now reversed, causing us to be lifted a bit upward and out of the car. Plus there’s the visual experience of such an element, especially because we’re always so used to turns banking inward, here it just seems so wrong and unnerving to see the opposite.

From one extreme of the banking world (the outward banked turn) in a split moment the train slides right into the other (extreme overbanking). The result of combining this element immediately after the outward banked turn causes them to fit together naturally as one of the most off-kilter S-turns imaginable (recalling the simple back-and-forth dancing that started the turnaround with something much more sinister), and yet it’s an uneven progression because if the outward turn has a strong bite of lateral g-forces, this first 90° banked turn is completely graceful, a quick twist into the turn, bouncing off the inward curvature, the centrifugal force keeping us firmly pressed straight down into our seats before gently twisting back out and down. Just as naturally, the big blue train continues this rotational motion up into the opposite direction one more time for an immediate second 90° banked turn, this one with a bit more of a vertical arch to it (remember, repetition with variation…) It’s almost too pretty and graceful of an element, there being not much in terms of forces or fast direction changes in any direction, but they’re quite impressive just to watch our orientation change so dramatically without being accompanied by any violent dynamics, and it sets up the finale to this part of the ride quite nicely, a very fast-paced, intense s-turn/hop to the right plunging us into a last, quick tunnel. Notice the pattern that we’ve followed since finishing up the fast ground-level turn? S-curve into the outward banked turn to the right, then left with the first 90, right with the second 90, then another left-skewed s-curve? Not that patterns by themselves always mean anything but it’s definitely there as well for anyone that appreciates that sort of thing. The last s-turn/hop is a particularly well-timed touch, being the most rapidly paced element of the coaster thus far and with the quick dive into the tunnel it signals a strong sense of finality to this first half of the ride, such that the lull in the midcourse brake is anticipated rather than simply a break in pace.

When the ride was first announced and I got my first look at the layout via that NoLimits rendering, I initially strongly disliked the return run. After the triple down it appeared to me as though they ran out of ideas and instead decided to just randomly weave the track back and forth and up and down with an extra 90° thrown in just for the hell of it, all to give the appearance that something was going on when it was really all quite pointless, just trying to get it to line up with the final break run. However, that NoLimits rendering failed to completely do justice to this track, and after watching it being constructed, watching the official POV video when it came out and then riding it for myself, I not only came to realize that not only was the return run just as strong in ideas and craft as the first half of the ride, but it actually is one of the most inspired segments of coaster design anywhere, propelling what had until that point already been a great coaster over the top into something of otherworldly quality. Needless to say, it’s now my favorite part of the ride, and I’ll explain why…

First of all, the level of terrain difference from the top to the bottom is much larger than what it may appear (certainly more so than that NoLimits simulation ever let on), and the pace of the train is in nothing but a crescendo all the way until the end of the ride. Then there’s the layout itself, which begins as a straight forward out-and-back, airtime experience, but with each successive element in a mathematically precise pattern it transforms into an all-out twister layout by the end. Combine this with the aforementioned steady build-up in speed, and the result is nothing short of a modernist reimagining of what only the Beast before it had managed to accomplish (albeit in a decidedly more minimalist, subtle form): a hauntingly psychological ride experience where to understand it means one has to be taken out of the moment where one is normally only cognizant of their immediate experiential sensory inputs, and fit each moment within the context of those both before and after it. While most great coasters finish with some sort of big climatic finale, on the Voyage there is no need, because the steady, relentless crescendo becomes far more effective of a finale than any individual, momentary element could ever dream of being. But let’s look at this section of track piece-by-piece to see exactly how it accomplishes this.

The train rolls off the brake run and straight into the mouth of yet another tunnel. While the underground triple down is arguably the Voyage’s most defining and original element, monitor the average rider’s emotional response to this moment and it might not be what we’d expect from such an element? Is it excitement or, depending on one’s disposition, possibly terror, as is normally the standard emotional response to a coaster as bold and consistently thrilling as the Voyage? Surprisingly, no. Remember, the entire first half of the layout until the midcourse brake run is by itself structured in a way identical to most well-conceived standard coasters, and so we begin this moment in a state of catharsis (by this point the slow entry into yet another tunnel has become something safe and familiar in the ride). Therefore the natural response to this next drop into a tunnel is one of joy, amusement, maybe even laughter.

