My friend Tom and I left from Chicago for IB Saturday morning at around 9:30 am. We had planned on leaving a little earlier, but both had to run a few errands in the city before hitting the road.
Neither of us had been there before, and were looking forward to the trip. After hitting construction traffic on the highway and getting lost in Monticello, we arrived at the park at about 12:30.
Upon driving into the grass parking lot, we knew we were in for a unique experience. We paid our admission fee, got our wrist bands and decided to take a look around before getting on any rides.
The layout of this park is really cool, with rides built around, through, and on top of each other and the lake. It kind of reminded me of a crazy design from Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Tom likened it to a patchwork quilt.
Since we had limited time (the ride session ended at 6 pm, and it was already around 1pm), we opted to skip the flat rides and concentrate on the coasters.
First up we hit the Galaxie, a small "family" steel coaster. This was a good one to start the day with, and was quite enjoyable. We got to share our ride with a little boy taking his first coaster ride. He had a blast, and gave us and his dad big high fives after the ride.
We went over to Cornball next, but the line was pretty long, so we took a ride on Tig'rr. I had read reports of people feeling unsafe on this ride due to the lack of restraints (no seat belt, no lap bar), and I see what they were talking about. The cars are like individual Bayern Curve cars. While I didn't feel like I was going to fly out, I did feel a little nervous going around some of the banked turns with nothing holding me in.
After we got off the Tig'rr, it looked like the Cornball's line had gone down, so we went for a ride. We waited about 20 minutes for the back seat, which would be the norm the whole day. Enough reviews have been written about this ride, so I won't go into that much detail. This ride really packs a lot of excitement into its little course. The first drop literally whips you out of your seat, and doesn't let up until the end. My friend Tom is a really mellow guy, and I haven't seen him get excited about very much in the 7 years I've known him. This ride changed all of that. He was hollering and screaming the whole ride. It is that much fun.
We hit the Hoosier Hurricane next, and took a back seat ride. It was fun, but was a bit of a let down after CE. We decided we should have gone on this first, but had no idea the difference between the two coasters would be that extreme.
We went back to CE for a couple more rides (20 min for back seat all day), and another trip on the Tig'rr. Another great feature of CE is how re-ridable it is. None of our re-rides disappointed, and were as much fun as the first.
We went for another ride on the Hurricane, this time in the front seat. What a difference! The front seat on this ride is way better than the back. There was significant air on all the drops, and it was very smooth.
We ended the day with two more CE trips, one in front and one in back. The front seat of this offered a very different ride. There was very little air, and it was very tame.
All in all it was a great day, and I'm sure many more trips to Indiana Beach are in the future. I'd also like to point out that the staff there are great. Everyone was very helpful and friendly, and even though there were only one train operations on both the CE and the Hurricane, the crews did an excellent job in keeping the lines moving quickly.
I highly recommend making a trip to Indiana Beach if at all possible.
*** This post was edited by chris on 6/27/2001. ***
It's too bad you didn't have more time - they have just about the best collection of dark rides/walk-throughs around, along with a couple unique flat rides, including an insane Chance Yo-Yo over the water. Great fun!
A good tip for Indiana Beach on a Saturday is spend the evening there. The Park is usually open till midnite and very little waits. I rode CornBall 3 times Sat. nite after getting off work in the SkyRoom.
Great perk: Get off of work; go ride a coaster!
