Let me have your thoughts on SIX FLAGS KENTUCKY KI
dawnmarie313 said:
Sometimes, when there's one glaring fault early on, a person can miss all the subsequent little ones.That appears not to be the case with Kentucky Kingdom though. Regardless, I'm planning to get there for the first time in April.
Dawn, trying (though admittedly not very hard) to get into the 80% range
You can do it, Dawn! We believe in YOU!
Back on topic: I had a very nice day at SFKK back in 2001. The mouse was fun, Chang is also my favorite stand-up, and Thunder Run continues to lurk in the bottom of my top 10 wood despite riding lots of good CCI's since then. The park has lots of good flats and Viper/Greasy Lightnin' looks to be a strong addition. However, the ops at Chang were bad, and the park was getting REALLY crowded when we left, so I guess I'm positively-biased that way.
I will be back in 2004 to get some of that Anton-baked lovin'.
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Mike Miller - Harbinger Of Doom - Killer Of Threads - Cheap Rates, Ask About Our Special!
The *anal-yzing*, I'll save that for when I get home and reach the 'puter...;)
*** This post was edited by rollergator 3/12/2003 12:52:18 PM ***
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A park without a hypercoaster is like dancing about architecture.
I have been caught in crowded days at SFGAm and still managed to enjoy myself whether it was coaster watching, drinking a brew at the saloon, playing arcade and redemption games, or just kicking back with others and making conversation.
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Arena football has arrived in the Windy City. Go "Chicago Rush"
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"Run Betty! The giant chicken's sticking to the pan"!
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A park without a hypercoaster is like dancing about architecture.
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"Run Betty! The giant chicken's sticking to the pan"!
"Now being savvy and being yelled by managers at PKI I knew there was 1 way to get things done. I grabbed a games manager and asked to see the rides manager. They were there on the spot. The crew was laxing and they got yelled at for it. No one used the breaks. He yelled at everyone because they were hitting stopped cars fast! He found the problem and gave me a free ride and also FOF got another"
Also When I went the place was really clean.
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Waiting for the season to start.
Visit History of PKI!
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A day is a drop of water in the ocean of eternity. A week is seven drops.
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A park without a hypercoaster is like dancing about architecture.
Mamoosh said:
Frankly I feel that sometimes as enthusiasts we expect *way* too much. I also think that many create self-fulfilling prophecies. When you expect to have a bad time you're pretty much guaranteed to have a bad time.When I go to a park it's not only as an enthusiast, but as an industry proffesional as well. My experience at SFKK was similar to ones that I have had at other (but not all) SF properties. You can always tell what parks have "old school" management. They don't have the problems that have been discussed here.They are an example of how not to run a park. Is corporate not backing up local mangement, or is somebody trying to impress the people in OC with their bottom line? Possibly a combination of both? What ever it is it needs addressed.
Chang - had barely any line at all, yet the wait was still 1.5 hours. How can that be?
Thunder Run - Good coaster, we've got one very similar to it at King's Dominion, but still nice.
Twisted Twins - I hear it is a rare thing to have both sides open. We got lucky as they finally realized that the lines were long enough to open the second side. Pretty cool coaster, and it's fun to see the other train whiz by
Mile-High Falls - probably the best landscaping in the park. Didn't ride it, but enjoyed being in the area - seemed in the wrong place, however
Batman, T2, or whatever that hang'n'bang is called - we've got one just like it at SFA - so, it was nothing new for me, and didn't make the park seem any more exciting or unique to me - it just dulled it down quite a bit, especially since the wait was excessive. {that new/old shuttle looper should patch things up a bit}
Blizzard River - The theming looked really cool, but once again out of place in this flat land of asphault {too open, not enough landscaping}. Didn't ride it because the wait was the longest in the entire park.
Overall experience -
Here's the good:
Parking is only $3
Twisted Twins when running both sides
Chang
You can use your Six Flags season pass and not feel cheated
Right on the way back from Holiday World after SRM, so you're not going out of your way to get there and you don't feel like you're wasting your time
Here's the bad:
The landscaping is hands-down AWFUL. Please take a year off thinking about putting in any more rides and spend money to put in many more trees, carve more hillsides, completely cover up the road in the middle of the park by building a tunnel - come up with a better circulation pattern. Even the parking lot needs to be redesigned
Chang might be a good ride, but it's sitting on a parcel of completely flat land right beside a highway - gives it no ambience whatsoever
The atmosphere was completely lacking because there was one entire section of the park that was completely closed down - I felt like I was walking around in a closed park. Every single store was shut down, the rides were sitting still, etc.
I didn't notice the management and its performance in terms of customer service as other people have complained about, but I did notice that they really love to run only one train on all the rides - not too fun
Final comment: I think that this is a good park to visit once on your way back from another park. But if I lived in Louisville, I would not want to make recurring visits to this place -
-Chang might be a good coaster, but I'm not extremely fond of standup coasters in the first place. Make it a floorless and maybe I'll come back for more.