Some people have pointed out that as crazy an element as the triple down may come across as an idea, in actuality it’s not intense at all. In this they are factually correct, but the implication is usually that this is somehow a bad thing, to which I must fully disagree. If it were otherwise then that particular emotional response would not be feasible for many people and the ride might run the risk of becoming monotonous. Here is an opportunity to hoot, holler, enjoy the floater air over each successive dip and just be taken in by the pure visceral oddity of this track, being completely enclosed and yet diving further underground in a stop-start motion not once, nor twice, but three times before finally emerging at (surprise!) ground level.

Furthermore, isn’t this comfortably pleasurable reaction exactly not the emotional response one would expect to have at this point in the ride? Especially as it picks up speed and a bit of an edge on the crest of the third subterraneous drop, one might also feel a fleeting sensation of discomfort precisely because of their relative comfort. “This isn’t how I should be feeling at this point in the ride; we’ve just dipped underground three times in a row and have got a fairly strong pace back and yet I was grinning at it all.” The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said something to the effect that there is no such thing as real happiness, the only thing humans are capable of feeling is pain, and happiness is only created to the degree that there is a lack of pain. While we needn’t be as pessimistic as Schopenhauer (at least for the sake of this ride analysis), we will soon find that a somewhat similar concept can be applied to the Voyage: it is through this moment of ‘happiness’ at the midpoint that the white-knuckle intensity that eventually emerges throughout the last portion of the ride can be contextualized against, and accordingly vice versa with the relief felt during this moment that otherwise wouldn’t exist in isolation.

Emerging from the tunnel, we begin that logically precise sequencing that builds all the way to the finale.

First, a perfectly linear bunny hop. What should be the physical sensation? A light floater/ejector mix, pushing our derrieres up out of the seat but never forcing it into the top of the lapbar. What is the emotional response? Same as it was in the tunnel, simple, joyous fun. In fact it’s perhaps my favorite single spot of airtime out of the ride’s 24.2 seconds worth of that intangible substance.

Second, another bunny hop. This one is mostly identical to the first (repetition) but has a slight righthand curvature to it as it follows alongside the second camelback hill. We feel some of the airtime transferred into laterals although the mix is still pretty even. We’re still having fun, but the turn catches us a bit off-guard and we have to brace for it slightly instead of simply enjoying the airtime.

Third, this hill has a similar profile as the previous, but adds on to it with a tighter curve to the left and then switches back to the right after it crests. Airtime is even less pronounced but for the first time since the turnaround we’re starting to feel some real direction changes (achieved by combining rotational motion with the lateral forces) rather than the few light laterals along an otherwise forward-moving stretch of track as the previous hill.

Fourth, rather than a flat, drawn-out pullout between the next element there’s a bit of a tricky ‘slalom’ effect as the track tips slightly to the left before continuously banking back up to the right again. The perceived timing between elements is subsequently shortened because of this distraction, also due to the steadily increasing speed. The train scoots back up to the right in a harsher, more jolting motion than anything else experienced along the return run so far. There’s a quick burst of airtime over the top, but rather than be the ‘bring a smile to your face’ fun variety, here it’s more subversive and cutting, caused partly by the faster timing and strength over the top and also by the sharper transitions into the curves at either end. The track reverses directions once again on the leadout and now starts to curve left again.

Fifth, real laterals akin to those on the turnaround have now fully developed and any pretense that this return run is about airtime has now been dropped. There’s a brief hill over this turn that the train scurries over, any potential for airtime is instead transferred into even stronger laterals (generally laterals accompanied with reduced gravity will feel stronger than those without because our entire weight is then pressed against the side of the seat instead of shared between the side and bottom as we would on a curve at the bottom of a dip). This is repeated a second time taking us even farther uphill.

Sixth, there is a slight pause in force as the transition back from left to right again takes place. There is a minor downhill ‘skip’ (as I recall this was much more violent in its opening year and they have since then smoothed this dip out much more) and the train suddenly flips us through a hard right around our axis so we’re completely parallel to the ground. Within the back-and-forth sequencing of the curves, this moment will stand out not only from the extreme 90° banking but because it is the only one to feature very strong rotational forces (first spinning to the right entry and then the left on the exit with a momentary push of positives in the middle) while containing no laterals. As we will later see, it comes at a strategically important location along the sequence as well.

