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Kings Island Central has been abuzz about all the improvements Kings Island has been doing for their 50th anniversary season in 2022. To say we are just sightly happy and somewhat excited would be an understatement. KIC keeps a detailed timeline of park history (click here to start in 1969) and the list of items for the 2022 season continues to grow, and we are still 2 months away to opening day on April 16th. Before the season ended in 2021 KIC members noticed that the band organ has been totally removed from the ride. We learned in December that Kings Island was having the Wurlitzer #157 Organ restored. Details The Wurlitzer Duplex Orchestral Military Band Organ Style #157 was built in 1918 and was originally used on a carousel at Ocean Grove, New Jersey. It was purchased in 1964 by Paul Eakins and completely restored. It was then placed on PTC #79 when it was moved from Coney Island to Kings Island. It is hard to believe when seeing it on the ride, but the organ stands nearly 8 1/2 feet tall, over 12 feet wide and nearly four feet deep. On Feb 24th the park revealed that they were restoring the Grand Carousel along with the other exciting improvements for the 2022 season. The Grand Carousel opened in 1926. The carousel has 48 hand-carved horses, of those, 28 move up and down. We learned on the KIBlog that the All Around Carousels, LTD has been on site at Kings Island restoring the carousel horses and chariots. They have been busy sanding, cleaning, cutting out bad joints, repairing hoofs and tails, replacing jewels, touching up paint and varnishing to restore the ride and make it look new once again. Kings Island Central is very excited to see the PTC Grand Counsel when the park opens for its 50th Anniversary season in 2022 on April 16th. We apricate all that Cedar Fair has been doing to keep Kings Island looking great. All Around Carousels, LTD in action:

I’d be all for having less mazes if that means a bigger budget per maze, I’d love to see some extremely high quality & high tech mazes make their way into Haunt. There’s some really cool technologies out there that are specifically made for haunted attractions that I’d love to have in the mazes.

Given the recent refocus on the family aspect within the chain, I’d probably agree with you. But an overhaul of the Haunt experience as a whole would be welcomed I’m sure. A lot of the mazes have seen better days. I’d push for quality over quantity always. Less, but better mazes. A larger emphasis on scare zones. Maybe incorporate some other fall festival-esque activity’s like food trucks, live music, entertainment, etc. I know I more or less described many aspects of the Tricks and Treats festival. But I think there’s room for improvement for the actual Haunt event as a whole.

I don’t exactly see the park’s numbers but I have always been under the understanding that Haunt makes money hand over fist. I can’t imagine that not being true. Maybe the parks that are losing Haunt do good, not great, numbers and the staffing and other considerations make this make sense. Loosing Haunt or Winterfest would be tough for Kings Island and even Cedar Point. Offering a product and then substantially reducing it would wreak terror on season pass sales. Plus the new guy doing PR ain’t exactly Jeffrey Siebert when it comes to selling the park’s perspective. It imagine be pretty devastating.

https://www.visitkingsisland.com/events/haunt The official page shows dates for 2022.

I personally hate this completely family oriented approach that many parks are taking. We have a kids event, the adults need something too! Haunt shouldn’t be for kids, and definitely shouldn’t go away. Every year, haunt seems to shrink a bit, and it worries me.

Not all the time. BiTech. They've reversed-engineered some parts and manufacture a LOT in-house for Cedar Fair.

I agree that the family friendly portion of the event would be better held in the water park. More room to spread out. Planet Snoopy gets congested as it is with the rides in there, and then add in all the trick or treat stations, and it is chaotic. I get that opening the water park for the event means more staffing, which hurts margins, but I think it would produce a better all around event.

Someone who volunteered to work on it, but not a full restore.

I like the overall environment of Halloween Haunt. I think the kids portion of the Haunt is over crowded since moving back from Soak City. Planet Snoopy becomes too crowded and using Soak City was a great way to resolve that. The park is always packed full of guest every Friday and Saturday night during haunt. Canceling this even would hurt the parks even more. If Cedar Fair is strapped for cash its time to offload some of the parks they haven't touched in 20 years.

Somehow I feel like a refresh of the event wouldn’t make it any better. Probably worse.

Regardless, I feel like a refresh of the event would be great for the park. It’s been a bit… stale for a while. I wish it was on the same level of quality as Winterfest. But if it’s been a lot of cash, I don’t see why they’d change anything.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/business/article258725283.html Pretty Strong,

Dollywoods Luminights are packed. It seems like the better route for the future. Kings Islands Haunt crowd is questionable enough that they don’t allow re entry. If Haunt is attracting the sane unsupervised crowd as last spring, that’s a consideration. The scare mazes and dark foggy pathways are a liability. They have cut down on the fog recently. Ultimately they will chose the demographic that spends the most at the park. On a side note I would let be one bit sad if those hideous metal side Haunt buildings disappeared from the parks.

I believe they already have LED filament bulbs on the carousel. During Winterfest, I was talking to my brother, who has an eye for things like that, and we noticed that the bulbs didn't look like the traditional incandescent bulbs, but rather like what's pictured above. I remember about 10 or so years ago they had solid white LED bulbs. This. I've noticed several of those mirrors missing, along with one of the big ones. Even some ornamented wood pieces were missing from the mirrors and rounding boards. Hopefully those will be remedied too.

It goes in cycles. If Haunt disappears, they will go this route for 7 years or so and then bring it back. This is an easier bring back than Winterfest so the gap would be less. But yes, even though our Haunt has scaled back every year, and is by most people here the same event from prior years, it still brings crowds, so the incentive to spend a lot to change it up every year isn't there. KI has data on a tricks and treats only event from 2020 and data on Haunt "post" pandemic, and CP has numbers on expanding Haunt to Thursdays and Sundays, so CF has a wealth of data to go by to make a financial decision over an emotion decision. I am sure someone is crunching the numbers and doing the analysis to determine if Haunt should continue.

In case people missed the source and link to the other thread...it is two of the smaller parks. Until you see Knott's, Wonderland, Dominion, Carowinds, or the Point cancel it, I doubt we will not have it this year....but with the current trend of being more family-oriented, it is something we could see happen down the line, especially if they decide the hassle and staffing of the event becomes more of a liability than an asset. Things can change, but Knott's, Carowinds, and Dominion are the only "confirmed" Haunts at this time, but KI is usually one of the last in the chain to formalize the next event. https://cpfoodblog.com/several-cedar-fair-parks-replacing-halloween-haunt/

Yep, have it all

Usually all of the rides are open. However, crowds can be pretty bad and operations can be slower than usual since associates are still training at that point.

Most rides are open and some of the largest crowds LOL. You can do a search here to see how busy LOL. Take a look at the first few pages of this thread to get an idea...IIRC last year was the first season passholder preview that they let Fast Lane be used as well....