Indiana Beach was the final stop on a 10-park road trip I conducted this summer, and I was hoping that this recently saved classic park would end things on a high note. I might get some hate for this, but spoiler alert: It did not.
Driving up to the park from Indianapolis, I was first amazed that this place can even support an amusement park in any capacity. It is literally in the middle of nowhere with corn fields as far as the eye can see, the only civilization around being small, if charming, country towns. And then here is Indiana Beach, a literal oasis in the fields, as if someone picked up a Victorian seaside resort and decided to put it back down as far from the sea as they possibly could.
That is to say there is a definite charm to this place. It exudes a nostalgic energy that made me feel right at home, despite never setting foot in the park previously. Part of that as well is the awe inspiring sight of coasters and rides built on top of each other, seemingly entangled together, like something out of a park one would build in RCT when limited in space in a scenario.
With the park opening a good hour before any of the rides, we took a stroll around taking everything in, until the park's pinball room caught our eye and we headed in for a few rounds of play to wait out the rides. This was one of the high points of the park for me as they have a great varied selection of pinball tables, including a couple all-time classics, all well loved and in excellent condition. I highly recommend anyone visiting to set some time aside to check out their collection.
So far I've been singing the park's praises but unfortunately that's not going to be the case going forward thanks to the worst ops I have ever seen. Rides began opening an hour after the gates opened (this wasn't mentioned anywhere BTW so we spent the first few minutes of our day wondering why nothing was open until we asked an employee), and knowing how unreliable Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain is we headed there first. It wasn't open. No biggie, I half expected that, so we headed back to Tig'rr, which was open and running one car. One car. Each car holds a maximum of 4 people. One car. All I'm gonna say is I'm glad we got there first. Capacity woes aside, this was my first time on a Jet Star and it was a surprisingly intense ride. No airtime but the mnimal restraints (just a seat belt) plus wild laterals had me holding on for dear life. The Jet Star is an iconic Schwarzkopf model and I can definitely see why.
Following our ride on Tig'rr we headed over to the only other open coaster, Hoosier Hurricane. Coming into this park, the only thing I really knew about their coasters was that one of their CCI woodies was supposed to be good, and the other one... Not. I figured right away that Hoosier Hurricane was the latter. My first ride was in the back and I spent the whole time getting jackhammered. It looks like there should be decent airtime on the course but there was none to make up for the roughness. I tried again in the front hoping it would at least be smoother, but it amazingly rode exactly the same as in the back. The ride does give a nice tour of the park, so it at least gets a point for that.
And that was it for the time being. Lost Coaster still hadn't opened, Cornball Express was going to open late, Steel Hawg was broken, and there wasn't a peep room Cyclone. We played a round of Fascination, which was fun although their Fascination tables are in a markedly worse state than their pinball tables. This was followed up by the antique cars that provide great views of Lost Coaster and Hoosier Hurricane, the dark ride which was in quite poor shape with many targets not working, and the sky ride for a nice view of the park. I thought about riding Tig'rr again but the first time I passed back by it had a long queue due to the one car ops, and the second time I passed by it was broken.
Mercifully Lost Coaster finally opened up after a while and we hopped on its first train of the day. Good thing too because this again one was running one train and quickly built up a sizeable line. This thing is weird... The caged cars are super claustrophobic and some of the turns it makes as it winds down the mountain are impossibly tight. It's some bastard child of a wild mouse, wooden coaster, and mine train, and I'm glad it exists. I got one ride facing forwards and if I'm ever back I'd love to try it in one of the backwards facing seats.
Cornball Express also opened up right after we got off Lost Coaster to our good fortune, as it was also running one train and we managed to be among the first in the station. We started off with a back seat ride, and honestly I came off rather unimpressed. There was some good airtime, even a couple nice ejector pops, but the jackhammering made it impossible to appreciate. We also got stuck on the brake one and one of the mechanics (who had been running around all day trying to fix everything, poor guy) had to come out and manually adjust something with the brake system to release us. Undeterred we went around to try the front. What a night and day experience that was. There was somehow when more airtime in the front, including some super intense ejector moments, wild laterals, and I didn't come off in pain. Finally a real winner! Cornball was definitely the surprise of the day and I genuinely love this coaster.
We fruitlessly wandered over to Steel Hawg a few times after this, and throughout the day, hoping to get on our first El Loco, but with no luck. There was plenty of activity in the station but whatever was wrong with it had no chance of being fixed while we were there. Their Galaxi, Cyclone, showed no signs of life either, so after a few hours in the park we hit the road.
I really want to say I enjoyed Indiana Beach, but the operational challenges make that difficult, especially with our limited time in the park. It has so much potential, but beneath the nostalgic charm it is quite run down looking, and the operations are atrocious. Between the one train ops on everything and rides constantly breaking (at any moment during the day at least 3/4 of their coasters were down, with only Hoosier Hurricane operating at one point) I felt like I couldn't be spontaneous and just relax and enjoy the park if I wanted to actually get on rides. Now I think I understand why it's taking so long for them to get their Schwarzkopf looper open. Good luck to them because they will need it.
And that was a wrap for my 9 day, 10 park coaster trip. Not necessarily how I hoped it would end, but I'm still glad I got out to this unique park, especially considering that in an alternate timeline Indiana Beach is nothing but a memory.
Sad. I was at HP for the first time this summer and Comet really surprised me with how much of a wild ride it delivered, mostly due to the buzz bars allowing you to get thrown around. It really won't be the same without them.