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Horrible...I cross the front with my arms crossed in front of my face, saying "no, no, no, no", and STILL, they hound you. They need to be much, MUCH less pushy. My friend and I had a photographer sincerely scream the "hi, welcome to Kings Island, squeeze together for me" spiel on opening day. It was actually really humorous--it was like she had had just the wrong number of no's for the day, and she was not having any more. That being said, it's like 16gwoods said: they've got quotas they need to fill. You can't fault them that much, even if you think they're annoying--it's no different than the people working the floor at electronics stores or the average worker on an assembly floor. They probably know it's a pain in the butt to be asked, as it's probably a pain to do the asking. They probably get attitudes left and right from people, especially if park guests "leave their brains in the car," as the phrase goes around here sometimes. So don't come down too hard on them, guys. They aren't there with their cameras to bother you; they're just trying to make money.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Bluegrass Boardwalk. There's a lot of risk here, but sometimes you have to take risks in order to succeed. For now, I'm willing to give the Kochs involved in this operation the benefit of the doubt while I stand back and watch the progress. We can talk about whether BB will succeed or fail all day, but ultimately we won't know what will happen until next year at the earliest. My belief is that the Kochs are taking a huge risk in this venture, but that they are possibly the best people for the job other than Ed Hart. If BB is to succeed, though, they have a lot to learn, not the least of which is an entirely new market that they're not familiar with. Still, I trust that they aren't completely clueless here; I doubt they would have taken on this venture in the first place if they didn't have some understanding of what it would take.

The investors have a very successful model to follow. Predicting failure one year before the gates open is similar to predicting the weather 25 days in advance.

There was a member who used to reside here that used to have bright green hair..

My son, who is six, is a huge thrill seeker. He's been riding coasters and thrill rides since he was like 3, riding all the coasters at WDW and Disney Paris. Also rode the Matterhorn at DL in Anaheim when he was either two or three! He LOVES The Racer at KI, and yesterday he finally got to do his first rides on Vortex and Beast. He liked The Vortex, though he said his head was bouncing around a bit on the restraint. But he LOVED The Beast. It was very funny because when we pulled into the station, he looked at me and said, "We need to ride that again! RIGHT NOW!!" Can't wait for him to go on his first Beast night ride...that's his daddy's favorite ride in the world.

