Voicetek

Not trying to take anything away from anyone. However, you'll see that this is how other parks, especially Disney, deals with crowd issues. When crowds become too large and start interfering with guest experience, then something is done. Disney's method of solving this issue is to keep raising admission prices in order to weed some of the crowd out. I'm 36 years old and have been attending KI since I was too younger to remember. I will wait in line if I have to wait in line. If I don't feel like waiting, I won't. However, when crowds become so large that you can't do anything, then that's when it becomes a problem. When an exclusive Gold Pass night maxes out park capacity, then you need to step back and think about whether or not that could hurt guest experience in the future. I'm not impatient, I'm not entitled, I'm just looking at the facts. Plus, we're all entitled to an opinion.

Wow, imagine riding The Beast while sitting behind that HUGE mounted camera! I tell you what, I think that would scare me more than the ride itself. Imagine that camera rig coming loose somewhere during the ride and being smacked in the head with that thing going 60 miles an hour. No thanks!

Yes!!! I said this exact same thing to my wife just recently. When the park about hit capacity during the Gold Pass Preview Night that, to me, was proof that WAY too many Gold/Season Passes had been sold. But who can blame people? When you can get an entire summer of entertainment for $99 with free parking, free entry to "Haunt" and free Winterfest, you'd be out of your mind not to buy a pass. However, with passes being so cheap (if $100 wasn't cheap enough, then they let you put that on a payment plan!), this brings about huge crowds and also not the best type of crowds sometimes. I told my wife that I'd gladly pay $150 for a season pass if that meant lowering crowds and improving the quality of crowds as well. In my opinion $150 for season long park access, waterpark access, "Haunt" access, Winterfest access, PLUS free parking is still a steal. I think $99 to low $100s is underpricing the value of what you're getting by way too much. So yeah, I agree, I think we might see the price of the Gold Pass rise in the near future and that won't bother me one bit.

Not sure how I feel about the "fake out" countdown on rides like Flight of Fear, ex. "10, 9, 8, 7, 1, Launch" or "10, 9, 8, Launch." Sure it might be fun or even funny for some. Those of us who have ridden it a million times and love the thrill. However, what about those guests, and I'm sure they're out there, that have used every ounce of courage just to sit down on the ride to be able to try it for the first time, or the young first time rider who is still not sure about coasters in general, let alone getting launched into a dark tunnel. Being launched without expecting it could literally scare the mother lovin' crap out of someone. I'm sure that would make them ever so eager to get back on something like that. I know people think these spielers are funny and are just "having fun" with their job, but guest experience and safety must take priority over that. You're not working the ride for yourself, you're there to make the guests day the most enjoyable it can be. I'm not against having fun, but doing so at the expense of a guest isn't professional or even right. Even though a fake launch or something similar wouldn't bother most of us, we must keep in mind all the different types of guests who could potentially be riding with us.

Ha, if you're one of the few people in the Tri-State area that still don't have a Gold Pass, you better get on it!

The Phantom Theater 2: Maestro's Revenge. The phantoms, especially Maestro, are angry that they were evicted from Nickelodeon Central/Planet Snoopy, so they've decided to haunt a different area of the park. It will be the guests/riders job to chase the revenge-seeking phantoms out of the park for good. Who will win, the guests or the phantoms? This could be a really exciting interactive ride with a mixture of 3D screens and practical effects. Of course this is a HUGE stretch and it's likely we'll never see anything resembling this inside the park. However, it's fun to think up attractions like this!

My wife and I took a vacation day Monday and rode out to the park for a few hours. We decided to take advantage of being there on a weekday and ride Mystic Timbers a few times. We arrived at the park around 2pm and the line for Mystic Timbers averaged between 20-30 minutes, which wasn't too bad I guess. During our time at the park, we got to ride 3 times. That brings our grand total to 4 times this season. Of the 4 rides on Mystic Timbers, 3 of them gave us the "Bats" ending. We were able to see the "Snakes" ending one of the times we rode on Monday, but since we were up near the front, we missed some of it. We rode in the very back once on Monday and I have to say that that's probably my favorite seat on the ride so far. Everything feels so much faster back there! It really made for an exciting ride! I'm looking forward to riding it some more this season and hopefully we'll catch some more of the shed endings!

Looking at the past history of our dark ride building, with the exception of Scooby, it tends to get a retheme about every 10 years. If things continue on a similar timeline, that means we could see a retheme of Boo Blasters in the next 2-3 years. I, for one, would love to see this happen. I'd almost like to see the removal of the laser guns and for the ride to transition back to just a normal dark ride with no interactive component. And even though I'm not 100% thrilled with the Peanuts theme, I still think a Peanuts themed dark ride (with actual animatronics and NOT cardboard cutouts) would be an fun addition to Planet Snoopy.

