Final Thoughts about the Voyage

We’ve known Doug and Betty since introducing ourselves to them at a Disney Club meeting in 1992. Usually they will ride along with us when we go to our monthly Disney meetings. Karen and Betty used to walk 4 miles at the mall together about 4 or 5 times per week. Karen works now so it is usually only once or twice per week. We spent 17 days with them and Karen and I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was an extremely enjoyable time. They are a great couple to vacation with.



Before we left we were concerned about the heat and humidity but we managed to stay in the shade when possible just like those guys in the movie “Missile to the Moon” so that they wouldn’t burn up when the sun shone on them.

We really needed two days at Dollywood and I’m glad we had the time to spend there. It’s a great family park, the coasters were fun, and it was a plus to be able to see Dolly Parton there.

After we were off of the Delta Queen we took a trip back to Louisville – we had more to do there. On our way back to Cincinnati our group decided to talk about what we liked and didn’t like on the Delta Queen. A few minutes into the discussion I asked Karen to start taking notes. These are her notes. My addition explanatory comments are in parentheses.

Pat liked Kevin’s service (he was our server at breakfast and lunch; a servant with a servant’s heart).


(Here we are "serving" Kevin on the last morning of the cruise)

Talks with Toni (she was the maitre de and found time to talk to everyone at every meal it seemed. She still works at WDW at the Grand Floridian). Bread pudding (it took me three nights of Doug saying how good it was before I succumbed and then I, too, ordered it the final four nights).



His room, but not how the shower drained (I guess the boat is so old that we had to take “Navy showers”). The variety of soups.

Betty didn’t like the Captain in shorts and messy hair. She thought he needed to be more professional (late at night when the boat was going through a lock he would come out in shorts and direct the boat). Not enough items in the Gift Shop. She wanted a photo album and a T-shirt. She bought a T-shirt but wanted a better one. Some food had a lack of flavor but mostly the meals were pretty good. The diet coke was watered down. Liked all of the Help; they were very courteous. She slept well. She liked the tours of Fort Donelson, Henderson walking tour, and the Paducah museum. She thought it was great that Majestic provided buses for all of the old people to get up to the top of the steep landings in the towns we landed at.

Doug liked the storytelling by Mary Charlton, our Discovery Guide, AND the bread pudding.



Karen loved the whole boat – every inch of it – especially the paddlewheel and the calliope. Toni was her favorite staff person – she always had a smile and always took the time to really talk to people. She told lots of stories about her personal life. She worked on the boat AND had a Disney connection – practically perfect in every way – or at least “no worries”, her favorite saying. She made sure that every desire was fulfilled including getting us copies of the menus AND the bread pudding recipe.



Karen continues… Kevin was the best server on board so we made sure we got him for breakfast and lunch. Novie (a DQ crewman we met on the bus from Nashville to Clarksville) was very personable and would always have a smile and time for a chat.



Bruno and David, passengers who were members of www.steamboats.org, who she wished she had more time to talk with.


(Linda and David on "dress-up" night)


She liked visiting the little river towns along the way, like Madison and Henderson.

Deep Breath…And finally…Her favorite thing was sitting in the rocking chair in the sunshine with the calliope playing as we traveled along the river.




Random Statistics:

Pictures: (Karen took most of the still shots): 4,950
Video (Pat shot most of the video): 8 ½ hours

States visited: Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio,

Cities visited: Knoxville, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Nashville, Clarksville, Dover, Paducah, Henderson, Owensboro, Louisville, Madison, Cincinnati, Kings Mills, and Santa Claus

Rivers floated on: Cumberland and Ohio

Amusement Parks: Dollywood, Holiday World, Kings Island

Coasters: Thunderhead, Mystery Mine, Blazing Fury, Tennessee Tornado, Raven, Legend, Voyage, Beast, Backlot Stunt Coaster, Firehawk, The Racer, Adventure Express, Flight Deck, Fairly Odd Coaster, and Rugrats Runaway Reptar.

Miles on the road: 1,050
Miles on a bus: 75
Miles on the river: 604

DQ paddlewheel going 12 rpm = 9.3 mph
DQ paddlewheel going 16 rpm = 10.9 mph
DQ paddlewheel when racing on Derby Day = 19 rpm

Monday, 1st, Last Day

We got in so late last night that we spend the morning packing and loading up the van. We checked out about 9:45am and headed for some viewpoints around the city of Cincinnati.

Mt Adams is east of town and has a great overlook of the Ohio River. It was a holiday so there was lots of boating activity on the water on a beautiful sunny day.



