Kentucky Kingdom was the sixth park on our tour. The funny thing was that we were never supposed to stop there. We decided to go on another highway because of construction and it took us right past Kentucky Kingdom, so we decided to make a quick stop.

We knew before we got to the park that we would only be there for three hours or so, we had to be quick with our riding. We pulled into the parking lot, which is shared with a mall and found it completely deserted. Our hopes were high as we ran into the park.

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Welcome to the first - of most likely many, Disneyland trip reports/updates! Just yesterday I purchased my Disneyland Resort season pass. So you can expect many of these reports in the future. The majority of my pictures will be put into a Disneyland gallery, at Nate’s earliest convenience.

I arrived at the park at around 8:45 - only fifteen minutes before the park opened. After purchasing my season pass and renting a locker outside the park. I along with my brother and sisters got inside the park and headed towards the newest addition, Finding Nemo Sumbarine Voyage.

We were promptly greeted with a two hour line, which we passed up. As to not bore you with all the happenings of my day, I’ll skip straight to the standouts.

• You can practically smell the Stitch branding going on. Probably a buffer for the new Stitch ride that may be built in DCA.
• Finding Nemo consistently had an hour or more wait all day - I did end up riding it, but more on that later.
• The Haunted Mansion was closed for refurbishment, as were many other smaller attractions.
• They have rethemed the monorail to look like the subs, which is neat.
• The Pirates re-theme of Tom Sawyers Island is definitely a big hit, all of the little kids love it.
• Toy Story Mania in DCA is taking shape, it should be a neat little ride!
• All the lines were fairly short (with the exception of Nemo) until later in the day when schools started getting out.
• The park is also promoting their kid friendly halloween event, which I’ll try to get out to this year.

I rode everything major, and rode Buzz Lightyear three times, as well as riding Big Thunder twice.

That’s all the stuff I can think of off the top of my head!

Now onto my thoughts of Finding Nemo. To sum up the ride, I had a very “that’s it?” feeling about it. It was cute, and the kids love it, but I was kind of bored.

Let me break it down into pros/cons. Some of the pros would be… Fantastic scenery, great crew, beautiful and clean water (those that remember the old sub ride may recall the murky water).

The cons would be… Weak storyline, boring ride, the really good scenes took way to long and the poor ones dragged on forever. The CGI’s were pretty poor, you could easily tell they were fake, etc.

All in all it was a nice ride, but nothing to write home about…

I had a great day, and hope to go back soon. I also hope you enjoy my pictures once they are added! You can check out the rest of the pictures here.

After being pleasantly surprised by Beech Bend, I had high hopes for Holiday World. This park is at the top of every enthusiast’s list. You always hear about the great coasters, the staff, and pricing. The general atmosphere of the park is so engrossing for many, that it’s hard to not want to make a trip out to Santa Claus, Indiana.

We arrived at the park just after opening and found a surprisingly large parking lot. You always hear about these small parks, and I always assumed that they had small parking lots as well. Holiday World’s lots are huge and unpaved. There are two things that catch your eye when you pull into the lot. The first is the Raven, with a large sign on it saying “#1 Wooden Coaster on the Planet” and the second thing you notice is the water town at the foot of the lot saying “Holiday World” in the cool text that they use.

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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!

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If you are counting, Dollywood is the third park on the Midstates Tour. It was also the first new park on the trip for me. From everything I had read previously, Dollywood is a fantastic park, with great food, outstanding service, and quality coasters. Judging by what others said, I was in for a very enjoyable trip.

We got to the park right around 12ish, because an accident had slowed us down by a few hours on our way there. Getting to Dollywood is an adventure in itself. All of the roads in cling to mountainsides, and then you come into Pigeon Forge. The area is one giant tourist trap with more go karts then I have ever seen before. It looks like they have lots of shows and other things in the area to keep you busy for weeks. After all of the fanfare we were finally at the entrance to Dollywood.

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