Park Review

Holiday World Santa Claus, California By Josh Wozny May 11 & 12, 2001 (Stark Raven Mad) Well, I'm still tired, so I don't know how good this will be. These are my views/thought/facts/events of the trip to Holiday World for Stark Raven Mad 2001. The weather started off a little sketchy. We were watching the weather channel and noticed a line of massive thunderstorms in the Indiana/Kentucky area (knowing our luck, we'd get pounded all weekend). It turns out that everything was nice, and sunny, and hot. There was a period of rain, but I'll get to that later. When we arrived, I was very nervous, thinking that we wouldn't make registration because of the time. What was I thinking? We had an extra hour because of the time change. This was my first time at Holiday World, and as we were setting up the tent, I kept hearing this wolf howling off in the distance (scary). It turned out to be a sound effect off the top of Legend's hill, (along with "don't look back"). We were escorted to the Holiday Theatre at 5:00 and awaited the park "clearing" of the GP. Here we got a presentation of "waterless urinals", found out that Mrs. Koch has cancer, and is on Chemotherapy for it now (very sad time). At this point, we were getting anxious to go ride. It was hot and sticky in the theatre because there were a lot of people there. The turnout seemed to be very large this year. On to the ERT. Fear of storms had kept the rides closed down for a little while, but then as they were passing and everyone else was eating, Nate and I grabbed a ride on the Legend. Legend: +3.5 Wow, there was a massive pop of air right after the second twisting drop. The only problem I see with this ride is the trains. They're extremely heavy and they like to fall very hard after airtime. We got to chatting with Jeff from CCI (who now only works on the two Holiday World coasters) and he said he had just patched up 150 feet of track for us that morning to give it more air. Dry, this ride is really good. At night, after the rain, it comes alive! So much so, that when the train came into the station, it would shift a whole six inches, and usually the thing overshot the brakes because it was hauling so fast. Hey, I didn't mind, I just had to make sure I held on for all the laterals (which this coaster is full of). Raven: +3.9 This ride has PTCs on it (Yay!) versus the Gerstlauers, which bumps it up a slight few notches from Legend. The first time out on this, I discovered that they don't mind how far up your lap bar is, as long as your seatbelt is fastened, and your bar is past your knees :-D I left it at two clicks and the seatbelt all the way loosened. Dropfive, in the middle of the woods, takes the cake. This ride is nasty (in a good way) at night, and after the rain, it really woke up, too. There's no one way to describe either of these coasters except, wow! After meeting up with Jeremy Norris (and Greg), the fun began. Nate and Jeremy had their little debates and we all just had a really great time getting hyper off adrenaline and just talking. Then (this was just at dark, well before the rain storms) we decided to hit up the oasis and head back on to Legend for ride 14 of the night. "Clang" - wow the bell sounds weird. Oh, it fell!! Right over the station entrance, the bell that normally is rung by the attendant when the train is coming back came off it's cradle and fell down, hanging above where the train enters the station. It took them about 30 minutes and they finally got it down (thanks Jeff!) without hurting anyone or themselves. The ERT continued with 37 second loading times on both coasters (amazing) front seat, back seat, wherever - I think I rode both coasters in every seat. Shortly after the bell incident, around 11, there was about ten minutes of straight downpour and t-storms. The coasters kept running, and just got more and more out of control. They gave us an extra hour of ERT (till 1AM!!) and all was well. Once the rain stopped, it never came back, but the coasters never let up, either. We were planning on leaving the next morning, but we were informed that there would be a walkback for us at 11 am, great photo ops, and, of course, second day admission is free with SRM, so we stayed and rode until about three that day. Though there weren't many other enthusiasts there, out of those who were there, I was crowned "King Of The Circle" on the flyers when I was snapping cables on the flyers that nobody thought you could. It was great; I flew up so high, hit some leaves, and "snap" - I came down and flew up and hit leaves on the other side and "snap." I can't wait for PPP! Todd Long, you have a new challenger! After that, we hung out with Todd and some other people on the Rapids ride for about three cycles, while Nate stayed dry the whole time. We decided to cram four full grown guys into the log flume with Nate in the front (hehe � he didn't stay dry for long). After then, we hit up the Legend and the Raven one last time, and we headed on out to change and proceed to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom for some more (exciting) coasters. I'll write in about SFKK some other time; it's time to crash. Thanks for reading. Later, Josh The above park review, and all other reviews contained on this site, are property of Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Geocities and their respective owners. See Yahoo's Copyright Policy for more information.

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