Kings Island Opening Day 2024. Rocky Start but Strong day

I had the opportunity to skip studying for my finals and go to Kings Island with my friends for opening day. As we got to the park 10 til open we went to Orion first, as my friend Tiago had never visited the park, and being from Brazil he was very excited to visit the park.

Orion did not even begin block checking until 10am, which was not a good sign. However FoF did open on time, so we went there instead. This attempt to ride something quickly also failed, as not even 10 minutes into the day FoF decided to break down. We left the line and made our way to The Beast, which the app would say had a short wait. We would learn that the app was not nearly as accurate as it was in previous years, but I just assumed its probably opening day first real implementation of the new tech. When we got to The Beast, it decided to go down on us as we walked up to the queue. It was now about 10:20am.

We all decided to try our luck with Diamondback, which was running. Lucky for us it decided to run rather well early into the day, and we got on by 11 am. We all decided to wait for Mystic as it had a 45 min wait, and it ran so smoothly and quickly. We all decided to go get lunch after, being noon. It was around this time many of the rides began to start breaking down, with Racer, Beast, Invertigo, Banshee, and Orion all being down. By the time we finished lunch we went to Racer which had not only reopened, but was running both sides. After waiting about 15 minutes we got a back row ride on blue side. The retrack was super smooth, however it felt like the airtime was lost. Adventure express had a short wait, and after intentionally stapling myself for the worst ride experience (trust me I thought it would be funny to have a bad ride on AE.) After consulting the wildly inaccurate wait times on the app our group split up to do our own thing. Tiago and I decided to wait for Orion, since I could visually confirm it had a 1 hr wait.

Orion suffered a bird strike, doubling my wait time for the ride. By the time we got to the platform, EMS was still trying to clean blood off the affected train. After riding Orion we went over to try and reride mystic since the app, again, incorrectly said the wait was only 45 min, however the entire queue was full since many people came over from the then closed Diamondback. We decided to take a nice break and ride the KI railroad, since it had just pulled into the station. it was 6:30 pm and we got dinner from Tom and Chee. Being from Cleveland, Tom and Chee is a treat for me just as skyline chili is. dinner took about 45 minutes, most of it was us relaxing a little and planning the rest of the day.

We looked at the app and saw the last two important coasters for Tiago, Beast and Banshee, had a 90 min and 115 min wait respectfully. We went to Banshee, since I, correctly, had a shorter wait than posted, where we only waited 30 minutes for the ride. This put at 8:15pm, and we had time for one, FoF or Beast. We went for Beast, waiting about 45 minutes for the ride. We go a row 14 night ride, and it was a wild ride through the woods. No slow first lift for us since the trains had stacked due to some sort of hold up in the station.

This ride on The Beast was my favorite ever. It was an amazing ride through the woods in the night, and I have had 2 prior night rides. Funnily enough I found a phone on the floor during the climb of the second lift. I gave it to the operator in the station once we returned. We all regrouped at the front gate and recapped our day. We all agreed on a few things, mainly that the crowds and operations were not too bad, however the downtime of the rides, with at one point only 4 coasters being open, was a major issue. I personally do not see any issues with the reliability in the long term this season, I think today was a fluke.

Overall I had a wonderful time, My friend Tiago had a blast visiting the park and riding everything he did. He and I are planning a return visit in the fall.

Glad you had a good day, and that you were able to introduce someone to such a great park who has never been there. Love that experience.

Glad you were able to make good day out of that situation. If I were considering travelling to visit the park, I would be having second thoughts.

I was there yesterday and it looked like they're already hitting their groove. All available trains are running on all the coasters, but far less stacking than last Saturday, and no more issues with the POS terminals. The only major delay I saw was a 10 min dispatch on Orion while security removed some guests from the train, not sure what they did but if the ops tell you to exit, you need to exit; arguing is not going to change their mind.

BTW I am just floored at how well Racer is running now. Leave yourself some space in the restraint (the ops are quite forgiving with this) and be amazed at how much floater those low hills give on the outbound trip.

I was there opening day as well! It was such a beautiful day, but yeah…ops were slow and rides were down left and right. Banshee and Orion broke down right after I got in line for them. They got Orion back up and working about 20 minutes later and I got to ride then. Never got back to Banshee.

It was still a great (quick) trip down. It’s hard to have a bad time at Kings Island.