It all started with a trip to the emergency room.

It was Saturday June 16th, and we were waiting on a table for dinner at a favorite restaurant.  I had been suffering for two days with right ear pain, but I didn’t want to go to an emergency room, since I knew we’d be there until the wee hours.  We were leaving for Cincinnati in the morning for our coaster trip, and hadn’t packed yet. I finally relented, as the pain was becoming unbearable, my wife’s nagging was too, and I thought that my ear (that by this time resembled Dumbo’s) might explode on takeoff. We left without eating and walked about a quarter mile to the ER. I was pissed off and sweaty from the heat, and when we walked in, I think they thought I was having a heart attack, as they brought me right back. Twenty minutes later, with two antibiotic scripts in hand, we headed out. This is unprecedented in ER turnaround time! 

The next morning we left for the airport, ready to embark on a trip dubbed affectionately as “roller coaster boot camp.” Officially it was the American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) Coaster Con XXX, a seven day trip, to four amusement parks, with twenty one roller coasters, and nearly 900 miles on the rental car. 

(It is worth noting here, again, that while I am a member in good standing of ACE, this column is my opinion only, and does not reflect the opinions of ACE or any other of its members.) 

We arrived at the Cincinnati airport (which is in Kentucky), picked up our car, and headed north towards our first park, Kings Island, in Kings Island, OH. About an hour later we arrived, checked into our hotel, and went over to the park, for the first of four days there. Kings Island is a huge park, previously owned by Paramount Pictures, but recently sold to the Cedar Fair group, which also operates Cedar Point in Sandusky OH. It has twelve roller casters, and loads of other rides. We had been there previously, but not in years, and there were quite a few new rides for us to experience.  Some will remember it as the park The Brady Bunch visited on their TV show in 1972. 

First up was Italian Job Stunt Track. This is a roller coaster based on the film that uses a train that looks like three Mini Coopers strung together. Using Linear Induction Magnetic (LIM) technology, the coaster shoots out of the station up through a spiraling “parking garage.” The train stops near a staged scene with police cars and helicopters, where an explosion goes off, then drops into a tunnel that spirals down, culminating in a faux splash ending, where the cars go into a trough in the water, jets spraying outward giving the impression that you are causing the splash. It was a good start. 

We decided to tackle The Beast next. This behemoth ride, which we had ridden on our previous visit, is not one of my wife’s favorites. It’s very long, with over a four minute ride time, and is pretty rough as well. Since I was a bit bigger than I was on my last visit, the lap bar was much tighter on me. This tightness, combined with the roughness of the ride, provided a very uncomfortable experience. This was once a top ten ride for me, but no longer, as four plus minutes of a bar pressing into my belly and bladder proved too much. It would be the only time we rode The Beast. 

Next up was The Racer, a dual track racing wooden coaster. Kings Island runs one train forward, and one backward. Normally I love the backward ride, but with my painful Dumbo ear, I decided to just ride forward, especially since I had ridden it backwards before.  This proved to be a smart move, as my wife rode it backward, and said it was much rougher than she remembered. We then stopped at the Tomb Raider ride, which, with its inverted coaster like test seat, we assumed was a coaster. After trying (unsuccessfully) to get into the test seat, I took a seat on a bench, and waited for my wife. Good thing I was too big, as Tomb Raider isn’t a coaster but a huge spin and puke ride inside a building. The type which she can ride, but I cannot.  That was all the time we had on Sunday, as it was time for our group dinner at the picnic grove. Many ACEers say that ACE also stands for All you Can Eat, and the meal times can be a bit boisterous, if not an occasionally disgusting display of mass consumption. 

One of the best parts of an ACE event is the ERT, or Exclusive Ride Time. This is when the parks open up coasters and other rides for us prior to the park opening to the general public - the GP in ACE parlance - and after it closes. We chose to bag the evening ERT on Sunday, however, as it was on Tomb Raider, The Beast, and Vortex, a multi-looping monstrosity that we had ridden on our previous visit, and which neither of us were itching to ride again. It was off to the hotel bar for a nightcap or three, and a round of video trivia games. 

Monday morning provided a breakfast buffet at the picnic groves, and ERT on the rides in the kiddie section. These included Avatar, the Lil’ Bill’s Giggle Coaster, The Fairly Odd Coaster (formally known as the Beastie, and The Scooby Doo coaster), and the Rugrats themed Runaway Reptar inverted coaster. 

Lil’ Bill’s is a tiny steel kiddie ride with about a 10-foot lift hill. There was a one adult per seat rule, and I had to ride with my legs crossed, and my knees jammed into the front of the seat. Not really comfortable, but the ride was quick, and I added it to my total.  The Fairly Odd Coaster is a great little wooden coaster that would be perfect for the young enthusiast. Runaway Reptar is a non-inverting, inverted coaster that provides the youngsters with a step up towards bigger rides. Avatar is not a coaster, but a large ride that looks like a skateboard with the anime character Avatar on top. The ride slides back and forth on an undulating track while spinning around. Needless to say, I didn’t ride it, but my wife loved it, riding it about six times. 

