silver2005

Upon a closer look, I fail to see how a Thunderbird goes along with a voyage across the sea...

A few observations- 1. LSM launch 2. Like the interaction it has with the launch and first inversion around the area and then has a part that finishes with a terrain section, nice. 3. I'm surprised B&M's first launcher is a newer model. I was guessing it would be a sit down (standard or floorless) or possibly an inverted coaster. 4. Kentucky Kingdom is SOL

Wow, HW is shelling $22 million for this? Consider me impressed.

^^I can see it now, a bunch of KIC members at one member's house huddled around someone with a Smartphone or a PC trying to get the stream to load.

I'm on several coaster sites furiously doing this at the moment as opposed to trying the Livestream.

Trip Report- 7/24 This was a shorter trip to Kings Island, mainly meant for some relaxation. Been putting up with a lot of stresses this summer, so any trip I take to our beloved park in Mason is worth it to me. I got in a lot of rides in the morning since most of the shows didn't start until after lunch. I went to 2 new shows. I wanted to do the Flashhback 80's show, but alas, they didn't do Thursdays. The first was Rock and Roll Never Forgets. To be honest, it felt a bit disjointed. A LOT of it is devoted to Elvis and Michael Jackson, but it feels off with the way the selections flow into one another. It starts out with Elvis and a little Chuck Barry, but then some 60's Woodstock music comes out of nowhere, and Whitney Houston's selections didn't fit at all. The cast rushed through almost every transition and didn't keep tone very well, it seemed like they were yelling into the mic rather than actual singing. I'd take The Boyz are Back over this any day. Then the true gem I found. This is now my favorite show at Kings Island and I really, really hope they keep it. If you know about the musician side of me, you know which one I'm about to say; Playlist Live! Any show with a live band instruments wins over anything in my book. I know we all talk up Cirque Imagine, but Playlist's music style along with the location felt more engaging to the audience than Cirque. The singers were amazing and ooooh, that horn and bass section! THAT is how you pull off a show. I also would like to tip my cap to the entire food department today. They had the park smelling so good today near almost every stall. Juke Box and the grill in Planet Snoopy really made the taste buds start to sizzle. Also, I had my first blue ice cream in a while today, and I always underestimate the feeling of nostalgia and pure joy walking up to purchase one. Kind of random, but WindSeeker was down until about 5 pm (shocker I know), but also, Congo Falls went down as well in the mid-afternoon. All in all, it was a great day including fantastic weather. I would have stayed longer, but a nasty migraine hit around 6:45 pm and I had to leave. I didn't get many good pictures as my battery died. Will be remedying that on the Fast Lane visit next weekend.

There will be more to come as I will be taking my camera tomorrow to Kings Island. I plan on this being a more relaxed trip. Might check out more of the shows besides Cirque. I'm hoping that Kings Island keeps the live band they have as I may try out for it next year.

I'm feeling a trip to Kings Island this week, maybe as early as tomorrow. EDIT-Thursday looks to be a more appealing day concerning weather, so that'll be the day I go.

Zoo photos. These are mostly the highlights, but I'll shoehorn in a few in the random photo thread as well. Accidentally used a flash on this. Whoops. Kind of impressed they'd leave a bird like this around without a cage (this was outside the Reptile House). I'm guessing it either can't fly or can't fly well. This guy was a pain to get a photo. This required a bit of elaborate camera handling as well. Of all the animals to be sleeping, I think Lucy deserves it with all the times she visits UC for football and basketball games (and a myriad of other things). From a bird show. This guy along with a few hawks and bigger birds were flown about, some rather close to the audience. The zoo train. My favorite picture. My 2nd favorite picture.

