Quick PKI Opening Day Festivities

Ello Coaster Fans Who Are Now Happy Their Are At Least Two Parks Opened In Ohio (even though they are on totally different ends of the state,)

I managed to get time out from my designing to go to Paramount's Kings Island's Opening Day festivities. I went down for preview day, and let me say, today was MUCH BETTER than preview day. For starters, the weather was perfect high 66 degrees and sunny (last week was 31 and snow!)

I'll try to make this pretty short. I arrived at 9:45 am and parked in the second row (must be a lot of late comers today.) I noticed they moved the pickup for season pass processing outdoors now, intead of that little room.

I made a quick trip at 10am around the park. I hit all roller coasters VERY quickly, since no one was in the park at this time. SOB was still not running today. Runaway Reptar was stuck in midcourse. Those were the only two rides not running today.

I got 10 rides on FoF today all with the lights on! It seems the ride was REALLY bright today or new flood lights were put in, because it was clear as day in there. I had a lot of fun re riding this today.

All employees were VERY friendly today and I got to meet a lot of new people and people from last year. Everyone kept telling me to go see the new "Magic of the Movies Live" today...and I mean EVERYONE...even the midway sweeps told me. So guess what I did?

I went to see the new "Magic of the Movies: Live" Grand Opening. All the umpteen news crews around the park decided to see this thing also so that was fun to for the interviews. As for a quick review. The biggest thing is the theater! WOW! New seats!!! This place looks a 1000 times better with the new theater seats...no more church pews! They also added a pretty good control panel set up. The MC's were pretty good for their first showing. This show is IDENTICAL to any Disney or Universal movie making show. Which is a good thing for an Ohio Park. PKI is moving up in their productions. Of course they use Paramount movie stuff though. They did a "Movie sound effects" sketch with "Sleepy Hollow" and used audience members, then they did a "Green Screen" tutitorial with Titanic. All of couse mixed with a WIDE variety of humor. Two dislike notes: The screen they used to show what the "Movie Viewer Sees" was AWEFUL!! They used video projector for the diplay, but the screen gets big time drowned out by the stage white lights! I saw the control panel monitor, and what things were suppose to look like, and the screen sure was not those colors! Instead of a nice blue ocean water it was a very dull greyish blue. The problem was that they had a few jokes they tried doing with the green screen and it didn't have a full effect do the screen no really contrasting. Second thing was the only "Speech" line in Sleep Hollow for the effects they were doing was, "Oh my God" Now I don't have a problem with that, but I know a few people do, and it was evident when I left, when I was in line for some food a (roughly) 11yr old girl said, "Why did they use the Lord's name daddy." During the show I didn't think anything of it, but when she said it, I couldn't help but think of all the other dialogue they couldn't have choosen. Either way, it was an excellent show, and a good lineup to PKI's already great shows.

I made another trip around the park and by now a lot of que lines were really filling up. Action Zone had some REALLY long waits for some really long loading cycle rides. Hannah Barbara Land was PACKED full of little kids. I couldn't believe how many babies were at the park today! All were smiling and having fun though. Looks like a lot of parents were just happy to get out in the great weather with their kids.

One other thing I noticed in my two trips to PKI this year is how they are REALLY REALLY pushing their movies this year (go figure it's a Paramount park.) More so than the past. I don't think we are going to see any BIG rides for quite some time now without a movie theme (aka SOB) but it just seems they want to start turning more like Disney or Universal over all. You just get that feel now walking around the park.

I left around 3pm Sunburn and all to head back up north. Great day today, and I saw a lot of friends!

"The Future of Roller Coasters"
-RollerCoasterGod
http://OhioThemeParks.com
*** Edited 4/10/2004 10:41:47 AM UTC by RollerCoasterGod***