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Nick_Plummer

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Posts posted by Nick_Plummer

  1. I hope they get rid of the bins next season. Every once in a while I see an employee ask people if they need their stuff taken to a bin for them before the ride starts. Doesn't really have an impact on the dispatch time though. I've ridden it where the employee takes things to the bin but then having a minute of just silence apart from the guests talking. 

    • Like 1
  2. Okay, I've always loved Kings Island. But this year there are a lot of things that make me unhappy. Rant time. They're trying too hard to reach out to people my age (teenagers) and they end up just sounding lame. I don't listen to pop music that much but a lot of the songs they play are about a year or two behind what most of my friends and sometimes me listen to and a lot of it isn't even good music either. I was at BGW back in June and I had a better experience there than I've ever had at Kings Island. Compared to Kings Island, most of BGW's rides are better themed and a more fun experience. Though Kings Island has thrilling rides, they don't have any theming I enjoyed the music that was played all over the park. Nice orchestra and themed music is the way to go in an Amusement Park with themed areas. Kings Island is lacking in almost all areas of theming. Banshee and Flight of Fear are pretty well themed but they're nothing compared to what other parks put into their rides. The bathrooms this year are usually awful. I dread having to use any of them. Food service is terrible as well, I talked about a terrible experience I had at what's usually my favorite place to get food in the park earlier in this thread. I feel like one of those guests in RCT that complains about how disgusting the paths are. I'm luckily not having to avoid vomit but I usually see litter scattered about the park. There have been days where I'll pass an area when I first get to the park and see litter and come back hours later only too see that it's still there along with some additional litter. Diamondback's operations are terrible as usual. ERT is usually the only time I'll get near the thing because once the park's open to the general public, the stacking ensues. I'll pass by large rides like The Beast, Banshee, Firehawk, even Flight of Fear on non crowded days with waits around 5-15 minutes for each and then get to Diamondback only to see around 5-6 lanes of queue open and around a 30 minute wait. And you can bet that all 3 trains are stacking when I get there. Any theming the park once had is basically dead at this point. It's all just one giant area now. There isn't even a Coney Mall sign anymore. I think Kings Island's 2015 season is a huge disappointment compared to the 2014 season. I mean obviously there was an awesome new ride put in, but they also went the extra mile to make sure that everything else in the park was great as well. The whole park seemed to kind of go on lazy mode this year. I hope operations improve by Haunt because I'm starting to go to the park less and less. At this time last year, I had gone to the park over 20 times. I've gone 5 times this year because of the poor treatment I get by the staff and by how little they seem to care about guests and the condition of the park. I don't know if it's just me that's experiencing these problems or if others are having these problems. Sorry about my rant but that's how I feel about the park this year. 

    • Like 6
  3. I was at the park yesterday and experienced my first chain lift stop. We were sitting in the front and we sat there for about 10 minutes before they started it back up again. I thought we might have to evac because we were up there so long but they didn't. Pretty good day. I got to ride everything before the crowds hit. Saw Cirque Imagine for the first time this year and it was awesome as always. I ended up leaving around 4:30 because the crowds were getting pretty large. Pretty average day. Other than getting stuck on Banshee's lift hill for a while nothing extraordinary happened. I second jtro223's comment about the food service being terrible. I haven't had good service all season. When I went to get a pretzel at Auntie Anne's on IS, the employees seemed more concerned about their own conversation then me ordering a pretzel. It took around 8 minutes for them to take an already made pretzel out of the display case and take my money. 

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  4. Welcome to the Forums! Her age wouldn't necessarily matter when it comes to life jackets. I think it's how tall she is. Also on some slides they don't like it if you have some sort of metal on your swim suit like a pocket button or something, they make you roll up your swim suit until it's covering the metal. Don't wear anything too revealing as I've seen people get turned away at the entrance for wearing something too revealing. It is a little hard to breathe in Tropical Twister. The life guards usually even tell you to hold your breath on the ride. I learned that just trying to breathe normally is a very bad idea. I actually had to sit down and cough up a bunch of water from where the water and gone in my mouth. Other than that, Soak City is a very nice water park and I think you and your family will enjoy it!

    • Like 4
  5. I noticed colored lights in FoF last time I rode (purple and green). I feel like the lighting is different every time I ride though. Sometimes there are no lights, sometimes there are some colored lights, and other times the whole building is lit up by white lights.

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  6. I do sit in 5-1 every time as I've learned that from this site but it just seems to be getting worse every year. I know where to brace and usually I just exit feeling a little dizzy. I'm going again next Saturday and I'll ride it again and see if it's any better.

