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(I am really beginning to worry where Paul is. )

I own the original Bat Press kit that the park gave out in 1981... not a reproduction - the complete original memeographed kit.

It will work if you search for The Bat inside of quotation marks. The search recognizes it as a seven letter string. "The Bat" Edit to add: Actually, you can just do " Bat". Any three letter word with a space on the side seems to be recognizable within the quotation marks.

^ Google crawls the forums, so you can search there: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+bat%22+site:KICentral.com EDIT: this forum doesn't like quotes in links; fixed

It's not as difficult as you think, really. Often times the kids know they're too short and the parents are the ones trying to get them on. I'm usually annoyed rather than feel bad, because it's rare that a parent doesn't know their kid is too short and they're trying to sneak them on anyway. Especially when they try little tricks like coaching them to stand on their toes, piling their hair on top of their head, etc. I've made kids take out headbands, hair clips, ponytails, all kinds of things that their parents used to add an inch to their height. Parents love to try and guilt you into letting their kids on. My favorite line ... "now you've made her cry." No ma'am, you made her cry when you brought her up here knowing full well she wasn't tall enough to ride.

An analyst asked whether there would be additional upside from Fast Lane in 2013, as predicted last year, considering that more growth than expected was realized in 2012. Mr. Ouimet answered, vaguely, that "meaningful opportunity" still exists. There could be a change in philosophy, but I don't think that this response signals one. Tweaking Fast Lane pricing and implementation is nothing new, and revenue has always been the goal. After a full year at all their parks, they're probably better at finding the "sweet spot".

I had no idea that search algorithms worked in KICentrals search option. Thanks for that.

The Bat is easily one of the hardest things to search for on this site. 'The' and 'Bat' are both three letter words and the search option doesn't allow words under four letters in length.

Hope you guys don't get me and ncp546 confused because of our avatars. BTW, welcome to KICentral, ncp546. I've never ridden The Bat at all, but I remember seeing it either down (which isn't anything new) or operating. Anyways here's some photos of The Bat at the Roller Coaster Database website: http://rcdb.com/627.htm?p=0

^Did it for you. Here's the link to jandyb's interview post: http://www.KICentral.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23109-the-bat/?p=478222 ... and to the beginning of that topic: http://www.KICentral.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23109-the-bat/

It was an off year for me, only 1 time. It was opening day and I had a Fast Lane pass so I at least made the most of it. This year that will change since I've purchased my first Gold Pass. Also helps that I now only live about 2 hours away.

Have you done a search on this site? Please do so.

That would look good in Dinosaurs Alive.

I wish I was around for that ride! It looks like so much fun!

Are you allowed to request for them to remove shoes if you feel there is an artificial height enhancing system (Paper towels), or if the shoes them selves have a heightened heel?

For the person asking about 15 year olds, I know they used to hire them in merch, food, park services, games and admissions. Not certain if this is still the same listing of departments. Either way, there are limited amounts of 15-year-old positions available and they fill quickly, so apply early for a better chance of a spot. 16 year olds add rides and lifeguard. You must be 18 to work in security. Unsure about entertainment's minimum age. As for what department .. having worked in 2 KI departments and 3 park departments overall, I'm really enjoying rides/attractions the most but not everyone would. Merch is a much more laid-back pace and is not very physically demanding. There's no actual selling technique involved, just the ability to run a register. You'll also do restocking, cleaning and organization. In my second year, I was called back early (in February) to help set up stores for the new season. Myself and three others basically did the full setup of On Location in Action Zone, which was pretty fun since Delirium was new that year so we had tons of new merchandise. Upward mobility (chances for promotion) are pretty good in merch as there tends to be fairly high turnover. This is also true in foods. Security is also not very physically demanding, except for being on your feet and walking around all day. It's a little more mentally demanding as you are usually called in to de-escalate situations that are starting to get out of control. You need to have a cool level head and be willing to step up to diffuse situations. You also need to be assertive enough to confront people who are breaking rules such as smoking and line jumping. I really enjoyed being in security because you're not just in one deparment, you're involved in all departments. In one shift you may handle situations that involve every department in the park, so you will get to know a lot of people. Plus as an added bonus, since security isn't "operational essential" if another area, like rides, is short staffed, they may pull from security to fill it. I never got sent to rides, but several of my coworkers did before I started. Rides is a whole different beast (no pun intended) from any other department. You are the main face of the park. People remember the rides employees more vividly and tend to have more interactions with them. Not only are you in charge of their safety, you have to be upbeat, energetic and friendly even when it's 100 degrees outside, or raining, or freezing cold. You need to be calm enough to maintain a level head when things don't go quite right, patient enough to work with a child that's upset, and stern enough to handle confrontations over safety issues. You have to be assertive and confident enough to turn people away who are too short or don't meet rider requirements (with disabilities, this can be VERY tricky to handle smoothly). You will be not just on your feet the entire day, but bending, twisting, reaching and lifting. On some rides you will need to be able to handle climbing lots of stairs or catwalks. However, even with the challenges, it's highly rewarding. What other job will you ever have that you get to operate a multi-million dollar amusement ride and bring joy to millions of people a year? Plus you get to learn a lot about how the rides themselves work. You'll learn about how they are maintaned and how their operating systems work. You'll get to explore areas that most people only dream of. At Coaster Con 2012, 6 people paid over $200 a person to climb Wild Eagle's lift hill. During my training, I got to do the same thing and even get paid for it (though my legs were sore for two days after!). I've been all over the inside of Mystery Mine's building and to the top of both lifts. I've been involved in video shoots at both rides. Usually the toughest situations you'll deal with are guests breaking or attempting to break safety rules, and they can get very frustrating. But it's the most rewarding job I've ever had. I love being in rides, and I don't think I'd ever consider another department now.