Cincinnati Zoo- 7/16/14 Today, the UC Community Band, which I play alto saxophone for, had a concert at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens today. One of our brass players (brass in general as he plays trumpet and baritone) works as an elephant handler a the zoo. As such, we got free admission, but it was also $1 day, which reared its ugly head; more on that later. In any case, it was a good situation for me to check out the zoo again. I haven't been there in nearly a decade, back when my family had a membership and we'd go all the time, and boy has it changed since. Getting there was a pain though. As I said, it was $1 day, and I could tell most of the demographic was from around Clifton/the immediate area around the zoo. On top of that, there were also a lot of camp groups, both ones run outside the zoo and ones run by the zoo itself (which I have to commend the zoo for in their conservation efforts, they do a stellar job). I arrived at around 10:30, but holy cow, traffic was bad. When I got to Clifton, the cars were lined up all the way down Vine from the zoo parking lots and all the way up MLK Jr Drive to Reading Road. No one saw it fit to go down Burnett to go in that way, which I did and got in probably around 1/8th the time the rest of those cars were waiting. It started to show in the zoo as well around noon when all those cars finally got in. I got through most of the zoo's exhibits within 2 1/2 hours before the crowds really set in and just took a leisurely stroll around afterwards up until the concert. I really liked the changes to the zoo since I last went. First off, there used to be their main parking lot off of Dury Ave. with their main entrance there. The 'main' entrance (in quotes as there are 3-4 entrances) has been moved to the corner of Vine and Erkenbecker while the old parking lot is now where they have all their big Africa exhibit (lions, giraffes, cheetahs, etc). The elephant exhibit changed quite a bit as well, with a more lushly covered trail than before with just the building. The entire zoo seemed more full of trees and foliage than I remember. I don't like what they did to Swan Lake though, with it merging with a crane exhibit and having a raised walkway. Its still one of my favorite areas in the zoo along side Jungle Trails and the area by the Reptile House. I also liked how they scheduled more shows and 'encounters' with zoo employees showing off animals, probably a way to let guests see certain animals active (I know we've all been to zoos and complained about the animals doing nothing, lying around). I also made sure to pay homage to one Lucy the Bearcat (yes, its a real animal). On top of the $1 day, they also had kind of a music festival going, probably why the band I'm in was invited to play. There was an African-esque drum group, a Dixieland band (also provided by the UC Band), and a guitarist. The only problem is they had those groups perform along the paths, which made for some wicked bottlenecks with the enlarged crowds. All in all, I had a great day re-discovering the zoo. I might go more often, but definitely on days not $1 days. I'd rather pay the extra amount and not have to deal with that kind of crowd, plus the money is for a good cause in the zoo's conservation missions and such, so I wouldn't mind. Pictures to come. EDIT: I also forgot to mention that the zoo is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the year the last passenger pigeon, Martha, died and the species went extinct.

I'm actually putting my money on a dive coaster here. Its something that would be entirely unique to the area and I think the simple layouts, thus slightly less costs than the other models (in theory), would be more akin to the kind of budget Holiday World has. If it is a dive coaster, I would suspect a layout similar to Krake at Heide Park.

I wonder if Kings Island ever considered something like this in regards to the Big Red Machine back in the 70's.

^Well, you'd be missing out on half the slides then. Honestly, its not that bad and the airtime is sooooo worth it. The only way it was bad on the back for me was when I rode one of them continuously, which I did on a few. I didn't do the zip line just out of disinterest. I think I may have 2-4 more trips lined up for the rest of the summer before band owns my soul again. I'm making sure to make one of them a Fast Lane Plus visit, regardless of if we still have the KIC meet up with that plan in mind. I want to go at least once in August to get used to the warmer weather for band camp. I have 2 weeks off of anything band related between my last community band performance and band camp and I want to relax as much as I can those two weeks before the grind.

There is something similar with an all day drink wristband that I had to pay $10 for. Didn't know there was one directly associated with the souvenir cups.

What's more puzzling is that they put that out in the midst of those things happening pretty recently- the PotC incident, Ninja derailing, and the ZacSpin in Spain throwing a rider off. It just makes it look like more of a bad idea.

Why is the state of Kansas allowing this to be open?! This is beyond stupid if this is all true. I can't believe they're going through with opening it at all. It its a marketing ploy, it has to be one of the worst ones I've ever seen come from an amusement park of any kind.

Yeah, of all the area chili, Empress lies at the bottom for me, but in any case, its just nice to see some variety. If they want an opinion from me concerning chili and staying away from GS or Skyline, they should go with Blue Ash. That stuff rocks. I also wanted to add that today was a very good day to go if you were a heterosexual male. I'll let that speak for itself.