After doing the morning ERT, it was off to Stricker’s Grove, a small amusement park about 30 miles away from Kings Island. This place is one of the most unique places I’ve ever been to. Privately owned, it is open to the GP only two days per year, on the fourth of July, and on one Saturday in August. Apart from that, it is open only to groups who rent the entire park. They have a bunch of antique kiddie and adult rides, as well as two wooden roller coasters, the kiddie sized Teddy Bear, and the adult sized Tornado. 

Both coasters were designed and built by the park’s owner. Both rides were fun, but the real attraction was being at this throw back park, with only ACE members in attendance. The combination corn and wheat field next to the park was pretty cool as well. The park closed at 5 p.m., so we hurried back to Kings Island for some shopping and riding, though we were pretty tired by 10 p.m. when the park closed, and we bagged the evening ERT again so we could spend more quality time at the hotel bar. 

Tuesday was another scorcher (every day so far had been between 85 and 90 degrees), but we still had a bunch of coasters to ride, so off to the park we went. The morning ERT was at the water park, which would have been very refreshing, except for the doctors admonitions to NOT swim while I was on antibiotics, so we slept in, and went to the park when it opened to the GP.  We hit the remaining coasters we hadn’t gotten to yet, including the new “flying” coaster Firehawk (not bad, if a bit uncomfortable), the indoor steel coaster The Outer Limits: Flights of Fear, which had ridiculous restraints I couldn’t fit into, Top Gun, a suspended coaster that required a long hike back to the loading platform, Adventure Express, a steel mine ride, that was Indiana Jones themed when we last visited, and Face:Off an inverted boomerang coaster.  Now some of you may remember from my top ten steel coasters list that I intensely dislike boomerang coasters. I decided to try Face:Off, however, because it was an inverted boomerang, which I hadn’t ridden before, and because my wife went one coaster up on me with The Outer Limits ride that I couldn’t fit into, and I didn’t want her going up two. 

On a boomerang coaster, you are dragged up a hill backwards, released through the loading station, go through a vertical loop and batwing maneuver, and up another piece of track. The train is grabbed again, and dragged to the top, only to repeat the process in reverse, until coming to a stop in the loading platform.  The inverted seats made this ride a bit more tolerable than the standard boomerang, but not much, and afterwards I felt a bit queasy. Kings Island’s twelfth coaster, the massive wooden Son of Beast, was not operating. It once had the only loop on a wooden coaster in the world, but after an unfortunate accident last year, the loop was removed, and the park was waiting on new trains for the ride. That was disappointing as it looked like a lot of fun.  We stuck around for part of the nighttime ERT, as my wife wanted to ride Delirium, a huge spinning ride that looked like a Frisbee on the end of a giant stick. Anything that looks that much like a kitchen mixer is not something I’ll ride.  

Wednesday was a lazy day as we’d had our fill of Kings Island. We went out to breakfast, and afterwards, my wife went for a run in the hotel gym, and hung out by the pool. I decided to take in the ACE video contest (denied access due to overcrowding of the room), and the yearly business meeting where the rank and file members can bitch about the club (like why there wasn’t enough room for everyone at the video contest).   We also took a side trip to Coney Island, once the largest amusement park in the Cincinnati area, but now a sad shell of its former self. Due to being built in the flood plain of the Ohio River, Coney Island has never recuperated from the devastating floods it experienced, and now has just a large pool, and a small assortment of rides. The park graciously gave us free coupons to ride their small steel coaster The Pepsi Python. We rode that, and then walked around the rest of the park. One note of interest is that both of Stricker’s Grove’s coasters were based on rides that had previously been found at Coney Island. 

Wednesday night was the optional banquet which we decided to opt out of this year. The problem with the banquet is that it’s expensive ($35 a head), it’s hotel food, and it’s interminable. The banquet started at 6 PM with a cocktail hour, and lasted until 11:30 p.m.. An auction was held after 11:30 that didn’t end until well after midnight. We decided instead to book a reservation at a local steak house (excellent), and afterwards join some other non-banquet attending ACEers at the hotel bar, for what was dubbed the “dodged a bullet party” when we saw the banquet letting out at last call! 

Thursday morning meant getting up early and hung over and driving about 200 miles to Santa Claus, IN, and Holiday World for two days. Holiday World is one of my favorite parks in the country, and since we had last been there they have added two highly regarded wooden roller coasters, The Legend, and The Voyage. They also have The Raven, one of my top ten wooden coasters.  Holiday World is a very clean park, with the nicest park employees in any park I’ve ever been to. They also have one of the best policies at any park, and that is free soft drinks. Yep, you heard me, free soft drinks! At various places in the park, there are Pepsi Oasis Zones, where there are self serve soda machines. Each one also had a water spout in case, like my wife, you don’t drink soda.  It was so nice with the temps in the 90’s both days to be able to get a cup of ice cold water or soda. In comparison, I paid over $7 for two bottled waters at Kings Island.  Holiday World also offers several free sunscreen stations as well. 

