66 days at sea have lead to an extraordinary creature of the skies. Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana is unique among amusement parks. The family owned and operated park began from humble roots, and continues to stand out among its competitors by offerings free Wifi, free soft drinks, free sunscreen, and free inner tubes at its incredible included water park, Splashin’ Safari.
If the park’s perpetual annual award-winning friendliness wasn’t enough incentive to visit, its standout coaster lineup would be. The park has, so far, dealt exclusively with wooden coasters, resulting in a trifecta that amazes even seasoned enthusiasts.
As the park’s name suggests, it’s divided into themed lands based on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and the Fourth of July. In Halloween, Raven and The Legend have been thrilling guests since 1995 and 2000, respectively. Thanksgiving houses the park’s most celebrated wooden coaster, The Voyage, opened in 2006 and today acting as the park’s signature attraction. Due for another massive ride, Holiday World has thrown its full weight behind a new addition for 2015…and here’s what you need to know about it.
1. Hints in a journal…
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It all started with a voyage across the seas. And indeed, viral marketing tied the park’s 2015 addition to that voyage (and its eponymous roller coaster) by releasing one entry per day from a supposed “pilgrim’s journal” that tracked the 66-day travels of the Mayflower. At once, it was clear that whatever was coming in 2015 would join The Voyage and 2014’s addition, the swinging ship Mayflower, in the Thanksgiving land at the park.
But what would it be? A water ride? A new wooden coaster? Certainly Holiday World wouldn’t venture into the steel coaster territory that they’d avoided for so long?
As the announcement date neared, the pilgrim’s journal began to hint at a strange creature that had been spotted in the stormy clouds over the ship, seemingly soaring overhead from the mysterious New World…any ideas yet? Even if fans got close, they couldn’t have guessed the full extent of it.
2. Ride the wings
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In 2015, Holiday World will open Thunderbird, a striking sunrise-orange B&M Wing Rider roller coaster. In the past, we’ve seen Wing Riders essentially take three forms. The first type (as Gardaland’s Raptor and Thorpe Park’s The Swarm) utilizes the model’s ultra-wide trains to highlight near-miss moments along the ride’s circuit, where riders and onlookers have the suspicious feeling they’re about to be decapitated.
The second style (like Dollywood’s Wild Eagle) leaves the compact layout and near-misses behind, opting for grand, sweeping, oversized inversions that play on the ride’s massive size and wingspan to produce weightlessness and sensations of free flight.
The third style is a comfortable blend of the two, with one or two signature “near-miss” moments located throughout a sweeping course. This middle ground has found successful footing in Cedar Point’s GateKeeper (with its huge layout featuring two keyhole towers) and Six Flags Great America’s X-Flight (with its singular aviation tower fly-through).
3. The experience
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Thunderbird is most certainly in the third category, featuring 4 inversions along its 3,035 foot circuit and just one signature near-miss moment. Of course, the striking winged trains will immediately grab the attention of the general public. The five-rowed trains feature seats suspended out from each side with no track above or below.
The ride begins with an LSM-launch from 0 – 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds that will send the train blasting up a 140-foot tall Immelmann loop. Coaster enthusiasts will already be stunned by that. The ride’s manufacturer, Bolliger & Mabillard, stresses reliability and uptime. While competitors push the limits with launches, drop tracks, tilting tracks, backward sections, and more, B&M simply builds fast, smooth, reliable coasters that have near-perfect uptime and rarely break down.
In fact, B&M has constructed 96 roller coasters, and only 1 contains a launch. (That would be Islands of Adventure’s Incredible Hulk Coaster… Even then, B&M famously wanted nothing to do with the physical launch mechanism itself, building the track alone and insisting Universal outsource the launch to an outside company.)
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But, Thunderbird will be number two, blasting into that 140-foot Immelmann that serves as the ride’s highest point. As it pulls out of the inverting manuever, it’ll soar down and over a pilgrim’s farmland and up into a massive 125-foot tall vertical loop, jumping over the park’s Voyage coaster (just like the bird recorded in the journal). Two massive, exhilerating banked turnarounds will provide weightless moments before the coaster crosses over itself and leaps into the air for an oversized zero-g roll.
Then comes the ride’s defining moment. The wide, winged train will snake through the forest and come upon an old, tattered barn. Pulled downward, the train will slide through a just-right-sized barn door that will no doubt cause riders to retract their limbs for fear of losing them in-flight. Then, the train will circle back around and approach the barn again, this time twisting onto its side and sliding through a narrow crack in the barn’s ceiling and into a graceful in-line twist that signals the ride’s end.
Our Thoughts
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Few could’ve predicted that Holiday World would enter into the steel coaster world, and certainly not with such style! Thunderbird is everything that riders could want. With launches, inversions, unique winged trains, and a terrain-hugging layout all set among Holiday World’s forested scenery, Thunderbird is simply beautiful. It’s got the grace of Wild Eagle with the power of Swarm.
It’s not the longest or most intense steel coaster in the world, but it will bring Holiday World into the steel coaster game in a big way and satisfy a whole lot of fans. Secretly, we’re still hoping that a few more near-miss moments get placed along the ride’s course. But even as is, this is a stunning addition for the family-owned park, and yet another ride that’ll bring well-deserved fame and admiration to a regional Indiana park.
Left Seat POV:
Flyaround Video:
Tell us – do you think Thunderbird is a nice first steel coaster for a major park that’s specialized in wooden creations? Would you make the trek to Santa Claus, Indiana for Thunderbird’s launched-B&M innovation?
