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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/14/2012 in all areas

  1. My mom, fiancé Jeff (count_of_tuscany), and I went to Cedar Point's opening day on Saturday, May 12 and had a super great time! All in all, they made some great improvements to the park! Here is a bit about our day, as well as the changes we saw to the park: As soon as we got there, we saw there was a giant dino between the parking lot and the season pass center area - made me so excited for Dinosaurs Alive! (I love dinos!) We got there around 8:30am and the line was already pretty long to get in near the main entrance gates. When we got in at 9, we headed straight to Millennium. On our way there, we noticed that the Celebration Plaza was in its construction phase still (no surprise there!), but it looks like it's going to be awesome! They have some pretty cool new curvy concrete benches all along the midway over there. It looked so strange without WildCat there - so bare! And was much quieter in the area later in the day - we were always so used to hearing the loud cars on the rickety track. Kind of missed it! On our way over to Millennium for our first ride, we noticed that we hadn't seen it testing yet since we'd been there, and when we got near the ride, we noticed that it was closed due to mechanical reasons. The line for it was already curved way out to almost the Red Garter. We were looking for Single Rider Bob and sure enough, we spotted him near the front of the line and waved to him! He is so awesome! Since Millennium was down, we decided to go on Maverick. On our way over, we noticed some changes. The big tree right as you enter Frontier Trail was cut down, which was really noticeable. The woodworking shop is now the Toy Barn (I'm pretty sure that's what it's called, I can't remember exactly), and the woodworking shop is located in the building that used to have the make-your-own-teddy bears. (The teddy bear making machine is now in the Toy Barn.) Also, we noticed that the water wheel on the building near Snake River Falls was working, and there was a waterfall coming down. I did not personally remember that always being on, but I could be wrong. When we got to Maverick, the line was already up in the building near the stairs (near the single rider line), so we hardly waited at all for that. Had a super great first ride of the CP season! After a few more rides, we headed over to Dinosaurs Alive and waited there for about a half hour for the ribbon cutting ceremony to start at 11. We were some of the first people to go into Dinosaurs Alive, and it was awesome! The most awesome part about it was the view of Millennium - WOW! I have never seen it from that angle before (I was on Terror Island during Halloweekends, but it was too dark and foggy to see anything.) The view was truly amazing, it was so crazy to see Millennium from such obscure angles! We took some great pictures of it which I will post later. Throughout the rest of the day, rides were breaking down left and right (which we expected because it seems to happen every opening day.) Overall, throughout the day, the only major rides that we never saw broken down (or riding empty) were Raptor, Power Tower, Iron Dragon, MeanStreak, Dragster (surprisingly!), and Mantis. (Some of those may have been down at one point, we just didn't see it.) Every other major ride was closed at least once throughout the day. Usually we say "what ride should we go on next?" but it got to the point where were just saying "what ride is open?!" Instead of being upset and annoyed that the rides were all closing and things weren't working, we just made a joke out of the whole thing and made up a song about it, adding lines to it as we observed, such as "Mine Ride don't work, Millennium don't work, Go Karts got stuck, ran out of meat (they ran out of meat at Los Gatos!), and so on. We were really having a lot of fun with this - we always manage to have a great time at Cedar Point no matter what - just being there is a blast! We won't let broken rides ruin our day! Some of the other changes we noticed that I didn't mention above were: * New elevator lift systems on mostly every major ride for disabled accessibility * New Fast Pass lanes, and some re-routed regular lines on: *Power Tower (entrance is now across from Dragster, closer to Corkscrew) *Iron Dragon (entrance is near the opposite side of the station than it used to be on) * "Tornado Shelter Area" signs on restrooms * New menus at Johnny Rockets * Some new wood on the turnstiles in line for Gemini * Parts of MeanStreak are re-tracked (still just as bumpy in my opinion! but I love that ride!) * Big LED scrolling sign in front of the parking booths (I'm almost positive they are new, I don't remember them being there) * Random dinos throughout the park! * New electronic lockers (which I'm confused about - do they open all day, or are they a one-time-open like they used to be?) * Pagoda gift shop is now tiled with a light-colored floor instead of a darker carpet. In my opinion, it looked so much better with carpet. * New awesome lights on Giant Wheel, Power Tower, and Millennium Force. The Giant Wheel is definitely the most impressive - it's almost hypnotic looking at it! I stared at it for literally 5 minutes straight while my mom and Jeff were in the restroom, and I never saw the same design twice. * Cheese-on-a-sticks are about half the size that they used to be and more expensive. (Glad we get 2 free drinks with them with our platinum pass!) * No more "It's a good call!" sign near Raptor by Game Day Grille (we used to love that sign, and always made that hand gesture and said "It's a good call!" while at the park.) Most people probably wouldn't miss this sign, but we always laughed at it for some reason. We miss it! We find funniness in the weirdest things.. We even took one of our pictures near it at our engagement photo shoot last October: There are probably many more changes we noticed (we were sure to point them out as we came across them) but I can't think of any more at the moment. If I think of any more, I will post them! It was definitely the most memorable opening day we've been to! We were laughing so many times throughout the day! Weather was beautiful all day too. I have some pictures that we took that I will upload when I get them on my computer. Although many rides were on-and-off closed, we did manage to get 17 rides in and a Dinosaurs Alive experience: 1 Maverick 1 Wicked Twister 1 Corkscrew 2 Gemini 2 Magnum 1 MeanStreak 1 Blue Streak 1 Mine Ride 1 Wave Swinger 1 Disaster Transport 1 Iron Dragon 1 Sky Ride (that ride is freaky!) 1 Space Spiral 1 CP & LE Railroad 1 Tilt-A-Whirl Thanks for reading!
