This will be an enthusiast style write up, so I will be using some bs jargon. I won't be using my actual photos as they are Facebook, and I keep my online stuff separate pretty much.
Ok, so partly what I started this thread on; The Voyage at Holiday World & Splashin' Safari.
Incredible!So as a baseline, the Golden Ticket awards are given yearly to basically all the parks but Disney and Universal. They are in there, but they seem to focus on everything else, which I get.
https://goldenticketawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AT-GoldenTix-2015-LoRes.pdf So what I'm drawing attention to here is Holiday World (HW) has the #4 (The Voyage), #12 (The Raven), and #25 (The Legend) Wooden coasters of 2015. To kind of put that in perspective, Cedar Point (CP) has four of the top 25 steels. Not even SF:Magic Mountain can claim three in the top 25. What is even more amazing; HW has five coasters, one of which is a kiddy one! So they nailed it on all of their wood rides.
Further, both the Voyage and the Raven have been rated #1 by the same awards more than once in their lifetime's. And sure, the point can be made that wood coasters may be easier to win awards or something, as it is more niche. But to me there is just the same amount of ratio of crap for wood as there are steel.
The Voyage is easily the best wooden ride I have ever been on (I haven't been on the top 3 yet). I would argue El Toro is not a true to heritage wooden ride based on its description. Any who, I would go so far as eventually saying The Voyage is my favorite coaster ever. This ride does everything perfectly. It is over 2:30 minutes long. It has the most negative Gs ("airtime"), something like 24 seconds, of any coaster in the world. It is second longest amount of track only to the Beast. It is high for a wood ride, and fast. It has 90 degree banked turns. It has tunnels.
All that said, this ride is unpredictable. And I don't mean the apparent belief that wood rides are never the same twice due to natural movement in the rails and the frame. After the first two hills that not only look like the Magnum XL-200, but feel like it; you hit the first tunnel, and the ride shifts tone. If you are not in the front, good luck finding out where the ride goes. Watch a POV of it, or better yet, a non-front row ride of it. And even then, it is insane. The lateral G's are intense, but just the twists and dips are hard to predict. It also had lush wooded scenery, so much so that only the first hill and the ending curves can really be seen from the walkways. The ride is just awesome. The only knock is they trim brake the second half of the ride, which is probably why I feel it is no longer rated #1. It is easy to accept, because it is still nuts after the brakes. I cannot even find good enough pictures to show what the ride is like.
The Legend was my next favorite, and I feel it should be higher. Similar to the Voyage in that it is unpredictable, but lacks the full punch of the Voyage. However, it has the most insane lateral Gs i have ever experienced on a ride. I literally had to drop one of my hands to hold on so I didn't mash into my brother any further. It was only apparently a double helix done in a different way and time of the ride, but felt like it was more than two revolutions.
The Raven was more of a classic styled wooden coaster. Not too long, but had nice elements (a 180 turn by a lake,) and there were no trim brakes. So the ride felt like it became more off the rails as it went on.
The newest coaster is a launched B&M wing coaster. I still am unsure about how cool Wing rides are, but this had a launched start, so that is nice. It's a similar start to The Hulk at Universal Florida. Concept art for the photo, but is telling of the ride. Plus it has the Voyage represented well in it. It had an inline roll at the end that I have never experienced on a ride- quite cool on a wing coaster.
I would be cheating the park to not mention the water park. I haven't been to Schlitterbahn, but for the ones still open I have been to are CP's, Kings Island, Michigan's Adventure, and both WDW's water parks. HW's water park, if we remove WDW's theming as a factor, mops the floor with it. It has not one but two water coasters of The Wildebeest (red and yellow) and Mammoth (red, yellow, blue in photo), and for the uphill bursts they use water jets vs. a conveyer belt that was on Crushing' Gusher at Typoon Lagoon. So those jets make a world of difference, because it was smooth and produced many moments of airtime. After thinking the Wildebeest was amazing and full of airtime, I didn't think The Mammoth could top it. Not only is Mammoth longer, but it is better still. It is a giant shared raft, and therefore like those downhill giant raft rides, the raft twists in different orientations. So I got nailed with being backwards down almost all the drops- quite a thrill hanging onto raft handles and not knowing when the drops are occurring!
But they also have two funnel rides, more than two tube slide structures, this surfing type halfpipe that was closed, but it is similar to the Proslide funnel, and the usual water park fair of wave pools, lazy river and a kiddy area. The park was excellent.
So if you like these type of rides, and/or are not far from Indiana, I *highly* recommend this park. On a non-busy day, you can nail out all the major attractions in both parks without any issue in one day.