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Indiana Beach
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There are very few parks I like more than Indiana Beach. In fact there are only two, Knoebels and Kennywood. Indiana Beach is my #3 park and Cornball Express is my #4 wooden coaster. I love this park so much I wish I could have stayed an extra day. I wish I lived in one of those houses and could throw rocks at the people who complain about the noise at the park! This was the last day of our trip and the only day the forecast called for rain. We were there mid-week so the crowds were fairly light, which is always a good thing and a bad thing. At Indiana Beach they have a minimum rider rule on Hoosier Hurricane and Cornball Express. Unless they fill the coaster up in all but four seats they wait 15 min. between rides. This guarantees you don't have to wait THAT long, but sitting idle in a coaster train for 15 min. is obviously not ideal! Fortunately we only had to play the waiting game later on in the evening, and even then the ride ops didn't make us wait more than 10. God, I love this park! When we walked in we went straight for the yo yo. Last year I got yelled at, not by the ride op, but by one of my fellow coaster enthusiasts and friends who took it upon himself to decide what the rules were, and loudly called me a bad enthusiast and yelled at me to stop yo yoing. Obviously this kind of thing irritates me, particularly when there were no signs stating such a thing, and I'd been told by another friend the day before how he and one other friend went wild yo yoing only two days earlier. The bottom line is I don't go to parks with my friends and fellow enthusiasts only to be policed by them. I'm on vacation! As a consequence of that, I shied away from telling anyone where and when I would be on this trip. Sad it had to come to that but it was nice to be able to yo yo! We passed by the taco stand and simultaneously our pace slowed to a crawl. Cindy was the first to make a move. "Well I want a taco!" "Me too!" We each got a taco and there is no doubt, Indiana Beach makes good tacos! Someone read my trip report from last year and accused me of having bad taste in tacos. I'm not saying these are the ultimate in authentic Mexican tacos, but consider where you are! You went on a three hour tour and your tiny ship was tossed on this uncharted desert isle! When I say Indiana Beach makes good tacos I mean it! The shells are fried and everything's made fresh. We watched the trains testing on the Lost Coaster. I knew absolutely nothing about the changes being made on this ride and I was all gaga when I saw what they were doing. Good lord! There's a triple up heading into the mountain and just inside the mountain I spied what looked like an impossible drop! Later on we rode the antique cars (which I hate) just so we could get a better look at the coaster, and I have to say it looks like it's going to be the talk of the coaster community after it opens! This looks like the ultimate marriage between roller-coaster and dark ride! I simply could not believe how excited I was by it! I ran into Michael Graham later in the bathroom and he told me the ride would be opening that Saturday. So I peed on him. There are so many great rides at Indiana Beach we didn't even get to our first coaster for an hour! I love nearly every ride in this park. The Chaos is VERY good here, and I love the Tilt-a-Whirl and Paratrooper, too. These rides that are built right on the pier just have a special feeling when you ride them! Our first coaster was the Galaxi. I just LOVE Galaxis and Jet Stars and Zyklons, provided they are mostly unbraked. The Galaxi at Indiana Beach is my favorite because it looks out over so many things and the ride is basically very smooth for an old steel portable. I could sit in this or Tigr'r for hours and be absolutely giddy with joy! The Double Shot at Indiana Beach is also my favorite. I don't know what they do to it but whatever it is, they run it right. Our experience on the Double Shot is a perfect example of why I love this park so much. The ride op was a middle aged gentleman who joked around with us, and when he saw Cindy and I putting our legs and arms out he said "now that's what I like to see! People having fun!" Later on when lightning in the distance forced the ride to shut down, the younger ride op joked with us about the folly of preventing people from riding large metal objects in the vicinity of lightning. She told me there were several other rides that would be operating and when I mentioned the Galaxi she said "I don't know, how about the ferris wheel?" I laughed and said "It's okay, if nothing else is open I can always go swimming!" You gotta love this place! Cindy talked me into PAYING to go into the Haunted House. This time wasn't nearly as bad, since Fred's stupid friend wasn't there