    3 points
  2. My son, who is six, is a huge thrill seeker. He's been riding coasters and thrill rides since he was like 3, riding all the coasters at WDW and Disney Paris. Also rode the Matterhorn at DL in Anaheim when he was either two or three! He LOVES The Racer at KI, and yesterday he finally got to do his first rides on Vortex and Beast. He liked The Vortex, though he said his head was bouncing around a bit on the restraint. But he LOVED The Beast. It was very funny because when we pulled into the station, he looked at me and said, "We need to ride that again! RIGHT NOW!!" Can't wait for him to go on his first Beast night ride...that's his daddy's favorite ride in the world.
    2 points
  3. ^Really? Must everything be about SOB?
    2 points
  4. Oiy Vey.... man this board is the most mixed up KI board I have ever seen. I'll set the story straight. Officially no one has ever died at King's Island. How so? Well, no one is pronounced dead at PKI... that happens at the hospital. ;-) There has only been one ride-related fatality in the park's history. On June 9th 1991 Candy Taylor, fell from the Flight Commader ride formerly located on Coney Mall. The ride, an Intamin Pilot ride allowed guests to flip or rotate their individual cockpits. But let me back up, because that day has become known as KI's darkest day. At approximately 8:30 in the evening, Timothy Benning (22)entered the park's pond located next to the Octoberfest Beir Garden to, apparently, retrieve a lost item. Upon entering the restricted area he was shocked due to an electrical current (later determined to be coming from a defective water circulation pump.) When he screamed and fell unconscious in the shallow water, his friend William Haithcoat (20) jumped in to pull him out. Immediately Haithcoat was shocked. Upon hearing the screams a park security officer, Darrel Robertson (20) jumped in attempting to help and was also shocked. Ironically the rescuers... Haithcoat and Robertson died, but Benning survived. The Octoberfest area of the park was emptied immediately, and closed off. Helicopters landed in the park to life-flight the victims to the hospital. They were undergoing CPR when they left. Just after this at the back of the park, Ms. Taylor, who was drunk, boarded Flight Commander at approximately 9:45pm. She rode by herself which later was determined to be the cause of her death. As the ride proceeded, she passed out (her Blood Alchohol level was 3.0. ) while flipping the ride upside down. Since her body was limp, she slid to the side towards the empty seat next to her and out of the over-the-shoulder restraint and lap bar. She fell 60 feet to the concrete below in front of eye-witnesses who were horrified. A design flaw in the ride was blamed. The ride was closed the rest of the 1991 season, but re-opened in 1992. The other death mentioned occurred on Grad Night 1983 when an un-named 17 year-old boy was found after he cllimbed a 10 foot barrier fence on the Eiffel Tower's 50-foot observation platform and fell in the elevator shaft. He plummeted to his death and rumor has it he was partially decapitated. A lot of mystery still surrounds this instance, but the general belief is that the boy either committed suicide or was showing off for friends and climbed into the restricted area. The Tower's 50 foot platform was closed and never re-opened. Each instance above was investigated and all were determined accidental. The park was fined for various OSHA violations, and more than likely settled with the families. Also of note, in 1976 a Wild Animal Safari Lion caretaker was mauled and killed as well. But King's Island is also the site of Heart Attacks, Strokes, etc of which people have perished. But so have malls, grocery stores, workplaces etc etc etc. Shaggy
    2 points
  5. Found this on Youtube... A guide to Coney in its final season before KI opened.
    1 point
  6. If the photo people are stalking you that bad, you can also go to GR or drop a line at the website. If enough bad complaints come in, they might make the photo people back down.
    1 point
  7. (...must avoid bad pun about asphalt....)
    1 point
  8. I wonder what Mondial's return policy looks like, and how the company feels about having just built three more of these...
    1 point
  9. The most famous picture is of him with a tour group (i believe?) in the shelter underneath the ticket/season pass sales building.
    1 point
  10. Proably some animals right activist would get mad
    1 point
  11. Around the time the film "Red Dawn" came out, Cold War hysteria was at an all time high. Kings Island built a series of underground "weather" shelters in the 80's and reallocated them for storage purposes conveniently around the time that the Berlin Wall fell. In the mid 90's they used to give tours of them. As a PR stunt, Patrick Swayze came in and gave a speech on the day the tours opened to the public. I'm surprised no one has shared pictures on here before.
    1 point
  12. WOW is that a topic bump! Where did you dig up this fossil?
    1 point
  13. This needs to stop.
    1 point
  14. Kinzel talked. He was good at it and loved listening to him talk. It was listening he wasn't so good at.
    1 point
  15. Yeah. I'm still trying to figure him out.
    1 point
  16. I love that they are getting much more involved with their fans. Chances are enthusiasts are most likely to follow them, and they are probably aware of this. So in my opinion they are kind of giving us a little nod, saying, "We know you're out there, and we appreciate you, so here's some information you might like that the general public won't always find out about as quickly." Maybe I am WAY off on this, but to me this is what it kinda feels like. I realize anyone can follow them (and I bet Facebook is where the most non-enthusiasts follow them), but I still feel it's probably us KI junkies that follow them the most. I follow Greg, Don and the Facebook page. Don't wanna miss out on anything exciting! lol
    1 point
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