mayaman2

Even if we have a height restriction, as many other have said, it's not high enough to impede a giga. There goes my hopes for a strata at some point, but considering the terrain, I doubt that was going to happen anyway.

A Skyroller would be great anywhere in the park, honestly. I'd love to see one go where Flight Commander used to be. The added elevation would make for some great views.

I don't believe Mason has set a height limit for KI. AFAIK there's nothing in the area that would invoke a height limit.

RIP Dinosaurs Alive 2011-2017

Speaking for all teenage/young adult guys... don't stop wearing booty shorts, please.

Don't come at me with the orange. It looks yellow. @Sally's Sea Plane #1 Fan

Right on. Sally's Sea Plane pales in comparison to the splendor of a certain blue and yellow Arrow Looper.

@Hawaiian Coasters 325 Just some food for thought... how many attractions at KI interact with each other? Mystic Timbers has interactions with the train and WWC, but that's it. KI is not a park that has coasters close enough to interact with one another, which is why I find your mock-ups pretty far-fetched. Definite improvement with the second one over the first one (having the ride go through the middle of the Coney Midway? This isn't CP), but still not likely in the slightest. I know you said it was "unlikely," but why even speculate something that's so unlikely? It's quite different to say, "I know it's unlikely, but the giga may work better in Rivertown than Action Zone/Coney Mall," because while it is unlikely, it is still within a normal scale of likeliness - having outlandish ideas and spamming a board with them is not on a scale of likeliness, and only stifles real conversation/theories and encourages others to up the ante with more outlandish ideas if we give the impression that such "out of the box" thinking is the norm or encouraged - which further stifles real conversation. I don't mean to single you out, since there are several others who encourage empty talk and drive forward debates that go in circles because they cannot be reasoned with, but this is an issue that will have to be addressed at some point. Let's face it guys, news is slow as to what amusement parks do with developments and it is several years between big announcements with not a lot of new content to talk about, but idle unfounded speculation does lower the quality of posts and ideas in the community.

The terrain beyond where my image ends is very hilly - I've never walked it, but I've driven it several times. I hear Dollywood has some hilly terrain in its guest areas though, so making the area more Oktoberfest themed and a transition into X-Base/Coney Mall would be nice. The biggest obstacle is that the maintenance road right there is the quickest way into Action Zone for vehicles, the only other road goes deep into undeveloped KI territory behind Firehawk/FOF and comes out under Banshee... which takes forever, especially if there were some emergency situation in Action Zone. So not only would KI have to do all the work needed for developing the area to Oktoberfest for guest use, but it may have to do a lot of work creating new roads in its backstage. Racer does not have a storage shed for its trains, it leaves them on the track every night. Its PLC (Programmable Logic Computer, it's the brain of the ride) is under the station. Nothing maintenance related about it is stored in the ride's area, because the Woodshop (which handles wooden coaster maintenance) are the red buildings visible from X-Base.

Story about SoB bolts and the rides department: In the ride department's office, some of the area supervisors have SoB bolts on their desks, but nobody is allowed to touch them because they are "cursed to close down a ride." There was a Rivertown area supervisor who touched one and the Crypt closed that year, and a Coney Mall area supervisor accidentally touched one early in 2017 and then Dinosaurs Alive closed.

Any number of seasonal employees would have had access to that area in order to bamboozle everyone.

Ehh, I really want to say that it's just snow melting from the last time it was shoveled.

Slightly off-topic, but wanna give the rundown on that?

*coughItalianBacklotStuntJobCoastercough* Seriously, right there? Really? You want a parking lot coaster in the middle of your park?

Huh. Your comment made me realize that in my tangent, I completely forgot to plainly state what point I was trying to make. 2019 will not bring a giga to Kings Island. The reason why I brought up the point about competition and how KI is largely reactive rather than proactive to market development is to show that it is still too soon for KI to stop reacting to the market, and probable future developments (2019 hyper at KK? 2020 coaster at HW?) will cause KI to react with a bigger, better coaster - maybe one that surpasses 300 feet? My point is, the competition that will spur a giga hasn't been built yet, thus there's no need for a reaction from KI - they still have the biggest and fastest [citation needed] roller coasters in their market, no need to compete with itself - the coaster wars are over, and competitive thrill rides are CP's area of expertise.

Photoshop and a little graphical knowledge. To open it up a little, you could always knock out the old FOF photo and just have FOF exit straight out to the midway rather than the overhang like it is now.

An idea for adding a second Coney midway and expanding X-Base (since X-Base is considered a subsection of CM and not its own area). I was careful to leave room for maintenance and wary of the changes in elevation in the area, since the top part of the antique cars border lies on what is basically a 5ft cliff that the maintenance road creates.

uhhh thanks me too r/meirl

We are. I will not give any actual numbers because that is not my place, so you'll have to take my word that park attendance and ridership was up this year, but there has been a general small decline over the past several years.

