Photo TR: New Hotness, East Coast, and More!

Mammoth is not only the best attraction at Holiday World, it is among the best attractions in the world. Deena and I were both blown away by it.

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^Mammoth and Wildebeest have more airtime than a lot of coasters.

It has been a while since the last update, and this one will be rather short, but I am back!

Indiana Beach

Our second day in Indiana brought us up to Indiana Beach. This is a very interesting park, with the exception of a couple of rides it feels like it has been stuck in time. This made for a very interesting day since I had never been to a park like it before. The day started with some ERT on the coaster (all except Hoosier Hurricane which was closed all day for what looked like some major work). I went straight for Steel Hawg, the park's El Loco coaster that I somehow managed not to get a single picture of . It was a fun little ride, while I do prefer the custom layout version at the Adventuredome, I still really enjoyed the ride. The beyond vertical drop is great and the rest of the ride of just wrong, but in a good way. Next up was Tig'rr, the Schwarzkopf Jet Star. I was surprised by how forceful it was and I really liked it. Cornball Express, while nothing special is still a fun ride. The last coaster to ride before the park opened to the public was Lost Coaster. This ride is probably the most notable ride in the park because of how strange it is. It started out as a dark ride but now lives on as a wooden coaster with a vertical lift. The ride is very temperamental and took a little bit of rearranging of people to get it to run, but it was definitely worth it.

After exploring more of the park it was time for lunch. The park provided us with a very nice buffet, which was a nice change from all the fried chicken we had eaten the last few days. We then had a TPR Takeover of the Fascination parlor. If you don't know what Fascination is, it is a combination of the midway "roll a ball into hole and move the horse" games and bingo. It is very simple to play and only costs 50 cents per round, making it very addictive and competitive. Winning a round gives you tickets which can be used to buy random prizes. Some of us bought harmonicas and probably annoyed a lot of people as we horribly played them throughout the park.

Another must do at the park is the upcharge walkthrough Frankenstein's Castle. It had a lot of classic gags throughout and was a lot of fun. I didn't know what to expect going in and my group was a little more scared then we probably should have been, but that made it even more fun since we were freaking out over nothing . I highly recommend checking it out if you visit the park and it is totally worth the upcharge.

Overall I definitely enjoyed my time at Indiana Beach. It was a nice change from the rest of the trips, and other parks that I have been to. While I wouldn't make a trip specifically to the park, but I would check it out again if I was in the area.

Now a small amount of pictures because I am terrible at this:

We have arrived at the park

The ride the park is known for

This section is the most coaster part of it, and due to the way the trains are, I was riding this craziness backwards

Now time for a classic Schwarzkopf which really blew me away

Underside of Tig'rr

TPR in line for a fun ride

The classic Scrambler. It is built out over the water as are many of the rides in the park

This weird looking things appears to be a new inverted scrambler

Totally true

A little bit of theming from the pirate shooting ride

Because an Easter Island head belongs in Indiana

The park has an S&S Double Shot which was outstanding. The airtime at the top was intense

My first Fascination win!

Cornball Express running along the edge of the pier

Yay for lifthills

Yay for more underside of coaster

Noted

Followed. It was made fresh and was delicious

After the park we went for a group dinner at UNO's because who doesn't love pizza

The park gave us these cool cups and a pin which I couldn't find when taking this picture.

As always, thanks for reading. Next time, the last stop on the Mini New Hotness Tour, Six Flags Great America

Yep--those elephant ears are might tasty, as are the redneck biscuits.

Six Flags Great America

This marked the last day of the Mini New Hotness Tour, and everyone was excited to get the chance to ride Goliath! Right at park opening we all headed straight to Goliath to try and beat the line. We got our ride in, picked up our Q-bots from Robb, and we were off. Since the rest of my Q-bot group had never been to the park, we went for the credit run. Over the past few years the operations at the park have gotten worse, taking much longer to get to everything than I am used to (This was in part due to the double rides on pretty much everything with the Platinum Flash Pass). The biggest offender was the food service, taking forever to get a very simple meal, that wasn't even that good.

But we weren't going to let that ruin our day. We had fun with our group, making jokes about how bad some of the stuff was. We got through almost every major coaster before we had to meet back at the bus for the farewell dinner. It was a fun meal to have everyone together, but it was sad since we would be saying goodbye to all of the great people that we met on the trip.

After dinner most of us headed back to the park. My group used our Goliath reservations to get two rides in (one back row, one front row). It had warmed up considerably. We finished up the missing credits and got a few rerides before calling it a day. We were really lucky with our timing to leave. We had to walk back to our hotel (it was around a ten minute walk) and right when we walked out the front gates the wind picked up out of nowhere. By the time we got out of the parking lot it started to rain, and when we got back it was raining pretty hard. One last surprise of the trip

Here are some pictures from the day:

A great sight to see when you walk through the front gates

Morning testing before the ride opened for the day

Our first ride was kind of slow since it was early, but I could see the potential

The extended queue right after park opening

Maybe they could have used the money to print these to build the rest of the ride

Now time to ride X-flight. Also in the background is Giant drop, making so that I have ridden one second generation and one third generation (Drop Tower) Intamin freefall

I'm not a huge fan of wingriders, but they are neat to watch

I don't understand why this turn has a big rattle to it, but it has been that way since opening season

Due to the small footprint the queue gets very close the ride multiple times

Viper! It is one of my favorite wooden coasters. Still very smooth even though the wood doesn't look like it has been retracked in a long time

This time around it was running much slower than usual (even later in the day), and the operations are painfully slow. That aside it is still great

Who would voluntarily wait 75 minutes for a wild mouse?

The carousel's animals start out normal with a lion

And finally, we have this horse-fish, possibly a hippocompus from Greek mythology, for some reason

Then there is a dragon, which is a pretty common mythological creature

Beware of the log flume, There is a water jet at the bottom of the drop that went straight into my face

V2, fun but I miss the holding brake on the back spike

Batman clones always make for good rides

Zero-g roll into the sunset

American Eagle is a lot of fun, but brace for the final helix

What could be wrong with these playground slides?

I do like that there was some effort put into the theming

Ah Demon. I am apparently just too tall for Arrow loopers, the restraints always dig into my shoulders no matter how loose I try to put them. This made for a great time when we got stuck on the final brake run for twenty minutes

Raging Bull, great first drop in the back row, but why must that hill be trimmed so much?

This is a very intimidating angle to see the ride from

My later rides were much better but the short length really stunts the ride. It is still a great ride but it just stand up that well to the other RMCs

I'll end this update with a shot of the dive loop from right out side the station.

Thanks for reading, and next time we start the Mini East Coast Tour with Hersheypark

Your experience sounds similar to mine. Viper was slow, lines were long, Goliath was good (not great). Only difference is that I beat the rain back to the hotel.

Really, if you can't keep a playground slide up and running...