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There's a few very easy steps to remedy the Preferred Parking situation. Make the lot for Prestige Passholders only. No more parking upgrade at the tollbooth. Some people use Preferred when the Handicap Lot is full, but frankly that's another can of worms on its own. Have the system count how many cars have been scanned into the Preferred lot. If the number of passes currently scanned in exceeds the total number of parking spaces, then the lot is full. The exit gate lifts for each car that leaves. That can decrease the number of cars currently scanned into the parking lot by 1 with each lift. If the preferred lot is full, then the associate puts up the block against the entrance and turns on/puts out the "LOT FULL" sign. The lot remains "full" until 10+ cars have left. I believe there has to be some way for them to track the number of cars in the lot without building a new parking toll system from scratch. Someone online claimed that the Preferred lot attendants were too lazy to check the lot (which, granted, this user probably didn't think it through before commenting). In reality, they shouldn't have to go look for spots or keep track on their own. Cedar Point could use a better Prestige parking lot setup as well. Theirs is even more packed and confusing to get into/out of. In other news, last night was super crowded. The thing I noticed last night was that, much like with the Bandstand, the standing room for Jingle Jazz was interfering with the walking path. I'd love to see if anything could be done to help with that, whether it be moving it further back into that alley or reworking the logistics of how much of the pathway is dedicated to thru-traffic.

They are seriously going to have to figure out how to handle Preferred Parking now that they oversold the prestige passes so badly. It was especially bad tonight since they plowed all of the snow into one lane of the road along the walkway to the park, so you had people circling around trying to go both directions in one lane.

Me waiting for Kings Island to open so I can ride Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare be like: 119 days to be exact...

tonight, Saturday 12/20 is the perfect storm. It’s the warmest weather of the event, it’s Saturday, and school is out for break. It’s the first big crowd of this year’s event

Might want to clear your cache in the browser.

Yeah I don't know what is up with my browser. It's been doing this since the new refresh came out. It does look a lot nicer though when you can actually see the words! I'm on Chrombook right now

There was broken concrete the first week of operation. They have a few hurdles to get through but even with the bottleneck later in the day it’s not a bad spot to get through. Epic, in and of itself, is still my favorite themepark period. Stardust Green is ranking very well for me and it keeps going up after every visit.

Guessing it's a browser issue, I'm seeing it all fine on Windows 11 - Chrome Browser

I’m not sure I completely understand, but I see a white background on the drop down menu items. Maybe it’s a browser issue? (I’m using Safari for iPad…)

^ I wonder if this is an agreement with Accesso to deliver more traffic to them and increase their revenue on the fees they collect?

Ok this is getting annoying to have to squint to see the drop-down menu options. This isn't just something on my end right? It's like impossible to see the drop-down options because there is no background to it. And you can't even see the promotion at the bottom left either. Not really a fan of how the website looks thus far...

The International Street cam and Orion cam are both offline , was this due to the storm overnight but the Planet Snoopy cam is functional. Is the park doing something in that areas that we cannot see to post online ?? rumors and tinfoil hat comments welcome.

Does anyone know why purchasing a pass at the park costs about $74 more in person than it does online? Is that extra money entirely to pay for the staffing required at the ticket windows, or is it just a cost that's passed off from somewhere else in the park? There's no way (in my mind, at least) that all of that money is entirely for "processing fees". Yes, there is a form to fill out and payment to be made, but why does that cost $74 more than doing the same process online? There's not even anything physically being given out or exchanged now that the season pass cards are gone and they don't even bring any guests inside the building. I'm not trying to imply that these associates don't do anything meaningful or that it's easy work, but I don't think they're getting paid more than the standard Kings Island/Six Flags hourly wage. This could be some weird industry standard or a crazy fee structure that only exists in-person, but I simply don't understand why that added cost is so high. Any help to understand this would be appreciated.

