Old Paramount Park websites are down

I suppose this is kind of a non story, but it looks like they are finally going to be relaunching the websites for the former paramount parks.

http://www1.cedarfair.com/kingsisland/

At No Coaster Con Don Hilbig mentioned that the new Kings Island site would be http://visitkingsisland.com

Perhaps they will also get a face lift so that they resemble the other CF sites as well.

I hope they do. I have always hated the Paramount websites, and was disappointed they kept the same layout after the buy out.

A change for the better, hopefully.

I just hope they don't have those horrible and useless maps like CP... but pretty sure they will.

The individual park sites (carowinds.com, cagreatamerica.com, etc) are working, sadly, they are not changed though.

Maybe it's too early in the day?

Mike

The Kings Island site looks the same at the new address as it did at PKI.com...

Hey at least they gave Kings Islands Railroad a history on information page http://www.visitkingsisland.com/attractions/detail.cfm?ai_id=151

KIs new site is www.visitkingsisland.com

Chuck, kinda suprised they're too cheap to retain the PKI domain name for a couple years more. I have a strong feeling millions of people have no idea the names changed back.

They also still have the firefox mini address logo as the Paramount logo as well.

The Pki.com domian will point to visitkingsisland.com for a while.

Looks like they just did back end work changing it from Http://www1.cedarfair.com/kingsisland to http://visitkingsisland.com

No major changes just some back end stuff from what was being said over on kicentral.

I think it's safe to assume part of all of this is to prepare for a relaunch of some new websites for the parks. Now that the back-end work is done, they will probably be making the visible changes soon. You can't build a new building without a good foundation. *** Edited 1/25/2008 7:00:51 PM UTC by kirk06***

Well her it is 8pm & KD's site is still down.

kirk I actually think it is the opposite, what better way to assemble a webpage then on a new site, and restrict access to it. The fact that they went through the code and re did it for the new address instead of launching with a brand new site and version at the same time suggests that the old design will stick around a while.

I'm not so sure about that quite yet. The fact that they are obviously letting Paramount logos sit in many places all over the sites without bothering to take the time to remove them, and along with the fact that many rides are being renamed (and those names are mentioned in sooo many places on the sites) I would venture a guess they're planning on starting from scrap. Cedar Fair isn't exactly dragging their feet with removing Paramount from everything, so there is no doubt in my mind if they were planning on keeping the current design the Paramount logos would be gone. Favicons, page titles, and placeholder images aren't hard to change. They could've gotten rid of those faster than flipping all of the stones over in Paramount Story.

I can almost guarantee they've already been working on redesigning the pages. The "old" pages that are still being used, even now, are probably nothing more than mere placeholders. They've done the work to the back-end, now they're probably just waiting on designs and code to get finalized and polished.

The guy that works on Cedar Fair's sites recently created a Facebook group encouraging suggestions for things to implement on all of the Cedar Fair park websites. He has since closed/deleted the group, as his deadline was awhile back. They're working on a redesign...believe me. It was also confirmed at NoCoasterCon the other day (as presented in a thread on the forums here) that Don Helbig mentioned Kings Island's new site. NOT new domain, but new website. Even as early as last year, things were in the works for a new site. I spoke with Maureen at SOAR last March and she mentioned something about a new site, though she obviously had no details on it at the time.

edit: Just an update, pki.com works again. Doesn't redirect to visitkingsisland.com, however. *** Edited 1/26/2008 5:58:43 AM UTC by kirk06***