The Voyage (roller coaster)
The Voyage is a wooden roller coaster located at Holiday World & Splashin' Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana. Designed and built by The Gravity Group with the help of designers Mike Graham, Korey Kiepert, Larry Bill, Chad Miller, and former park President Will Koch, the roller coaster is themed to the famous voyage of the Mayflower by Pilgrims to North America in 1620. It opened to the public on May 6, 2006. It is widely considered one of the best wooden roller coasters ever built, and was awarded by TIME Magazine as the Best Roller Coaster in the world in 2013.
The Voyage roller coaster
The Voyage's station, maintenance area, and transfer track (rightmost building), gift shop (building to the left of the station), and brake runs (behind the station), as seen from the roller coaster's lift hill.
An overview of the first three drops of The Voyage in 2006, as it looked prior to the construction of Thunderbird
One of The Voyage's three 90° banked turns.
A wooden roller coaster is a type of roller coaster classified by its wooden track, which consists of running rails made of flat steel strips mounted on laminated wood. The support structure is also typically made of wood, but may also be made of steel lattice or truss, which has no bearing on a wooden coaster's classification. The type of wood often selected in the construction of wooden coasters worldwide is southern yellow pine, which grows abundantly in the southern United States, due to its density and adherence to different forms of pressure treatment.
Scenic Railway at Luna Park, Melbourne
Vuoristorata at Linnanmäki amusement park in Helsinki, Finland is the oldest wooden roller coaster in the country; it opened in 1951 and is still in operation.
Colossos, one of the world's largest wooden roller coasters at Heide Park, Germany
Thunderbird in the PowerPark amusement park