Jump to content

Firefall Pkd

Members
  • Posts

    91
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Social Media

Profile Information

  • Location
    Northern VA
  • Interests
    Busch Gardens Europe & Curse of DarKastle

Firefall Pkd's Achievements

KIC Tourist

KIC Tourist (1/13)

3

Reputation

  1. Don't expect too much this year. While you may get more than KD did... it still felt like the same horribly run park we left back in October. Got my Maxx Pass so I can go to the other parks, tried to have fun in the park and got very bored after only 2.5 hours and left for Busch Gardens. We knew thinks wouldn't be perfect just yet, but there has been little to no progress in the right direction yet.
  2. SheiKra is converting the trains, not getting new ones. Not to crush your hopes or anything... Griffon will actually have riders from the media on the 16th and 17th of May as well as a VIP Party on Friday the 18th for those who win spots.
  3. Too bad KD hasn't taken care of the fountains for 3 years now, half of them are always turned off and half of those working are shooting at different pressures and different directions. A truly horrible first sight at the park for anyone that notices. Since some are turned off the water landing in these empty funnels would make a gurgling/farting noise, very odd to walk down IStreet and have a sound you can't figure out where it's coming from. I can only hope CF will put an end to that lack of care.
  4. That's interesting, kinda knew it was coming one of these days though I'm a little surprised it's coming so soon. If it's for the good of the park, then I'm all for it cause let's face it KD really needs some sprucing up But one BIG question, WHY is XLC up for sale BEFORE Shockwave...!?
  5. Well if it's the same people who did Imaginique then that would explain why they have "human-sized polka-dotted slinkys" I was starting to think it was a knock-off of what Busch put on. Yes, it was very good for a theme park but nowhere near the quality of any of the Cirque traveling shows and espically not for any of the Vegas shows or La Nouba at Disney World. And for real Cirque news, seems they have a brand new traveling show coming out in April 2007. I don't know if this is the real name or just a place holder before the details are released; "Cirque 2007"
  6. Ah, reminds me of Imaginique at Busch Gardens, and they had to go and replace it with that Kinetix show I'd love to see this show, let alone go to Sfft in general. Oh well, I'll get my Cirque du Soleil fix next week in Washington DC with Corteo.
  7. I honestly hope someone from KD takes notice of good lighting on the Eiffel Tower and brings that cool effect to VA. I didn't get to see KI at night when I was there this summer, maybe next year.
  8. It is true that it is very simular to SheiKra at BGA, such as a right turn out of the station into the lift hill, right turn to drop and into an immelman and brakes soon after. Things that will set it apart would be the second immelman and a small hill that may offer some airtime. I would agree it's alittle more based on SheiKra than I would like, but it should be original enough to offer an amazing experiance. For me it's just going to be strange to see a new towering coaster where there once was a ground level family ride
  9. I'll deffinately be trying the park again as soon as I can and hopefully not on a weekend. I think going on a Sunday didn't help with crowds and lines which probably helped toward a skewed view of the park
  10. I just got back from the Media Event at the park to announce the ride, it is going to be truly amazing. A very nice presentation in the AbbeyStone Theatre with a skit, ride details, and of course the movie. After that was a site overview with questions from the media which was held in the Aquitaine France SkyRide station. It was made clear that Busch is not concerned with building the tallest or fastest (even when they do) but they care more about the greatness and quality of your ride experiance. I'll have an update on BGEscape.com later tonight for all to see.
  11. Sunday Aug. 13th 2006 Well after a couple of years of hanging around this site always having an interest to visit PKI I finally got that wish to come true. My cousins moved to Columbus so the park is only 90 miles away and I decided to grab that opportunity to experience it. This is going to be long, and I hope any die-hard PKI fans don’t hate me after this haha. And since I’ve been going to Kings Dominion for the past 12 years there will be plenty of comparison of these two parks. Started the day out with a long drive down I-71. Certainly not as fun of a road as I-95 down to KD. Many random changes between two and three lanes, doesn’t help when you want to be the one passing everyone in the Fast Lane. So more than an hour later I spot the Eiffel on the horizon and head off the exit. So first impressions come at the parking lot gate, a very interesting parking lot… wide and rectangular… Premium Parking, Regular Parking, Gold Parking. Paying extra to park close is ridiculous unless it’s like at Busch Gardens where there are two entirely separate lots and one requires a tram ride. And Gold Pass was in the back-middle of the lot, why? Kings Dominion Gold Pass Parking is much closer to the park entrance so I found it odd PKI’s was so much further away. So after flashing my pass at the Guest Services window we head down International Street, feels so familiar yet so oddly different. I wanted to check out the new Nick Universe, well really just Avatar. This was an awesome ride I was really surprised how forceful it was for a ride in a kid’s area. I was kind of wishing KD had gotten one. So after that fantastic ride we decided to head toward Tomb Raider and was shocked about the no bags policy since of course at KD ours is floorless and the platform drops away and you can put your bags there, not here. So we skipped it for the time being and moved on to Beast. After hearing so much about The Beast from tv shows and other websites I had high hopes for this ride. They were kinda smashed to the ground and beaten with a rubber mallet… We sat in the front seat of the second car, I thought many parts of the ride were just too random. It’s pretty much built on a hillside and it didn’t seem to take full advantage of that as much as it could have. The long straight parts reminded me of Superman at SFA. So the second lift hill comes and dives into the helix and right into the brakes. I will say the helix was one of the most insane things I have ever experienced, but an entire lift hill just for a