Santa Claus, Indiana – Sunday May 10th, 2009

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…