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The baffoons holding these out on roller coasters were enough. Personally, I'm ridiculously happy that this was stopped BEFORE someone got hurt. We've all seen the photos of someone holding a selfie stick out on Big Thunder Mountain. Enter a tunnel and CRACK. Stick goes flying and hits everyone behind. Absolutely ridiculously idiotic. Though this probably isn't a direct response to it, California Screamin' was E-stopped the other day when someone pulled out a selfie stick on the lift! Can you imagine? I'm glad Disney put a stop to this and quickly. This means that bag-check locations outside the parks will be screening for selfie-sticks and asking visitors to return them to their cars before entering. That's great. For those that DO inevitably slip through, I very sincerely hope Disney empowers employees to react. I'm sure they will on rides, but it's just as important that those things stay out of the air during shows, parades, fireworks, etc. And you KNOW dozens of those poles were hoisted up during every showing of World of Color, JUST so the owner could have a shaky amateur video of the performance.

Eventually these infernal things will be banned in so many places that there will cease to be a market for them, and then they will die off like the stupid fad that they are. I look forward to that day.

Excellent.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/disney-world-will-ban-selfie-sticks-from-its-theme-parks/ar-AAcafZ9?ocid=ansTribune11

You might find yourself pleasantly surprised. SkyCatcher is like WindSeeker, but actually a lot scarier. Breakdance is a relatively rare type of ride, well worth riding! Their scooters are identical to every other set of Larsons (including the ones at KI) but usually have a relatively short line. The Flying Dutchman is one of the original 1972 rides from Kings Island (yes, that specific one) and is worth riding on that basis alone. Raging Rapids is no White Water Canyon, but it's a solid rapids ride. Mile High Falls is decent. Its got a straight drop as opposed to the double dip you see on Congo Falls, which makes for a somewhat different experience. If you have time for a waterpark visit, there are some great attractions there, too. Deluge is a must! The two (major) coasters, as it happens, rank in my top 5 woodies and top 5 steel respectively.

This happened a week and a half ago but I have been too busy to post, but still wanted to share. My daughter and I were there Monday before last and rode FOF and were in front seat. It launched us through the tunnel but right before it started to go up to the first loop it came to a dead stop. Wacked my head pretty good on the seat when it stopped and got stuck there for like 20 minutes while our feet were going numb from the restraints, but turned out to be a really cool experience. They turned the lights while we were waiting and it was amazing seeing what it looks like with the lights on. One of the ride ops walked through the tunnel and hung out with us and she said she had worked that ride for 3 years and had never gotten to walk down the tunnel before. She was so jazzed about it and was going on and on about how it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what the ride actually looks like that everyone on the train was excited too. She was even taking pics of people with their cell phones with the track in the background. They eventually drug the train back to the station and had us get off and then we got to get back on and ride a little while later. It was way cool and I was very inpressed with the op and how she made an uncomfortable 20 minutes seem like fun.

That is interesting - especially as they seem to allow people to take pictures and videos on their rides. If only people would use common sense! On Wednesday, I was on 64 in Virginia when I saw a front seat passenger roll down their window to stick a selfie stick outside to take a picture. It may have been stop and go traffic, but seriously? At Kings Dominion, as my train was pulling back into the Volcano station, a teenage boy had a selfie stick strapped to his wrist (like a Wii remote) when he was told he couldn't use it. The strap might return to the station but if that stick breaks, the debris is going to hurt someone and I imagine potentially cause issues with the coaster. Just enjoy the ride and leave the camera in a safe place while on the ride. Why is that too much to ask?

Love your Avatar Pic, brskeen! I changed my skin to DB. Is everyone staying with The Beast or did they change?

I still remember eagerly awaiting to return home from Paramount's Kings Island in the late 90s so that I could visit the "new" www.pki.com in Netscape over 28.8kbps dial-up Internet. (My phone line was noisy as a kid; I was stuck at that speed until we got cable Internet.) As a redirect to www.visitkingsisland.com, It's been up and down over the years. It hasn't worked for the past few months, which has finally caused me to start typing "visi" instead of "pki" when I want to find the park's website.

That was my other worry, all these new members we got over the past week suddenly lost and having to recreate a new account. But it had to happen. I do have to admit that with all these problems with the server made me dive into MySQL optimization and CPU saving processes. I have been making tweaks on the backend and at least in my perspective KIC has been loading much faster.

I went to one food truck festival in Loveland. The trucks were overwhelmed by the volume of customers. The lines for the popular trucks were around an hour long, and some trucks ran out of ingredients to make their dishes. The Pizza Hut in the parking lot took advantage of the surplus of hungry money spenders by having a special for medium pepperoni pies. I have tried, and liked food trucks on several occasions, but these truck rallies are not their optimal venue, in my limited experience , that is.