Seventh, the train tips to the left a bit as it slowly curves back down to ground level. The left curvature is fairly consistent all the way to the next switchback, but the laterals are much harsher at the beginning and end of this curve (owing to the minor rise in the middle that correspondingly increases the banking slightly) so in effect this feels a bit more like two left turns plugged back-to-back rather than one continuous turn. One thing that should be pointed out is that up until the 90° banked turn, the timing between elements has been set at a rhythmically steady rate, almost hypnotic, except for it also increases in timing quickness. This builds up to the double leftward skip just before the 90° turn, but then coming immediately out of the turn the timing seems to slow down again around this left turn. This is ironic because the train is now traveling at its fastest since low left ground turn on the turnaround. Coincidentally this curve does ‘recall’ that section of the far turnaround quite well, both being laterally-steady left curves that break the established pace of the timing between moments for a brief second, and then suddenly jolting alive again with a couple tight maneuvers as it races towards the climax. While the return run is decidedly more minimalist and repetitive than the original out run with its big, dramatic elemental flourishes, this moment for me always subconsciously recalls a similar point in the progression structure of the first half and thus helps set up the actual finale much better.

Eighth, huge rotation back to the right over the top of this hill, everyone but the most staid of enthusiasts are by now arms down and holding on tight. The banking really throws us far on our sides but the intensity on the way down is still just as intense. Although it has been a constant evolution in the progression of the return run elements from gentle out-and-back into intense twister, this moment is when the ride definitively abandons the ‘forward momentum over hills’ sense of movement through space that makes up the out-and-back experience, and completely replaces it with the ‘angular velocity changes around curves’ mindset that makes up any good twister layout.

Ninth, we dive into a tunnel before immediately bursting back out a split second later, recalling the first half’s rapid-fire underground excursions. The next element is basically a mirrored recapitulation of the previous s-turn hill, only the intensity and degree of the banking rotation over the top are even more embellished. The way back down to the left can almost feel like another 90° turn for a moment, and instead of following it up with another evolution of the previous element it instead just continues to hammer the riders as the left curve continues around a full 180° and through another tunnel, extremely brief, never letting the adrenaline slip for even a second. A quick pop up out of the tunnel producing a split-second of floater before slamming hard to the right again around another steeply banked but still laterally-intense turn, the sense of finality to the entire ride is strong with these last sustained moments, but it never wants to give in, just not quite yet. Again, it holds this force for a couple moments as it skips along a curving double-up, hitting the brakes hard without a single superfluous moment added after this incredible climax.

Look again at the pattern of this finale and we’ll see that my initial assessment that it appeared ‘random-looking’ is in fact the exact opposite case. Here “R” stands for a right turn, “L” for a left, and the first … represents the straight hill while the later ellipses represent the sustained curving used in the ride’s finale.

… R-L-R-R-L-L-R90-L-L-R-R-L… R……

The structure is at once perfectly balanced, a progression pattern of rights and lefts emerging in both the first and second half with the singular 90° turn acting as the centerpiece, with each half also a mirror of each other. At the same time, there’s also a linear progression to the return run, with the tightening timing and slowly increasing pace and intensity as the layout works its way back down the nearly 100 ft. elevation difference downhill. So masterfully has each moment precluded each other in a progression structure designed to achieve perfectly balanced drama, that by the time the ride is over and the train has come to its final rest, riders are once again put in that elevated cathartic state. This is particularly notable because, as I mentioned earlier, this is actually the second time along the course of the ride that this happens; few coasters out there are able to progress with the structural discipline needed to achieve even one. However, while the first catharsis experienced along the midcourse brake run results in something fun and innocent, after the hauntingly mesmerizing buildup to the second climax, this second ‘actual’ catharsis is of a distinctly more noble flavor. One is left not in a state of relief, but in awe. The Voyage is complete, nothing more can possibly be added to it, but instead of being completely let off of the emotional hook it uses to pull riders into the experience as is the standard with most states of catharsis, it will continue to linger with one for several moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, maybe even an entire lifetime. Each second of the ride transcends category as they unite to form a whole so perfect that to remove one single moment will cause the entire experience to collapse. So completely fulfilling and life-enriching is a ride on the Voyage that I’m reminded of what the ancient Greeks would call out to a gladiator achieving their ultimate victory: “Die now! Die now! You will never be as happy again!” While a truly great ride on the Voyage (at night in the pitch blackness after a summer rainfall has greased the rails) could conceivably warrant a similar reaction as the ancient Greeks would have, we needn’t worry ourselves about our preferred method of suicide once we disembark from the loading platform because of one key difference:

We can ride it again. Shall we?

