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I was packing my bag on Friday to wake up at 2:30 AM on Saturday for the drive to CP with Scott (IBEW_Sparky.) Jesse (Avatar) was planned to join us as well, but he had some issues come up and was not able to make the trip. I picked up Scott and headed out of Indy right at 3:15. We had some great conversation making the drive pretty quick and painless. On the way we ran into rain and we knew to expect a little in the early morning, but thought by the forecast we saw would be gone by the time we got to the park. We got to Sandusky about 8:00 where the wind was terrible and still raining. We decided to hit up Walmart for some more water proof gloves and another layer to add to our wardrobe. We got into the park and was ready for the Mille walk back tour that was to start at 9AM. Mille Sign! The wind was terrible and still raining, but not hard, just enough to be annoying. Here is a small group of us waiting for the walk back. We were hoping to start seeing some trains test as we were on the walk back, but Maintenance was still inspecting the ride. Maintenance is on his way up to the top of the first hill for inspections. Someone will have to post what this car is called. Obviously it is used for evac as well. Here he is at the top of the first hill. I can be up there inside the train all day, but you won't catch me up there like that! We were told by the park that a button has to be pressed every day at the top of the lift before the computer will allow the ride to operate. Back on the ground we were getting some good pictures. Here are a few of the mechanical parts. I got right under crest of the first drop and got a picture! Track that you may not have seen from this angle. This one turned out really cool. Mille is in year 1 of a 3 year repaint job. Sand, water, and winter weather literally sand blast the structure and is hard to keep painted. DA is already being laid out back by this run around. You can see the stakes in the ground under Mille. More cool track! We were standing under this track and it kept dripping water on us. So I thought it was telling me to grab a shot! This one came out nice! Despite the terrible weather we were all enjoying ourselves getting a close up shot of this amazing coaster. More to come!

Did you ever remember seeing the Roller Coaster and saying, "Roller Coaster 1 looks too intense for me"?

Two new guys, one from Anaheim and one from nearly three decades at the Walt Disney Company and Disneyland Resort. National Hot Rod Association is certainly interesting, and as for this: Red Gold, my friends. Red Gold. And as for what thekidd quoted, I look forward to seeing how this may impact the parks' social media presence. Lord knows they're a tad behind industry standard. Disney has the Disney Parks blog. Universal has in-park events and specials centered around Twitter. SeaWorld parks has a very involved blog and massive Facebook presence. Even Six Flags' Twitter is friendly and pun-ny with visitors (which sometimes may even border on unprofessional, but at least it's welcoming and inviting and fun). Kings Island had a Facebook discussion page (gone) and has a Twitter page that is very "business," with a noticeable lack of playfulness or interaction, as though each tweet must go through corporate first (and knowing Cedar Fair, it very well may). That's sad, to me, because in-park displays at Halloween and the rare personal interaction would have me believe that the folks at Kings Island are very capable of humor and poking fun at themselves. It would be nice to see that extended to a broader social scale where others can see it.

I truly dislike Haunt Badasses. To be honest, I either let them meander on and leave a break in the group in the maze if they are in front of me, or if they are behind me, I try to skittle ahead and lose them. There's what? 10-20 people going through a maze, and a single show off like that can put a damper on things for the rest of us. Jdawg, we had one of those guys with us last year. We left him eating spaghetti in the midway, and didn't return for him. Good thing he drove himself. Screamingnight, I do run away sometimes, to be honest. Hopefully I'll be heard through the fog before I mash into someone. I'll keep that in mind.

