When I departed on my recent coastering road trip, I reflected on which ride I was most looking forward to riding. That ride was undoubtably Voyage, so when I arrived at Holiday World on Day 2 of my trip, I decided to end the suspense and hit it up as my first ride of the day. Walking quickly towards the back of the park and that awesome lift hill, I managed to get on the second train of the day. I cannot recall exactly where I sat, but it was somewhere close the the very back. Up the lift hill we went, and despite its height, it took a surprisingly short time to climb the 173' to the top. The ride that followed was nothing short of amazing...the height and airtime of the first 3 hills are good enough to rival any out-and-back, but it is this ride's middle and closing portions that set it apart from other wooden coasters and put it in a class of its own. The tunnels and turns in the middle of the ride are ferocious, relentless, and attacked with amazing speed. Roughness is present, but it is controlled, and hey, it's a woodie...it wouldn't feel right if it were too smooth (that's what hypers are for!). The mid-course brakes, if they are to be called that, are placed almost at ground level, so that the coaster gains speed once again by plunging through yet more underground tunnels, this time in the form of a triple-down performed mostly in the dark. When you do reach daylight again, it is to find that you are moving at an incredible pace for the 2nd half of a coaster, and this pace is here to stay...if anything, the ride simply gets faster and faster throughout the entire second portion, relenting only when you hit the final brakes. Again, there is some roughness, and I received some rough jarrs here and there, but never so much that I would call the coaster "rough." By my 4th ride of the day on this beast, I was fairly worn out physically, but I had also ridden the other 2 woodies in the park a combined 4 times as well, so that was probably inevitable.
Comparable in many ways to Millennium Force, Voyage never lets up, with regard to speed or intensity. Ultimately, I was left with a phenomenal coaster that sits firmly in my Top 10 at #5, and my #2 woodie, behind only the legendary Coney Island Cyclone. If anyone had doubts about making a trip to Holiday World when they "only" had Raven and Legend (as I did), Voyage should erase any ideas of skipping it from their mind. Holiday World is an amazing park with 2 other unbelievable coasters, but it is this largest and newest monster that looms in the back of the park that resides in a league of its own.
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