After Dollywood I wasn’t sure there was a park left that could beat it out in terms of total quality. Beech Bend, in Bowling Green, Kentucky was the next stop on the trip, and, in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting very much. From the pictures I had seen on the internet, it was a small park, with one worthwhile ride, the Kentucky Rumbler. Boy, the internet is right about a lot of things, but not about Beech Bend.

We pulled into the park just after two o’clock, knowing that we were only going to be there till six o’clock. From my impressions, the park was small enough, so that didn’t matter all that much. The bus drove down a long straight road flanked by trees and suddenly we pulled off into, what looked to be, a long driveway. The driveway ended up taking us to the park’s parking lot. The lot was just grass, with paved roads to get around the lot. The bus dropped us off at the front of the park, and we were off!

After grabbing a park map, we went for the Wild Mouse. It is a Zamperla spinning coaster, my first spinning coaster. While in line we looked at the map and found that it looked like it had been done in Microsoft Word. Not a big deal, but not the park map that most people are used to.

The Wild Mouse broke down while we where there and the mechanics came out to fix it. Small parks like Beech Bend don’t have the safety standards a large park does. Take a look at this picture and again at this one to see what I mean. Wild Mouse only had one operator for the entire coaster. As for the ride, it is a great take on an old classic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see spinning wild mouse rides popping up all over the place.

We then took a break from the coasters and went on some interesting flat rides. One thing you notice about Beech Bend is that all of the rides are portable, except for Kentucky Rumber and their dark ride. Everything else can be packed up and moved, which adds a bit of interest for me. I mean it even has a portable log flume! The park is home to my new favorite drop ride. It’s my favorite because you have no idea when you are actually going to drop. Beech Bend also has a petting zoo, which is a nice time out area. After the flats and animals we went to the Dragon.

The Dragon is your typical Dragon coaster. It’s a fun ride for the kids, and Beech Bend lets the adults ride also, which is great for those credit whores out there. Just across from the Dragon is the Looping Star. This coaster comes from Pinfari and is a ZL42 model (according to RCDB) whatever that means. It has the smallest loop I’ve ever seen. It’s a tiny coaster, which was built for people not quite as tall as I am. The Looping Star was fairly enjoyable, but I prefer the Dragon and Wild Mouse over it.

Our final coaster for the day was Kentucky Rumbler, as GCI twister that opened in 2006. My first impression of this coaster was that it was very reminiscent of Thunderhead at Dollywood. While I was slightly right about that, there is a lot more straight track on this coaster, which isn’t a bad thing, just different. I’ll save the big details for later, as this is a park review, but this coaster makes this park. The only thing that kind of stinks is that there is only one train, so it has a longer wait then most of the rides there.

For the rest of our time there we went around and re-rode a few rides and enjoyed the rest of the flats. Beech Bend is a park with a lot of potential, and is great for a day visit. I really enjoyed myself while I was there. They need to work on some infrastructure, as there are not many bathrooms, food areas, or gift shops. Given a few years, the park should fill in nicely and be a great spot for enthusiasts and the general public alike.

Check out our Beech Bend gallery.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.