to scare the living daylights out of me. The ride op managed to give Cindy a good jump, though. During the elevator ride down, the lights went off momentarily. When they came back on, the ride was standing mere inches from Cindy's face! He did this several times, each time changing position and always coming back closer but from a different angle. The people who work here are really cool! But the ultimate, THE person who just MADE THIS TRIP for us, was the old lady working the Fascination game. You could not create a character as memorable or classic as this woman. She was probably in her sixties or seventies, short and diminutive, with a sweet old lady face, and she talked in an exaagerated nasally tone. "We have a winner at table thirteee tooo! Give that lucky player one cooopon, and if everybody's ready, we'll have another game!" She spoke in a kind of singsong fashion with that nasally twang and sweet old lady demeanor, Cindy and I were nearly beside ourselves laughing. She never once deviated from the script, but one time (I think she might have been eating) she said "We have another winner! At table thirteee wan! Give that lucky player one cooopon, and if everybody's ready....." Cindy and I leaned forward imperceptibly, hanging on her every word, just waiting, waiting... "...we'll have another game!" PHEW! I had never played Fascination before and I quickly became addicted to it. It is the STUPIDEST game in the world! It's no more a game of skill than bingo, but of course you couldn't tell that to Cindy. She's sitting there strategizing and oofing and awwing all over the place. She is absolutely certain she has this game all figured out. "I'm trying to get all the red ones, I've only been one away from it three times now!" I love playing games with Cindy because she is just as competitive as me and HATES to lose! And she is an absolute idiot when it comes to Fascination! We're sitting there acting like we're so much better players than the other three losers sitting down the aisle from us. Oh yes, we are master Fascination players. Nevermind this is my first time in a Fascination Parlor, I'm Mark, this is Cindy. Here, come sit by us. Learn from us. We are the masters. The prizes being given were really quite good. By the end of the day we had amassed a respectable number of tickets. I won more games but Cindy won more tickets by hitting bonus and lightning rounds. I selected a very nice Power Flashlight set to shine on critters from my balcony at night. I also got a pig sty complete with straw and three little piggies who look like they are having a very good time! Cindy chose a very handsome tool set. I don't know how much money we plunked down in that Fascination Parlor but I'm telling you, anybody who sits down to play that stupid game is a dead man! Our competitive natures still set to high, we took a couple of spins playing the Den of Lost Thieves. The advantage goes to the person sitting on the left, and in the first game Cindy won handily. In the second game we reversed seats and I beat her, though she bested my score in the losers seat. Later on in the day we rode again and I made her ride alone. I hate how competitive she is in that game, her whole body language just says get out of my way. I must concede though, in a test of single rider cars, she beat me handily. The log flume was down on this particular day and we headed for Hoosier Hurricane. This ride has had some work done on it! It feels much faster! There still isn't a great deal of airtime to be had, but there is a decent pop or two on the ride out. I know this isn't a favorite of many but I find it a pleasure to ride. It's a lot of fun, whether it delivers airtime or not. It's fast and smooth and attractively presented and I like it a lot. As we headed for the Cornball Express I noted with extreme disappointment that Tigr'r was not operating! Oh no! Not my beloved Tigr'r! We quickly realized that men were working on it. They appeared to be replacing a motor and after no more than fifteen minutes the workers began testing the ride, first with empty cars and then riding the trains themselves. Tigr'r would be open after all! But first it was time for my favorite ride the park and number #4 coaster overall, Cornball Express. Cornball Express may have a corny name but believe me, there's nothing funny about the ride. Folks, this is the real deal! This coaster packs all kinds of thrills into a very tight layout. Overcoming space limitations, Cornball Express is innovatively designed to pack a powerful punch within a short amount of space. It was built over, on top of, and through the Hoosier Hurricane and comes VERY close to the log flume - so close that about every fifth coaster train that goes by gets splashed by the flume! The coaster train was fitted with classic PTC buzz bars - proof positive that this park knows what it's doing. The ride