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Coasterstock at Kings Island


ohiocolts
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Thanks Don, Sara, and Kings Island for a great CoasterStock event.  Kim and I had an absolute blast and are both exhausted.

 

Made it into the park around 8:30AM  We got 4 Banshee, 2 Bat and 1 Adventure Express before Pass holder ERT started.  We probably could have done more but too many Banshees makes Paul a dull boy.  I didn't expect Saturday to be as busy as it was, but it got pretty crowded quickly despite the weather.

 

The Banshee photoshoot was nice but somewhat limiting.  I understand all the ramifications for something like that and appreciate the opportunity.

 

Dennis Spiegel was certainly a treat and to listen to his story from Coney Island to Kings Island.  Didn't expect the shoutout during the Q&A, caught me off guard really.  My employer and Dennis opened KI, KD, and CW together.  I also found it interesting about the number of people in favor of Thunderbird over Gatekeeper.  Is it the launch, terrain?  Ride time seems too short to be a competitor.

 

The dinner was good. The ribs tasted good but were more work than they should have been.  Desert was tasty as well.

 

The Best was saved for last on Saturday night, I felt The Beast was running amazingly well and tuned for speed at the right places.  Got a couple rides before we called it a night to get enough sleep to survive Sunday.  29k steps

 

We chose to decline the train Behind the Scenes Tour and arrive at 9:00 for coaster ERT.  Because Flight of Fear always seems to have the longest wait times, we chose to make that ride a priority.  We got on and off that ride twice in 10 minutes, which was great but 2 rides is enough for me.  3 rides on The Racer is always fun for this classic coaster.

 

Lunch was great on Sunday.  The blue ice cream was Kimmy's favorite.  Our local whippy dip get's the blue during KI season.  Due to an already scheduled conflict, we left the park at noon and would return at 7:15PM.  I wanted to hear Jeff Gramke's talk but I understood it was to start at 1:00, but tweets on the way home indicated more of a 12:30 start, rats.

 

Since I did The Beast Behind the Scenes on Tuesday, I felt it wasn't a priority to do it again, although it would have been nice to see DBack.  Was it similar to Banshee's photo op?

 

Ended the night  once again riding The Beast in the dark.  Added a few DBack rides in for good measure. 20k steps.

 

Got to meet some fun people and hope to meet again at another event.

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You also missed Jeff Gramke's talk. Leaned something new today. I did not know that KI had another in-house woodie designed and trains ordered to be built where Diamondback stands now.. The plan was backed out as Paramount purchased the park. But he still has the design. Apparently it was designed with the same John Allen inspiration The Beast was. So another black mark caused by Paramount.

Sent from a signal coming out of the Vega system.

 

I really enjoyed his talk.  It was informative, but I have also heard a lot of it before.  I am not doubting the design or that they were working on purchasing the trains.  But every time I have heard about the building of Top Gun it was designed and purchased by the previous owners of the park.  Paramount just decided to brand the ride with Top Gun.  Which completely contradicts what he said.  I have no insider information, or first hand information.  Any knowledge I have is based on reading here on KICentral and from behind the scenes tours and talks.  So I have no idea which is correct.  I would like to believe that he is correct and it was 100% Paramount.  The problem is timing, the purchase of the parks did not occur until the end of the season in 92 and Top Gun opened in 93.  Designing, ordering, and constructing the ride in such a short period of time would be very difficult to pull off, it makes a lot more sense if KECO did order the ride.

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My husband got me a Fitbit last season, and I've enjoyed tracking my steps too. Yesterday, since I was there from 6:30 till 10:30, I hit my record so far: just short of 40,000 steps. When I got home and saw I was about 700 away, it was tempting to circle the living room to break 40k, but I was just too tired and sore :) That came out to be something like 16 1/2 miles. I've noticed that I generally walk about a mile for every hour I'm at the park.

Eventually we should start some sort of step counting thread for those of us who are into it.

Wowzers! That is impressive! I hit 21,000 by 5p a few Friday's ago at KI only because I had to make 3 round trips to behind-the-scenes...followed by a quick walk to ride Banshee and The Beast after working.

And I did have a moment of panic at the end of Flight of Fear yesterday when I felt my watch sliding - caught my Fitbit just in time!