Love these! What's funny, my wife and I were just talking about the Sippers yesterday and then look, there's a picture of the Sippers cart! I love seeing pics from this era of the park, they bring back such good memories. Thanks for sharing!

The first time I rode, none of the props moved. We literally sat there for a good 2-3 minutes with nothing going on except music playing. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be happening since I had never ridden it yet. I didn't realize props were supposed to move until I read it in one of these posts. I've only ridden it once, so I'll have to get back soon and ride it again. Hopefully everything will be working properly.

I tried to use the app one day when I wasn't at the park. I just wanted to get a feel for what the wait times were for various attractions before I decided to make a trip out there. However, the app kept saying to visit park for wait times. So I'm assuming you have to be inside the park in order to receive wait times in the app? I had never used it before and wasn't sure if the app just wasn't working or if you truly had to be in the park in order for that feature to work. If so that would be a shame. A couple years ago in the weeks leading up to our Disney trip, I'd log on the MyDisneyExperience app and view wait times for various attractions throughout the day just to get a feel for what we might be expecting while visiting. I liked being able to do this and would be nice if the Kings Island app let you do this as well.

Just curious what it looked like (picture on the towel) and also, was this a Kings Island branded towel, or just a general Nickelodeon Ren and Stimpy product?

^Heck yes! I second the Rick-Rolls. If they could get the rights to that song, that would be the cherry on top!

Bearded Dragons are pretty sweet, in fact, I'd even argue that they are more awesome than Beyonce. Probably not as awesome as Chuck Norris, but pretty close.

I feel like I remember waiting in the queue a couple of times when I was a kid shortly after it first opened. I remember the concept art for the ride that was sent in a brochure before the start of the season. If I recall correctly, I think it showed a boat floating through the jungle or something. I just remember thinking the final product didn't match up with the idea I had in my head based on the artwork I saw.

Been reading through the back and forth "debate" and I'm going to throw my two cents in just for the heck of it. My opinion? There's nothing wrong with joking around of having fun, however, you can still maintain some level of professionalism while doing so. I don't think the problem is the joking around, but the deliberate spewing of "fake" or incorrect facts/stats. I'd like to think that the average park-goer would know better, but my faith in the general public isn't that strong. For those visiting who are not enthusiast (which I would think would be a pretty big number), they might actually believe the fake facts being given. I know we all find it funny when we hear someone in the park make a claim about a ride or attraction that isn't true - just read through the "Guests say the darndest things" thread and you'll see any examples of it. However, I'd hate to think some of that incorrect knowledge stemmed from the park employees themselves. Let me tell you a little story. Back in 2004 I was visiting Disney World with some friends. One day, while visiting Hollywood Studios, we decided to take the tour of the animation facility. For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge animation fan and have been studying animation and its history since I was 5 or 6 years old - a good 30 years now! I also wanted to be an animator for Disney, so I pretty much knew everything there was to know about Disney animation. Well, while on the tour, the tour guide began to spew one incorrect fact after another. He was also answering guests questions with incorrect information. As an animation enthusiast, this irritated me to no end! I just kept saying to myself, "What is he saying?" The thing that bugged me the most is that the other guests didn't know any better - they accepted what he was saying as the gospel truth. I don't know if this guide just didn't know any better, or if he was just doing it to be funny. Either way, it appeared he was uneducated and unqualified to be acting as "Animation Tour Guide." I was so irritated, that I literally wanted to stand up and correct him. However, I was just another guest and who would take my word over the official employee with the badge? See the problem here? So yeah, I can totally see where Shark is coming from. For enthusiasts who are passionate about a topic, hearing wrong information given in any form - whether jokingly or not - when it's coming from a so-called "professional," can be irritating. Not because we don't want to have any fun, but because we know just how ignorant the general public is and we know that they'll walk away with these incorrect facts and keep spreading them around. Why would they want to do this? You can still have fun and joke around without spreading false info. I know Disney's Jungle Cruise was mentioned in this thread, but I don't know of anytime the captain of the Jungle Cruise gives false info. It's not like they're floating around saying things like "Because of the success of the movie, Splash Mountain will now be referred to as 'Zootopia Flume' " or some other ridiculous piece of info. It just doesn't make sense. Yes, have a spiel, joke around, have fun, but leave the fake facts out of it - they're unnecessary. Come up with something else original and unique and your spiel will benefit greatly from it, and so will the guests listening. And that's all I have to say about that.

