King's Island - 4/29/07

Trip Report: Kings Island
April 29, 2007
Mason, OH

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Today was just a quick visit to the park. That's one of the benefits to being a seasonpass holder, I can arrive that the park just before 4PM on an 8PM close and not feel rushed or like I wasted money. My partners for this round of fun are Rideman and April.

Accordingly, we arrived just before 4pm, and used assorted Cedar Fair Maxx Passes to park and enter the park. We enter the park, and not wanting to overdo it, we head right to Graeter's for some of their wonderful ice cream. I had the black raspberry chip, if you care.

After having our ice cream, we deicded to start in Nick Universe, which would go well since we started in Action Zone last time. For our first ride, we rode the Fairly Odd Coaster (1972 John Allen PTC junior wood coaster) - its the classic PTC kiddie coaster layout, well except for the fact the final dip is missing, a trim brake has been added to the turn over the station, and the station is on the straight track rather than along the curve. It's still the best running wood coaster in the park despite the trim brake.

From Fairly Odd Coaster, April grabs a snow cone, then we head to Avatar (Zamperla Skater Coaster). April doesn't like spin rides, so Rideman and I take a ride on this spin ride while April enjoys the snow cone. This time we got an upgrade from last week, we were in row 5 on the end, instead of row 4 in the center. I really do like Avatar, though sometimes I question if it really belongs in the children's oriented section of the park. That ride may be a bit more than some kiddies may have bargained for.

From Avatar, April rejoins us, and we head to Rugrat's Runaway Reptar, (Vekoma Junior Inverted coaster). Owing to the awful station design where it can be hard to push through the crowds waiting for the back seats to get to the front, the line took longer than it appeared, even though it spilled just barely out of the station into the queue. We found seats in the middle of the train and rode another solid reliable coaster. April also noted for the first time that the park added Phantom Phlyers (Zamperla Kite Flyer)

We were headed to Wild Thornberries River Adventure, it was getting a bit hot, and the line was only through one switchback in the queue house. We wound up not riding, and April needed to take care of other matters. While April was off taking care of other matters, Dave and I started back in Coney where we started with a ride on Vortex. (Arrow 6 inversion multi element coaster) We took a ride in the second to last seat, and confirmed that yes, Vortex seems to be running better this year. Rideman noted evidence of some major track maintenance, and with video camera in hand, walked alongside the ride fence in Coney while I watched Three Point Challenge (aka License To Print Money).

After Dave got done taping, we both went for a ride on Shake, Rattle and Roll (Huss Troika) We had heard a rumor that the park had installed seatbelts, and a worse rumor that they were short seat belts. Never fear, while the park did install two individual retracting seatbelts in each car, they are plenty long enough. We figure the person who commented about the belts being short doesn't know how to work retracting seatbelts.

We saw a few friends at this point who informed us that Flight of Fear was running an hour wait. We skipped Flight of Fear and headed to Racer. We took a ride in a random seat towards the back of the train. Racer did get some care this year, and I can tell it's trying to perform, it really is. Now lets get some grease on, and the trim brake off.

We headed into Oktoberfest and noted the sign for a new Coke Oasis coming soon. We then headed to Adventure Express. We took a ride near the back of the train. Adventure Express delivers an intense fun peepy ride, and today was no exception.

We then headed into Action Zone, where we made the trek all the way to the back to ride Top Gun. As usual Top Gun was a complete walk on, so into the next to the last seat we go. Like most of King's Island's coasters, Top Gun delivers a solid ride, just nothing exceptionally noteworthy.

Next, we were going to ride Delirium, but we met back up with April, and headed to Italian Job instead. Italian Job had a short wait, it was back just past the bridge over the track. We wound up in the middle red car, which on this ride means its just a fun quick ride, the only airtime is in the blue car.

By the time we finished with Italain Job, it was almost time for the park to close, but we still managed to make it down to Adventure Express for one more ride. There was almost nobody riding Adventure Express so we all took front seat rides. By the time we were done, it was time for the park to close. So following what has become usual tradition for a Kings Island visit, a trip to Culvers was in order.

That's all the park outings for April, next scheduled outing is Holiwood Nights!