has wonderful floating drops that send you out of your seat, hairpin turns that recreate what it's like driving through a mountain road at 50 mph, and great bunny hops that deliver serious pops of air time. The ending takes your breath away, with a lunging dive into a double helix, followed by two of the most intense bunny hops I have ever experienced! Guests who exit the ride nearly fall over themselves running down the exit steps to get back in line, and to me that is the surest sign of a runaway hit. Major kudos and congratulations to Indiana Beach for doing things right and giving us one of the most innovative and exciting wooden coasters in ages! We rode the Cornball several times and then decided it was time to eat. We were looking forward to dining in the Skyview Balcony Restaurant since we opted not to eat there last time and sincerely regretted it. We got a nice window seat and began perusing the menu which, knowing Cindy's ability to get overwhelmed when faced with too many choices, made me think she might go hurling herself through the plate glass window from all the pressure. This menu is MASSIVE! It's an odd, eclectic menu really, like it doesn't know what to be. Do they want to have elegant dining, or do they want downhome? The thing that attracted both Cindy and I to it last year was the chicken and dumplings special that we found out about too late. That wasn't on the menu tonight, and instead I made the regrettable error of ordering the night's special, some kind of foo foo dish that wasn't what I wanted. What I WANTED was the bowl of yummy looking food the lady two tables down from me had ordered. But our waitress mistakenly told me it was the night's special and even though I'm not a picky eater, I found myself wishing they would just take it away and bring me another taco! I really do like the fact that they have this place, but I think one of the most appealing aspects of Indiana Beach is its boardwalk atmosphere and boardwalk type foods. I don't want foo foo! I want chicken fries! Tacos! You know, the good stuff! After dinner we walked back and found Tigr'r was running! YAY!!! We mini-marathoned on it for a good half hour with no waiting. Tigr'r is just the kind of coaster I wish were in my backyard. I wish I could wake up every morning and ride it. There's something about bobsled style seating and the quick drops and turns that I like. Jet Stars are so much fun, I really wish there were more of them still in operation. But I'm just happy the one I love most is running at one of my most loved parks! We could see the skies starting to darken ominously, and it became apparent that a storm was coming. We quickly got two more rides on the Cornball for good measure, and a couple of spins on the Galaxi. We walked back in the Fascination Parlour only to hear that a severe storm was headed our way and wasn't expected to let up for the rest of the night. By this time it was 9 o'clock and when the rains came we decided it was best to call it a night and head back to Indianapolis and eventually home. I don't think either one of us felt the least bit shortchanged by leaving a little early. We'd spent 9 great hours in one of the best parks in the country, done everything we wanted to do (other than ride the Lost Coaster) and ridden everything multiple times. Our bellys were full of bad food and our hearts were full of good will from this most unusual place. Why do I love this park so much? I think anybody who comes here can see why. Because only the very best parks take you away from your normal everyday thoughts and immerse your mind completely in another world. And that's what Indiana Beach does for me. Going there strips whatever I may have been thinking about at home or with family or friends or even the previous day's activities. In many ways I lose my identity entirely and just let go. In other words, it's a state of mind. This trip was, in many ways, a way of seeing familiar things for the first time again. Many of the parks we visited had undergone or were undergoing major changes, making old rides seem new again. In addition, I had gone so long without seeing many of my friends that it really felt different this time, there was a better appreciation of how special these times really are. One of the most important things me and my sisters have resolved ourselves to do since our parents deaths has been to grab ahold of life and let go of the petty because life really is too short. I know I won't be travelling nearly as often as I did in the past. But I know that when I do, I'm going to appreciate the experience so much more, because the opportunities to experience things are so precious. A trip like this is now a rare opportunity for me. I had some unforgettable experiences and I won't soon forget the many memories made along the way. Tee hee!
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