I stand in the middle of the Thanksgiving plaza, the Voyage’s finale wrapping all around us, sort of suffocating the atmosphere by closing in on all sides, the banked turns nearly all facing outward from the midway and the brake run being a huge black mark slapped over and across what still might have been a pleasant, oceanic painting of coaster track. Compelled forward to escape this negative space, I’m drawn to the ride’s entrance, not before watching a train rush by, and as I watch my subconscious tells me that while most of the coaster remains out of view, the ending has now been given away, and knowing precisely how the ride will inevitably finish removes much of the mystery of the attraction, compared to the reverse situation of the Raven, where even the comfort of knowing how the first half of the ride might behave by having seen it from the parking lot doesn’t remove the suspense of not being able to see the finale for one’s own eyes until they’re actually riding it in person.

The station is not much more than a gigantic, sky-blue pentagon box, aesthetically flat and vacant, while also creating a sense of negative space as one realizes their relation of being outside of the box rather than welcomed into it. The queue entry point is a very narrow, unassuming pathway that frequently bottlenecks whenever a group of patrons coming from the rest of the park for their first ride meets another group of riders coming around from the gift shop to do it again. Thankfully we needn’t use the lower floor of queuing area on this occasion, a claustrophobic space with railings set maybe three feet apart and stagnant air trapped inside properly reminding one of being locked up in the ship’s bilge. There are some attempts at providing a nautical atmosphere, but ‘attempts’ is all they can be described as, since they consist of only identical ship wheels and nets nailed against the walls at haphazard angles (sort of like a middle-schooler forgetting to do a class project until the morning of its due date, and the presentation they cobble together on the way to the bus doesn’t actually have any value in and of itself but is just there to prove that they did at least remember it).

The loading platform is functional but the loading gates for the individual rows don’t extend very hard so it can at times be hard to tell exactly which seat you’re queuing for until a cycle or two before your ride. On my date of visit they only had one train running all day, although thankfully the crowds were still so light that there were walk-ons for most of the morning, but it eventually did swell to nearly a half hour later in the afternoon before everyone abandoned the area in the last two hours before the park closed (more details on that in the Holiday World article). I think part of the reason for this was the platform attendants were still in training, although given how long the ride time is I have to wonder how big of a difference that should make at all, especially since it’s designed to run three. Actually, I think they only ever run two at a time any more except for on the busiest days, because the third train only shaves a few seconds of wait time off for everyone and spends the rest of its time stacked on the brake run; the first night I rode it back in 2006 was the only time I ever saw all three trains on the track, and they frequently had all three stacked up. Not that I want to put fault on anyone specifically for personal lack of effort, but this has always been one of those reasons that made me completely perplexed by the park’s continual win of the best employees award in the Golden Tickets for every year (they finally lost to Silver Dollar City in the 2009 poll). Correct me if I’m wrong but Knott’s Ghostrider runs with the same train configurations (three seven-car PTCs) and I don’t recall anything about stacking being a problem with them, and they even have a shorter ride length.

I think this problem will be completely resolved starting in 2010 with the replacement of the new Timberliner trains; the fact that they’re only replacing them with two and this is still going to improve capacity by a considerable margin is sadly indicative of how ineffective the three PTCs were. I personally am not sad to see them go because the seatbelts on those always bothered me (having the buckle located directly between the crotch and lapbar isn’t a good idea on a coaster touted as having the most airtime in the world), plus the hollow seat dividers were awful. In 2006 when the coaster was really hauling ass around the course, those seat dividers were the one single thing about the entire ride that managed to nearly ruin it for me. The laterals were so strong and not having a solid edge to slide against created pressure points on the side of my leg, I felt  like it wasn’t until later in the day that I could finally start to enjoy what the ride was supposed to be like. This year it was running as such that those pressure points weren’t a problem anymore, but sadly I realized it was only for the wrong reasons.

But now buckled and locked in, I have to say that I am really anticipating this ride. Who wouldn’t, it’s rated #1 in the world, and one look at the overhead layout renderings will easily reveal why. No other roller coaster has ever been built at such an epic scale while at the same time making sure every moment is original and designed specifically with coaster enthusiasts in mind. Raven and Legend, which are my frame of reference so far for the day, are both puny compared to the Voyage, and the mind reels at the prospect of just how much more amazing this ride is going to be than both of those already stellar examples of wooden coasters.

It doesn’t pretend to be an epic roller coaster experience, however. Unlike the Beast or others where there’s a long, formalized process designed to slowly give away information while keeping most of its hand hidden in a way to help build anticipation, on the Voyage the train rolls right out of the station to directly confront the lift, which very quickly whisks us to the top of the 163 foot tall ascent as if it were only 63 feet. Even the Raven lets it simmer for a bit longer with the long prelift section and a comparatively slow lift hill. I guess on days with one-train operation it helps reduce the waiting, but I feel like this approach harms what could be a tremendous psychological impact.