My mom, fiancé Jeff (count_of_tuscany), and I went to Cedar Point's opening day on Saturday, May 12 and had a super great time! All in all, they made some great improvements to the park! Here is a bit about our day, as well as the changes we saw to the park: As soon as we got there, we saw there was a giant dino between the parking lot and the season pass center area - made me so excited for Dinosaurs Alive! (I love dinos!) We got there around 8:30am and the line was already pretty long to get in near the main entrance gates. When we got in at 9, we headed straight to Millennium. On our way there, we noticed that the Celebration Plaza was in its construction phase still (no surprise there!), but it looks like it's going to be awesome! They have some pretty cool new curvy concrete benches all along the midway over there. It looked so strange without WildCat there - so bare! And was much quieter in the area later in the day - we were always so used to hearing the loud cars on the rickety track. Kind of missed it! On our way over to Millennium for our first ride, we noticed that we hadn't seen it testing yet since we'd been there, and when we got near the ride, we noticed that it was closed due to mechanical reasons. The line for it was already curved way out to almost the Red Garter. We were looking for Single Rider Bob and sure enough, we spotted him near the front of the line and waved to him! He is so awesome! Since Millennium was down, we decided to go on Maverick. On our way over, we noticed some changes. The big tree right as you enter Frontier Trail was cut down, which was really noticeable. The woodworking shop is now the Toy Barn (I'm pretty sure that's what it's called, I can't remember exactly), and the woodworking shop is located in the building that used to have the make-your-own-teddy bears. (The teddy bear making machine is now in the Toy Barn.) Also, we noticed that the water wheel on the building near Snake River Falls was working, and there was a waterfall coming down. I did not personally remember that always being on, but I could be wrong. When we got to Maverick, the line was already up in the building near the stairs (near the single rider line), so we hardly waited at all for that. Had a super great first ride of the CP season! After a few more rides, we headed over to Dinosaurs Alive and waited there for about a half hour for the ribbon cutting ceremony to start at 11. We were some of the first people to go into Dinosaurs Alive, and it was awesome! The most awesome part about it was the view of Millennium - WOW! I have never seen it from that angle before (I was on Terror Island during Halloweekends, but it was too dark and foggy to see anything.) The view was truly amazing, it was so crazy to see Millennium from such obscure angles! We took some great pictures of it which I will post later. Throughout the rest of the day, rides were breaking down left and right (which we expected because it seems to happen every opening day.) Overall, throughout the day, the only major rides that we never saw broken down (or riding empty) were Raptor, Power Tower, Iron Dragon, MeanStreak, Dragster (surprisingly!), and Mantis. (Some of those may have been down at one point, we just didn't see it.) Every other major ride was closed at least once throughout the day. Usually we say "what ride should we go on next?" but it got to the point where were just saying "what ride is open?!" Instead of being upset and annoyed that the rides were all closing and things weren't working, we just made a joke out of the whole thing and made up a song about it, adding lines to it as we observed, such as "Mine Ride don't work, Millennium don't work, Go Karts got stuck, ran out of meat (they ran out of meat at Los Gatos!), and so on. We were really having a lot of fun with this - we always manage to have a great time at Cedar Point no matter what - just being there is a blast! We won't let broken rides ruin our day! Some of the other changes we noticed that I didn't mention above were: * New elevator lift systems on mostly every major ride for disabled accessibility * New Fast Pass lanes, and some re-routed regular lines on: *Power Tower (entrance is now across from Dragster, closer to Corkscrew) *Iron Dragon (entrance is near the opposite side of the station than it used to be on) * "Tornado Shelter Area" signs on restrooms * New menus at Johnny Rockets * Some new wood on the turnstiles in line for Gemini * Parts of MeanStreak are re-tracked (still just as bumpy in my opinion! but I love that ride!) * Big LED scrolling sign in front of the parking booths (I'm almost positive they are new, I don't remember them being there) * Random dinos throughout the park! * New electronic lockers (which I'm confused about - do they open all day, or are they a one-time-open like they used to be?) * Pagoda gift shop is now tiled with a light-colored floor instead of a darker carpet. In my opinion, it looked so much better with carpet. * New awesome lights on Giant Wheel, Power Tower, and Millennium Force. The Giant Wheel is definitely the most impressive - it's almost hypnotic looking at it! I stared at it for literally 5 minutes straight while my mom and Jeff were in the restroom, and I never saw the same design twice. * Cheese-on-a-sticks are about half the size that they used to be and more expensive. (Glad we get 2 free drinks with them with our platinum pass!) * No more "It's a good call!" sign near Raptor by Game Day Grille (we used to love that sign, and always made that hand gesture and said "It's a good call!" while at the park.) Most people probably wouldn't miss this sign, but we always laughed at it for some reason. We miss it! We find funniness in the weirdest things.. We even took one of our pictures near it at our engagement photo shoot last October: There are probably many more changes we noticed (we were sure to point them out as we came across them) but I can't think of any more at the moment. If I think of any more, I will post them! It was definitely the most memorable opening day we've been to! We were laughing so many times throughout the day! Weather was beautiful all day too. I have some pictures that we took that I will upload when I get them on my computer. Although many rides were on-and-off closed, we did manage to get 17 rides in and a Dinosaurs Alive experience: 1 Maverick 1 Wicked Twister 1 Corkscrew 2 Gemini 2 Magnum 1 MeanStreak 1 Blue Streak 1 Mine Ride 1 Wave Swinger 1 Disaster Transport 1 Iron Dragon 1 Sky Ride (that ride is freaky!) 1 Space Spiral 1 CP & LE Railroad 1 Tilt-A-Whirl Thanks for reading!

The old entrance was basically a hole in the fence. You prefer that to the new Soak City entrance?

At least KI doesn't have anything as bad as Tracker Jackers. Of course, I probably shouldn't make quasi-esoteric references on a forum with people who may or may not have the same taste as me in film and literature either...

