TombRaiderFTW

^ Mm, that makes sense. A tangent, and I'm thinking out loud here: It's struck me as a bit odd that Kings Island (to my knowledge) never sends Racer's or Beast's trains to PTC in the winter to be refurbed. Like, the trains are perfectly serviceable come spring, but I feel like trains that go to PTC come out the other end feeling like new, and KI's don't. I can't imagine it's THAT expensive to have done--small independent parks do it. Maybe it costs more than it does to have the park do it in-house, or maybe the trains are of age that PTC won't touch them unless they're replaced with new 3-bench trains. I'm under the impression that KI modified Beast's trains from 4-bench cars to 3-bench cars in-house, and maybe PTC won't take on liability for them because of that? But that wouldn't explain Racer. And it's not a Cedar Fair policy or anything, because Blue Streak's trains go to PTC every winter.

^ Thank you so much for posting! It's really cool to get firsthand accounts of a time in the park's history that doesn't get talked about in detail often. As far as the spark wall goes, do you know if that's the same prop that was used in Massacre Manor when it was located in Coney Mall, towards the end of the house? I remember something similar being used there.

I question this, not because I doubt your industry knowledge (because I don't), but because of two things: 1. Both GCI and The Gravity Group offer that their respective trains can be put on existing coasters, and have been (e.g. Roller Coaster at Lagoon, Wildcat at Lake Compounce, Wildcat at Hersheypark, Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa, Hades at Mt. Olympus). Would GCI/GG have to build their trains wider to fit the existing gauge? Surely they aren't adjusting the track gauge. 2. I feel like some of the aforementioned examples (except Hades and maybe Gwazi) had their trains switched out quietly, without too much PR/Marketing buzz. I assume the financial justification was reduced maintenance. Do you feel like it's Cedar Fair's style to only make that kind of change if they can market it?

The live actors in Boo Blasters weren't able to get close enough to the cars to slap them, as I recall. They were actually on a rope that restricted how far out from the walls they could move. That was a neat gimmick, in my opinion. EDIT: The actors themselves, not the "being tethered to a wall" thing.

This doesn't ultimately matter that much, but did Cedar Fair coin the term "giga?" I definitely thought that was Intamin's term, and Cedar Fair took it and ran with it when coaster enthusiasts started applying it to non-Intamin coasters that are 300-399 feet tall. There are small plaques on Millennium Force's trains that say something along the lines of "Intamin Giga Coaster."

You monster.

I mean this in only a nice way: There's something incredibly hilarious to me about knowing how verbose @BB1 has been over the years and then seeing them write, "You do you." It's like watching someone dodge an out-of-control semi on foot, then immediately trip over a Roomba. Oh, and Orion.

I contest. ...I don't have anything to contest; I just wanna keep the thing going.

...The Eleventh Commandment would like a word. A very, very emphatic word.

Hagrid's was my 300th coaster, and I absolutely loved it. It's such a fun ride. I'm glad everyone was safe. Here's hoping they can get it up and running again soon.

Would you mind sharing some of what you've already found? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's never heard of this ride before and would enjoy learning about it. Not to mention that it might help jog some memories for folks who DO know something about it.

It just hit me that there IS a modern equivalent, kinda... It's Poseidon's Fury at Islands of Adventure, which I unabashedly love. It's cheesy as heck, but I love the concept of a show that you walk through, and I think it could very much be done in a better way that would be legitimately fun to experience for everyone. If Kings Island were to get something like that somehow, though, I don't know what it'd necessarily be themed to or where it'd go.

So like, I don't have that much sympathy if they had their phone out. But if they didn't, can you imagine much it would suck to have made it through the whole ride and lose your phone on the brake run?

I still think there's zero correlation between the Steel Vengeance posters and Cedar Fair's plans, because they're Easter eggs. The sheer number of Easter eggs in Orion's theming should be a sign that there's nothing to that besides winking at enthusiasts. But OP made me imagine a world where there's a Wonder Mountain (from Canada's Wonderland) replica located in Vortex's spot and a coaster located inside it, with occasional peeks (and peaks, heyyoooo) outside. And now I'm gonna be daydreaming about that for the rest of today. It'll never happen, but Kings Island having its own take on the Volcano: the Blast Coaster concept would be so freaking cool. It doesn't have to be Congo-themed like Kings Dominion; it could be mine-themed to fit Rivertown. It'd be neat to see that in the background behind the Eiffel Tower. (Emphasis mine.) This is such a minor thing, and I don't mean to specifically call you out, Zader, but I need to point this out for everyone's reference: It's IAAPA. It stands for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

I had them on Wednesday. For Cedar Fair food, they aren't bad. I wasn't able to identify what was in the seasoning, although I'm speculating it's something similar to (though less flavorful than) seasoning salt and/or old bay seasoning.

The Eleventh Commandment is willing to make exceptions for improvements to the ride.

That's a shame, but it makes sense that the pandemic threw off parks' maintenance schedules. I loved Storm Runner when I visited Hersheypark in... 2014, I think? That one element that's half inline twist and half corkscrew is a ton of fun. You rotate quickly enough that it's basically airtime the whole time. Hopefully it's just what they said and it'll be back in 2021.

I'm a simple man. I see Adventure Express merch, I buy it. In all seriousness, I've never felt compelled to be into pin collecting, but I really, really like those. I'm gonna need to find some way of showing those off.