We continued upriver to Coney Island Amusement Park to view the site of a former world class park. Then we headed across the river to the Kentucky side and drove along the river to Newport. Along the way I found this great boat to buy.



Lunch was at a Mexican restaurant near the Newport Aquarium.



Karen and Doug opted to walk across the Purple Bridge while Betty and I enjoyed the scenery from a less strenuous vantage point.



Similar to Puducah’s Flood Wall the city of Covington had the same outfit paint their flood wall with murals. There are 18 of them and they look gorgeous.

This clever picture by Karen shows the Roebling Bridge mural with the Roebling Bridge in the background.



Our plane was leaving at 7:10pm so we started heading toward the airport around 4pm needing to gas up the van before dropping off everyone with the luggage at the airport. I would then take the car to the rental place and get driven back to the airport for check-in and the flight home.

So we waved goodbye to our last riverboat on the river.



The airport was surprisingly empty on this Labor Day. We flew into Minneapolis – the site of the Republican National Convention that started today. That airport wasn’t busy either.

There was a huge storm west of Minneapolis that we had to go around but it only added 10 minutes to the flight. Karen called her sister, Margaret, to let her know we were ready to be picked up and we made it home by midnight.

Sunday, 31st, Kings Island

If Holiday World can be considered one of the top family-owned amusement parks then Kings Island must surely be considered one of the top corporate-owned amusement parks. Due to some excellent detective work we determined that we could buy tickets online for $26 each. Tickets are regularly $48 at the door! It pays to plan ahead.

Our intent was to arrive at 9:45am so we take advantage of our American Coaster Enthusiasts perk to walk back to The Beast roller coaster before the rest of the crowds. Alas, we were a few minutes late and the group had already departed.
We headed to the back of the park to ride The Beast anyway and were we surprised at the performance of this once-upon-a-time monster. Most roller coasters will have brakes to slow down the coaster half way thru the ride (this is a safety feature that allows them to put more than one train on the tracks at a time) and another set of brakes at the end to stop the coaster before it goes into the station. The Beast now has brakes coming down the first drop and many other places out on the ride. It was pitiful.


(Betty riding The (tamed) Beast)

We had been warning Betty for a full day that this is a really a beast of a coaster but it turned out to be just a pussycat.
We went on 2 other coasters before lunch, Backlot Stunt Coaster and Firehawk. Backlot only took 15 minutes to get through but Firehawk had a dozy of a line and was extremely slow in loading and launching out of the station. 80 minutes later we were all heading for lunch at the Jukebox Diner.


(Cool theme)


(You actually ride on your back AND facing down at the ground)

Two coasters after lunch and the huge Drop Tower were next followed by a trip down memory lane.

Back in 1973 the Brady Bunch TV show came to King’s Island and rode The Racer coaster and made an episode out of it. Three of those members were having a reunion for the guests in the big theatre. Greg, Bobby, and Cindy were there. We got in to see the show. Greg mostly sang a few songs. The three of them answered questions. They brought up about 30 members of the audience who wanted to learn some Brady choreography. When it was all over you could stay and talk with them and get something signed by them. They did the show three times that day.


(Doug never actually RODE a coaster but he did go through the line with us sometimes)

A lot of the amusement parks now have food vendors that are from outside the park. We ate at Panda Express inside Festhaus. Karen had the chicken teriyaki and I had the orange chicken ($13)

The kiddie area included rides themed to Scooby Doo, Wild Thornberry’s, and Rugrats. Interesting rides in here were a suspended coaster that children could ride and a Buzz Lightyear-like ride with a haunted mansion theme (you sit in ride vehicles and shoot at targets).



There was a simulator ride at the back of the park near The Beast that we wanted to ride but it was closed when we got back to it, so we rode the train in the dark instead – not exciting at all. On the way back there three of us got ice creams. Mine was so big that I actually had to throw the cone part away because the train was leaving. It was a sad moment.

On our way out of the park Karen and Betty walked into Graeter’s for an ice cream sundae. Doug and I waited outside and watched the close-of-the-park fireworks.

I think we left around 11pm on our last evening on vacation. It was a long day but we had a plan for what we wanted to see, we stayed in the shade as much as possible, and we paced ourselves well. Two full days back to back and we lived to write about it.

Saturday Holiday World

We drove 185 miles the next morning to Santa Claus, Indiana to Holiday World amusement park. They recently installed a new roller coaster, the Voyage, that was rated #1 for a couple of years so we had to go.

This is a perfect example of a family owned park. Here are some of the amenities.

