My Coasting For Kids photo report

[standbyme]

Oh…where to begin. I guess I’ll start with the fact that I have always wanted to marathon a coaster and really didn’t think I would get an opportunity…I am SO glad to say that that turned out not to be true. Thanks to Kings Island & Coasting For Kids I can finally knock one more thing off of my “bucket list”!

I signed up the very day I read about it here on KICentral. As most of you on this site are aware, the event was held on Sunday July 24^th.

Since I live in Illinois and you had to register between 7–7:45 AM, there was NO way I was getting up early enough to drive all the way to the park in the morning…so I booked a room at the Kings Island Resort and arrived on the evening of the 23rd so that I would be well rested for the event.

I guess I will warn you right now…this is not one of my better trip reports. When all is said and done the fact is that I had SUCH a good time I didn’t get around to taking very many pictures…something that I am not sorry about!

So…even though I don’t have many…I hope that someone enjoys seeing a little bit of what it was like.

My day began by walking from The Kings Island Resort to the park…which is not a bad walk at all…and is actually quite pleasant early in the morning.

A nice (already warm) morning…with a little haze in the sky.

I was not the first to arrive!

This sign was set up next to the security entrance…I think it is nice that the park does things like this for their employees…it looks like it would be a great time.

After signing in everyone received a free t-shirt to wear…which was mandatory so that the ride ops could instantly tell if someone belonged or not…something that would definitely come in handy as the day wore on. As I signed in I noticed that their seemed to be more X-Large people signed up than any other size!

To change into our shirts the bathroom was made available…as you can see the gates haven’t been fully opened yet…seeing the park just waking up like this is the nerdy kind of stuff I live for!

If only I could come to the park on a day like this when it was open.

Mr. Don Helbig came out to greet us.

This is a video:

Entering the park in “different” ways is always fun.

A nice quiet fountain.

Now you would THINK that since Keyhole Photo was closed no one would be “bugged” about taking a photo…but Don INSISTED that EVERYONE be in the photo. (But don’t bother looking for me…I’m hiding behind someone who’s hiding behind someone else!)

[standbyme]

Proving that the Dippin’ Dots guy does not get all of his info at his stand…he is undoubtedly out investigating a hot lead.

Snaking our way back to The Racer.

Some early morning activity.

Waiting to start.

As we walked back to The Racer I got the chance to meet another KIC member for the first time, m2raptor/Matt! (Let me tell ya…he’s a tall guy…I’m surprised he can even fit in The Racer!) The marathon started at 8 AM. We luckily were assigned the Red Rcacers for the marathon! For the first hour everyone seemed a bit quiet…something that would certainly change later on. It seemed like one early topic of conversation was how many rides everyone was shooting for. My goal was to hopefully be able to get at least 60…I had never ridden any coaster over 20 times within’ a couple of hours so I didn’t know if I could actually do it…even if “the spirit was willing”. (I thought if I could hit 100 that would be something I could always talk about.)

At around 9 o’clock Avatar/Jesse asked me if I wanted to head over for one ride on Diamondback during the ERT with him, Indyguy4KI/Brad & StalkerChick/Rachel…so I put my marathoning temporarily on hold since I love Diamondback!

Indyguy4KI, Avatar & StalkerChick pretend to do their own press conference outside of The Racer.

It was back to marathoning…and I had fallen about 7 rides behind the ones who hadn’t stopped while I was gone.

Ironically Brad mentioned that there are countless photos of him posted with his eyes closed…so I guess here’s another to add to that collection!

The whole morning could not have gone better. Everyone was jumping from seat to seat with someone else…and it never seemed to fail that whoever was in the front seats would always offer them up to whoever would want them…the ride ops were asking us park trivia questions while we were getting ready to go…and when they eventually ran out of their questions some of the riders turned the tables on them with their park questions. (And yes…someone asked about Son of Beast!) It was a VERY friendly atmosphere.

At a little before noon it was announced that lunch was about ready…so we could all start heading to The International Restaurant if we were hungry. It seemed like pretty much everyone was because the trains started emptying out quick. I was at ride #45…still about 7 or so behind most people…I wanted to hit 50 before lunch. At 47 I was the only one still riding…I asked John (The Supervisor) if he minded if I stayed on a few more times. He was great…his answer was “We’re here for you, you stay on as long as you like”. There is NOTHING like having a whole train to yourself while riding in the front PLUS racing a full Blue Train! (The looks I got from everyone in The Blue Train was priceless!) On my last “solo” trip Cody joined me…so that was also a good time.

