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0 Rating Posted by: ginzo on 7/16/2006 4:26:00 PM

The ride is exhilarating from start to finish, except for the slow down right before the triple down tunnel. The airtime is mostly floater, which isnt as good to me as ejector, but theres gobs of it. Despite all the insane airtime hops and lateral throws this ride does it is relatively smooth in the front. Yes, there is some roughness in the other seats, but *not* in the front. The front seat of Voyage is smoother than anything on Legend or Raven. Son of Beast is in my home park. So, the slight bumps on some of the Voyages seats are really a joke compared to what you get on that notorious whiplash machine.
Update: I got one cycle in on Voyage yesterday. Wow, what a difference a year makes. The ride was total crap. I didnt get much airtime on the camelback. And the new trims totally slaughter a few airtime spots on the return run. Yes, there ARE trims on Voyage now. HW admits it. The ride was "tearing itself apart" and they had to intervene. Meh, it was pretty rough in spots as well. Let this be a lesson to you kiddies: always ride a great looking new woodie in the inaugural season. I doubt Voyage will EVER again perform at the level it performed at last year.
Im lowering this to a 9. Yes, I should base this on more than one cycle. But, the coaster kept breaking down yesterday. So HW didnt give me the chance to more properly evaluate the ride. Im forced to go off the one cycle that I did get. Ill give it another go around next season.

I updated this to reflect this years trip to HW.

Wow, the Voyage now has trims, is rougher, and lost some air-time. This is totally unexpected for a Holiday World coaster.

When you consider the size of the ride, its not surprising that its a maintenance nightmare. The trims are little bit surprising as HW was hardcore enough about maintenance to retrack 1100 feet after just the first season. Maybe I need to ride this sucker earlier in the season next year, before it has a chance to chew up whatever track they replaced in the off season. I hate the fact that I had to lower this coasters rating based off one ride alone, especially when other people were claiming it ran great that day. But the coaster was down for a good part of the day, and broke down right after we queued for it at around 8 PM. With only an hour or so left in the day, we didnt want to risk losing Raven night rides only to walk all the way down to Voyage and have it be broken.

Natures first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leafs a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

--R. Frost, c. 1923

That is really interesting. I went to Holiday World twice last year and got a total of 6 laps in on the Voyage. Some of you woodie fans correct me if Im wrong, but Ive always heard that it normally takes a certain number of laps before the ride really "settles in". That makes this review really surprising. I am going back up to Santa Clause in a few weeks so Im extremely interested in what Im going to find up there now.

And to think I thought it was lame last May. Im now happy that I didnt bother going up there to reride it.

In fairness, a lot of the TPR midwest trip people really liked it. But a decent number of people preferred Raven. I seem to have this bad habit of hitting woodies on bone dry 95F days, which doesnt help matters.

I still dont understand why HW doesnt kick up their flat ride selection. Ive been to state fairs with better flats. For example, the Ohio State Fair yesterday.

theres a certain part of me that thinks raven is the superior coaster. i cant really put my finger on why voyage didnt blow my mind as much as i was hoping. i think that the vertical portions were not crazed enough and maybe too brief, and then all the ground hugging bedlam that follows the drops just goes on for too long for it to feel like a "surprise" - you start to get used to all the kinetic violence by the end. or something. i dont know - its hard to say. but , imo it was far from rough and much less painful then a few coasters i really like. timberman felt it was running better than last year. man, coaster-fandom is awfully subjective......

Were the trims on when you guys rode it? I feel they really screw up a critical part of the ride, and steal a good amount of airtime. Yes, there are much rougher coasters out there. But, the #1 woodie should run better than this.

^The midcourse break was there, as it has been from day one, but it wasnt virtually stopping the train, as it appeared to be in the recent TPR video. Hrrytraver is right. Voyage blew my mind last year, and it was running even better when we there this June. For me, it was as close to the ideal combination of intensity and rideability as Ive ever experienced, meaning that the sheer insanity of the ride was actually kind of scary. Enthusiasts tend to have this absurd notion that if you cant ride a roller coaster 17 consecutive times after filling up at the ACE buffet that its therefore too rough. Those are the people who seem to be crying about Voyages ride quality. The comparatively well-adjusted general public, on the other hand, who are satisfied to ride a given roller coaster once or twice during a day at the park, all reacted favorably to Voyage on my visits. If Voyage, from a maintenance standpoint, was becoming unsustainable, then thats one thing. However, if HW is caving into the lamentations of the gravy boat commandos who wont tolerate a ride their bad backs cant stand two or three dozens times a day, then that is just sad.

The MCBR was there for blocking so that they could run three trains. However, HW was initially fervent about telling everyone that they were NOT trimming. It just so happens that the MCBR occurs after you go uphill a bit, so there is natural slowdown there. But now theyre trimming, I saw the brakes squeeze with my own eyes.

I obviously need to get more cycles in, but the one I had was not good. There was really no airtime to speak of, especially after the trims. This is a shame because there were a few really nice pops of air immediately following the MBCR, including one pop as you cut under one of the hills.

As for gravy buffet enthusiasts influencing HWs operations, you know thats not true. Heck, they didnt even give TPR ERT, and they brought 100 guests into the park. E-mail Paula from HW, and ask her. I think shell say something like, "the ride was tearing itself apart".

I look forward to riding this thing again, probably next season. If I still dont like it, they still have Raven and Legend, which both ran great IMO. Legend in the back seat was insane! Two great coasters is far more than most parks have.

EDIT: oops ginz, i just read your above post after i typed. were both sitting at the screen thinking about voyage right now. heres roughly my original point -

trimming seems too cynical for holiday world. trimming is that reptilian mentality that as long as a ride looks interesting from the ground or on a TV commercial then its accomplished its purpose. its seems to me like holiday world sincerely want their guests to have fun on their coasters - and fun cant be had if you take the forces out of a ride. if the tracks not feeling the forces, than neither are we.

btw, it wasnt squeezing much at the MCBR at all when myself and timb rode. i got nice floating air on the hills after the 3-down.

Yeah, well HW is a growing park. And sometimes you have to sell yourself out a bit for business reasons. I totally agree with you about trimming. And I wish HW would have stuck to their guns with their old mentality, which was something like "maintaining the coaster is OUR problem". I wonder if there could be a hybrid between an Intamin woodie and a traditional woodie. Like maybe they could use the laminate track in the portions that undergo higher stress, but not use laminate for all the track. This would keep the project costs down a bit. But, Im no engineer. I have no idea if this is possible.

On our ride the train damn near stopped at the brakes.

^we definitely WERE NOT trimmed in june. i can easily see how the design is pushing the track to the limit. i thought boulder dash felt like it was going to fly off the tracks - voyage was shaking so much (in every seat i rode) before the dive under the station i wouldnt have been surprised to experience a pop of "airtime" and soon after find myself looking down from a treetop in kentucky.

"icon_STOPPark News - (8/6/07) Holdiay World has had to add some trim brakes to The Voyage (or turn them up) due to some maintenance concerns. You can see a video of the train running through the new brake area posted to Theme Park Review, though they report the impact to the ride experience is minimal which is good news." Im just quoting a source...hope it doesnt get me in trouble. Dont know what the policy for using info from other sites on here is....or maybe im just too lazy to look it up.

Good news! Holiday World has removed the trims from Voyage, so it's back to its former glory!

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