Kings Island 4/21 (Photos Included)

Not really enough for a full TR, so here's some points of interest:

-The season pass processing line was approximately 16 miles long, but they were pumping it out. What we were predicting to be 45 minutes or so upon approaching the line was actually right around 20 minutes. Very impressive!

-Lots of characters hanging out. Kids were happy.

-Sweet deal on drinks for the season. (photo)

-Many major attractions down or with significant downtime throughout the day making the lines feel much longer than they should've been for other rides.

-Saw no less than three employees get publically reprimanded, corrected or bitched at - right in front of guests.

-Trackwork is coming along on Son Of Beast (photo 1 - photo 2)

-Firehawk is coming along nicely too (photo 1 - photo 2 - photo 3)

-3 Point Challenge game is ridiculously addictive to watch and stupid popular with guests. Every time we went by it was a non-stop stream of players handing over $5 every 40 seconds. (photo 1 - photo 2)

-One new credit for the day. My son finally hit 44 inches and we did Reptar. (photo) It was #270 for me, #188 for my daughter and #27 for my son - still not much coaster-wise for a 44 inch tall kid to do at the park. 48 inches for Adventure Express!? Come on!

-I'm convinced just about everything in Scooby's Haunted Castle is defective - the guns, the targets, the cars, the lighting, the sounds...maybe I just suck. ;)

-Just realized the clock above the entrance to the Festhaus 'chimes' the friggin' chicken dance (photo)...and that a certain segment of people will break out into said dance if nearby when it happens.

I think that's it.

Drop Zone had a terrible day, didn't it? I kind of felt bad for it, although it IS an Intamin...

It tested erratically all day. Finally tested steady and opened the queue and loaded the ride at 6:55. Broke down again. Maintenance comes and swears at it, and it carried its first riders of the season at 7:09. I was on the second cycle of the season at 7:12.

Gotta love those Intamins...

It had an electrical problem, too. When the drive motor is running (lifting or lowering the catchcar) one of the speakers in the queue was making this horribly loud buzzing, kinda like the alternator sound I've heard through car sound systems.

I dunno what was up.

We must've been on a bad luck loop around the park. Drop Zone, Vortex, Italian Job, Beast, Tomb Raider...even basic flats like Viking Fury were down for a while. Seemed like we couldn't catch a break.

Hmmm, a picture of Gonch doing said chicken dance. Now that would make for an interesting wallpaper on the ol' computer. :)

Yeah, that'd be a treat. :)

Rest assured that no chicken dance participation came from me. But there is a smoking area right by there and I was amazed at the number of people who'd break into it if the clock started playing when they were walking by.

^That's scary. ;)

I heard there were a lot of issues with operations in general. The couple of people I talked to were NOT happy campers.

Cool deal on the soda thing, though!

-Tina

*** Edited 4/22/2007 7:36:05 AM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

Hey Gonch,

In reference to the height limit I agree 48 inches for Adventure Express is a bit much. In comparison, I took the family out to Branson this last week and we hit Silver Dollar City. My son will turn five in June and he is at 44 inches. His first coaster of the day...Powder Keg! That's right! Can you believe that?! To ride Powder Keg you just need 42 inches and if you are under 8 then you have to ride with an adult. His face was priceless when we launched off, but he loved it after that and we went 2 more times. All the adults couldn't believe he wanted to keep riding. He also got to ride Thunderation, which IMHO is one of Arrow's best mine train coasters out there.

Wow, I'm thinking they need some better trainers or something.

At least train your employees how to count change.

The guy at the toll booth tried to scan my CP Maxx Pass with the all Ohio parking on it twice and then tried to hand it back to me, telling me that it wouldn't scan. I had to tell him that the OP on the front of the pass was all Ohio parking so he said OK and let me go.

We got to the front gate and waited in the regular entry line only to have them direct us to guest relations. There were three people all with different passes. I had a CP maxx pass and the others had a GL maxx pass and a KD maxx pass. I was surprised that they couldn't even scan the KD one. So we went over to guest relations and was greeted by someone outside the window who looked at our passes and just let us in. They didn't write anything down, just told us to have a nice day. Interesting.

Time went by and we decided to go outside of the park to get something to eat. As we were leaving we got our hands stamped as normal with the black light ink. After eating we came back to the park and didn't see any line to get in for re-entry so we just went to the normal entry line. I walked up and asked if we could enter here. The kid at the booth said they weren't using black lights any more "because so many people's skin got burned", so we could just go ahead. He also stated that the ink was "yellow"....yeah, it was the normal black light ink that they use everywhere. I even showed him the wrong hand.

All in all the day was OK, just seemed busier than normal due to some rides being down, as LG said. We actually got our rides in on IJTC, Beast, Vortex and Tomb Raider, in between their down times.