If you still type "pki.com" into your browser's address bar to access the Kings Island website, then I think it's time for you to move into 2015 and learn what these wonderful things call "bookmarks" are for. (A bit more on topic: Firefox also times out.)

Because that idea worked SO WELL the first time.

^ There is a theme selector at the bottom of each forum page. Click "Change theme". I personally pick "IP Board", since I prefer reading text against light backgrounds. Regarding the lost posts, I got back most of the recent trip reports from web caches and reposted them. People spend a lot of time writing those, so it was good to restore them. Dane increased the frequency & longevity of backups, so hopefully content won't be lost going forward. Stuff happens; it could have been worse.

We as many of you are surprised this morning logging in. I reverted to a backup I made just before the forums being upgraded. The new software was just too buggy, constantly crashing, and lacked support. (8 days ticket response times) Last night the forums kept getting themselves in a "get" loop meaning they were fetching pages on pages on the same page in a loop like it was out of the movie Inception and 503 crash the server. At about 4:30am still up working on it I threw in the towel and reverted. What's next? Well we will be trying this upgrade again in the future once we are in the new server. (getting configured right now) As for now. I apologize for the missing posts from the past week and all the work you put into them but we will bounce back. This isn't our first rodeo.

I don't know all the details yet, but KI just tweeted about an All Season Photo Pass.

Had a great time today. The predicted rain drove the crowds away, as the actual storm around 2 or so did as well. Full trip report coming over the weekend. Also, the food prices surprised me. 15 bucks for a meal? I can go to McDonalds and get one for 5. We did decide to go to Reds HOF Grille. We expected the prices to be through the roof, but we were surprised when we looked at the menu and saw that the prices were just like any sit-down restaurant. The food was good as well, although my dad complained that his burger was small for a $10 burger (although the onion rings on top probably made up for the cost!). The Spicy & Sweet sauce was pretty good, although I still prefer Pizza Hut's Sweet Chili. I thought the Spicy Garlic was good as well, but I also thought it was lacking some flavor and heat. Although my mom couldn't handle it, so I don't know. Also, it's the only place in the park with free refills without a brand new souvenir cup. I was extremely impressed. My dad also happens to be a Reds fan, so that was a nice treat for him as well. Also, if you want to get ERT but don't have a pass, Kroger should still have vouchers until the end of the month. They are only valid until the end of the month though. You just hand them to the person at the gold pass entrance and they'll take em.

@KingsIslandPR ADVISORY: Due to inclement weather tonight's Soak City Dive-In Movie has been cancelled.

When I was at Hershey, I could hear a group of people behind us using a selfie stick to take a selfie on Fahrenheit's lift (and I heard the group rejoicing after the ride). I was surprised nothing was done about it.

...and there was great rejoycing in the heavens.

Zombie Dogz is the biggest food truck in Dayton with a ginormous following. They are known for huge all beef hot dogs served in oversized hot dog buns with a wide array of unique toppings and sauces. Everything is themed to Zombies. https://www.facebook.com/zombiedogzdayton I had them out back of my buisness many times and its amazing to see the croud they bring just on their own.

I don't know how many here on KIC are collectors of Kings Island memorabilia, but I found a listing on Ebay for a piece of Son of Beast track. Just thought maybe a few on here might be interested in something like that.

How many photos would you need over the course of a season? A $60 pass seems pricey for what it offers

^ Stayed with The Beast!!! Excited to be able to have it back there as I browse the forums!! The others are good, but The Beast still wins for me..... As usual....

just comin in with the bee quip!

I have this problem on Firehawk, Gatekeeper, and Banshee. Every time I ride Banshee, the restraints press down on my hipbones by the end of the ride. Sitting at the final brake run is torture because I can't breathe and I need to get out. I have yet to find a seat on Banshee that I can comfortably ride in.

I don't see why they would not deliver there. For a large group, the party platters or 6 foot subs might carry a smaller delivery charge.

But...speaking of Jimmy Johns, I wonder if they would be willing to deliver to the "drop off area" on the west end of the parking lot. Could order it ahead of time, have 1 or 2 people meet them out there, then do a picnic style lunch in the parking lot. Food would be a little fresher than if it was packed, obviously a little more expensive, but probably cheaper than inside. check the deliver fee if one decides to go that route, IIRC it was $1 per sandwich when we have delivered up to our neighborhood pool. If you are talking about a large group, the convenience of not having to leave your parking spot could get awfully pricy.

Rode it once. Won't ride it again. The restraints are the reason. It wasn't the restraints around my torso that was the problem, it was my legs. I was in physical pain for almost the entire ride. I was actually very sad afterwards because I was so excited to experience the 'flying' ride...

