Beech Bend

Alpine Slide at Kentucky Action Park

As Cindy's Uncle might say, I love Holiday World but I'm no son-of-a-bitch for it! We decided to skip the second day of Stark Raven Mad and head for a little known park in Kentucky, Beech Bend. Beech Bend is located in Bowling Green, a picturesque area that typifies my conflicting feelings about Kentucky in general. I love driving through Kentucky, I think it's a very pretty state. But I hate the towns. They're all ugly. They look.....kind of trashy, like trashy people might live there. That's not to say there aren't nice people or that everybody there is trashy - certainly my friends Cory and Heather don't fit that bill (well except for Cory's hat, that thing belongs in a museum!) - but it just seems like Kentucky is full of picturesque scenery and trashy towns. It's a place full of contradictions. Words never rang more true than at Beech Bend. This is very much a local park, and the crowd here was 100% redneck. I don't mean that in a bad way, the people were extremely friendly and I liked them a lot. Everyone was well behaved, there was virtually no line cutting and no unruly behavior, and I felt more comfortable here than in many other parks. But the demographic here is unmistakably low income, local and 100% white. I have conflicting feelings about the park. The place was extremely clean, immaculate even. And it had a lot of rides I really enjoyed. The employees were nice and very efficient. And the food here is really good, too. So why don't I like this place more? We walked in and the first impression I had was that this place looks like a permanent carnival. All the rides have a temporary installation look to them. Shortly after we arrived they turned the music on throughout the park, and it was so loud and overmodulated I nearly lost my mind - I don't know how the sno cone stand workers can take it! There are plenty of beech trees in the older section of the park but almost no decor of any kind. The main rides section was completely shadeless and reminded me of a carnival midway without tents. There are only two bathrooms in the entire park, one being at the entrance, and it could really use a couple more. Cindy and I walked around for what felt like an eternity looking for one and finally realized there might be one in the arcade and lunchroom. The food served in the arcade building is really good. Other than a sno cone-hot dog stand, this is the only place that serves food in the park. Everything is grilled and my cheeseburger was outstanding! There is a good selection of menu items to choose from and it's a nice big concession area with a condiment bar in the middle of the room, but there are no tables to sit anywhere. This was the hottest day of our trip and I really wanted to stay out of the sun, so it would have been nice to have some seating in there since it's the only place with air conditioning in the park. We did play some skeeball and air hockey later on, though, and the air conditioning was welcome. Beech Bend is an old fashioned park with a surprising number of old fashioned and modern rides and all of them are pretty good. We started off the day riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, which has the distinction of being the only orange Tilt-a-Whirl I have ever seen, and something called the Scat2. Is that a weird name or what! This is kind of like a Round-Up, only there are two cages that rotate around each other, and the g forces this ride generates is absolutely astounding! Both Cindy and I had to scrape our faces off the floor before exiting the ride, and we both agreed that even for people like us who demand a good whirling, this is not a ride to marathon on! The roller-coaster, called the Looping Star, is a modified Galaxi with an inversion! Cindy was absolutely certain it would be jarring and painful - we watched riders heads snap at the bottom of the first drop - but it turned out to be amazingly comfortable and a very fun ride! I am a big fan of unbraked Galaxis, Zyklons and Jet Stars (I could ride Tigr'r and the Galaxi at Indiana Beach for hours) and the Looping Star is very rerideable and a ton of fun! We also rode our first portable log flume! These things have never held any appeal for me but one thing caught my eye - riders were allowed to ride this backward! So we got in line not expecting very much and were totally surprised by how much fun it is! The drops, which are basically all there is to the ride, are great! The first one is a double down, and came as a complete surprise in the backwards position! The second drop is continuous and a little higher than the first, and I really really enjoyed it. We rode it twice and I liked it so much I'd have gotten back in line again if it weren't for the heat and my arms which are allergic to the sun. Beech Bend also has a ride-through Haunted House and a Mirror Maze, two things that, to me, really make an amusement park special. They also have a Fun Slide, Spider, Scrambler, Tea Cups and a number of other old fashioned spinning rides. But they also have a surprising number of contemporary spinning rides, too - Starship 2000, Tornado and Avalanche. Also in the older section of the park is an old fashioned swimming pool, which was really popular on this day, and a few waterslides as well, including one with an underground tunnel. And this park has an OUTSTANDING selection of kiddie rides, both old and new, including a Dragon Coaster, Jumping Star, Jumping Jumbos, Boat Ride, Flinstone Cars and Firehouse Funhouse! If I were a little kid I think I would have a VERY good time here! Despite the temporary installation look to everything, all the rides were in tip top shape. Everything looked really well maintained and everything we rode was efficiently operated. So why don't I love this park? Well, I think it's a combination of things - the lack of decor and shade, which fueled the fatigue I was feeling that day, the temporary look to all the rides, and the wide open, kind of empty atmosphere I felt. But mostly I put the blame on a little white trash girl. We were