In regards to the black light readmission lamp. Could the reason peoples skin got burned was that some idiot last year replaced a burned out black light bulb with an infared bulb. Its red glow was quite distinct and putting your hand under it felt like a heat lamp and didn't do anything to make the black light ink appear.

Lucky for the park, they use an old fashioned oversaturated stamp pad and stamp that puts a big glob of ink on your hand that can be seen for quite some time with or without the black light.

I would have expected better of the parks operations with Cedar Fair in charge. I'm thinking the GR office was so swamped from the sounds of it that if you showed them anything that looked remotely like a valid season pass they would let you through. Or maybe they have no way of viewing your photo on those new photo-less season passes (from other parks).

My CP pass has my pic on it and the GL pass also, but the KD one does not. KI and KD have been usng photo-less ID's prior to this year so I would have thought they had something in place to scan them.

In all honesty, I don't think they were expecting the turn out that they had yesterday.

On that second picture of Firehawk it looked like X-Flight was trying to come out.

The ride operations really were pretty good. Opening Day Jitters for sure, but things were pretty efficient.

There are a LOT of new employees in admissions and all over the park, and there wasn't a dry-run day this year. It's a slightly rough start but it shows signs of getting better.

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Lord Gonchar said:

-Saw no less than three employees get publically reprimanded, corrected or bitched at - right in front of guests.

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Is this a positive thing? (i.e. - they needed correcting and it was delt with appropriately by the superior?)

Also...someone enlighten me...what's the goal to "win" the 3 pt. challenge, and what's the prize?

The 3-point challenge thing is a license to print money. That was open a week at CP before they decided that every park would have one. It's silly how much money they make with that, and no surprise that they added a second one at CP.

You could be onto something with the Scooby thing. The one at KD seems to have some problems as well. Normally, I kick butt, but this last time, the targets weren't registering for me like they should have. I wonder how easy these rides are for the parks to maintain.

Also, the 3 point challenge game does well at KD, too.

Who said that KD has been using pictureless passes? I've been getting passes there for a few years now, and this is the first year that I've had a pictureless pass.

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Peabody said:
Is this a positive thing? (i.e. - they needed correcting and it was delt with appropriately by the superior?)

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I meant it negatively. Sure, it was good that they're on top of things, but in all cases it not only seemed like the ones in charge were bent WAY too out of shape over things (who knows though, just my POV), but also that handling it in front of guest is just as inappropriate to me as whatever the kid probably did in the first place.

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Also...someone enlighten me...what's the goal to "win" the 3 pt. challenge, and what's the prize?

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You have 40 seconds to make 12 three point shots. 4 each from both sides and 4 from the top. Three balls are 'regular' and are worth 1 point and the fourth shot is a 'money' ball worth 2 points. A perfect score would be 15.

4-7 points gets a small prize - a novelty sized B-Ball
8-11 points gets a medium prize - standard sized B-Ball
12-14 points gets a large prize - a NBA jersey
15 points gets choice - a 'better' NBA jersey

There was also a sign stating that the high scorer for the year gets an iPod nano.

We're adding a 3-point shootout game at Kennywood this year, too.

Are you sure Kings Island was purchased by Cedar Fair? Sounds like Six Flags operations to me...

That Coca-Cola logo next to the Cedar Fair one makes me nervous.

*** Edited 4/23/2007 2:32:14 AM UTC by kpjb***

Thanks for posting the great pics Lord Gonchar! Looks like work on Firehawk and SOB is comming along nicely. :)

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rablat5 said:
Normally, I kick butt, but this last time, the targets weren't registering for me like they should have.

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I was kinda half-joking, but I did notice the same thing. I could be right on top of a target just firing away and not get the points.

Even worse is I've heard so many times that the further targets are supposedly easier to hit because of the way the beam from the gun spreads over distance, but I've never felt that was the case either. The distant targets seem impossible and the closer ones can be flat out frustrating.

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kpjb said:
Are you sure Kings Island was purchased by Cedar Fair? Sounds like Six Flags operations to me...

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Somehow the original post came off more negative than it should have. It wasn't horrible, not even close. It just wasn't perfect.

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jkpark said:
Thanks for posting the great pics Lord Gonchar!

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:) Thank you. Those and a bunch more should be up on my site later this week.

Another point I forgot in the original post:

-Saw a whole assload of these "Jesus Is My Superhero" shirts printed in the 'Superman' font/graphic style. Some had the Superman logo on the front but rather than an "S" it had a "J" - come on!

I was at Knotts early this year, so I guess that was the first Cedar Fair to have 3 Point Challenge, unless one got one last year that I didnt notice. It seemed quite popular there on a non-busy weekday when I was there in February. *** Edited 4/23/2007 3:39:36 AM UTC by ChicagoCoasterCub***