Our Thursday night visit to Winterfest was rather nice because of the small crowds and friendly associates. The operations were remarkably slow in some areas and perfectly fine in others — both of which are completely understandable and acceptable for me. I had expected high crowd levels because of the warmer weather, but it looked like the rain kept a lot of them away. We had dinner at Rivertown Potato Works where I had a nice Coca-Cola and some Bacon and Cheese Fries while my group member got the Honey Ham Fries and a drink. My fries were a little under-cooked, but the bacon bits and cheese improved them a lot. Personally, I like the under-cooked fries a whole lot more than the burnt Potato Works fries I've had in the past. I had wanted to get some ice in my Coke but the nice associate had already started filling the cup with pop before I could request any ice. We rode the train and got to enjoy a break in the rainy weather. There were more lights out this week than before, but it looked like there were associates out along the route that were working to either get them lit or to get them ready for heavy rainfall. The engineers had us absolutely hauling our way along the track, but we still had to make the stop at the end before Mystic Timbers despite being the only train operating. I'm curious to know why they started making that scheduled stop this year when it hasn't been made most other times. Also, if that stop becomes a more permanent feature then I'd love to see either more decorations along that guardrail or some kind of display to entertain guests while they're stopped. A little stop into the Rivertown LaRosa's led me to find out that the ice machine in there was dispensing about 5-8 oz of ice with the quickest of presses. It was also interesting to find out that my Coke was nicely mixed while my group member's Coke was not well mixed at all. The Shooting Star section of Winterfest Way was very nice to walk through again. I did notice that the small back-most passenger window of the purple car is now missing — which certainly cannot be good for the interior and the longevity of the car's life in the park. The version of A Christmas Carol playing was one that I've never seen before. It was older and had a staunch difference in quality compared to the chopped up version of It's A Wonderful Life that they play. We walked over to Area 72 to look around and I noticed that there was a Firehawk oil can just like the one found up front in the Kings Island Trading Co. hidden among the display at Flight of Fear's exit. The last part of our night consisted of sitting on the warm Coney Bar-B-Que porch to catch up on some messages and decide our next steps. The two announcements for the early closing were clear and concise, but seemed to be presented awkwardly. I'll chalk that up to the fact that some information was accidentally skipped in the first announcement. It was super rainy as we exited the park, so we stopped into the Starbucks dining room (which should definitely be connected to a park-owned restaurant instead of Starbucks). I'd forgotten how nice and large that room was. Getting back to our cars was very wet, and I wish there was an easy way for the park to fix all of the drainage channels so there wouldn't be as large and deep of puddles everywhere. Overall it was a good night despite all of the rain and leftover snow. The only things I think the park could easily do to improve guest experience on nights like this would be to make sure the french fries are fully cooked and to have associates with dry mops in the restrooms every so often to make sure the floor isn't so slippery. I nearly slipped a few times around the park with how wet all of the indoor floors were (particularly in the arcades, restrooms, and shops).

Even without those walls, it was super bottlenecked in that area

Don, I can’t seem to find a clear answer without hitting a paywall. Is this lawsuit against Cedar Fair and/or Six Flags prior to the merger or does it stem from something after they merged?

It wild. Everywhere you go, broken concrete. I went this past Sunday and those walls are literally everywhere. I noticed how bad it was in October, they were filling the spots in.

Broken concrete in a 7 month old theme park?

Turkey Ball in Grain & Grill > then the Meatloaf Burger outside Juke Box Diner in the cold.

Christmas overlay is epic, the choke point due to broken concrete isn’t.

Went for my likely last visit to Winterfest for the year last night. I had a great time in all honesty. The weather was great and the crowds were light. First thing was dinner at Coney BBQ. The Turkey and Corn Soufflé tasted great especially with the Cranberry BBQ sauce (turkey). I did not go to any shows during this visit, but did catch several midway merriment characters and part of the parade. Took a ride on the 12 Days of Christmas train. This time, they actually played the song, though by the 5th Day display, we were on the 9th day of Christmas. Of course, there were lights out including the number 12, but it's okay because the song was already over and we were on some weird version of another Christmas song. Some displays were missing their heads, some of them were lit well. I still don't know why they can't send them to the manufacturer (I think it's a business in the Pigeon Forge area) to get refurbished in the "off season." This was my first visit to the park with snow on the ground (even if most of it was in piles) and some on the rides too. It made the event more magical to me. I ended up buying a print from Theme Park Art and it's one of Vortex. It was fairly priced and a gorgeous piece. The highlight of the night honestly was the food. I got the turkey ball at the end of the night and wow, I'm sad I hadn't had it before.

I agree with a lot of the above but one that came to my head was the Flight of Fear sounds like the “Waaa-wah” during the very long mid-course breaks

Anyone have any requests for photos/looks in Epic? Heading down tomorrow and will be there all day Thursday! (For context, I’m doing WDW, USO, IOA and KI in one day Friday so wish me luck!)

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/six-flags-fails-to-avoid-website-data-tracker-lawsuit

I'm fully with you on the "too many areas" idea for the dry side of the park. The Moonlite Gardens project might actually get moved in my headcanon now that I've been developing an "Old Coney" revamp of Coney Mall. Some of the things you listed are unfortunately par for the course as Kings Island continues to toe the line between amusement park and theme park. I've stated my desire for a Medieval Faire or Oktoberfest retheme for Action Zone while my hopes for Rivertown rely on it becoming more town-ish again. I'll have to see if I have any more ideas once I get home from work.