Holiday World (HW) Discussion Thread

[jarmor]

I would def start from back to front.  Hit the back two coasters, do some water park activities as soon as they open, then the rest of the park.  If it makes it easier, the water coasters have single riders lines.

[mikeykaise]

^ what he said, at rope drop Raven, Legend, and the kiddie area in the front of the park is where everyone heads first and then work their way back as it gets closer to water park opening time. When the water park opens you'll have you pick of which dry rides to ride.

[KBrylczyk]

On 6/8/2022 at 4:09 PM, prozach626 said:

Who would pay $400 for some used bearings?

Enthusiasts like exotic anal beads, ok?  Don't kink shame.

[prozach626]

Leaving the hobby now...

[AmyUD06]

Just got back to my hotel after my first trip to Holiday World.  A full report will follow, but here are some bullet points:

-Legend, Raven, and Voyage are all insanely good rides for different reasons, despite the roughness on the first and last of those.  All have found a place in my Top lists (see signature).  I regretted skipping rerides only 15 minutes down the road, but the extreme heat combined with the not-exactly-smooth wooden coasters had given me a recurring headache.
-Water coasters are absolutely bonkers!  This was my first time going on any of them, and holy shit.  Airtime on a water ride!
-This is going to be probably a me-only problem, but the water park needs more for solo-traveling adults who are mostly introverted.  It's weird getting on a big group-tube with a bunch of randos, sorry not sorry.  There's plenty of kids slides and big-tube slides, but there are only three solo slides and they are all super short.
-SHADE!  After my day at KK yesterday, this day was so much better on my body despite the hills because of the ample shade (excepting the long walk back to Thunderbird).
-Anyone who says KK is an objectively better park than this is out of their mind.

[anonymouscactus]

3 hours ago, Mike240SX said:

Water coasters are absolutely bonkers! 

 

3 hours ago, Mike240SX said:

Anyone who says KK is an objectively better park than this is out of their mind.

I think it's just the lack of beer that most people here can't stand holiday world, not objectively looking at the park as a whole. And they've never been on the water coasters, because they will change your life.

They had another set of slides for solo riders way out near Thunderbird but they took them out. They were decent.

[teacherkim]

19 hours ago, Mike240SX said:

Just got back to my hotel after my first trip to Holiday World.  A full report will follow, but here are some bullet points:

-Legend, Raven, and Voyage are all insanely good rides for different reasons, despite the roughness on the first and last of those.  All have found a place in my Top lists (see signature).  I regretted skipping rerides only 15 minutes down the road, but the extreme heat combined with the not-exactly-smooth wooden coasters had given me a recurring headache.
-Water coasters are absolutely bonkers!  This was my first time going on any of them, and holy shit.  Airtime on a water ride!
-This is going to be probably a me-only problem, but the water park needs more for solo-traveling adults who are mostly introverted.  It's weird getting on a big group-tube with a bunch of randos, sorry not sorry.  There's plenty of kids slides and big-tube slides, but there are only three solo slides and they are all super short.
-SHADE!  After my day at KK yesterday, this day was so much better on my body despite the hills because of the ample shade (excepting the long walk back to Thunderbird).
-Anyone who says KK is an objectively better park than this is out of their mind.

Glad you tried the water coasters! I don't think people often believe me when I say they are something different than what you encounter at most water parks. Not only air time but I actually saw Wildebeest valley once and have to be evacuated, lol, just like a coaster. I get that it can be weird to go solo on a water ride with strangers, we often do it just to use the single rider line and my son finds that sort of thing a little difficult, not me I'll make friends with anyone but I understand the issue. Just remember you are all there for the same reason so if nothing else you have at least that one thing in common.

I realized after our last visit that seat selection on Voyage (and probably the other two) makes a huge difference. After only ever riding in the front and not finding it to be rough, in fact we got a particularly smooth ride last October at night when it was much cooler, I rode in row 2 which is a wheel seat and got jackhammered all the way around. If you ever get a chance to do a night ride on Voyage it is a legit contender to Beast and with the cooler temps slowing it just enough to smooth it out but still letting it haul ass. Or the even more rare trimless night ride. Unfortunately, it is a hard thing to score because they don't often stay open late enough. 