Holiday World is set up in sections, named after holidays. Raven and The Legend are found in the Halloween section, The Voyage in Thanksgiving. There is also a section for the Fourth of July, and, of course, Christmas, where Christmas songs play constantly.  At one point as we were sitting in the Christmas section, I heard Neil Diamond singing the song Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens. I’m sure I was the only one who appreciated the irony of a Christian song, written by a Muslim, and sung by a Jew.   

The Raven was everything I remembered it was, fast and smooth, with unrelenting speed, and no trim brakes until the end. The train hits the brakes coming into the station so hard, that the train that is waiting to leave, as well as the entire station itself, jerks forward slightly. The Legend was slightly disappointing, as it has very little airtime, and is mostly just side to side action. A fun ride, but not one you could re-ride a lot. It gave both of us a slight headache each time we rode it.  That really didn’t matter, however, as Holiday World was all about The Voyage.  

This steel structured wood track coaster is huge. Some 163 feet of lift hill brings you down a first drop of 154 feet at 66 degrees. The first three drops all are over 100 feet. You travel through multiple tunnels, and at three points on the ride, you make turns that are a 90-degree angle to the ground. That’s right, three times during the nearly three-minute ride duration, you are facing sideways!  

The coaster provides an estimated 24 seconds of airtime, especially noticeable on the first three hills, where you come out of your seat as you crest each one. After the first three hills, you make a series of twists and turns which bring you back towards the station. There is a short breather as the train hits a mid-course break, only to drop into a tunnel featuring my favorite part of the ride, a triple down. You drop into the tunnel, level and drop again, then level and drop a third time. The airtime on this section is unbelievably sweet!  The last third of the ride as you approach the station is the roughest part, but you’re having so much fun you don’t even notice it that much. 

That night was the most anticipated ERT on the trip. The Voyage is an out and back coaster into a heavily wooded area of the park. After the lift hill, there are no lights on the ride at all. Since the park normally closes at 8 p.m., there is little chance of riding it in the dark, but since we had ERT until 11 p.m., we were assured a few darkened rides. I wish I could adequately describe how fantastic this coaster is at night. Suffice it to say, there is no way you could hold your hands up after the first hill in the dark. Once you start up the second hill, you are in pitch darkness, and holding on is the only way to insure you will return to the station without broken ribs. I was a bit apprehensive about riding in the back seat, as that tends to be the roughest seat, and my wife doesn’t like riding there. I decided my last ride in the dark on Friday would be in the back seat, and am I glad it was. The ride was no more or less rough back there, but the extra airtime from being whipped over each of the hills was exquisite. She promises me she’ll try the back seat next time. 

Friday morning was another scorcher, so since I was nearly done with my antibiotics, I decided to ignore doctor’s orders, and we went to early morning ERT at Splashing Safari, Holiday World’s water park. The highlight there is Bakuli, their new water slide, where 2-4 people sit in a four leaf clover shaped raft, slide down through tubes, and then circle what looks like a giant toilet bowl, going around 2-4 times (the more weight, the more you go around), until you are finally flushed down the final slide into a pool. This is more fun than it sounds. There is also an observation deck where you can watch riders circling the “bowl”! 

Friday night was spent at the hotel bar at Santa’s Lodge near Holiday World. It generally closes at 9 p.m., but stayed open until 2 a.m. because the ACEers were in town. The locals were out in force to observe the strange coaster folk, including Lu, the alpaca breeder and postcard dealer, and Randy, a pleasant trucker/riverfront worker. 

Saturday morning meant another 250 miles of driving to get to Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  This is a small family oriented park, with many rides that seemed to have been purchased from moving carnivals. We rode the scary, “is it going to stay together” Looping Star coaster, named Dora by her operator.

We also rode the Zamperla Dragon with the sharpest first turn on any I’ve ridden, and a spinning Wild Mouse. The spinning Wild Mouse is fun to go on with my wife, because she finds them very scary, and screams the whole time. They also had a great old haunted house with cheesy paper mache monsters (which also made her scream), and a wonderful wooden roller coaster called The Kentucky Rumbler. 

The crew running the Rumbler was very funny, and obviously were enjoying themselves immensely. Saying they would run the coaster backwards, only to turn around to push the start button, or threatening to run it with the lap bars up, was part of their ongoing shtick.  This is a ride that you could ride over and over again, and we managed about five rides before a lightning storm chased us out of the park. 

It was another 200 miles back to Cincinnati, so we stopped and spent the night about an hour away. We left on Sunday, but not until after our 3 p.m. flight was cancelled, and we ended up getting the last two standby seats on the 8:10 p.m. to Boston.  I awoke Monday morning with a full body rash from the antibiotics, no more penicillin for me! 

It sounds like fun, and it was, but it’s a lot harder on your body than you might think, and both of us were exhausted and glad to be home. 

I know I promised a column on dark rides for this month, but I had to postpone it for this report. I’ll pick that column up next month, and until then, I’ll see you in the queue line.