helix? I got off the ride rather confused and felt like I was missing something. Should not have hyped it up so much in my mind. Next up was Vortex; we sat in the back seat. I was hoping this was a good seat since it is the best while riding Anaconda. It’s an Arrow steel, so rough of course. This was another ride that really confused me not taking advantage of any of the terrain 80 feet below most of the ride. It was just too weird for me to be going through corkscrews so high off the ground, just another disappointment. So we wondered down Coney Mall and came to Flight of Fear. This was a Godsend since not having the one at home open for almost the entire summer for absolutely no good reason. It was an hour line but it was very worth it. It was very interesting to notice all the small differences between the two FoFs such as lighting (PKI’s is better) and sound effects. I really liked how “All Clear†is not blared over the station speakers just making the initial launch all the more exciting. By now it was lunch time, and Bubba Gump’s was close by. This is where I normally eat at KD so I was expecting something similar. It wasn’t… I prefer that you can go in, order, and sit at a booth and eat at KD, all the seating at PKI was outdoor what’s up with that? Haha. After lunch Adventure Express was right there, a very interesting ride kind of fun too but a little on the rough side. Not to mention the strange second lift right into the brake run, I was expecting something more but oh well not too shabby. It was getting hot out and we didn’t want to bother with Boomerang Bay so Congo Falls was a nice substitute to getting soaked. After that was Face Off, I don’t care for these rides but it was something to add to the coaster count. Got off with a headache, no surprise there. Drop Zone. Let me just start off with I still like KD’s better. Loading was very slow making the line seem to go on forever. The rotating bit was cool but nearly pointless since it only rotated once and stopped half way up the tower. It sat at the top for what seemed like an eternity and some announcement came on at the top talking about how it’s the tallest and fastest Drop Tower in the world…. Right… Don’t mention the one at Heidi Park in Germany. Fun ride, but I’ll stick with the KD one. We went on to find the slightly hidden entrance of Top Gun. This was one of the biggest surprises of the day. One of the best Arrow suspended coasters I have been on (all of 3 of them) though it was just too short. Rode that twice since it was so much fun. Oh, and SoB was a nice lawn ornament. Off to Delirium, long wait, MaXair was better. Nuff said. Next up was Italian Job, oh joy. This has to be one of the ugliest coasters on earth no matter what park it is in. I did like that PKI saved more trees in the area than KD even tired to. The launch from the station was a very weak start to begin things, but it eventually did get up to the 40ish mph range. No music was playing during the ride (boring). Then the helicopter scene was meh with barely working effects, our helicopter is cooler with the lights in the gun holes. The launch there was extremely weak, nowhere nearly as forceful as ours. And of course the final boost out of the billboard, can you say "nonexistent"? I wasn't expecting better than ours since theirs is a year old, but that was simply disappointing. So overall it made me greatly appreciate ours, but it's still the ugliest coaster on earth After that disappointment we were going to try our luck again with Tomb Raider. I don’t know if it was a really slow line or they were just having so many problems keeping the ride running. We got to the inside of the cave and nearly about to get on the ride when the thing breaks down. We’re going to wait it out, about 45 min later some lady announcement comes on “Tomb Raiders we regret to inform you that your expedition has been canceled this ride is now closed please exit the building.†Devastated I was. Not every day you get to ride a Top Spin in a Box…. After that we tried to find something we wanted to do but at this point Racer was closed, Tomb Raider was closed, Drop Zone was closed, Eiffel Tower was closed due to an elevator jam. So it seemed like there wasn’t anything else we could really do and decided to just call it a day and return home. Overall Kings Island is a very nice park; I don’t think I had as much fun as I should have because I’ve been raised with Kings Dominion. It was just too much like a strange parallel universe gone horribly wrong distorting my views of everything. The day was just a compare-fest and I couldn’t just relax. I will say the park is beautiful, and that is one thing I look for; lots of trees, flowers, and bodies of water with fountains. Of course it’s not up with the Busch Gardens standards, but nicely done nonetheless. As for the rides selection I think I’m going to stay with the Kings Dominion variety, I’m a launch coaster lover and when you have 4 of them in one place it’s awesome (getting repetitive, but still awesome). Sorry this was long, I hate to write long reviews (or any in general) and it took a week and a half to finally get this report online. I’m going to try and get back again next year and get a better feel for the park. Thanks.
  12. Smoking I'll agree with, Paramount has done little in enforcing the bans and they even sell those caner sticks next to the park entrance at KD. But for the Beer... I have no problem with it, barely even notice it. Now I know many people here wanted Busch to buy KI, now those are parks built on beer. Beer in every country at Busch Gardens Europe, yet somehow they come across as an extremely family friendly park. All things in moderation
  13. One word: Why? Personally I can't wait for the day that KD says they are removing Shockwave. It takes up far too much space on a prime piece of land on the main midway where something much better could be sitting.
  14. Honestly after watching about 10 min of the footage, I got bored and closed the window. And to think some people were jelious it wasn't being added to other paramount parks... haha, I bet those people are relieved now.
  15. Firefall Pkd

    Metal Detectors

    Yes there was a shooting a few years back in the parking lot, on BET day. (which led to that event being stopped from then on out... that's really a different topic though). As much as they metal detectors are a hassel and slow people getting into the park, I don't know how I would feel if they were taken away with a Richmond crowd. Whatever the outcome I'm going to trust the Cedar Fair judgement on this one.
×
×
  • Create New...