At Holiday World, they just do thumbs up, with no audible signal. Or at least that's how it's been for several years. I don't know if they're doing anything different with Thunderbird.

Flashback to how the site looked on my 10th birthday! Man, I feel old... (and I'm "only" 28 now )

Well they own it till atleast Aug 6, 2017. Which it may be renewed, or (if smart)hopefully they auction it off themselves. Estibot has it estimated at $200,000

I find them uncomfortable but never had had the thought of falling out. I feel that most of it is just from people not used to being in that position or having much experience with those restraints.

Cannibal has started testing with actual people on it, so hopefully it's getting close to opening. Wicked is a surprisingly great ride for how small it is, so I'm hoping they have another hit on their hands.

I don't mind the ads so much on the midways, it's the train wraps I can't stand. For a ride like Kingda Ka in the Golden Kingdom that is arguably the best themed section of Great Adventure, having Smurf or Karate Kid ads in the queue and banners in the station and Karate Kid train wraps felt out of place. It was the same with Runaway Mine Train. The station is in the giant fort along with the Skyway station and they put huge Polly O ads all over the outside of the fort, took down historical pictures with captions about the West and covered them with ads and put ads on the trains. As much as people are tired of Super Hero themed rides, at least they can't put ads on those coaster trains.

If you think that is scary...I got a better one. My last full season as an employee I approached this gentleman and his girlfriend over by Delirium when I saw him looking at the park map confused and then looking at Son of Beast, which was still operating, then he saw me (while he was pointing at SOB) "is that The Racer?" I never could figure that out but then again I had someone ask for direction to Raptor while at KI several years before CF took over. (I thought he was referring to Reptar but nope...he was looking for Raptor) Did you tell him to get in his car and driver several hours north to get to it? Nah, I did explain he was at the wrong park though. That would be the type of response you'd get out of a Knott's scare actor if you approach asking how to get to Splash Mountain.

Malem we who write and read really appreciate the effort and work you have done. Thank you.

Oh I forgot to mention I got a functioning Blaster and scored 2460, a few hundred more than my previous high score. I was over 2000 before I even got to the skeletons. I used my trick of turning them to look at the red light before choosing a Blaster and the other two were seriously weak.

I no longer ride The Vortex, but will be sad when/if it goes. Holds memories of a high school friend who is now gone. Roller coasters are so much more than machines or material, they have a life in the lives of people.

And here I thought metal fatigue was when I rock out too hard and have to take a nap to recuperate.

Thank goodness for The Flash Pass. I had about four hours I could spend there. Goliath twice and everything else I wanted to do at least twice. Worth.every.penny. And then some.

Unless you hoarded light bulbs before they were phased out, just like I may have done... You and I both! I do art for a living. With the new style bulbs, I might as well use an oil lamp for lighting. I somewhat value the ability to see what I'm working on.

I miss the style of the pads underneath the flats. Made it look unique versus hard gray concrete...

Last I saw Zypher does have the newer LED lights.

I like the black paint on Monster it matches the ride name better, but it does look better with its new scheme matching the midway. The new lights are fantastic though, that def needs to stay

I love Monster. This is without a doubt one of my alltime favorite classic flat rides. There is just something about the idea of riding a piece of history that makes the park feel more like home. A familiar old friend. Not to mention, I enjoy all the little quirky things about this old guy. All the sounds it makes, the insanely intricate looking mechanics that go into it ( and considering how old tihs ride is just makes it that much more impressive to me ), and oddly enough-the smell. The ride experience is always fun with nice little pops of airtime and not to mention a great way to cool off on a hot day with a nice breeze ( also a good way to get a little sun when you're stuck at the top while the other arms are unloading ) So moral of the story is, I hope whatever they are doing ultimately leads to the rides return to service. A trip to the park isn't fullfilled for me without a spin on Monster.

I'm betting on refurb/lighting package like SR&R received last year. And if I'm right, I cannot WAIT to see it!

Sure we will see Monster again in a new "light" soon Sent from a signal coming out of the Vega system.

Even when I was a little kid my family didn't like bringing lots of stuff to the park. I do remember one time I got a souvenir cup st CP and we ended up hiding it in bushed whenever we went on rides. I know that's not the most secure way of storing a loose article...but heck, it was just a plastic cup. I'd never leave anything valuable behind in a bush. Really, unless you have a baby or small toddler with you, I don't see why you need so much stuff. Me: Cargo shorts, water bottle (refill it throughout the day--never need to buy drinks), wallet, keys, phone. The water bottle's a little lumpy but it still fits. I have all the essentials and I don't have to worry about loose articles. If I want a souvenir? I wait until the end of the night and buy something on my way out of the park.