Associated parks:
None
Pre-show
Well, its finally here, we've all been looking forward to these two days since the announcement of Holiwood Nights.
We prepared by booking our reservation at Satan's Lodge for a modest price and we're all set. Now, we're not the cool people that pre-registered, nope. See, we didn't belong to any coaster clubs, no reason to be a member, but this required such a membership, so we took care of business and joined up.
We found out some friends we hadn't seen in a LONG time were going to be at PKI for the morning walk back, and we live 20 mins from PKI, so we figured we'd meet up with them and get a few laps in there. The walk back organizers proceed to tell us that we are going to SOB, and at first, we said we were not going to ride. It's been something like 3 years since we've ridden it and really didn't wanna give it another chance. Although for some reason we caved in and decided to see if it was still it's old self. It's worse. To spend money and time to retrack at a ride, and have it be worse, is kinda pathetic. It didn't even open on time this year. Sad really. While at our home park, we hit up Delirium, Italian Jobber and Beast. Beast is so good this year, it's been a long time since it's given rides like this. It's so fast now, it's kinda like the old skid-brake days. And it's not really rough at all, it’s intense, but I don't come off the ride hurting. Enough about PKI, that’s not what this TR is about, but it was the start of our day.
We headed out of PKI early, and decided it was time to eat before going to HW. We hit up Skyline Chili. Now I know a lot of idiots don't like skyline, and I can only see that as being because they don't understand Cincinnati Chili, or are just simply idiots. But in the end, if you don't like it, you're not any friend of mine, you can move on. Boycott Gold Star BTW. Good lunch, full stomachs and a tank full of petro, we were ready for some Santa.
We bought a whiteboard so we could talk *trash* to people we were driving by, but unfortunately it turned out to be fairly uneventful except for us running across a few Michigan drivers/fans.
We exit the Highway and as we come closer to Holiday World we hit that four-way stop. You know, that ONE four-way stop. There were NO freakin beggars, what's going on? Un-freakin-believable... So in honor, we just blew through the stop sign anyway, inconveniencing a hill-billy in a 4x4 dodge truck.
We arrive at HW, and park in the legend lot in a special spot, a spot reserved for us. We stroll up to the registration window and it’s time to pay our 46.95 or whatever it was, but we ran into a road block. You see, there were these one enthusiast, the ones that really make me and most everyone else angry. It was an entire family and they were so concerned with being stupid, they didn’t notice the line forming behind them while they went back and forth with t-shirts like it was a Wal-Mart dressing room. If you wanna try on 6 thousand shirts, go to the Wal-Mart up the street from your trailer home. 25 minutes later, it was our turn to sign up and pay our fees. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, the holdup was in NO WAY the fault of the wonderfully pleasant Holiday World employee. She was very competent at her job, very quick, and she had us out the door in 5 minutes or less…….. I didn’t keep track, but it wasn’t long. As we left the line, some dood decided to ask us if there was an “after party” and where we were staying….. WTF dood? Do we know you? NO, I don’t think so. The invites to our “after-party” had already been handed out, and obviously you didn’t get one, don’t think we’re going to feel sorry for you, or you’re crashing our ****. Good day to you. So with everything in hand, we headed off to check into Satan’s.
We pull up to Satan’s and walked into the lobby to check in. The cute girl behind the counter took care of checking us in, and she did so in a timely manner. She also asked us if we’d like express checkout, and even though we were rather neutral about it, it seemed more appealing than having to check out at the desk, so we did that. So we moseyed on up to our room and turned on the air conditioner. We headed to the park around 5:30 or so and walked around for a bit. I can’t remember if we rode anything or not, but it’s entirely possible that we caught a lap and then headed on over to the picnic grove. At the picnic grove, people spoke, rules were laid out, and everyone was freed to go ride coasters!
ERT Began (Friday):
Voyage was running so strong it was un-real. One thing we noticed was that the little bump before the last 90 was gone. Well, there was still a little bump there, but it was hardly as serious as it was opening day. It was nothing but a good little pop of air now. The turn-a-round on Voyage is amazing, I mean, you gotta love a bank to the left while turning right. Who does that? I can’t decide what I like better, the first half or the second. During ERT in the back, the airtime on the first three hills was utterly amazing, and the turn-a-round is amazing too. But after the block brake, whoa, it’s so intense and non-stop. It really wears you down if you don’t hold on, it gets to be a complete fight at the end. I mean, enough can’t be said about Voyage, or how outstanding TGG did on it. We didn’t ride Voyage all that much on Friday and as such most of our rides were not very dark.
We rode Legend once, the entire weekend. It’s not that we couldn’t get away from Voyage, but Legend just seems horrible after the first half. The helix was absolutely horrible and the whole second half seemed very slow! I’ve logged a lot of rides on Legend, not saying I have a ton of rides on it, but definitely spent quite a bit of time on it during ERT and normal operation. It just doesn’t seem like its as fast as it once was.
Raven on the other hand was completely out of control. Definitely faster than I ever remember it. The tracking in the lake turn was sorely needed and has definitely helped that ride. The ride after the fifth drop is astonishing. Raven has really come a long way, and it used to be my favorite coaster, it still would be if not for Voyage.