Cresting the top, the first drop is supposed to be one of those showstoppers that everyone talks about as being one of the most extreme parts of the ride: 154 feet at 66°, admittedly beaten by the Intamin plug-n-play’s capabilities but for traditional tracked wooden coasters this is still supposed to be the best in the world. Except it isn’t. In fact, of the three first drops located within the same park, I personally would rate this one the lowest. Apparently sometime during their transition from CCI to the Gravity Group, the designers decided the best way to improve on their first drops was to design them more like B&M do, with a gently rounded parabola over the entire crest rather than the tight snap over the top followed by a long flat ramp until the pullout. A friend of mine who has not been on any of these coasters (he doesn’t need to since he can always figure out exactly how they will feel just by using online resources) has insisted that this method represents a huge improvement over the old CCI method because the flat track in the middle was just wasted opportunity for more airtime, and explained all the physical principles that made it so. He’s forgetting to look at it from the inverse perspective: making the first drop continuously rounded means they have to make the curvature over the top much wider, and it takes longer to reach the maximum steepness. As a result, the rotational motion forward over the drop is much softer, and it actually feels shallower than the first drops on Raven or Legend. While those rides whip you over and make you immediately aware of the sudden change of movement through space (which is sustained on the flat ramp with the constant acceleration removed of any other interfering dynamics) on the Voyage you just float down until you’re at the bottom.

The sense of speed is not as great as I might have hoped for either. The only thing that gives it away is the fact that the surrounding field of bright green grass becomes something of a blur, but even then the trees have been cut back far enough that it’s hard to observe any rapid parallax while still looking straight forward, and the curvature still follows the same path any B&M speed coaster would so there’s not much in the forces or dynamics to really impress me with the scale or power. This opening act was clearly inspired by Shivering Timbers and even tried to improve on it with the added height and speed and more rounded hills that would in theory produce more airtime, but comparing my experiences with each opening act (probably some 40 rides on the Voyage, including 15 or so consecutive re-rides in the front and back seat on my last visit, versus exactly 199 rides on Shivering Timbers since 1998) Shivering Timbers is the superior coaster. It’s even more than thirty feet shorter, but if I didn’t know better and just based my opinion on my immediate visceral reaction to them both, I’d swear Shivering Timbers was the taller and faster of the two.

But the airtime is better, right? Logically it ought to be since it’s been touting the label of the world’s best airtime coaster since it opened with “24.2 seconds” worth, but even in this regard the Voyage somehow comes up short. The hill is wide and the airtime sustained, but it’s neither that strong or that long to make it anything remarkable, and the wide radius over the top robs it of the more interesting dynamics founds on the taller, narrower hills found on Shivering Timbers. The goal was to sustain -.2 g’s or something like that, just like a B&M speed coaster, which seems like it could be a good goal (at least if you ask people that aren’t me) but it doesn’t translate well to a wooden coaster. While the ride is smooth, there’s still enough jostling that the perfect floater sensation easily becomes contaminated with a lot of ‘noise’, and the individual ratcheting lapbars aren’t as well designed to experience this sort of air (if it had the same trains as the Phoenix then I’d be writing something different here, but as it happens, it doesn’t). It pulls back up and heads into the second camelback hill, this one with a slight curvature in it. It doesn’t add anything to the experience, and in fact because it is banked inward it actually detracts from the airtime even more (the laterals start to translate into the positives… when I did a similar beginning in Quiver I recognized this problem and designed the curved camelback to bank outward instead of inward, which actually works better at both reducing laterals while sustaining the zero or negative-G environment.)