standing in line for the roller-coaster when this little girl got in line with her brother or cousin or friend. She couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. And yet she looked about 60 years old. She had stringy red hair, sunken eyes and a mush mouth that contorted this way and that, freckled pasty skin, and the ugliest clothes I have ever seen. I mean this little girl was Pure D Traaaash! She looked like she had been born with a drink in one hand and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She just looked like she was drunk! Every time she spoke I couldn't help looking at her, and neither could Cindy. Neither one of us said anything at the time but afterwards we both practically fell over each other talking about it. "Did you see that little girl?" "That's the trashiest looking thing I ever saw" "And she's only a little girl! "She's got doublewide written all over her" "I think you're being a little generous!" "She's destined to be a hairdresser" "Hairdresser! That little girl is gonna be standing outside the 7-11 looking for a quick twenty bucks!" "I've never seen clothes like that before in my entire life!" "Did you hear her talk?" "She talks like she's drunk!" "Pure D Traaaaash!!!" Later on, we saw the little white trash girl riding the Jumping Star all by herself. Her little white trash body was flopping around all over the place, and Cindy and I just looked at each other and said "let's get out of here!" So we left Beech Bend, forever traumatized by the little white trash girl, but both of us glad we made the journey. At first I didn't think it was the kind of place I would ever go back to, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how many things there are to like. It was clean, the people were friendly, the food was good, and the rides were great. All it needs is to turn down the music, add some trees and flowers and a few bathrooms, and keep that little white trash girl out of there, and they'd have a really nice park! We drove half an hour to Cave City, home to Mammoth Cave, which we visited last year just prior to Stark Raven Mad. One of the things we saw there was an alpine slide at Kentucky Action Park, which was closed at the time, and we both wanted to return someday and ride it. I *LOVE* alpine slides! There is one in northern Minnesota overlooking the north shore of Lake Superior that is absolutely incredible, with two huge drops that leave riders airborne for a good three seconds! We had no idea if this one would be as good but judging from what we saw it looked to be even better! It wasn't. Oh, it was decent and fairly long, but it had no drops. Not only were the rides expensive ($20 for 5 rides), but the rules and restrictions they placed on the ride were ridiculous. First of all, there were two separate tracks spaced far enough apart to avoid any danger of collision, but still, NO RACING. We had to go down one at a time - it was stupid! Second, some of the ops there had a MAJOR attitude problem. One guy who worked the bottom of the slide scolded a little girl for knocking over one of the rubber tires when her toboggan finally came to a stop. He made her go over and pick it up and put it back on the other tires, despite the fact that it was his JOB and he was sitting in a chair doing absolutely nothing but smoking a cigarette and looking bored. I braked my toboggan as hard as I could and twice I came very close to crashing into the rubber tires, and I guarantee if he had pulled that stunt on me I would done something very different with that tire. The final insult were the clothes they made us wear. All riders were required to wear long sleeve shirts and pants for "protection," despite the fact that any kind of wipeout would result in major scrapes and broken bones no matter what kind of clothing you were wearing. But oh, the clothes. The park provided long sleeve clothing for everyone who wasn't wearing any, which in June meant everyone. The woman who sold us our tickets assured us they'd been laundered and not to worry. Then the ride op handed us our clothes. These were the dirtiest, smelliest, UGLIEST stretch pants and shirts imaginable. The shirt was too tight and the sleeves were too short and I felt just like a janitor. I looked at Cindy and she looked at me and we both burst out laughing. Yep, we had become white trash. The rides were okay. They were fun but frankly, I was so grossed out I just wanted to be done with it. Cindy, who had never ridden an alpine slide before and was extremely nervous about it, went quite a bit faster than me, despite my braking on only two or three turns in the track, and started getting cocky. On our third trip up the ski lift this woman who not fifteen minutes earlier knew nothing about alpine slides suddenly launched into a technical analysis about the finer points of braking and started lecturing me about proper and improper toboggan selection. Shut up, Cindy, you look like a ho! We rode the alpine slide five times and that was enough. We looked for a firepit on which to toss our laundered protective clothing but couldn't find one. We removed our white trash clothes and agreed never to speak of this incident again. We ate dinner that night at Hickoryvilla, also in Cave City. We went there last year and agreed it was one of the better barbeque places we'd been to. It really depressed me to see Cracker Barrel sitting right next door, its parking lot jam packed with cars and people standing outside waiting to get in, while a local eatery, with food ten times better than any corporate slop being served up next door, was barely even half full. I really don't understand travellers who go to different parts of the country or even a different country altogether and then lose their sense of adventure when it comes to sampling the local foods. I would NEVER go to a Pizza Hut or Fridays unless I were with a group and didn't want to make any waves! Food is one of life's greatest blessings, and God did not rest after creating MacDonalds! There will be divine proof of this the following day. Up Next: Camden Park