At 50 rides I thanked everyone for indulging me and headed for lunch.

Even though I was hungry I was kind of dreading lunch…there is nothing I hate worse than hot food on a hot day. Luckily that was not going to be the case…it was a nice surprise to find that sandwich wraps were on the menu today…nice cold sandwich wraps! I couldn’t have wished for anything better.

During lunch Don announced that they would be giving a bunch of cool stuff that they had lying around. Luckily for me it was just a random drawing…and not a trivia question situation! They gave away quite a bit of stuff…cups, photos, bobbleheads…but there were also a few “killer” items:

An Adventure Express Media kit cover…a Bat Media kit cover!

An original press release page for The Beast…before it was named The Beast!

And the item I would have killed for…original concept art for International Street…

…and the lucky winner was Indyguy4KI! (Congratulations again!)

StalkerChick even won a cup.

Everyone also received a nice personalized certificate of thanks!

[standbyme]

After eating I decided to go back to The Racer and see if I could get a few more rides in before everyone else got back. I wasn’t the only one who was thinking thist because I barely made it out of the door of the restaurant before jcgoble3/Jonathan came up behind me! This was the first time that I really had a chance to really talk to him…I asked him what his goal was today…but instead of giving me a number he told me that his goal was to ride in every seat at least once! I never got to ask him if he made it…but I’m guessing that he did because he was one of the few riders who never seemed to take a break. (If you read this Jonathan let me know if you succeeded.)

It wasn’t long before most of the people came back from lunch…and things seemed to REALLY loosen up. Within’ the hour everyone was acting sillier and sillier. The crew had us doing the wave as we left the station…and before long we were all singing different songs every time we came back into the station…some of the highlights (In my opinion) were Spongebob Squarepants, The Brady Buch, We Are The Champions & even The Hokey Pokey where we all got out and then back into the train when we stopped in the station. The looks we were getting from the general public on the Blue side were hilarious. Eventually someone in the front of the train came up with the nickname for our train…The Crazy Train. (Sorry I don’t know who to give the credit to.) From then on out that is how the ride-ops referred to our train.

Things were going well with my goal…I breezed past 75…but I was still behind some other riders…but I was still happy. Unfortunately the skies were clouding up and it looked like rain was imminent…I kept hoping the rain would hold off…but it didn’t. I did not have a watch…so I can’t give you an exact time…but I THINK it was around 3:30 when it was announced that they had to close down because of the weather.

Even when we were told that they had to stop running we were treated “special”. We were all invited to stay inside the station to stay dry and try and wait out the rain. The marathon was scheduled to end at 5PM…and judging by the radar it didn’t look good…but we all tried to keep up hope.

Just killing time.

John & Savannah

Dominic

At around 4:45 I gave up hope that they would be running by 5. I hade some family members waiting for me so I decided to call it a day marathoning and hang out with them. In the end I didn’t get to 100…but I was happy with my total…81.

This is how I kept track:

So in conclusion let me say that this will go down as one of my finest memories of the park. Except for the rain I don’t think that there is one single thing that could have been better….from being greeted in the morning, a nice looking shirt, a good lunch…and more free bottles of ice cold water than we could even count everything was perfect!

The Racer crew members were ALL great. I am sorry that I didn’t get all of their names so that I could thank them here individually…they really do deserve that. They made this event…had they not been just as into this as we were it wouldn’t have been the same. (I kind of always thought that there just couldn’t be a better crew than the one at The Beast…but I guess I was wrong!)

Thank you Coasting For Kids and thank you to EVERYONE at the park who made this possible!

P.S. To all the naysayers who thought “just” riding The Racer over and over would be boring…you missed a VERY unforgettable experience.

[Magm&MForce24/7]

Wow great trip report! I would of loved to go, but was really busy. I'd love to experience that next year. Looks like they had a lot of staff their, which is great, and is probably needed to dispatch fast. I'm glad you had a great time!

p.s. I think when i went to park around a month ago Savannah was told to shut up by a rude guest. I felt so sorry for her as she's was really nice!

Thanks again for the trip report!

-MagmMForce247

[KIfan73]

Thanks for sharing! Looks like a fantastic event. I wanted to participate, but I had a long-planned activity at my church that day. Hopefully next year!

Wow, those were nice prizes that were handed out...if anyone wants to sell theirs, PM me!