[prozach626]

On 7/1/2022 at 5:44 PM, Mike240SX said:

This is going to be probably a me-only problem, but the water park needs more for solo-traveling adults who are mostly introverted.

Not the target market or the money maker, bro. Holiday World focuses heavily on families.

Glad you had fun.

[AmyUD06]

31 minutes ago, prozach626 said:

Not the target market or the money maker, bro. Holiday World focuses heavily on families.

Glad you had fun.

Yeah, I totally get it.

Thanks, it was a good time

 

[Dan the Coaster Man]

Went to the park for most of the day Wednesday and had a great time. Legend was posted to open late, once it did it was one train. But man its running great.

[FeelTheFORCE]

^ I was there Wednesday as well! 

 

This was my first visit since 2008, and first time experiencing their waterpark as well.  I forgot how great of a park this is, and the water coasters are pretty phenomenal.  We didn't get to do Wildebeest, but Cheetah Chase and Mammoth are a blast.  Thunderbird was also new since I was there last, and was awesome.  The barn owls in the station are also a cool touch!  The Voyage is also running so incredibly well this year.  After the rougher rides I had on El Toro a few weeks back, it's safe to say I definitely hold Voyage a bit higher now.  Also, major kudos for HW leaving it open until 8:30, even though park closing was at 8pm.  I assume that was so people had something to do while they waited for the night show?  Either way, it was a walk-on, and I'm certainly not complaining.  The show was really nice also, and I already can't wait to go back!

[AmyUD06]

Just finally got around to posting my first ever trip to Holiday World in my big 2022 Photo TR thread.  What did I think of the park, after spending the previous day at Kentucky Kingdom?  Click through to find out!

[mikeykaise]

On 8/2/2022 at 1:39 PM, AmyUD06 said:

Just finally got around to posting my first ever trip to Holiday World in my big 2022 Photo TR thread.  What did I think of the park, after spending the previous day at Kentucky Kingdom?  Click through to find out!

You're totally right about Holiday World over KK, and I live 15 mins from KK.

[Bamwa]

What in the world was the voyage and how is my head still on?

[CedarFlags]

In the "where do I go" stages of planning a trip and I noticed that the Ops Calendar for Holiday World has the park closing at 6pm for the majority of September.  Is the park really that dead, even on a Saturday, that it's not worth it to stay open until dark?

[boldikus]

On 6/4/2022 at 8:44 PM, anonymouscactus said:

Only 17 min left!!!! The best gift for a coaster enthusiast!!!!

I don't know how I missed this post but holy shit.

[prozach626]

On 8/15/2022 at 10:20 PM, CedarFlags said:

In the "where do I go" stages of planning a trip and I noticed that the Ops Calendar for Holiday World has the park closing at 6pm for the majority of September.  Is the park really that dead, even on a Saturday, that it's not worth it to stay open until dark?

I can't say for certain, but I would imagine a day in September isn't very busy at HW. Especially since the water park is open, which is a huge draw.

[Bamwa]

On 8/16/2022 at 8:48 AM, boldikus said:

I don't know how I missed this post but holy shit.

well that would explain my above post. THESE AREN'T WHEELS THEY ARE BEARINGS!

[prozach626]

I'm going to buy an old lap bar for $6,000 so I can keep a piece of trash in my room.

[swfan1988]

Hi Everyone!

Wow...uhhh...sorry but I got way distracted with some work stuff, and my whole plan of putting out all my trip reports from this year's "Coaster Desert Escape" totally went out the window. So let's just pickup where we left off at...Holiday World!

Now, I'll be honest. Holiday World was a park that I had heard a lot of people talk about, but it wasn't high on my list of park to visit. I don't know I just never felt a huge urge to visit it. But when during the trip planning process we decided to go from St. Louis (where we watched a baseball game which was AWESOME!) to Kings Island...I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit another park. Especially when that park has Voyage...I mean no matter your opinion of the thing, every coaster enthusiast has to do it at lease once right?