• They give out free soft drinks and water, all day, every day.
• Their prices are very reasonable. A funnel cake with apples that cost us $3.50 here and the next day at Kings Island it was $7.50
• You can get your picture taken with Santa Claus







We had a great time at the park but we probably won’t be back since this is our second time here in 4 years and it is really out of the way.

The Voyage was a big disappointment to Karen and me. It was really too rough and the twists and turns weren’t smoothly done. It was kind of like riding a bad simulator ride where the movie doesn’t sync up with the simulator motion (like Dollywood’s Thunder Road). The ride just threw you around for no reason. It was extremely fast but the speed needs to be transformed into smoothness in the corners and in the upward movement of the coaster cars. Throwing you up in the air AND turning the track does not make for an enjoyable ride. We were merely hanging on wanting the ride to be over so we didn’t get hurt. We did not ride it again.



They have a good sized water park that we didn’t go into.

We sat and watched a couple of shows. The 60s, 70s, and 80s show had two good singers out of the six that sung. The Gospel Quartet in the other show had great harmony and they could sing.

The Gobbler Getaway was a Buzz Lightyear-like ride where you shot at targets with a beam of light. Those rides are so much fun for kids of all ages. They also had a ride that shot you into the air and you were weightless at the top as it pulled you back down with a force greater than natural gravity.



Karen and I had a chicken dinner for $9 that we split at lunch time – chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked potato, and corn bread. What a great deal.

The park was very clean and there was plenty of shade from the 90 degree heat. We left about 4:30, gassed up the van, and headed back to Cincinnati with a stop in Kentucky for dinner at Sonic Burger in Campbellsburg.

Friday 29th Horses, Boats, & Bats

After our best night’s sleep off of the boat we trotted on over to Churchill Downs, the horse racetrack for the Kentucky Derby. We arrived a little bit before 9am – 30 minutes before the 1st tour started. For $10 each we got a guided tour of some of the places you see on TV when they run the race.



After looking at exhibits for a few minutes we gathered with about 20 others for the tour. The guide took us past the some of the 1400 betting windows that are open on Race Day to serve the 150,000 people who are there. We were early enough that there were still horses out on the track. They run until about 10am. After that it is too hot for them. So cool to see them actually run.



The track is worked on for 6 hours each day. The proper amount of water in the track helps keep the horses from injury when they are running at 40mph and makes for a fast track. When the tour was over we spend some more time looking at the exhibits. The theater had screens that were on the wall in a 360 degree oval like the shape of a track.



There was an area that taught you how to place a bet and they had a simulated race on the video screen. Two winners and a loser (yours truly).



Our 2 hour cruise on the 1914 steam-driven paddlewheel Belle of Louisville was schedule for noon. We arrived early to get a parking space in the shade on another 90 degree day. We were able to board when we arrived and proceeded to explore the boat that we had previously been on in 2003 during the Tall Stacks celebration in Cincinnati.



The boat consists of 4 levels. The boiler and engines are on the first deck. The huge open dance floor area is on level 2. They had tables and chairs set up for the lunch buffet. The 3rd level is also covered and had chairs and 6’ long tables set up for us to sit at while we cruised. We opted to just buy lunch a la carte, picking and choosing what we wanted to eat. We spent $12 for the two of us on 12 little corn dogs, bread sticks with mozzarella cheese in them, and a large diet coke. The top level is the pilot house.





We cruised an hour upstream to near some island and then went back to the dock. I don’t recall a running commentary on what we were seeing either a history of the boat and river boating or what was on shore would have been nice.. Mostly a disc jockey was playing music and commenting on it. Doug went down and talked with him and mentioned that he just had is 45th wedding anniversary the week before and that “their song” was “Sherry” by The Four Seasons. The guy played it a little later and dedicated it to them. Betty was so surprised. It was very nice.



The boat was not air-conditioned so that had these big fans blowing all over the place. If you really wanted heat you headed down to the engine room. It was completely accessible and you could really see all of the workings of the arms that drove the paddlewheel. The boilers that heated the water to create the steam were noisy and very hot. Working conditions were hard down there.

We had tickets for tonight’s Cincinnati Reds vs. San Francisco Giants baseball game at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, so immediately after getting off the boat we programmed the GPS to take us the 90 miles back to our motel room in Florence for a shower and a change of clothes.

The downpour started at precisely 5pm just as we got back into the van after getting ready for the game. We found some covered parking but the distance to the stadium was about 100 yards. Waiting for a lull in the rain we got pointers from some other fans on the best entrance to use since we could not see it from our location.