Trip Report 7/10- First time to The Beach Having lived here for all my life, I seemingly never saw fit to go to The Beach. I've been a pass holder at Kings Island for most of the last dozen years, and I either didn't get around to going to The Beach or it just slipped my mind. I remedied that today. Got there at 11 am, got dressed and started the visit. It was a nice change of pace from going to Soak City. The Beach just feels like it has a more natural feel and feels more vibrant. There were things going on besides guests clamoring around the park, such as all the volleyball courts being used, picnics going on, etc. It felt like a more personal atmosphere, more geared to guests comfort rather than putting the big rides on a pedestal. I will say the layout is a bit confusing, but they had signage in all the right places which made finding my way round easier, especially being a first time guest. My only things about the water park was it could use more music pumping through the area as it seemed rather bland with only guest noise and some of the surfaces could use more friction surfaces as some paths were slippery, especially around the slide known as Kamikaze near the front. Speaking of slides, they were all awesome. I didn't get to do Big Kahuna, the slide with uphill sections as I went alone, but the rest were great. Some slides, particularly The Cliff, Banzai Blast, and the yellow slide on Cowabunga Curl had airtime. Banzai Blast is probably my favorite slide there for now. It isn't just little bits either, you're airborne for a really nice length of time on some. Its a little hard on the back, but totally worth it. Kamikaze, Cowabunga Curl and Pipeline Plunge had nice speed to them, the turns had some nice banking to them with really good pacing. The only one I didn't particularly like was the single inner tube slide which I can't find the name of. It was slow, awkward, and took a lot of effort to get going again if they stalled. I also have a new pet peeve concerning water parks- people pushing their way through and/or causing the tubes to stall in the middle on the lazy river. Overall, I really enjoyed it. They definitely have a new repeat customer in the future. I really hope they find ways to keep adding and expanding to what they have, it looks like it has a lot of potential. On a side note, I was glad to see they had Empress Chili there. Glad to see not everyone in the tri-state area is under the Skyline and Gold Star empire.

And last I checked, Cedar Point has a dropping tower, or rather, 4 towers.

The last time I was at the park, the Diamondback crew seemed agitated. They told guests that trains would leave in 45 seconds, but the tone of voice made it seem they were angry with guests for no good reason. They then try to juxtapose it by doing the 'I say Diamond, you say back' routine or anything to liven things up again, but it falls flat on guests who are being rushed. For one of Kings Island's signature rides, its sure poorly staffed this year. I also overhear the ops speaking to themselves (on Diamondback, Vortex and Beast) saying they are angry with whoever is in charge and taking their time loading trains. I've also heard ride ops manning the microphones put down rides in their own park or even parks in the chain, not in the poking fun way, but in ways that make those other rides seem undesirable (Bat and Adventure Express are the usual rides brought up in that regard). Its like Kings Island spent too much time on training the Banshee crew and forgot to spread that professionalism to the other rides as well.

No matter how smart you are, you can't fight stupidity. The stupidity will always win. EDIT: To put it another way, you can lead a horse (GP guest) to water (the information about the new ride), but you can't make him drink (actually read and understand the info). But with that, you're implying that a majority of Kings Island's guests are that way, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case. Also, if renaming Flight Deck to Bat was seemingly such a bad idea, why did Kings Island just do it?

Just throwing this in there- for all your speculating on how the public would accept The Bat rename, I have yet to hear anyone bring that up. I think the GP is smarter than most of us give them credit for, which is why I still think a new wooden coaster could come sooner than most of you are thinking. New rides at Cedar Fair usually have those information websites about them which the park could easily talk about GCI of whoever builds it and do enough to separate it from Son of Beast. I think our GM and PR duo is smart enough to pull that off if they wish to.

From a few things I'm reading, its not that they can't operate together from an engineering standpoint, but rather, New Jersey won't let them. You'd think NJFTP would have put a little bit of forethought into that and actually build a separate tower. I'm surprised that rides like Kindga Ka and Nitro even exist in New Jersey.

Concerning the talk of 'shelf life' of suspended coasters, Ninja is regarded as one of the more forceful ones left. I believe it has the most swing of any suspended coaster ever built (I remember reading that somewhere). All things considered, I'm very glad no one suffered worse than an injury. That looked like it was rather nasty from the riders' perspective.

^Okay, I might have been mistaken about that, which I apologize. Also, no need to get so angry. You act like I labeled you something worse or something for mistaking that you may have liked Intamin. Learn proportionate response.