So after enjoying the free parking (yay!), and having a rather strange opening experience where they forgot to have someone come and drop the rope at opening time (Is that normal?), we headed to the far back of the park for Thunderbird! Now while enjoyed Thunderbird (best steel coaster in the park you know...) and I thought the launch was fun, I was actually a little underwhelmed. I thought the layout and inversions would do for me, but it just...didn't. I actually prefer Wild Eagle at Dollywood, because outside of the T-Bird's launch (which is better than WE's lift hill in my opinion) Eagle's layout was much more intense and unique than Thunderbird's. So after that interesting start, we headed to the star of the show at Holiday World which is of course...

...Voyage! Now, having heard a LOT of different things about the ride, mostly praise but some criticism, I was curious to see what I thought. And first off I want to say, yes voyage is ROUGH. I don't care if its a "good season" or a "bad season" for the ride, I thought it was rougher than it should have been. Yes, I get it, it's a big old honken ride, in a park with two other wooden coasters. And no, it wasn't grossly rough (like cough cough Timber Wolf cough cough), but definitely unpleasantly rough. I do have a high roughness tolerance, so it didn't bother me too much, but I was disappointed by it. Maybe I was under the false impression that HW was on parr with Knoebels when it came to wooden coaster maintenance, I don't know I guess I expected it to be smoother all around. The roughness also made it definitely a front row ride, as not only could I then enjoy a smoother ride, I could also form an appropriate opinion about it's famous layout. And that is: the first two ills are all right, but not all that great, the spaghetti bowl didn't do anything for me, and only when we get the the last third or so did I really see why people rate this ride so highly. Someone is probably gonna now say "But trim-less night rides at HolliWood Nights!", and to that I say (A) I didn't think the trims dampened it all that much, and (B) having the trims off wouldn't solve any of the problems with the first half of the ride. All in all, I thought the Voyage WAS the best in the park, but definitely not my favorite wooden coaster, with it currently sitting at number 4 just beating out Legend.

Speaking of Legend...

...that was our next stop! I had originally thought I would actually like this more than Voyage, which I know is a bit of a a strange notion. But you see, I have always been fascinated with this coasters layout. On multiple occasions I have heard Tremors at my homepark be called "An improved version of Legend", and to that I say NO! Legend does pretty much everything that Tremors does, except the tunnels, better. Better first drop, better laterals, better speed, about the same on airtime and theming. However, I will say that despite all of the things going for it, there are a couple things holding the ride back. First is it's rough, definitely rougher than Voyage. Again, not grossly rough, but rough enough to take away from the ride experience. Secondly, the elements just don't seem to "pop" as much as they should. Hill that you'd think would have lots of airtime, have are mild, and turns you'd think would slam you around fall flat. I know a lot of people want to see Legend RMC'ed, but I personally would really want it to get the "Ghostrider treatment" from GCI. I know GCI has already done some work on the ride, but if they took the whole "let's retrack and reprofile most of the ride to make it more intense and ride smoother, plus through on some sweet Millennium Flyer's" than I think the ride would really benefit, and that's also what I most want looking to the future of Holiday World.

After riding one of the world's most pointless log flumes (and I thought my home park's was bad), we rounded out the coaster collection with the original reason people went to Holiday World, Raven.

I don't think there's a whole lot that needs to be said about Raven at this point, short but sweet, a little rough, and the fifth drop is great but the rest of the ride is showing it's age. I do really like the queue for the ride in the old house, but other than that I walked away from Raven exactly as I expected too, it was good but also just kinda "there".

Aside from the coasters (and Frightful Falls, "can't forget that one..."), didn't ride a whole lot at Holiday World as we had to drive to Cincinnati that night and we didn't want to do it late at night. We did manage to ride Gobbler's Getaway, which I thought was a nice shooting dark ride although a lot of the effects seemed to be broken which was disappointing.

We didn't do Splahin' Safari due to lack of time and interest, but from what I could see it definitely looked like one of the best outdoor water parks that I have seen. Definitey on the list for next time I get to Holiday World.