  7. I would love to see one of these slides at Soak City next year.

     

    IMG_1420.jpg

     

    It's been a while since an actual slide was built in Soak City. Other than the re-theme, it's just about the same as I remember from when little 6 year old me went to Boomerang Bay in 2006. 

    • Like 4
  8. I rode Vortex for the first time this season yesterday and I think that if the ride could talk, it would say what the new Joker says.

     

    2A81837C00000578-3159895-image-m-108_143

     

    "I'm not gonna kill you. I'm just gonna hurt you, really, really, bad"

     

    Maybe the worst ride experience I've ever had on the ride. My back ached the rest of the day and my head felt awful. I had to wait almost 2 hours before riding another ride it was so bad.

    • Like 1
  9. Actually, the new ride will be called Skee-Ball.

    :)

    Worlds first ever Skee-Ball attraction. Riders sit in gyroscopic bubbles and get launched at 150 mph into the world's largest Skee-Ball machine. If only lol.

    • Like 2
  10. A new POV of the Carolina Cyclone has just been uploaded on Carowinds' official YouTube page. I wonder if this means other Cedar Fair parks will upload more POVs to their respective channels as well.

  11. I enjoy watching POVs when I can't go to the park but it's a little hard to enjoy when most of the HD ones are really shaky. The mounted POV I saw in the queue looked really nice. It didn't have a visually appealing mounted POV before this. This is the only train mounted POV of Diamondback available online unless someone can find the one that has been used on the FUN TV's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlhfCYqObc. I don't understand why it was such low quality as well as having no sound for a bigger theme park in 2009. Now here's a POV from Millennium Force in 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbXPhOFRxTc. It is available in HD and has sound. Why one of the best coasters of 2009's Official POV is such low quality is very surprising to me. I have been waiting for a new high quality POV of some rides at Kings Island for a while and I really don't know why they don't put the ones on the FUN TVs on Kings Island's official YouTube page. Any rides shown from other parks on the FUN TV's I have seen on YouTube via their park's official YouTube channel. Cedar Point has POVs of almost every ride in the park including some flat rides. I believe that in the past 10 or more years, 3 official POVs have been released, those being Diamondback, Banshee, and The Beast. I'm hoping that the park does release the new POVs somewhere where the public can view them other than in line watching one of the FUN TV's.

    • Like 1
  12. So I was at Kings Island yesterday and while I was in line for Drop Tower, I saw that they had new POVs for Diamondback and Firehawk. I have never seen this online anywhere and I was really glad to see an updated Diamondback POV. Does anyone know if they released the POVs anywhere online or if they're only available on the FUN TV's at Kings Island. Thanks!

    • Like 5
  13.           As a young coaster enthusiast, It's always been my dream to be able to go to Cedar Point. My family lives about three and a half hours away and my parents don't have the luxury of being able to request off so it's hard to plan a trip. Every year my school sends the graduating eighth graders to Cedar Point. Lucky or us, our trip was on a Tuesday so lines wouldn't be as bad. I was constantly checking the weather. The day before the trip said thunderstorms all day so I was really bummed. We arrived at my school at 6:30 AM for the long bus ride there. Thankfully it was a charter bus and not a standard school bus. It was a fun bus ride since I was with my friends but the views weren't very exciting, *cough cough* farm *cough cough*. We were actually in Sandusky around 10:00 and I saw the skyline through the trees. We were practically raving in the bus, just waiting until we finally pull into the parking lot. The bus stopped and I knew that this would be awesome.

     

              We piled off of the bus, stretching from being cramped for 3 and a half hours, and got our tickets and free drink wristbands from the teachers that came with us. My friends and I went into the park and managed to escape the dreaded front gate photographers and headed for Gatekeeper. Me and my friend sat on the left side back seat and it was really fun. Not as exciting or thrilling as I thought it would be but still a fun first ride. After this we were planning on riding Wicked Twister but it was down so we instead went to Top Thrill Dragster. It was about a 10 minute wait and the station was very cramped and uncomfortable but I got on in the second to last seat on the right side. It was short but really fun and I enjoyed it. After this we got some Cokes and walked over to Rougarou. The line was a little more than 15 minutes. I sat down in the fourth row on the left end and thought it was a pretty okay ride. Definitely not as thrilling or even as smooth as I thought it would be. There were some head banging moments that I wasn't prepared for and I had a little headache for a few minutes. We walked across the pathway to Millennium Force. The line was about 30 minutes, (45 if you count the 15 minutes it was down). I wasn't afraid to wait a little longer for the front seat and I'm glad I did. Definitely deserving of all the awards it has received. Millie is an absolute beast (pun intended) and it was extra fun in the front.