We mostly hung our Friday night, we live so close to the park, we didn’t feel the need to ride constantly. It was nice not to feel like we had to constantly be in line, and just hang out and talk with some people. ERT ended and we headed out of the park. All in all, it was a great night.
Saturday
I woke up at around 9am, local time, and Kris slept till (I think) 11:30. We had no intention of going to the morning thing at the water park. We got all ready and headed over to the park, rode gobbler getaway (Oh, forgot to give my thoughts on that!), maybe a voyage ride or two and then decided we’d go back to the hotel until the walk back for photos and what-not.
Gobbler Getaway is a really good sally ride. Our “home” park is Kings Island, so we have Scooby, and I’ve always been a fan of Sally dark rides. Gobblers theming is really good. Every bit, if not better than Scooby’s theming. The one little peeve I have are the cars, I like Scooby’s better. Now I know that the only reason Scooby’s cars are like they are, is because they reused the cars from Phantom, but I really do think it’s a better design for a shooting (I’m not supposed to say that BTW) game. When you’re sitting in the back of the actual Sally cars, you are disadvantaged. But overall, it’s such a good addition to the park and fits right in, and I think we all know Mrs. Koch really wanted it!
When we got back to the park, we waited for the walk back to start, and we could tell that there were a LOT more people there for that, than there was for ERT on Friday. Really, that kind of worried me, as I thought ERT lines would be kinda rough. We stood over by the entrance to Gobbler Getaway waiting for the walk back to commence. As we are just standing around, some little girl walked up with her parents and exclaimed “What is this ride?” I don’t know if they were part of HWN, or not, but clearly the little girl didn’t know what awaited her as she embarked on her journey on Gobbler Getaway. So some odd enthusiast was eager to explain to the little girl as she entered the queue what she was in for. He said, “It’s a ride, and I know you’re not supposed to say this, but you “shoot” at targets to get points.” Huh? Who? Why? You can’t say shoot? Oh noooo! Shoot, I mean, errrr…….. Come on dood, are you serious? Shoot? I can’t say that? Why? You are weird sir.
I love the walk backs. Plain and simple. To be back in the woods up next to a running coaster, that’s a rare opportunity. I took a few photographs, talked to a few people and spent a lot of time back there. What was really good, is that they let us walk down all the way back by the turn around. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to just stand up at the top of the hill there and stare down there. You can see my photos here:
http://coasters.cincygamers.com/gallery
We kind of randomly ran around the park for the next few hours, eating some ice-cream, doing whatever until we had to be at the picnic grove for dinner and what-not.
ERT Begins (Saturday)
We’ll it was time, we walked down to Voyage after they let us out of the grove and noticed a line all the way across the bridge. We were kinda shocked and then we watched a train go by empty and realized they hadn’t opened it yet and we decided to change directions for a while. So we headed up to Raven and rode it a few times, and it was what I expected, same as Friday night ERT.
Voyage on the other hand seemed even more wildly. I mean, I couldn’t believe it, it was so much more fun. And this time it was completely pitch black back in the woods, it just seemed so much darker back there. We basically power rode it the rest of the night, ride after ride, we got off and right back in line. The line wasn’t bad at all either, not nearly as bad as I had feared looking at the amount of people there for the photo walk back. They had gotten the third train running and earlier in the day we were talking about it. During normal operation, they were stacking with two train operation, but during ERT, with three they were doing exceptionally well, and stacking one train, but not the third. This certainly helped with the line, no doubt. So we ended the night riding Voyage, and it couldn’t have been any better. I was so sore and tired, but so content with how the night had gone.
Leaving the park, we weren’t like, “Man, I wish we had more time.” We had gotten so many rides, and it was so much fun that we couldn’t ask for more. It was all so amazing. Holiday World is a great park and has amazing coasters.
The event was over and we headed back to the Hotel. The next morning, we proceeded to do the whole “Express” checkout thing, left our mess in the room, along with our keys and got in the car and headed back to Cincinnati (BTW, we are now just permanently running that stop sign, beggars or not). Now on Friday some of our friends from Florida, who used to live in L’Ville, were talking about how they missed White Castle, along with Skyline Chili. There happens to be a White Castle in Corydon, In and as it was about Noon and we were hungry so we decided to stop there to eat. We were sitting there no more than 5 minutes when we see them pull up into the parking lot and it was quite funny that they decided to stop too. So we sat around and talked about HW, and HWN and finally had to part ways. It was such a great weekend. Can’t wait till next time.
EDIT: For a spacing problem. *** Edited 6/1/2006 1:41:04 AM UTC by eric.walton*** *** Edited 6/1/2006 4:04:14 AM UTC by eric.walton***
*** Edited 6/1/2006 1:46:10 AM UTC by eric.walton***
Good running into you and Kris early on, but I think I missed you guys the rest of the weekend. You had fun at least though and nice write-up on Gobbler. I was almost looking forward to that more than Voyage this year and I'm a huge dark ride fan.
Yeah, this weekend I was REALLY looking forward to Gobbler, because I like the dark rides. Since I had ridden Voyage already, you could almost say I was looking forward to that more than Voyage. It was kinda funny how we really didn't run into each other the rest of the weekend. Good times for sure.
See ya around I'm sure!
*** Edited 6/1/2006 2:16:34 AM UTC by eric.walton***
Waiting for comments from Den and Money B........
I love Voyage, by far and away my number 1.
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