Okay... that's not what the email newsletter said. But if you say so... We changed it.

Lets sum this up into one sentence shall we? There is a potential to succeed and there is a potential to fail. It pretty much goes for every business that if ran correctly and provided to the right market a business will succeed. Holiday World operated many years with Kentucky Kingdom only an hour away, it will be fine. If Bluegrass Boardwalk is a hit there should be no reason to think Holiday World will suffer, in fact I bet it could do even better than past years. If you're impressed with one, you want to visit the other right? Same can be said with Cedar Point and Kings Island...in which the product of Kings Island and Cedar Point are vastly different. Compare that to Holiday World and Bluegrass Boardwalk where they will too be vastly different parks. Of course there is always a chance at failure, hinting maybe why they aren't throwing too much money at it just yet. I'm not a business man by any means, but it seems pretty clear what they're doing. Kentucky Kingdom succeeded once, it can do it again.

John Allen. <3

john allen would be someone who has been influentual

I was wondering about that, thanks for letting us know!! I get the newsletter but must have missed that. I guess If i wanted to get a ERT ride on Diamondback, I would have to walk all the way around??

Reading the article, it is obvious HW has not been their only focus as Koch family has been part of numerous business ventures owned by Ho Ho Holdings LLC. The Koch family has shown a successful history of maintaining their current business while successfully exploring new ventures. Given their history, it is insulting to predict they cannot handle it. We also know that the entire management team is not going to be associated with BB.

You're thinking about the Magic Kingdom.

Very nice sign! Very inviting!

So Holiday World is on leased land? Included a collection of rides not maintained for the last several years? Has a State Fair board and a collection of political types who must be pacified? What is this successful analogous model? Visionland? Rye Playland? Playland in B.C.?

i think you mean me, i still pop in every now & then. just dont post that much.

Please, tell us what you really think.

Please make more of these! Excellent!

The more and more I read these linked articles and statements here under this Kentucky KIngdom post the more and more angry/disappointed I become. Did anyone else notice that the headlines have now changed from BB WILL open May 2013 to BB COULD/MAY open May 2013...? This park will: A. Not open on time. B. Not be a success. C. Not be worth visiting if the park somehow does open in May 2013 D. Ruin the reputation of the Koch family. They are expect to draw 5,660 people a day to this park? My question is what attractions will they have. $15 million doesn't go very far with amusement parks... $10 million got HW Mammoth and sparkler this year. If they are rehabbing rides there wont be very many that are salvageable (they have been untouched for years) all you have to do is look at the person's post from a couple of months ago to see these rides wont be reopening... The Koch's botched this idea from the get go. I wonder what Will would've thought of this... The park was and will be run by juvenile delinquents (If it ever opens). They have absolutely (despite what Dan claims) zero rides (Atleast the major ones) there that can be saved (If they do they cannot open an entire park with one ferris wheel and a tilt-a-whirl and expect people to pay $30 to enter). They should have stuck with their bread and butter HW and not been greedy and try and open a park that struggles with the fair board along with a cruddy population pool to draw attendance from. KK is a waste of space it would be better off as an extra barn for the cows whenever the state fair comes through once a month. I still can't believe the Koch's believe that this place is salvageable... It deserves to rot just like its doing right now.

The warm water areas beat the poop out of the slightly brown ones!