Thanks! So, if a coaster goes in Vortex's spot and its entrance is in Coney Mall, it'd be cool to see something with a 1920's-y theme (or even a 1960's-y theme.) Somebody here once suggested a Zamperla Moto coaster with a horse theme like this, and I have to admit that I do like that idea. Maybe not a copy of the *exact* ride I linked to, but something with a custom layout could be cool. If we didn't already have wooden coasters coming out the wazoo, that would be a neat place to put that Rye Aeroplane coaster previously discussed here. If its entrance is in Rivertown, it'd be really cool to do what you were talking about with a spooky story! Something with a haunted mine would be really fun. Maybe it could be something like Firechaser Express at Dollywood?

So, if you think about it, Kings Island's original design was based on a romanticized version of Cincinnati. Its German heritage (Oktoberfest), its history (Rivertown), and its classic place to have fun (Coney Island) were all there. Hanna-Barbera isn't necessarily a Cincinnati thing, but Hanna-Barbera was owned by Taft Broadcasting, which was based in Cincinnati. (International Street is the exception, and since I've never heard an actual reason why it was chosen, here's my theory: Dennis Spiegel said at the first Coasterstock that the Eiffel Tower was originally going to be at Coney, prior to the decision to build Kings Island. Putting it in an international section gives a plausible reason to exist, plus gives an opportunity to create a spectacle of an entrance area, much in the vein of Disneyland.) Within the context of those themes is where the park's attractions' themes exist. Was there an actual beast that terrorized Cincinnati when it was a settlement? Not to my knowledge. Did racing coasters exist at Coney Island? Nope. Do people really do things that make them dizzy at Oktoberfest? Well... Yeah, actually. But my point is that while each area is BASED in a part of Cincinnati's identity, it's not a 1:1 reflection of it. It's just a framework for everything else to exist within it. There's not really anything reflecting real life directly, as if it were the theme/amusement park equivalent of a fourth wall break in a movie, y'know? Theme/amusement parks and movies both exist to provide escapism. And yes, I think that's still true of amusement parks, too, despite the lack of focus on theming. Which brings me to my answer to OP's question: I'd like to see more of that "this ride's story exists within the context of the area it's in"-kind of thing happen than have an explicitly real-life-Cincinnati-themed ride at the park like Steel Curtain. This is just my opinion, but to me, if the park reflects too much of the outside world, it ceases to be a theme park and becomes a really elaborate outdoor shopping center, like The Greene in Dayton. I'm exaggerating for effect, of course, but do you know what feeling I'm talking about? To that end, if it were up to me, I'd also not have Skyline or Tom+Chee in the park, either. I enjoy both of those chains immensely, but... We're in Mason. Cincinnati proper isn't THAT far away. Heck, there's a Skyline just on the other side of 71. Wouldn't it be more interesting to have unique dining experiences in their places? Imagine if the park even had its OWN take on Cincinnati chili. (This is in a world where such things are realistically doable in a theme park setting--I recognize that there are a lot of reasons why that kind of thing isn't usually attempted.) I had somewhere I was heading with this, but I forget what it was.

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately... So, it seems like dark rides require extra money and time from maintenance staff to keep running well. By "well," I mean consistently throughout the year and in the same state it was when it opened. It seems like most seasonal parks want to put in the initial investment without needing to continually invest, or at least not invest on the scale needed to run well. At parks like Six Flags over Georgia, people at the top of the chain of command have decided to make their dark rides a priority. The Interpreter once pointed to Melinda Ashcroft as the reason why Monster Mansion runs as well as it does. I'd speculate that Holiday World does the same thing with Gobbler Getaway. When Cedar Fair was doing the whole Amusement Dark thing, it seemed like they were making a point to put in dark rides that they were willing to care for if people took to them. Admittedly, that was by having zero animatronics, but still, it was something. But it seems like both Wonder Mountain's Guardian and Voyage to the Iron Reef landed without making much of a splash, so we didn't see any more dark rides from that initiative. The last time I rode WMG, the screens were out of focus, and the guns were poorly calibrated. VttIR is already being rethemed less than a decade later. I'm curious to see how the Justice League dark rides hold up at Six Flags. They seem like they had a not-insubstantial budget put into them, and it seems like they're going to need some bucks to keep running well. They almost feel like SIX's version of Tomb Raider: The Ride, which is to say that they pursued a big concept that looks awesome at first but isn't sustainable for a seasonal park. I'd surely think they'd have kept that in mind when designing it, but... Would I love to see more parks get dark rides? Absolutely. Dark rides are often my favorite thing about a park, and especially when they're original IPs. But it seems like a lot of major parks aren't committed to them in the long term, and I'd rather have a few good rides than a bunch of rides operating half as well as they could.

So, I actually really like walkthrough stuff. I love Noah's Ark at Kennywood, and I enjoyed Wacky Shack at Waldameer and Kings Dominion's old walkthrough whose name escapes me at the moment. Those specific kinds of walkthroughs, though, seem to be a dying piece of history. I'm speculating that ADA requirements and some amount of liability are the causes of that. As far as a modern walkthrough goes... I'm split. I feel like there's promise in the concept, but the first thing that comes to mind is something like Madame Tussaud's, which isn't my thing. I can't think of a good equivalent in the modern era. I'll take a highly themed coaster queue any day of the week, though.

I'm *completely* speculating, but I do wonder if that ride couldn't pass clearance tests with standard PTCs. People can't reach out and hurt themselves if there's a gigantic wall in the way. See also: New Texas Giant and its windows.

It's one axle and two road wheels, lateral wheels, and upstop wheels per row, which is the same as PTC. I don't know what the stripped-down chasses of PTC cars or Millennium Flyers look like, though, so I'll give you that one. Out of pure curiosity, can I ask who told you?

ARE Millennium Flyers actually heavier than PTCs? Do any of us here know that?