It would be fun for another thread to discuss the options to maximize steps while exploring the park. :)

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It would be fun for another thread to discuss the options to maximize steps while exploring the park. :)

Organize your rides something like this:

  • Diamondback
  • Firehawk
  • Woodstock Express
  • Vortex
  • Invertigo
  • The Beast
  • Banshee
  • White Water Canyon
  • The Bat
  • Flying Ace Aerial Chase
  • Adventure Express
  • Surf Dog
  • The Racer
  • Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown
  • Delirium
  • WindSeeker
  • Drop Tower
  • Backlot Stunt Coaster
  • Congo Falls
That will really rack up the steps. ;)
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It would be fun for another thread to discuss the options to maximize steps while exploring the park. :)

Organize your rides something like this:

  • Diamondback
  • Firehawk
  • Woodstock Express
  • Vortex
  • Invertigo
  • The Beast
  • Banshee
  • White Water Canyon
  • The Bat
  • Flying Ace Aerial Chase
  • Adventure Express
  • Surf Dog
  • The Racer
  • Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown
  • Delirium
  • WindSeeker
  • Drop Tower
  • Backlot Stunt Coaster
  • Congo Falls
That will really rack up the steps. ;)

 

Forget the squad, might have to call in the 'copter for this guy. :lol:

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My husband got me a Fitbit last season, and I've enjoyed tracking my steps too. Yesterday, since I was there from 6:30 till 10:30, I hit my record so far: just short of 40,000 steps. When I got home and saw I was about 700 away, it was tempting to circle the living room to break 40k, but I was just too tired and sore :) That came out to be something like 16 1/2 miles. I've noticed that I generally walk about a mile for every hour I'm at the park.

Eventually we should start some sort of step counting thread for those of us who are into it.

Wowzers! That is impressive! I hit 21,000 by 5p a few Friday's ago at KI only because I had to make 3 round trips to behind-the-scenes...followed by a quick walk to ride Banshee and The Beast after working.

And I did have a moment of panic at the end of Flight of Fear yesterday when I felt my watch sliding - caught my Fitbit just in time!

It would be fun for another thread to discuss the options to maximize steps while exploring the park. :)

 

I did 61,000 steps Saturday and Sunday combined.

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I finally scanned in the photos I won for the Twitter contest. I know a lot of the others at Coasterstock were really excited to see them, which was why I set up an impromptu photo shoot for some other fans on the pavement near the front gates right after I got the envelope :) I think I nearly gave Don a heart attack by laying them out on the ground because he came over and asked if I was enjoying my very rare photographs?! I was just in a very sharing mood after spending the weekend sharing all my experiences through Twitter.

Anyway, this is a better (safer) way to see them. Since they're big, I don't want to post them in the thread, but you can get to them in this directory: http://crowchet.com/images/ki/

While the Phantom Theater picture and logo are very special to me (I really miss that ride!), I think my favorite of the bunch is Screamin' Demon with snow on the ground, before it even opened. That's one I only wish I could have ridden, it was removed long before I got into coasters.

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I watched the #Coasterstock trend very closely. As someone who does social media professionally, I kind of knew who was going to win. In fact, I accurately predicted all 3. You did great!! I couldn't be there for all of the events, so I really felt like I could follow along via the Tweets. Good work!!

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Thanks for the encouragement :)

After the first half-day or so, I got so involved with enjoying myself and documenting my own experiences, I couldn't really keep up with what anyone else was doing. At the end, I just knew I had done everything I could* and hoped for the best.

At the time, I couldn't help but feel if I had managed to garner the elusive @KingsIslandPR retweet like @kittenpooh did the first day, and gained that exposure, that I might have come out on top. But, I've finally gone and read what she was posting, and I will admit that by and large her tweets are more interesting and better written than mine were on average.

I was too excited about the Twitter part of the contest to be paying attention to the Instagram one given first. Who won that? I only remember it was a guy, and someone mentioned all three of us winners were Coaster Crew members.

* well, I could have stayed past 8 Saturday and continued tweeting, but I really needed the little sleep I got, and I could have focused more on tweeting and less on spending time with friends the last few hours Sunday but I don't regret that, either. It's been a long time since I laughed so much!

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