Oh boy, you asked for it... After being scared to death by The Racer way back in 2000, I was terrified of roller coasters for 9 years and would refuse to even ride some of the more intense carnival rides. However, in 2009, with the addition of Diamondback, I decided to give roller coasters another shot and we planned a trip to Kings Island. We arrived May 14th, 2009 around 10:30 AM. Little did I know, the 230' Diamondback would not be the highlight of the trip, as good as it was...(and still is) After heading up the Eiffel Tower for some amazing views, we first tried the now-defunct Crypt (because it was raining and Beast was down), which (even though none of us knew it) was on its 2nd day of the "ultra-tame" ride cycle that the ride became lamented for during its final few years. While the ride, at first, caught me off guard and suprised me, it ended far too soon. I was dissapointed, and was a little worried that Kings Island might actually let me down. After leaving, the rain had stopped and Beast had re-opened. I entered, and smacked my sister with a q-line "gate" on accident. The Beast's crew was doing an excellent job getting people pumped up for what they claimed was the "best roller coaster in the world!". After a 25 minute wait, I boarded the ride..."Ok, here we go...a roller coaster..." The train left the station and around the turnaround. Thudthudthudthud..."Oh (Insert Curse Word Here) What Am I Doing!?! I'm on a HUGE wooden roller coaster! This might hurt..." Then, we began climbing the 110' lift hill...clankclankclankclank...to relieve some tension, I looked at my momma and cracked a joke: "Look ma, we're higher than da treez! " The ride reached the top of the hill, and one of the most famous images in all of coasterdom was before me: "Well, here goes no..." I couldn't finish because we began dropping! There is a trim brake on the first drop, but I didn't even feel it (In fact, I never have, even though I know it's there...) We hit the tunnel, and people were screaming, and I thought "Hey! This isn't so bad!". We dipped into a ravine, then back up, and flew into the brake shed, where I managed to catch my breath for a moment before the ride quickly turned again and darted into a tunnel. "Oh Man, this is a long tunnel!" I thought during that part of the ride...then, the ride exited into the daylight and made a few more downward turns into the woods before another lift hill emerged before us. We hit it, and I caught my breath again. My first thought "Momma, are you ok?". She said yes. My second thought was for a friend of mine who was also afraid of roller coasters, and he said he was loving it so far. So was I. Then my sister blurted out: "You ain't seen nothing yet!" "Crud!" I thought. Kings Island emerged in its glory, but I didn't get to view it for long before a 141' drop into a tunnel was smack dab in my face. The ride dived down, faster, faster, faster and into the darkness, where I was thrown around and the train began screaming as if it were trying to break free of the track. Then, we exited, and dove back in! All over again, and finally, the train calmly exited the second helix tunnel and turned right into a small drop, and then we hit the final brakes. "WOW!" I thought. "Welcome back riders, how was your ride?" My response: "WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" After that, I took on Vortex, later Diamondback, and numerous other rides at Kings Island. That night, I returned to Beast with my friend and we took a night ride on the wooden monster that put even the ride I described a minute ago TO SHAME. I have been on The Beast 7 times, and all 7 of those rides have been memorable for one reason or another, but never because they were bad. I've since been to Holiday World as well, and rode their wooden coasters, and yes, they are great...in fact, at one point I had both Voyage and Legend ahead of Beast in my coaster rankings, but a stunning Halloween Haunt night ride changed that so Beast was #1 again. And it hasn't lost that spot yet. (Granted, I've only been to 3 parks total and there are some pretty epic looking rides out there I have yet to go on, such as El Toro @ SFGadv, Bizzaro @ SFNE, Millennium Force & Maverick @ CP, etc etc) And I agree with KIFan73: I would go to Kings Island simply if Beast were the only ride/attraction there, no offense to Diamondback, Delirium, Flight of Fear, Vortex, Drop Tower, Racer, Flight Deck, etc etc. But, they are simply the cherry on top of a Beast sundae...MMMmmm...Beast sundae...

I do........now.

That is cool, though. I wonder if King's Island knows he is a past employee. Would be cool to see him come back to the park.

Standbyme, I too am one that never replied yet in this posting. Admittedly, I'm more of a viewer on the site than I am a regular poster. This topic kept me excited to come back to the site every day and see the newest comparison pictures. For a few days after it ended, I assumed that no new pictures were up because you were busy with the holidays... then I realized you had mentioned that you had posted the last one. Just like everyone else, I was sad to see it end. The amount of effort and quality you put into this is phenomenal. Thanks for such a great topic. Another thanks goes out to Hendricks for the fades, as they really helped with noticing the similarities and changes. Probably one of my favorite topics of all time. I would really consider talking to someone within KI and seeing if you can publish a photo book with what you have and maybe even more! Thanks again!