So this opening act to the ride fell short from the original inspiration point. That’s not necessarily a crippling problem in my book, since this ride goes on to draw inspiration from many more unique sources, and it’s all about the quality of the overall layout rather than the immediate sensorial feedback that makes a great ride, correct? After getting the opening act of Shivering Timbers, the next coaster the Voyage decides to ape from is Idaho’s Tremors with the airtime hills diving in and out of tunnels. Again, the Voyage might appear to one-up Tremors by having two hills in a row diving between three tunnels, rather than just one hill between two tunnels, and while I’ve not been on Tremors yet to make any definitive judgments, I’ve again got to say that Tremors did it better. The thing that so strongly appeals about this ‘diving in and out of tunnels’ technique, besides just being a cool idea, is that the integration of the tunnels in what would otherwise be basic bunny hops gives the ride a sense of rhythm, as it were. From the POVs, I can feel that rhythm on Tremors, the ‘dark-air-dark’ sequencing all being well-proportioned with respect to one another and creates a forceful impression on the psyche. Meanwhile the Voyage is trying to go uphill while also fit into the same tunnels the return run, and as a result the effect is lost due to an oddly-timed, uneven sequence pattern. First of all the tunnels are much shallower and shorter so they already don’t make as much of an impact, and then the hill between these first two is so shallow and fast that it doesn’t even register as a hill, just a small break between what should have been one continuous tunnel. In fact it’s not even a hill, only part of a double-up as the layout tries to navigate uphill. That might be a decent approach, it makes the timing really fast and out-of-control, but then it follows up with the next hill, which is so much wider and taller (and frequently failing to produce any discernible airtime, sort of like the Legend’s failed 5th drop) that the contrast is not only wholly uneven, but by the time we get to the third tunnel my mind has already moved on to the turnaround, which was laid out clear in front of me when we crested the previous hill.

So now the Voyage becomes a fast, ground-level terrain coaster, this time most likely inspired by their own Raven. Except again for the third time the Voyage falls short from the original point of inspiration. This time it’s primarily because of the setting. The whole point of having a ground-level terrain coaster is supposed to be the sense of mystery and suspense, that you can’t see what’s around the next corner and are just blindly charging forward through the trees with reckless abandon. But as I already mentioned, I got a clear view of this entire turnaround when I crested the previous hill, so many trees around the area have been removed. It wasn’t a clear-cut deforestation as you’d get at a Cedar Fair park (this is Holiday World, after all), but coming from the same people that built the Raven’s finale and especially given how far out in the woods we are I’d have expected better terrain preservation at this point in the ride, when instead it still feels like we’ve not ventured too far from the safety of Holiday World’s green, pastoral fields.

In fact, it’s sometime around going over the first s-curve hill that my experience with the Voyage starts to turn negative, not because of anything the ride itself is explicitly doing wrong, but because I’m put in a state of cognitive dissonance. That is, the reality does not see eye-to-eye with my expectations, and I experience displeasure as my mind tries to sort out this contradiction. Before riding I was able to logically conclude that the Voyage was several tiers above all other wooden coasters in terms of grandeur of scope and just overall quality, and that is true; any coaster that starts out like Shivering Timbers, switches to Tremors and then finishes with the Raven’s finale in just the first half of the ride should automatically be considered superior to those examples. The problem is I realize that I was only looking at the Voyage from the Hegelian idealist perspective, and now that I’m actually sitting a couple feet above the rails riding it for myself, I’m now looking at the coaster from the existentialist perspective where those overarching visions of what the ride should be come secondary to what my own personal experience right now is, and frankly it’s quite underwhelming.

Due to the large height difference in the terrain, the scale of the elements have now been reduced to be even smaller than what’s found on the park’s other coasters, never venturing more than 25 feet above the ground (but also lacking the proper use of the forest that would make such low-to-the-ground tactics pay off). As a result I’m thinking, “both the Raven and Legend were much better and more impressive at this point in the ride, where I had either the final s-curves through the trees or the giant carousel helix, while this is just relatively small, indeterminate, and sort of a nothing experience compared to those other two”. It starts out trying to be aggressive with some strong sustained laterals, although unlike the Raven or especially the Legend’s turns which have real bite to them, on the Voyage even if the absolute forces are as strong or stronger than those two, the illusion of being out of control is given away by Gravity Group’s constantly shifting banking pitches clearly controlled by a computer, consequently lacking the emotional connection the earlier examples had and all I can do is just say to myself, “look, they remembered to put laterals in, and the teleological part of the enthusiast brain tells me that my enjoyment of the ride can be defined by appreciating the designers’ ability to maximize the quantity output of forces at any random moment”. But then it gives up on that experience all together and switches to the back-to-back 90 degree turns, which are surprisingly bland and undynamic, and are there more to satisfy the designers’ egos. The quick double-hop down into a tunnel injects a bit of authentic intensity into the layout before subduing again on the midcourse block brake.