I very much miss the Sunshine Turnpike as seen behind Fred Flintstone here! I

By the way...Happy Birthday Paul...wherever you may be!

You also get a chance to work hard, make life long friends, learn a great deal, and make money.

Paul??? Here is Gulliver's Rub-A-Dub as it appeared in the early 70's, before being revamped in 1978. There were several areas of this ride including The Flintstons, Yogi Bears Park, Top Cat City and a Haunted House section. If anyone has additional pictures of this ride, please post them!!! In the mean time, enjoy The Flintstones section: Yogi Bear:

I just joined today. First time caller, long time listener..haha I don't know why I waited until now because I've been coming to this site for a couple years.

A couple more tips about working in rides... First, don't expect to be "driving" a coaster or operating another large ride your first day on the job. Initially you will be trained on all the basics (safety requirements, height checking, checking restraints, etc.), and you will gradually "move up" to other positions with more responsibility as the supervisors see fit. Secondly, as others have said, working in rides is far from an "easy" job. When you choose which ride you want to work at, pick one based on what you enjoy doing and where you want to be. If you enjoy working with kids, you'll love Planet Snoopy. If you want to be where all the "action" is, pick one of the more popular rides such as Beast or Diamondback. If you want something in between, Coney Mall is a good choice.

Agreed--LinkedIn is designed for the career level job seeker, not typically an hourly employee. Then again, I'm not sure where there was any indication in the posting that this was anything other than a professional position. (The title "Director" sort of assumes that...) I think LinkedIn's job listings seem much better in their "suggestions" than either Monster or The Ladders (at least IMHO...) This showed up under my suggested jobs because of the search filters I have set and my LinkedIn profile, which focuses on learning & development and organizational change management. At initial glance, I thought this was a position at the CF corporate/shared services level, but then realized on subsequent reading that it's specific to Cedar Point. What actually surprised me more was that it was considered a metro Columbus area job (as opposed to Toledo or Cleveland...)

It’s not uncommon for ride restrictions to change. I remember when anyone could ride Viking Fury at KI, then it was changed to one must have a chaperone if they are under a certain height. That change was literally implemented overnight in the middle of a season. The height requirement on Racer was also changed between seasons.

At Kings Island, yes. At Dollywood, no. It gets frustrating, especially when you see kids in those platform flip flops that are clearly adding 2 inches to their height to get them to the requirement and we can do nothing about it.

You have to be able to brace yourself. I guarantee, if he was allowed to ride, his boat bumped the one in front of it, and he was injured because he couldn't brace himself against the lapbar properly, he'd begin litigation before he even exited the boat. "They knew this was a possibility, so they shouldn't have even let me ride knowing full well this was a possibility!" he'd claim. The park is in a no-win situation.

So next is he going to file suit against Dick's Sporting Goods for not being able to use the rock climbing wall? When does it stop?