-With Holiday World only 1.5 hours away, you might as well get a better bang for your buck. Much prettier atmosphere, free drinks
-I honestly believe that the thing that is keeping Kentucky Kingdom alive right now is its big wave pool/waterpark. I saw the majority of the people at the park in this area - without this part of the park, I think it would have gone under by now
Just my 2 cents - I'm so tired right now that I'm not even sure what I said -
"Another patron of the park complained stating that the ride ops were too busy arguing about next weeks schedule instead of checking lap bars. Now personally I find this a bit stretched but I will give it the benefit of the doubt and reoiterate with another question back: Did you talk to anyone about this? i.e. park management?"
Well Joey, that was me. Let me explain. When we finally made it around the loop to TRun, we hopped into a one-train wait station. We went to the back, while the train sat in the station, my buddy and I were wondering why it was sitting there. We rested our arms on the sides, while listening to the 3 ops arguing over the schedule of who was going to take the weekend shifts. The laps were not checked 2 minutes later as the coaster finally drifted out of the station. You asked why I didn't talk to management. a) Why? I was already ticked about one train operation and long-20 to 30 minute waits on a slow patron day for the other coasters and we wanted to get to HW. b) Really, now...should I waste 5 laps on Raven for a complaint box at a park that is getting thoroughly roasted on this thread?
Overall, I did have fun at SFKK, but this park has a LONG way to go before it's a "destination point". For now, it will remain a pass-thru towards HW and PKI.
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There's nothing like a woodie...
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Happy Birthday DawnMarie!!
Woody said:
. b) Really, now...should I waste 5 laps on Raven for a complaint box at a park that is getting thoroughly roasted on this thread?.
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There's nothing like a woodie...
Well, let me bounce the ball right back at you. Mind you, I'm not roasting you, I'm just asking legitimate questions: So you didn't want to "waste time" by talking to someone in management right? Well if it was such a big deal to you to be so ticked off and vent here in a forum, then it should be a bigger deal when your actually at the park where you can do something about it. Those ride-ops needed a knot yanked in their collective rears no doubt. Not checking lapbars is a major safety issue. Now if it were me, I personally would have been so mad that I would have beat a path to somebody's office to let them know my safety was comprimised. Don't get me wrong, SFKK has it's share of problem areas, as pointed out in this and many other threads accros the forum, (then again don't all parks have at least SOMETHING wrong with them) but in no way should any employee of the park be allowed to endanger the life of any guest by an act of carelessness.
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This ain't no book you can close, when the big light hits your eyes. Cropduster-Riot Act-Pearl Jam
BTW Moosh, I just wanted to say that you have the most diverse, most intellegent posts on the forum, can Jeff create an award for Best Insight?
Joey: You're bringing up a valid point about safety, but HW closes at 8pm....I wasn't going to waste one more minute in that park when the Raven & Legend were waiting. Am I careless? so be it, my man......since I'm an enthusiast, you're acting like I have a moral duty to report these wrong doings. A member of the GP wouldn't know the first thing to say to management in that situation. It's their problem, they'll deal with it. And since it's 'their' problem, I'm not going to bend over backwards for a park that gave me 4 hours of long lines on slow day, because of one train operation. I rode every coaster ONCE in 4 hours(which is downright sad!)...and that's my major concern. The topic was "Thoughts on SFKK", not "Barney Fife-ing SFKK". I gave my honest observations, very similar to many others on this thread. With this in mind, SFKK did not gain a dime from me (we threw a penny in the fountain), and probably will not in the near future. If that's the ol' "Welp Woody, that's one less person in line in front of me...." routine, then have at it people, there's better parks to enjoy.
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There's nothing like a woodie...
I, for one, thoroughly enjoy Kentucky Kingdom. Being a poor college student in Lexington, the park has plenty to offer me. Without the money or the means to go on several-day excursions like others out there, my only real choices are this or PKI. I'm not trying to start any kind of comparison war or anything, but SFKK offers quite a few things that PKI doesn't have.
They have the closest B&M, which happens to be a stand-up, the closest CCI, a wild mouse, an excellently themed rapids ride, and a decent collection of standard flats. Thunder Run is also one of my favorite woodies. Parking and season passes are dirt cheap, and the employees I run into are usually great. I go there a few times every year and have a great time.
Of course, I'll also be the first to admit the place has its share of problems. Uncovered queues, one-train operation, and that horrid path between T2 and Twisted Twins with nothing on it. Thunder Run is kind of hidden as well, but I find the place pretty easy, not necessarily convenient, to navigate. Overall, I like the place. That's my story, thank you for your time.
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Please disregard anything I said. After all, I like T2, how smart can I be?
And to touch on another note, I never said or implied that you're an ethusiasts. In fact I worded around that to avoid that line of thinking.
And you might oughta think about giving the GP a little bit more credit than you do. I'm sure an average park visitor (non-enthusiast) would definitely take note of a lapbar not being checked and chances are pretty good that they wouldn't mind letting somebody know about it too.
Bottom line, you don't care for SFKK. You are entitled to your opinion(s) about the topic. Sure I agree there are better parks than SFKK. (I didn't even go to the park last season because I was so disgruntled with it.) But my major beef is that you are pointing out safety violations that were commited here in a forum after the fact and you didn't do anything about it when you could have. Either your part of the problem, or part of the solution.
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This ain't no book you can close, when the big light hits your eyes. Cropduster-Riot Act-Pearl Jam
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