While we have this brief pause in the ride action, let’s step back for a moment and analyze just what sort of quality experience we’re getting on a moment-by-moment basis. As I mentioned earlier, both the profiling of the hills (evidenced especially in the first three drops) and the variations in the banking pitches suggest a very high degree of computer control more similar to any modern steel coaster than an authentic wood experience. The airtime is all incredibly weak and controlled, shaped more like B&M’s long floater hills than the harsh, circular curvatures found on other wooden coasters. In fact, where is that record 24.2 seconds of airtime? I count very few locations along the layout where it could be found at all. The first two camelbacks get several seconds worth in, and the first drop but only if you’re in the back (and I already criticized why the forces here are of sub-par quality), after that there’s the second hill between the tunnels, which frequently runs too slow so there isn’t any uplift anyway. The few other moments are also incredibly weak and laced with much stronger laterals that completely overpower any sensations of weightlessness. On the way back there’s only a light tickle on the third drop of the triple down and then the first camelback on the return run. Everything else after that is just laterals. Honestly, for being the so-called ‘world record holder for most airtime’, the Voyage probably isn’t even in my top twenty list of wooden coasters I’d recommend to people if they just want to experience airtime (available on request).

But while it may be relatively weak on the negative-g scale, there’s no way anyone could argue that the Voyage isn’t one of the most intense roller coasters built in recent years. However, ‘intensity’ has become a tricky thing to define in recent years. Most people seem to have noticed that rides they would describe as ‘intense’ can be analyzed to produce higher than normal g-forces, and generally these forces switch intensity in relatively short durations of time. And so when designing a new coaster, if they want it to be ‘intense’ these are the only factors they deem necessary to focus on. The Voyage sustains very high lateral g-forces at all moments, and the transition times are very fast so there are not lulls between them. And yet when contrasting with other rides that utilize ‘intensity’ as a positive factor in their overall experience, I find the Voyage becomes wholly disappointing in this regard. It’s intense, but it’s also too calculated to convey any psychological sense of being out of control. Even if it’s pulling two lateral g’s around a turn, I can constantly feel the banking pitch shift to make sure it never gets into lawsuit shades of force. It’s intense and I must hang on, but I’m not psychologically engaged with this form of intensity at all; I’m aware of the illusion being played on me and I must wearily play along with this game the designers have forced on me for the whole two-and-a-half minute ride by constantly repositioning my body so as to not pull any muscles in my back at each and every turn, as if it’s a contract written between me and the ride to produce and for me to respond to ‘intensity’ in a strictly rationalist, business-like form. Lacking from this method is any real emotional connection, there’s no genuine sensation of ‘out-of-control-ness’ to help me become self aware of my own humanity, I’m simply fulfilling my side of the contract as the rider, utterly alienated from any real emotive experience. By the end I’m just a piece of meat, something to be used for the designer’s own amusement, and the enthusiast community holds it on a pedestal by declaring “look, numerically it’s very intense, and anyone who appreciates intense rides must logically appreciate the Voyage most of all.”

By the time we get to the midcourse the Voyage has made a lot of huff-and-puff to prove itself as the defacto “enthusiast’s coaster” and yet as a ride experience it’s not accomplished anything of much depth beyond fabricating an impressively orchestrated illusion that somehow it is a great ride. Nothing genuinely original has happened, it just imitates the best aspects of other great coasters, not quite succeeding to the same degree the originators did, but because we get to experience all this different ‘stuff’ within seconds of each other I figure the ride has to be better than it actually is at each moment. But on the return run after the midcourse is when it finally dares to start doing something unique. The underground triple down feels like it should be a great element, but it’s just sort of there, not really dark or claustrophobic, the first dip lacking any speed, the second with a useless s-bend that kills the airtime and forces me to react when I don’t want to, and the third one only a frustrating glimpse of what might have been. For this brief second the Voyage actually allows me to enjoy myself, following with a straight bunny hill, the only moment on the ride that produces airtime that’s actually fun without wallowing in grandiose self-importance that fails to deliver any real substance.

But wait, here is the one thing the Voyage finally gets absolutely, spot on correct. That steady, relentless build-up to the end, each second predicated by the one before it as it transforms to a unrestrained twister layout, the rider’s psyche haunted by the screaming zeitgeist which makes any ‘final climax’ at the end unnecessary, because the anticipation from the buildup is more emotionally powerful than any solitary finale by itself can provide. Everything before it, it was all just an act to lure me into the exact psychological state the ride wanted so that it could then blow the lid off with the final run back to the station.

This is what great roller coasters are all about. This is what can finally elevate the roller coaster experience above the class of mere sensorial perception and into an object of beauty, in the Platonic sense of the word. What expands the mind to think of the coaster as something that happens not just in the moment but across space and time, and can’t be understood or quantified in purely scientific, rationalist terms but instead can only be subjectively experienced in a metaphysically humanist capacity.