These guidelines are also set for the "what if" situations. For example, If there was a problem with The Beast and an evacuation is in order from one of the lift hills, one of the rules is that you have one hand on a hand-rail at all times... that's kind of hard to do with no hands. In this theory, a person who uses a wheelchair wouldn't be able to ride because they can't walk down the lift hill. However, there are alternate routes to evacuate a person with physical disabilities down from a lift (usually a stair chair). Usually the disability restrictions are for the ride experience rather than the potential for evacuation. As was pointed out, acccording to guidelines you are supposed to grasp the restraint. All rides I've ever seen have this guideline. You are supposed to grasp some variety of handle or bar while riding. The lack of ability to do so is what prohibits certain individuals from riding because they cannot grasp the handle or bar.

In response ^^^ I may be mistaken, but are there not rules and guidelines in place that actually say to keep both hands in the car and to hold on to the bar for safety during the ride? So techincally when you have your hands up you are breaking a guideline

A lot of information here: http://www.KICentral.com/forums/index.php?/topic/20538-is-this-legit/ http://www.KICentral.com/history/photos/displayimage.php?album=2&pos=12

Thanks so much for posting those pics. I visited the park as a kid once in 1975, but don't remember it. It's so interesting to see what was in the park at that time, and what I may have seen or rode at the time!

It was basically a children's water raft ride. It was a small circular boat (not parent friendly) that would very slowly glide around a water canal. It started out with very little scenery and eventually grew to a fully sculpted fiberglass landscape. One employee in the art department commented that his only regret was that management never approved an enclosed ride. So all of the characters and scenery were exposed to weather elements. It was located on part of the land where the boys restroom in the children's area is now. I think pics of this ride are exceptionally rare because it was a kid only ride. I will eventually locate and post pics of the ride being sculpted for the revamp in the late 70's.

^I really hope that Fred and his car were not destroyed, that would be a major crime.

Not only did you steal my story, you didn't tell it right! Because, you have to realize, there was more to it than that. First, he brings up this girl that is CLEARLY under the height limit by several inches. Then when I ask him if he's doing a parent swap, he stares at me blankly, so I told him she was too short too ride. He stares at me blankly some more, so I lead her to the height scale. He proceeds to PICK HER UP so her head touches the bar. My turn to stare blankly at him and say "her feet have to be flat on the floor." When the bar was several inches above her head he just calmly shrugs and says "it's ok, I'm riding with her." Pause. Continued stare. "She has to be 48" to ride." That was when he then proceeded to ask if we had "a booster seat or something so she can ride." It took everything I had not to tell him to get the hell off my ride.

Wait.. Am I allowed to crack a joke every now and then or not?

Chang isn't there, neither is the freefall swing. Everything else is there. So far, we haven't gotten a clear picture how bad some of the rides are, or what shape they are in. The article this week said there were some surprises, as well as some let downs. If I had to guess at surprises, that is probably most of the water park is in decent shape. I mean, its meant for water, and I'm sure it has seen enough of it even when closed to keep things in decent shape. Most pumps can be cleaned up and made operable again which is good considering what some of those items cost. I suspect the bad relates to conditions of rides, most likely coasters, and even more specifically those that are made of wood. I suspect Thunder Run is worse than they originally thought. It probably needs new trains, a complete retracking, and possible repair of some of its supporting members. There was a broad statement this past week where they said it could take 150k or it could take 1m to make the ride work correctly again. They just did not know, and would not know until it was all inspected. They of course have some percentage set aside for contingencies or unexpected expenses. The only ride not expected to open in 2014, if all this goes through is Twisted Twins. It looks like it needs a lot of repairs. I think it needs a scrap heap. I saw it run one time, with only one train on each loop during one visit, and that was all. Its performance history has to be as bad as The Bat at Kings Island, or possibly worse.

My god. You guys are acting like I posted a tasteless photo of a dead cat or something. It was just a JOKE. Ridiculous.

Nice photos Josh...i'll add one that I don't think i've ever posted: Perry Meek, the main guy in the photo now designs outfits for Lady Gaga: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/from-hindley-street-to-dressing-gaga/story-e6frea6u-1226095969220 KI "Wall Of Fame" here he comes. Where is Paul? (Hopefully somewhere having fun!)

Awesome, now there are TWO parks "opening soon" that I wont so much as step foot in.

Photo #41 - Oktoberfest - 1988

Photo #40 - Amazon Falls - 1988

That was the era that I really remember from my childhood at KI so thinking about it makes me very nostalgic. I miss the theming, the music, and the general ambience of the place then, as well as the rides that were there then (plus their original names). I have a lot of amazing memories with family, friends and classmates from that era. But I'm also happy with how certain things have changed since then and the direction the park seems to be moving in, for the most part. It's just nice to reminisce!