Some other thoughts on Holiday World:

 - While the park was clean (as advertised), it was really only super clean in the parts that most people are, but if you look in some areas...it's not clean. Looking at all those Pepsi cups under Legend's station as an example.

 - Loved the free soda and thought it was a cool idea. More parks should do that.

 - The park as a whole was nice looking, but it kinda looked like they scrubbed all the detials off everything. Aside fromt the Christmas entrance area, pretty much all of the other buildings in the park just felt kinda "plain". Not that that's a bad thing I just thought it was an interesting phenomena.

To finish out my thoughts on Holiday World I want to do something kinda different. Over the years I have heard a lot of comparisons between my homepark (Silverwood) and Holiday World. You don't hear it a much anymore, especially since Voyage and Aftershock opened, but there are still a lot of similarities and some interesting differences. So since I've been visiting SW for a very long time, let's compare the too!

 - The first one is pretty easy, and that is Holiday World definitely has the better water park, no contest. There's just no way Boulder Beach can compete with Splashin' Safari's 3 water coasters and all it's tube slides. There's just no way.

 - I think Silverwood has the more rounded coaster collection (2 woodies and 3 steel, vs. 3 woodies and 1 steel), while Holiday World has stronger rides overall. I like Voyage and Legend better than Timber Terror and Tremors, with Aftershock and Tremors coming ahead of Raven and Thunderbird, and of course Stunt Pilot beats them all in my book.

 - Both parks have nice landscaping, but Silverwood is for sure the prettier of the the two. SW not only has the cleanliness of Holiday World, but also a huge chunk more of landscaping and detail.

Overall, I think I prefer my homepark a bit better (although I'm probably REALLY biased...), but Holiday World is still a good park, and a fun place to visit. I'd be curious to see where the Koch family goes from here, as they seem more willing than most independent park's to swing big when it comes to additions.

Thank you to @jarmor and  @mikeykaise  for the help and advice on visiting, I really appreciated it!

Whew! Finally got this one done! Hopefully should be able to get the last one done from this trip, plus the ones from a last minute trip I did in September, and an update from my homepark done real soon! See you then! 

[prozach626]

Thanks for the TR. I always walked away from Holiday World feeling indifferent. The wooden coasters are unpleasantly rough, which is probably the perfect way to put it. 

I'm disappointed to hear about Gobber's Getaway being neglected. It was always one of my favorite dark rides, having a more unique themeing. I can't understand why parks have such a difficult time maintaining Sally rides, since they seem so analogue, especially the animatronics.

Although some enthusiasts love HW, I think others leave feeling underwhelmed or indifferent, because it's geared more toward families. It's an affordable weekend getaway. It's a perfect park for families with pre-teens, in an area where there's not much else to do.

[teacherkim]

Fair assessment. We've never made it out to Silverwood so cannot comment on the comparison. I will say that HW without doing the waterpark is really only half the experience in my opinion, even for those that aren't generally waterpark fans the 3 water coasters there are unique, quality rides. Part of the unique fun of HW is the improbability of encountering something like a B&M launched wing coaster in the middle of a cornfield. I mean it just shouldn't be there, but it is, lol. 

Trimless Voyage does make it haul ass through the second half but I think riding it at cooler temps affects the smoothness and roughness issue much more.

[PaTim]

So this is neat. The Voyage is getting Gravity Group's engineered precut track added and well as a less sophisticated horizontal version of a prefab track. I'm optimistic this prefab track may offer more permanent solutions to lower maintenance costs while keeping the rides smoother in the process, especially given the lower positive G profiles on traditional woodies compared to the Intamin prefabs. Here's the video:

 

 

[thrillseeker4552]

Great news. I am all for more permanent solutions for track maintenance while keeping it a wooden coaster. There are many wooden coasters that should be RMC'd but the Voyage is most definitely NOT one of them. Good for Holiday World, I love their commitment to their wooden coasters.

I had a blast visiting for the first time last May and I'll be heading back this year in early August (and have enough time to include Splashin' Safari this time too). Can't wait!

[prozach626]

We're gong Thursday, June 29th, and Friday 30th. July 4th is Tuesday. How fucked are we with crowds?