^ I sorta agree with you on this. I really wanted the shed to be something amazing, but I figured it probably wouldn't be. I think the hype was unnecessary and with they would've focused on the coaster itself. They didn't have all that hype surrounding Banshee and they still had a 5 hour wait for that coaster on opening day. People will come out to ride the coaster, you don't need to create artificial hype around it. I think if they would've just advertised the coaster and not even mentioned the shed, it would've been such a cool surprise that it would've driven people crazy. However, when you create a hashtag called WhatsInTheShed and let it run for 7 or 8 months, people's imaginations start running wild and expectations become unrealistic. In my personal opinion, I think I might like the final Adventure Express tunnel better than the shed. However, if given the choice between just an empty, exposed brake run and a themed shed, of course I'd pick the shed. I think it gives a semi-unique quality to the ride and obviously gives us something to look at instead of just sitting on a brake run bored. I do love the ride though and am pleased with the overall theming of the whole area, including the queue. I think it's one of the best themes we've gotten in a long time. It's just too bad the shed didn't live up to the hype that was created. My thoughts on what's seen in the shed:

Ah, that makes sense then since we were only there for about 2 and a half hours.

Finally made it out to KI on Friday night for a bit. I was excited to hear "Rhapsody in Blue" when entering the park. Strangely enough, "Rhapsody in Blue" was playing again when I was leaving the park. Not sure how many songs are on the playlist or if the playlist is just on shuffle, but somehow I managed to catch the same song arriving and leaving. It was still a nice touch to International Street and hopefully I'll be able to hear more songs the more I visit this season!

I knew the park was closed today for a private event, didn't know what event though. I was on Facebook a little bit ago and start seeing pictures of my friend and his family out at KI today and was like, "What in the world?" Turns out it is a private event for Cincinnati Financial and my friend works for them. That explains it. LOL.

So, I finally got to ride MT tonight. My wife and I took a short trip out there this evening after work just to ride it. Since it was our first ride, we weren't sure what to expect. However, when we got to the shed, our ride stopped. Not sure if it was a loading issue or what, but we just sat in the shed for a few minutes. Since we weren't sure what we were supposed to experience, we never were quite sure if what was happening was normal, or if there was an issue. After a while, of course, we figured something wasn't right. Finally, we heard the music kick on and then our train traveled forward and then stopped again. Again, nothing was happening. I saw the screen with the swinging doors, but nothing for at least a minute or so. Then all of a sudden, we saw animations of bats come up on the side screen and then a large bat on the main screen in front of us. Then our train rolled through the exit. It was weird and a little distracting since we seemed to be experiencing some technical issues. So here's what we thought: I wish there was fog. For some reason I was under the impression that there was fog. Was there supposed to be, or is this ride just void of fog? Another thing, it would have been cool if the saw blades hanging on the wall would've started spinning by themselves. I was kind of waiting for them to, but nothing. Also, what's up with the wall on the right side? A couple of girls behind us starting freaking out because they thought something was going to pop up from behind the wall. Of course, nothing happened. The big wall just seemed out of place and distracting cause it did lead you to believe that something was behind it. Finally, I wasn't too impressed with the animated projections. If you've read any of my past posts you'll know that I despise the use of screens in dark rides and prefer physical props. Since I know now that the animations in the shed change, then that makes a little more sense. I can understand WHY they did it, but I still don't have to like it . One final thing we discussed was the upkeep on the shed. I really hope the shed doesn't turn into the whole "Boocifer projection on fog" thing. I do hope they keep up with the maintenance and keep everything functioning like it's supposed to. I'd also hate to see the shed go the way of the final Adventure Express tunnel and get no love whatsoever year after year. My thoughts on the ride are mixed. I absolutely loved the coaster itself, but was underwhelmed by the shed. I guess that's to be expected after months and months of hype and build up. KI was just asking for guests to be let down after a hashtag campaign that lasted for 7-8 months. Although the shed does offer a somewhat unique ending to a sweet coaster, I don't think it was worth all the hype. I think KI could've done themselves a favor and hyped up the actual ride instead. The shed could've just been a bonus and, had we not known, we might've been pleasantly surprised by the theming of it. Oh well. We got a great coaster out of the whole thing and that's what's important. I'm looking forward to many more rides on it this season.

Not sure what the policy is now, but back in 2008 my wife and I decided to go out to KI for a few on a Friday evening. As we were walking up to the entrance, there were a couple of employees waiting there to talk to us. They told us that KI was closed due to low attendance that day. We were pretty surprised since we had never seen that happen before. It had been raining that day also, but had cleared up by the time we got there.

^Same here. When seeing pictures and reading crowd reports last Friday, I decided to stay away and avoid the park at all costs. However, we're planning on coming out for a few tomorrow night. I really don't want to experience anything like last Friday.

Finally, finally, finally! I'm so excited to hear this! I didn't get to make it out this past weekend at all, so I kind of missed this pleasant surprise! I'm hoping to make it out sometime this weekend and I'm looking forward to experiencing this myself.

I was unaware, until today, that the park was going to be open this Friday evening. I might swing by for a few and see if I can snag a ride on MT. I'm dying to ride it!