I clear my mind waiting for the revelation. And it never happens.

Instead I am just given a string of ‘moments’. A smattering of ‘intensity’. I am once again forced, against my own will, to brace myself, and focus only on getting through the ride from one second to another. A 90° turn eventually comes along and I don’t particularly care; neither does the coaster. My ego tells me this is a great ride, but deep down I’m bored, and maybe just a little bit sad. Is there any higher ideal to be comprehended beneath the surface of enthusiast-pandering ‘intensity’. Probably, but it would take a Zen master to distill it from this furious but empty parade of nonstop self-importance. That probably accounts for that germ of sadness I would rarely in a conscious state admit to, because I know I don’t have the faculties I’d need to get to that core of potential greatness the ride has in it. What I will admit to is feeling a bit queasy, I’ve had enough sensation, by this point it only tastes like ash in my mouth, and just want the ride to be over so I can at least once again regain control over my body from this ride that insists on forcing me around in whichever direction it chooses. The train brakes and everyone is relieved, not because any catharsis has been reached but because it’s finally over.

I get off the exit platform and, thinking it all over in my head, I must conclude that the Voyage is a “Great Roller Coaster”. It has every ingredient I thought I’d need out of a roller coaster to be happy, and now that those needs have been fulfilled I’m not any happier walking down the exit ramp than I was before I got on the ride. I feel some guilt for that, and convince myself I need to ride it again, because maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention and somehow missed that fleeting moment of true happiness. But maybe there’s no such thing as true happiness in the metaphysical sense, maybe happiness is only defined by the momentary suspension of pain, and maybe suicide is the only real escape, if only it weren’t so vulgar and pointless an act as well.

Shortly after taking the first test rides back in 2006, Will Koch wrote the first review of the Voyage (since taken offline but you can read the archive here) in which he concluded that it represented the beginning of a new era for wooden roller coasters. He was 100% right in concluding that his creation represented a landmark in the history of wooden coasters, but his positioning was turned upside. The Voyage doesn’t represent the start of anything; how can it possibly? It instead represents the end of an era, that of the enthusiast-dominated mindset that declares that the ultimate coaster can be found through non-stop action and intensity, though the maximization of forces or pleasurable sensorial feedback as frequently as possible at every possible moment, and to supply it in as great of abundance as technically feasible until we’ve physically had enough. The Voyage is now at those limits, there is nothing original left that can possibly be added to this formula in the future without making everyone sick to their stomachs. Even if there somehow could be, what would it really add? It can only expand those perceptions of nonstop intensity by an increasingly marginal amount, and then what? Have we reached the zenith of roller coasters? To answer ‘yes’ is to show a total lack of imagination of ways to emotionally connect with the riders in even more profound ways than I’m sure designers even dare are possible. But there’s no way to expand that scope of aesthetic range as I think is achievable through coasters if the only direction they’re allowed to improve in is towards the direction established by the Voyage. When one is being assaulted by non-stop intensity for two-and-a-half minutes, there can be the most inspired of progression and sequencing structures, the most exhilarating of creative spark, or the most divine extrasensorial experiences happening around one… it won’t really matter because the ‘intensity’ will always overpower any of that, the adrenaline causing us to close our minds with the fight or flight mechanism forcing a heightened awareness of only the moment. And as long as that is the case, the roller coaster will never really become anything more than a novelty thrill device.

I hope the Voyage remains in the top ten for many years to come. I hope it remains the shining example of the best of this breed of coaster. I hope no matter what innovations may come in the future that it will always be remembered as an all-time classic, and as possibly the most important example to come out of the two decades since the inception of CCI and GCI in the early and mid-90’s that saw the wooden coaster radically evolve from its traditionalist origins. But I also hope we don’t delude ourselves in realizing that, in the year 2006 A.D., that voyage came to an end. Sadly, with the advent of the Timberliner cars, plug-and-play technology and Rocky Mountain Construction’s retrofitted steel track (all pushes further in the direction of solving problems caused by pushing the extremes of intensity in the first place) I don’t think we’re quite ready for that yet. Hopefully we at least can get one or two more Voyages before that time does come. If not, I guess I’ll just sit back and watch with increasing doubt and uncertainty as everything I previously assumed to be true… both the positive and negative side of the same coin… deteriorates as the universe moves towards higher states of entropy.

(Additional photo credits to Anthony Harrison and Freddie Ross. Used with permission.)