KIExtreme.com adds historical photos of Kings Island from 70's and early 90's

Those are awesome! I always love seeing old photos of the park. I keep forgetting how much it's changed over the years. :)

Boy, I sure miss the Hanna-Barbara theming. That was the park at its best.

Well, speaking of charm, isn't it funny to see the park without trees? And we all thought it was so beautiful then.

What I would really like to see are some pictures of the Cuddle Up and the Dodgem. They moved (without the Whip) from Coney Island and I loved that building and those original rides.

These are some really great shots. Thanks.

KI's history always intrigues me! Thanks!

It's amazing how busy the park is in some of those pics, considering the park didn't offer much in terms of rides and attractions. It's really grown!

Not amazing at all to me. KI offered plenty of rides and attractions (well, I can only personally speak for KD around that time, but not much difference there). It's just that we've become so used to theme parks nowadays each having at least 72 coasters and 4 billion other rides to choose from. It's hard to remember how much simpler all things entertainment were back then. Hell, going to a movie (that I would never own) or watching 4 or 5 channels on the19-inch TV in our living room (in real-time, with commercials) or playing PONG was fun...but if I got to go to a theme park with 3 roller coasters once per summer...that was the best day of the year.

And I certainly couldn't talk about my trip to a bunch of coaster fans on my Atari 400. :)

Pong? Atari 400? You must be a little older than me. I had Atari 2600.

I much prefer the present to the old days, especially when it comes to theme parks and computer entertainment.

Kings Island holds a very special place in my heart.

The Atari 400 actually was the early 8-bit comprooder that came out after the 2600 started to really catch on. I remember seeing them in Sears stores and wanting one at the age of maybe 9 or 10. I had an Atari 600XL, its later brother. I think my dad got it for sitting through a time share thing. You can probably give that machine partial credit for getting me into programming, and therefore creating CoasterBuzz.

We had the 400 first, then upgraded to the 600XL a while later. The cool thing about the 600 was that it had BASIC without the need for a cartridge. That, and a keyboard that you could actually type on (if you've seen a 400 you know what I'm talking about). We went through 2 600s in about a year (they both broke in some way), and went back to the 400. It's quite possible my folks still have it somewhere, and if so I would almost guarantee that it still works. The thing was a tank.

Yeah, well I cut my teeth on a TRS-80. 4K RAM, expanded to 16K RAM. Woohoo! That was was when every byte of programming mattered. Back in the day before I abandoned that part of my brain.