We managed to slog our way into the stadium with all us of getting somewhat wet except Karen who had remembered to take her rain jacket with her despite the fact that the forecast was 90 degrees for the two weeks we were on vacation. Is she a planner or what? Our intent was to see the Cincy Hall of Fame but they wanted an additional 10 for us to see it and we weren’t THAT big of Cincy fans AND Ken Griffey didn’t play for them anymore so decided to have dinner instead.

Our choices included hot dogs, hamburgers, philly cheesesteaks, chicken burger, pizza, and something else. We walked past the food talking about it and looking at it. There wasn’t much of a crowd still at this point (about 6:15pm) because it was still sprinkling. We sat at the top of our row and struck up a conversation about the weather and the likelihood of the game being played with one of the ushers. Betty asked him for a dinner recommendation and he said to get the chicken sandwich with the fries – so Karen and I did and we split it. Doug and Betty split the philly cheesesteak.

There is a structure in the outfield that resembles a steamboat. Pretty neat looking.



The rain stopped, the game started as planned, and the home team won 11-7 in a very entertaining game from a couple of 4th place teams.

Oh, it should be noted that Betty and I were interested in the GAME and bought tickets 30 rows up from first base. Karen and Doug were interested in the VIEW and bought tickets as high up in the stadium as they could. She took pictures of the Ohio River throughout the game and really enjoyed herself.





They came down with a couple of innings left to join us.

Thursday Louisville Again!

Our itinerary on our 7 day cruise on the Delta Queen did NOT include Louisville originally but it was a city that we wanted to visit for a number of reasons. So, our planning included a day and half of activities here and we planned to drive back from Cincinnati to do them. When we found out we WERE going here on the boat we juggled a few items around but we still thought we wanted a car to get to some of the places so here we are again.

We drove the 90 miles and headed for the Howard Steamboat Museum across the street from the old Howard Shipyards (now Jeffboat) in Jeffersonville, Indiana. This company built thousands of paddlewheel and towboats from 1834 until 1941. The museum is housed in the Howard Mansion which is a four story massive brick 1894 home.



Once again, we got there shortly after the museum opened and had a tour all to ourselves. The crusty, 85 year old lady that gave the tour was a wealth of knowledge of everything in here. The mansion is located within the floodwalls of the city so is prone to flooding and has done so during each of the major floods in the area, 1913 and 1937, and during a tornado in the early 1900s and THEN a boiler in the basement blew up and part of the house caught fire. It is really amazing that the place still looks like a mansion!

There were many scale models of paddlewheel boats and authentic parts from steamboats of long ago. The home was built with wood that floated down the river. Many different kinds were used – some huge pocket doors that separated rooms had oak on one side and walnut on the other.

The carvings on the woodwork were made by true craftsmen. Words can’t describe so here are a few pictures.




I have mentioned before that the Delta Queen and Delta King are sister boats. When the DQ broke the shaft that runs through her paddlewheel the shaft from the DK was removed from the DK and used as a replacement. That very broken shaft sits out in front of the mansion!



Lunch was down the street at Schimff’s Confectionery. This is a famous candy store here so we bought some candy on our way out the door after BBQ pork and chicken salad sandwiches that were very reasonable priced at $3.50 each.

When the Ohio River was untamed, before the dams created lakes behind each, their was an area of rapids called the Falls of the Ohio. Clarksville, IN is next to Jeffersonville and is home to the state park that now tells the story of the Falls. A beautiful museum (I know, all the museums we visit are beautiful!) sits above the site and has exhibits on steamboats AND Lewis and Clark that interested us.

They created an “L” shaped dam here that lets you still see how the floor of the river was 100 years ago. We were able to walk down to the river’s edge on the limestone and play in the cool waters of the river here. The temperature here was about 10-15 hotter than up near the museum because of the warming effect of the limestone. (The things you learn in a museum!)





Across the river is Louisville. We visited the Visitor’s Center in downtown to read the story of an old friend of nearly everyone’s.





We toured the “old part of town” with all of the beautiful homes on tree-line streets.



We then embarked on a wonderful adventure with the GPS. The GPS knows where you are. It has a feature where you can ask it to show you the nearest gas station. It found a close one and we went there but Karen said let’s see if we can find some cheaper gas. So we followed the directions to the next place and it was a station that no longer served gas. The next choice did not exist. We were on our way to our 4th choice when we spotted one on our own at the same price as the first one.

All the while we were searching for gas we were also looking for a place to eat dinner. Someone stepped out of the van at the gas station and noticed a Pizza Hut/Taco Bell a ½ block away! We ate and then punched in the coordinates to our hotel (Best Western Envoy Suites) but took a different route because we had seen that the freeway was clogged on our earlier gas sojourn. Karen did a great job and we’ll be using her instead of the GPS for now on.