Too lazy to quote, so I'm just going to throw a few thoughts out there. Kings Island's main market is the Midwest, drawing in crowds from most of southern Ohio (northern Ohio is Cedar Point's territory), Kentucky and southern Indiana, and the surrounding states - as an employee, I regularly encounter people from Tennessee, Illinois, and Pennsylvania (though I'd imagine Kennywood/Hersheypark/Knoebels/Dorney Park draw a lot of Pennsylvania). In this market, the main competition is Holiday World and Kentucky Kingdom; two smaller parks, but with large audience draws - Holiday World has several world-class woodies, a fantastic water park, and outstanding customer service and park experience, while Kentucky Kingdom has an RMC and a good flat ride lineup (from what I hear, I am planning my first KK trip for this summer). Both of these draw from two of KI's main records/draws (Best Children's Area in the World for 17 years in a row, and Most Wooden Track in a park) and directly challenge Soak City and KI's own history as a family-friendly park with good guest interaction. Kings Island's most recent additions are DIRECT responses to the challenges set forth by the competition. 2014 - Banshee 2015 - Planet Snoopy expansion 2016 - Tropical Plunge 2017 - Mystic Timbers (winner of 2017's Best New Ride by the Golden Ticket Awards) and Winterfest (attempt to please the market with guest experience and a throwback to the "good ol' days") 2018 - ... (New building in Coney Mall, likely quality of life improvements throughout the park?) So what am I getting at? Kings Island's main concern right now is market dominance in the Midwest (sans Cedar Point). They already have the tallest and fastest [citation needed] roller coasters in the area, and are acting very re-actively to market developments rather than proactively. This year break is much needed - the park's focus on the market has left its other inner workings lackluster. I see more complaints about the terrible parking lot (the employee lot is worse, I guarantee it), slow food service and bad Point of Sale systems, and a degrading family-friendly atmosphere (which I don't agree with). I see the addition of a new Coney Mall restaurant as a godsend, because they may bundle in an upgrade to PoS systems park-wide and put an end to the slow and unproductive food service (no offense to food service employees, but please, step it up, especially in Cornerstone Cafe). Looking to the future, what may the park do next? To look at that, we have to see how the Midwest market is evolving. 2018 brings Kentucky Kingdom two new flat rides, and two new attractions to their 5D theater, while Holiday World invests further into its water park. 2019 has murmurings of new coasters at both Holiday World and Kentucky Kingdom. Seeing as KI has been largely reactive rather than proactive to developments in the market, this is what I believe the timeline for park development will be: 2018 - QoL improvements, upgrades to PoS systems, focus on guest experience and service 2019 - New flat rides (Antique Cars, new Coney Mall flats, new Planet Snoopy rides, or a combination thereof) 2020 - Water park expansion (new water slide, possibly in place of Mondo Monsoon) 2021 - Giga (new addition to Action Zone, reuses/upgrades Son of Beast's queue) 2022 - 50th! Repaint/new light package on Racer and other classic rides In conclusion, I find all of this "writing in the snow" and "DAE Kings Island NEEDS a giga?!?!?!" talk really annoying and quite childish. Kings Island does not care about what we, a small group of enthusiasts want, but rather what the general population want - and right now, that's looking like more immersive experiences, good customer service, and family fun. The time will come when Kings Island has reset itself as the King of the Midwest market, and after some housekeeping and ride padding, will unveil the biggest and baddest giga that the world has seen. We can let Fury 325 hold that title for a few more years ;). P.S.: I'm going to scream if I see another person say it's going to be an Intamin. I will eat an announcement flyer for any Intamin coaster that makes its way into Kings Island within the next decade, quote me on that.

While I do anticipate Invertigo being on its way out within the next 5 years, no way will Congo Falls be removed as well. Their ridership has been on the decline, yes, but so has ridership throughout the whole park - if you take that into perspective, then you'll notice that its ridership has been relatively steady, and its placement doesn't necessarily interfere with any future replacements for Invertigo. I see Congo Falls sticking around for a while yet, barring any unforeseen events.

Security is definitely present at KI in the off-season, but it's not an impregnable border control like some suggest. Many seasonal workers from Winterfest (especially supervisors) still have business in the park to do, wrapping up the 2017 season and preparing for the 2018 one. Select seasonal associates have access to that area, and definitely have the motive to keep the prank going. I highly doubt that this is an indication of things to come in this decade (I anticipate 2021/2022 giga), and you are all being prank'd by a teenager with 20 minutes to kill on break.

In defense of seeing backstage areas from the Midway, there's nothing really to do about that. The more stuff you put up, the more to maintain, and it's harder for employees to access the backstage. Especially with how much area that the park covers, it's pretty inevitable until we get the next large expansion.

First off, a few comments: The Flight of Fear easter eggs are all hilarious. There's one guy who ran the Coney Mall ride department this year who is totally obsessed with themeing, and spent a lot of time on all of the FOF references. He also made a lot of the signs for Mystic's queue during Winterfest, many of which used the names of people in the Rides department (same with the FOF themeing). And about the 'Vortex 1987,' that was something the crew spent a good chunk of the 2016 season creating during downtime situations - there wasn't much else for them to do, anyway. Next season I'll be on the lookout for more easter eggs, but I'll have to supply one now defunct egg: Before Dinosaurs Alive was installed, there was a Haunt trail called "Trail of Terror." Many TOT props were left in the woods, including gravestones which read "Roger Wilco" and several fake severed limbs. TOT and DA overlapped at points, so if you were somehow bored by the dinosaurs and knew where to look, there would be gravestones (and sometimes limbs coming from the ground) in the woods, hidden enough to have to look for them, but visible. Unfortunately, nobody's gonna be on the lookout for them ever again.

Do people still think we're going to get a ride next year?