[Cpt Crunch]

I would have loved to of gone to this. Do you think they'll have it next year?

-Cpt Crunch

[jcgoble3]

After eating I decided to go back to The Racer and see if I could get a few more rides in before everyone else got back. I wasn’t the only one who was thinking thist because I barely made it out of the door of the restaurant before jcgoble3/Jonathan came up behind me! This was the first time that I really had a chance to really talk to him…I asked him what his goal was today…but instead of giving me a number he told me that his goal was to ride in every seat at least once! I never got to ask him if he made it…but I’m guessing that he did because he was one of the few riders who never seemed to take a break. (If you read this Jonathan let me know if you succeeded.)

I did in fact get in at least one ride in every row and found a new favorite seat out of it (3-1 gave me some very nice and unexpected airtime on the bunny hill right before the turnaround). I ended up with 106 rides total.

Things were going well with my goal…I breezed past 75…but I was still behind some other riders…but I was still happy. Unfortunately the skies were clouding up and it looked like rain was imminent…I kept hoping the rain would hold off…but it didn’t. I did not have a watch…so I can’t give you an exact time…but I THINK it was around 3:30 when it was announced that they had to close down because of the weather.

Even when we were told that they had to stop running we were treated “special”. We were all invited to stay inside the station to stay dry and try and wait out the rain. The marathon was scheduled to end at 5PM…and judging by the radar it didn’t look good…but we all tried to keep up hope.

At around 4:45 I gave up hope that they would be running by 5. I hade some family members waiting for me so I decided to call it a day marathoning and hang out with them. In the end I didn’t get to 100…but I was happy with my total…81.

They resumed operation at about 5:45, and KI was actually nice enough to extend the event to 7:00. I think there were a grand total of 7 riders who rode after the rain delay.

The Racer crew members were ALL great. I am sorry that I didn’t get all of their names so that I could thank them here individually…they really do deserve that. They made this event…had they not been just as into this as we were it wouldn’t have been the same. (I kind of always thought that there just couldn’t be a better crew than the one at The Beast…but I guess I was wrong!)

Thank you Coasting For Kids and thank you to EVERYONE at the park who made this possible!

This cannot be said enough. The Racer crew was AWESOME Sunday. Thanks to each and every one of them, and to KI as well for putting the event on; I know I'll be back next year!

[kingsrattler]

I really hope that I can make it next year. I can tell I missed out on a great day.

[Tanna]

Looks like you all had a great time, thank you and Indyguy for the photos

[m2raptor]

It was very nice to meet you standbyme and also this is a great trip report. I am glad you made it to 81 rides before the rain. Even with my height I found a very comfy seat and made it to 104 after the rain. I now have a different understanding of The Racer and really can't wait till next years event. As its been said, it was a great event for a great cause and I am more motivated now to raise more for GKTW.

[standbyme]

I did in fact get in at least one ride in every row and found a new favorite seat out of it (3-1 gave me some very nice and unexpected airtime on the bunny hill right before the turnaround). I ended up with 106 rides total.

I'm glad you made it...and i'm glad you broke 100 rides!

I now have a different understanding of The Racer....

I forgot to add that sentiment in my report...but I agree. I had kind of forgot just how much fun it can be.

P.S. Thanks...it was nice meeting you too!

[Avatar]

Standbyme I love your sense of humor you add throughout your report.

You took a lot of interesting pictures and that is fun seeing what others see. As far as our news conference we kept getting the same old question "When will there be a announcement of SOB...

I enjoyed riding with you especially during the afternoon session.

Just because it can not be said enough The Racer Crew Rocks!!!!

[Gordon Bombay]

Standbyme, AWESOME photos and report. Looks like it was a wonderful time. Glad to hear good things about that Racer crew, they're always awesome every time I go to ride.

They resumed operation at about 5:45, and KI was actually nice enough to extend the event to 7:00. I think there were a grand total of 7 riders who rode after the rain delay.

That's nice to hear, what an awesome thing for them to do!

[KIfan1980]

…but Don INSISTED that EVERYONE be in the photo. (But don’t bother looking for me…I’m hiding behind someone who’s hiding behind someone else!)

Thanks for sharing the photo's and your experiences of what looked to be a fun event - hope to be a participant myself next year!

As for the caption on the picture above - this almost seemed like a challenge to go cross reference this picture with your other picture, and those from other trip reports to identify the "missing man"