     

             After Millennium Force, we had to check in so we went to Coasters Drive-In, where we were to check in. None of us had our phones on us because we put them in a locker near Gatekeeper. We were supposed to check in at 1:00 so we figured we'd be early. Turns out we were 30 minutes late rather than 30 minutes early. The time on the Fun TV in line for Millennium Force had been an hour behind. We sat and got chewed out by our teacher for 10 minutes who was unable to comprehend the fact that 10 people were telling her the same excuse and said we were all just lying. She told all of us that we were going to be with them until 4:00, the next meetup. She made us go back to Millennium Force and wait in line for 30 minutes until the ride broke down. Instead of exiting the line, she made us sit there until 3:00. Millie never opened and they told us that we had to leave the queue. She was madder than a hornet at this point and told us we were going to TTD. I rode next to my girlfriend on it and this was her first time riding it. I forgot about being in trouble for a few moments while riding with her. When we exited we saw that it was 4:15 and we were dismissed to do whatever we wanted until the park closed at 8:00.

     

              We went to ride Wicked Twister seeing that it was now open. It was a couple minute wait though I kind of wished it was longer. The queue has a beautiful view of the beach and I wished I could have looked at it more. It was an okay ride and definitely made us dizzy. We next went to the ride that caused me the most physical pain, Magnum XL-200. It was a walk on and we were actually kind of excited. Though I knew it was a rough ride, I wasn't expecting the hell that my upper legs went through. We got off sore though we had to laugh at our pictures because I was saying the "f" of a word I'm not going to say on this website. We next went to the ride I wanted to ride more than all the others, Maverick. We could see the storm clouds in the distance so we really wanted to ride. The line was about 30 minutes long and we sat in row 4. Hands down best ride at the park. I thought it was better than Millennium Force by a lot. The theming was fantastic and the ride experience was unforgettable. The new restraints were also very nice. My friends wanted to ride Mean Streak but I really didn't want to. I went anyway for the coaster creds but I'm glad I did.

     

              I don't know how many of you are familiar with Mean Streak Henry but I know him from CoasterBob's videos and some blog posts. Normally I wouldn't voluntarily sit next to an older man on a roller coaster I've never met before but I did this time when I saw his shirt. He told me he was on ride 77,465 I believe, (It was over 77,000 I know that much), and I told him about how I'm a Kings Island fanboy and we talked about numerous coaster things throughout the ride. He was a pretty cool guy and I shook his hand when I got off. Mean Streak was not as rough as I thought it would be and though it was kind of boring, it was interesting. We went to queue Maverick again because I REALLY wanted to ride it again. The wait was more fun this time because someone brought three beach balls in the queue and we were all hitting them around. We were almost to the ramp into the station when the ride shut down due to weather. It was 7:00 and we had to get to the Grand Carousel in 30 minutes. We started walking back when it started pouring rain. We sprinted through the park along with about everyone else trying to leave. One of the cashiers at a shop yelled at us but an older man in the shop yelled, "They can't catch all of you, run!" We took a breather by the train crossing in front of Rougarou because the train was still coming but we then sprinted again. We ended up getting to the Carousel before everyone else and we rode it around 5 times until we had to leave. I grabbed a park map on my way out and we went to the bus.

     

              As a Kings Island fanboy I am kind of defeated to admit it but Cedar Point is by far a superior park. The theming and overall experience I had in the park was better than I ever had at Kings Island. I also bought a T-Shirt with some of CP's rides on it which I wore to our graduation party last night lol. Cedar Point definitely felt like a home away from home to me and even though I had never been there before, I felt like I was welcome there. The employees were friendly and the weather was fantastic until the storm hit. I never realized how beautiful and blue Lake Erie was because videos of the park really don't show it. I had a fantastic time and I really hope I can go again in the next few years before I'm out on my own in the world.

     

              Of course no trip report is complete without pictures! Here are some I took at the park:

     photo Snapchat-5440170733883764506_zpsdlkgzsgv.jpg  photo Snapchat--3818887526902472301_zpsir61whem.jpg  photo Snapchat-161834027145981956_zpsg7nvjnqt.jpg  photo Snapchat--3052653286559286263_zps3vektzro.jpg  photo Snapchat-5485077701340706448_zpscfq7atli.jpg

    • Like 8
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