Kings Island new Coaster 2014

We went to Kings Island again last Monday with my 2 middle kids (got 4), and their friends. We rode Diamonback 11 times -- the lines were about 5-8 minutes long, not a walk-on like last week Wednesday. Dang. Hopefully Cedar Point lines would be near-walk on next week 28th to 30th.

Anyway, as we made our way through the Action Zone, walking towards Flight Deck, we saw a group of 4 men looking fairly out of the place. 3 were Kings Island park operations admin, I believe. They wore name tags: Jeff, Robb(?) and the other one? The fourth one looked very familiar to me, and I knew I saw him before. He was wearing a pinstriped work shirt.

It finally came to me... was it Rob Decker, VP of Cedar Fair? The one Matt Ouimet issued a challenge for after building Gatekeeper?

I quickly googled Rob Decker and saw a picture of him. Yup! A match.

They were talking and one of them pointed at Extreme Skyflyer then gestured as if to move the attraction further back. Then they disappeared behind the wooden fences surveying the new construction site.

I thought, damn... I should have approached Rob and asked him, "So, you all are building a B&M Giga, eh?" just to see his reaction. Didn't have that chance.

Then my 12 year old son said he saw the paper clipboard on one of the guys, and it was a black and white park map reduced in size to fit letter size, and he saw a huge red line drawing, looking like a roller coaster up and down out and back.

He said it was huge and after I showed him the map we had and asked him to try and approximate what he saw -- he swears the lines went all way to Firehawk and possibly behind Dinosaurs Alive. It was a brief glance, though.

I quickly asked him -- because I know someone would say its an invert -- if he saw any loops or anything? He paused, thought for a second and said no, he didn't. Just really, really tall compared to anything else in the park map and long out and back line.

My son, an accomplished spy! :-) A father couldn't be more prouder.

Now, I grant it could be a confirmation bias on his part -- I have told him I had a feeling that they would build B&M Giga on that site. But the fact that he was a bit taken back when I asked him if he saw any loops and he had to think on that for a second, and said no.

So, there you have it. A B&M Giga, it is! Well, okay... make that with 98% confidence on my part. :-)

Ell Oh Ell...

Marvin Miller said:

...it was a black and white park map reduced in size to fit letter size, and he saw a huge red line drawing, looking like a roller coaster up and down out and back.

...really, really tall compared to anything else in the park map and long out and back line.

A map wouldn't show hills, or even loops in way I'd expect a 12 year old to recognize.

That's the thing -- when I asked him to draw me the lines, he drew straight lines up and down with pointed edges. I thought it was odd and maybe it was something he imagined.

Apparently not. Again, he said the size and scale of these straight lines up and down through was huge in comparison to others, including Diamondback.

I can ask him again when he gets home in afternoon.

Ell Oh Ell.

djDaemon said:
A map wouldn't show hills, or even loops in way I'd expect a 12 year old to recognize.

No direct comment on Marvin's original post, but there are plenty of 12 year old coaster obsessives out there that would recognize loops from an overhead layout. That's what, 6th or 7th grade? I haven't been to an enthusiast event in a while but they're usually swarming with kids that age that are freakishly knowledgeable about the hobby in general.

Hey Marv - was the map like a park map, or an overhead blue print kind of thing? If it's the latter, hills would look like straight lines, you know? And drawing a layout on a bird's eye guest park map seems kinda weird to me, especially with the project this far in...

I think what DJ was saying was that the type of maps usually used when a ride is under construction wouldn't be something that was immediatly recognizable as inversions to a 12 year old. Because they're not going to be walking around the park with a cartoonish park map and red lines drawn in to show where a coaster is going.

At best it would look something like one of These.

I got what he was trying to say. I'm saying that there are plenty of coaster nerd 12 year olds that would know exactly what inversions on a coaster would look like. It's easily recognizable. At 12 I was drawing coaster layouts in my notebooks when I was supposed to be paying attention in middle school.

Not saying anything about Marvin's scenario is likely or unlikely, just saying that that one part is entirely possible. Especially when the kid has a dad who's nerdy enough about the hobby to be posting here.

In third grade I drew hundreds of pages of theme parks during class, and I cried when my teacher made me throw it away. She said they were wasting space in my desk.

I drew pictures of roller coasters every chance I got in 6th-8th grade art. My art teacher was amazed how detailed and meticulous they were.

I did my 9th grade computer applications power point report on Superman Ultimate Flight at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

This is really weird and cool for me -- being a newbie and all. When I asked my son to draw the map last night, I printed out a copy of park map on letter size paper and asked him to draw what he saw.

The map threw him off. He said it wasn't what he saw. He tried but he said it wasn't right at all.

Then in morning, I asked him to draw what on a blank sheet of paper. He did.

He drew first the park boundary, then the tall jagged lines -- I stopped him and challenged him, "Straight lines? Seriously?"

He said yes, that's what he saw. I told him it couldn't be right. Then I asked him to finish what he was drawing and you can see he became uncertain and drew softer curves back to the starting point.

I have to admit that there was a small part of me that was skeptical of what my son said all along because I felt he was trying to please his "wee-bit B&M obsessed dad" -- don't get me wrong, everyone in my family LOVES B&M hypers and Leviathan, MF and others. It's me that's likely to be more obsessed. ;-)

Now to have what he drew this morning confirmed by others in here really surprised me.

Of course, since the lines are "typically" straight, jagged which begs the question -- would it even show loops at all? Meaning Tekwardo's hopes for an invert may still remain alive, however small? ;-)

Again, my son also insisted the drawing of red lines was huge in comparison to other rides in the park and he even swears that the line extended past Firehawk and Dinosaurs Alive -- I'm drawing my line here and don't believe that's the case.

All of this based on a brief glance. Wow.

And when he comes home, I'll ask him how the map looked like -- a regular guest park map or more of a blue print. He probably will roll his eyes at me at this point. ;-)

I'm not hoping for an invert. If I got my way they'd build something from RMC. But they're building an invert.

And if they actually had a map showing the path of the coaster, it wouldn't show "hills" like that. The regular guest park maps aren't going to be used for something like this as they're inaccurate portrayals simply used do people can see where things are.

Stop trying.

They had the invert layout on there, but to throw any gullible 12 year olds off the scent, they put red scribbles all over it. Mystery solved!

To be fair, they were trying to throw the 12-year old's gullible dad off. ;-)

matt. said:

I'm saying that there are plenty of coaster nerd 12 year olds that would know exactly what inversions on a coaster would look like. It's easily recognizable.

Maybe inversions are. But hills, shown from a top-down (AKA "map") view, would not show hills in such a way as to indicate their height. The description his son gave indicated both size of the plot of land as well as the height of the hills.

...All on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper on a clip board at a glance...

djDaemon said:

Maybe inversions are. But hills, shown from a top-down (AKA "map") view, would not show hills in such a way as to indicate their height.

Indeedy which is why I asked the other question. If it were a blueprint, we wouldn't be seeing hills. If it were a bird's eye view guest map, then why is park brass scribbling lines on park maps and then brandishing them about outside for everyone and god to see? :-)

We're reaching the same conclusions here, I just always like taking the more scenic route...

Here's the official artist interpretation. Don't worry everyone, I'll incur the costs of having this important work done.

Thanks LG. I was wondering why someone didn't just get a photo of the clipboard.

Can I get that on a coffee mug from Coasterimage.com?

No, but I fully expect it to be linked to anytime, anywhere someone mentions Kings Island's 2014 coaster.