--- This is Ed. Ed would like to welcome you to part two of the Big Honkin' Haunt Trip Report. Ed would also like some clothes because he's freezing to death. Seriously, I thought Kings Island would never stoop so low as to have their zombified animals without the bare essentials, such as clothing, shelter, and human brains. Where's PETZA when you need them? --- --- Okay, zombie cruelty jokes aside, Nightmare Alley is the new fear zone in Planet Snoopy. --- --- Jack now stands guard at one of the entrances to the zone. --- --- Deceiving smile is deceiving. --- --- These scrims are cool. Also, the kiddie carousel stays on and running through the night. Creepy indeed. --- --- The area may look barren when it comes to props (especially compared to the cemetery zone on I-Street), but NA actually rivals scare zones one would see at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights. It's even more true when the area is in full swing come Haunt time, with fog, lights, and monsters. --- --- Also neat is that the fog machines here are covered with themed boxes. It's the little things like this that make the zone that much more spectacular. --- --- Doesn't look that delicious to me... --- --- Time to take the hearse and roll out to another area of the park. Much quicker than walking, and it can also be used as a battering ram when pushing through crowds. --- --- So we first went to GatorHead's Meat Market for some lunch. It's cheaper than most of the food at the park, and, unlike SOME food being sold (I'm looking at you, emu leg pretending to be a turkey leg), it's all real human. No fillers or artificial flavors. . Oh, and if you get a chance, try the Blonde. Quite a delicacy. Though don't eat too much of it in one sitting; your IQ might temporarily drop a few points. --- --- We then hit up the Shipwreck Bar and Grill. Several Hurricanes, a couple Bloody Marys, and a Diet Coke later, we attempted to walk back to the car. --- --- Unfortunately, we got lost and wound up somewhere between the super tall wooden-looking thing and item #51. --- --- So we asked the big skull from Castle Grayskull for directions. He belted out a haunting spiel describing a most glorious production involving show tunes, jazz hands, and MC Hammer taking place in the Festhaus...in a mere 15 minutes as well! . It was then that we realized it was just a prerecorded spiel over the park speakers and not a hollow skull prop with a fetish for Broadway musicals suddenly talking to us. --- --- So they dug up Graveyard Shift after burying it ten years ago, polished it up, and put it inside the Festhaus. See, Hollywood isn't the only group doing the whole remake schtick. --- --- It's got ze dancing girls in it, something every show is required to have these days. --- --- It definitely shows its age as the majority of the songs used don't go past the year 2000 save for a Black Eyed Peas song at the end, the same year the original was made. Still, it's a great show, if you can get past the fact that they rework classic songs to fit the theme of the show by changing the lyrics (such as Love SHOCK as compared to Love SHACK), and you haven't been completely numb to the park strictly doing musical revue shows. --- --- So we leave Festhaus to find smoke EVERYWHERE. Apparently that two-bit magician earlier flubbed a spell and made all the smoking areas disappear, therefore bringing the park back to its pre-restrictive smoking area days. Yes, that's how bad it was back then. --- --- Needless to say, he got canned, the smoking areas returned, and the secondhand smoke quickly dissipated. Only to have the park turn on the fog machines almost immediately after. . But that can only mean one thing... --- --- GIANT BUNNIES HAVE INVADED Kings Island!!!! . Okay, so it's just the one bunny, but still, how awesome is it to have a giant, demonic bunny rabbit wreaking havoc amongst parkgoers? They should have, like, a whole maze devoted to nothing but evil rabid werebunnies. Like Wolf Pack, but with bunnies. Armed with chainsaws. Why chainsaws? Because nothing's scarier than a giant bunny wearing a vest running around with an 18" chainsaw. . Moving on. --- --- Massacre Manor is still up for sale even after seven long years. Maybe the tacky Halloween decorations scared some potential buyers away. --- --- Club Blood has a new mural adorned on its wall. Looks better than a bland wall, that's for sure. Maybe the park will call them back to to do something with that bigger brown building in Rivertown. --- --- Wolf Pack is now officially awesome this year. Why? Two words: NO TWILIGHT. Gone are the shirtless actors with dog faces, only to be replaced with real, 100% all-American werewolf. --- --- Remember how we mentioned earlier about the park canning that two-bit magician after he made all the smoking areas disappear? As a parting gift, he cast a spell on Mysteria to make it suck. While nowhere near the level of suck last year's Death Row had, it's still at a pretty high level. Higher than Transformers 3, but lower than Bucky Larson. --- --- I'm blue da ba dee da ba die... --- --- And we end this with a midget skeleton clutching a pole. Why? Because we can. And our camera/phone died so there's no more pictures for you to see. Sorry. --- Written Edition with reviews of all haunts except for Club Blood, CornStalkers, and Cut-Throat Cove coming tomorrow.

I can ride The Beast and the Voyage all day long. Before Diamondback, all i rode most of the time was The Beast.

Went last night and the ones we tried: Carnevil: Fun maze. Not too scary, but lot of cool things to look at and entertaining. 8/10 Holiday Horror: Went when it was still light out and didn't realize there was no roof to any of the scenes, so wasn't scary, but had cool themes. I bet we'd like it more if it was dark when we went. 7/10 Slaughter House: Best house of the night. Lots of good scares and scenes. Ending was unique and freaky. Liked watching the chainsaw guy scare people at the end. 10/10 Urgent Scare: Disappointing. Long line could use some scareactors to mess with people. House itself was more gore than anything else. People who looked like burn victims were cool looking, but weren't really scaring people effectively. 5/10 Nightmare Alley: Disappointed as well. Posted my thoughts on it in a Nightmare Alley thread. Mostly bad location and not enough scares. 3/10

^ Extremely rare parts for Flight Deck? As I understand it, one of S&S's prime reasons for purchasing the bankrupt Arrow is its profitable parts division...