Photo #39 - King Cobra - Employee Group Photo - Late 1980's

Photo #38 - Nick Theater

I joined back in 2010, when I was still just a reader. Since I didn't visit KI between 2003 and 2012 - or any Cedar Fair park between 2008 and 2012 - I never found a reason to post. There would usually be something interesting here to read, though, and I'd end up helping my family with their visits to KI and beyond. After reading enough about new management at Cedar Fair, I finally decided to see for myself what a decade had done to KI. As my interest grew, I asked a couple questions here and popped into a few threads. (Somehow, the 2-day ticket became a season pass, two days became six, and a few posts became a few hundred. I blame the Customer Service attendant at Kroger who upsold me.)

(Thought I already posted in this thread... Apparently not, since 90% of its posts are from before I joined.) September 2008. That was a couple months after I joined KIExtreme, which, for me, is now a mausoleum of my most embarrassing posts ever. (I used the word "n00b," complete with both zeroes, so, so many times... So embarrassing, haha. I'm sure a couple posts of mine were SH0Xing--right, ahank? ) I will say this much for KIC: even though I was never around for PKIU, etc., which many of you seem to consider the glory days of the site, this place has more or less consistently remained one of the best park/coaster fansites around. It's had its rough moments, but it always seems to work out in the end. There aren't unreasonable forum rules, disrespect for the park and its rules, or an epidemic of know-it-all attitudes like several sites I could mention. Trust me, I've shopped around to see what's out there. (TL;DR: GROUP HUG.)

This may interest some of you who are into conceptual stages of art production - namely Kings Island rides/attractions. I am good friends with one of KI's early employees who was a concept designer/sculptor. I met this individual from tracking down some of his other early work when he was employed with Kenner toys here in Cincinnati. This is the guy who sculpted the original Boba Fett action figure, for those of you who are into Star Wars While at Kings Island he sculpted nearly every fiberglass relief (3d character, sign, etc) in the park from the early 70's until KECO took over in the early 80's. He has told me several stories of what it was like working on projects big and small in the park. Some concepts were scrapped very early on, while others made it further and few were put into full production. I have always been most interested in The Bat ride and remember only seeing it as a child. At the time it was standing, but not operating. When he mentioned having worked on the design phase of the ride, I naturally asked if he had anything left over and he said only a few pieces have survived, but yes. He explained his work on the ride in an interview I conducted with him as follows: "I was told that we were getting a newer kind of coaster that would be very unique. There wasn't much detail given about the specifics of the ride, but we knew it was going to be different since Kings Island decided to go the route of unique coasters after the success of The Beast. The original concept for the park was that it would compete head on with Disney, but coasters seemed to be the new wave, so thats the market they played to. The first idea management had was that the new suspended coaster would be space themed. So they had me draw up a few sketches with moon surfaces and a queue line leading into a space station dome. I loved creating waterfalls, so naturally I added that in to the design. The entire surface was to be sculpted out of polystyrene and then covered in fiberglass. It would've been a massive undertaking, but we had already done this with the revamp of the Rub-A-Dub ride, so we knew we could do it. A week or so later I was given an order to begin creating a haunted house type station that would serve as the loading dock for the new ride. So out went the space ride idea and now we are working on some kind of haunted house themed coaster. I was told that they were now going with a bat theme and would need some sketches reflecting this concept. It was soon after that I was asked to sculpt up a large bat head to be attached on the front of the coaster trains. I love that thing! The haunted house loading station was to be decorated with pictures of "bat people" and a vampire maquette so I came up with a few ideas that were somewhat crude in nature, but would be refined once approved. Those concepts were unfortunately not approved since the theme was strong enough as it was. It was a job like any other...you are told what you were going to work on and the art department did everything they could to get it approved. Ideas would sit around for months and then all of a sudden management would approve the idea and want it completed and in the park yesterday! The ideas were already in place, my job was to simply refine the idea and give us a heading on what we were working on and how it would be accomplished, but ultimately management had the final say on what we could and could not do. The best projects were the ones where they would tell us to just be creative and come up with something! But I thought The Bat was a great theme and it's a shame the ride had so many problems" and lastly, his "artists proof" that was the first pulled from the mold and airbrushed for management approval... All of these items were rescued from certain destruction as KECO was taking over. They saw no value in the items and auctioned off the majority that remained. I'd love to one day showcase these items for the general public to view...if the park would ever ask me ~Josh

*Loved by a couple of people, ridden by millions