Leaderboard

Check this bad boy out: https://www.kingsislandgear.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/the-racer-nanocoaster-plus $59.99, but if you at the size it seems pretty darn cool!

2’ long according to the park. Dang.

Parks with the attendance, size, and profitability of Kings Island almost need annual additions. The number of years where almost nothing happened in the entire history of the park is very short. They don’t need to be large in scale but there is almost zero chance there will be nothing in 2024 or 2025. But I am expecting something much larger than this one of those years. The longest gap between coasters since the park opened in 1972 has been 5 years and it’s only happened twice, between Diamondback and Banshee, and after the park initially opened to when Demon opened in 1977. 2025 will have been 5 years since Orion opened. Typically it’s 3 years between coasters although the pandemic has changed plans and schedules, I would be extremely surprised if we don’t see a new coaster in either 2024 or 2025.

The attendance in October of `22 was actually better than attendance in Octiober of `19.

Ironic how they release this.

Couldn't have asked for a better 50th so what was my fav thing? #1. Beast re-tracking! If there was any doubt about The Beast being one of the best in the park, the re-tracking has solidified it as such. The wait time has been up a ton as well so I think a lot of people have realized how much better/smoother it is now. However, I also loved the shows, repainting of other attractions, and new food offerings. Wish alot of that would stuck around for next season too as it's really elevated the park experience. I'd love to see a continuation of high tech fireworks shows and a return of phantom theater encore. Also the special food items themed to defunct rides was not only good but really elevated the dining. I've never been one to eat in the park but this year I was curious as to what each location has to celebrate the 50th and which previous attractions they represented. Very awesome!

Really cool shot of Orion from Chaos's line:

Easy buy.

I hope they do as well! I just didn’t think they would because originally Orion wasn’t supposed to come to our park and they were going to focus on the water park and kids area. So I think those will happen in 2024.

Why do you think that? There is no past precedent for going two years with no capital investment at all. 2021 and 2022 were close, but I would argue that some of the investments in 2022 probably came from capital dollars (all the painting of rides, restoration of the carousel band organ and painting the carousel) and not from maintenance dollars. There was also the pandemic in there too.

I know alot of people would say not to disturb the sanctity of The Beast. But I would love a skyride going back in the woods and even go over part of The Beast would be great. That also takes away from using the skyride to get from one end the park to the other. But hey, the skyride at Lesourdsville Lake just took you over the lake and back and it was fun.

I would love for the mist to come back but I thought they removed it because it prematurely rusted out track. I guess they can use non-misting type of foggers but not sure how cost effective it would be for the long term. I love AE but I remember the year it opened and I went to ride the new coaster that year. I was loving every moment and then the final lift hill, the music, the statues with the arms swinging, the lava being dumped on the train. I think they even had droplets of water dripping on you (not sure about that one). The doors opened and I thought with this huge buildup we would be dropped in a deep dark tunnel or something. But no, the just opened back to the queue line. I thought "What the crap, that's it"!! Like I said I love the ride, rode it dozens of times. Just that first time I was expecting something amazing after the final lift hill.

If you look closely at the still frame here, you can see someone standing in front of the Kings Island sign. Imagine of his photo was taken at that moment. What an absolute rare pic he would have lol Also, dang I had no idea DT was having a huge lightning issue this year. Definitely explains all the downtime and early winterization.

My concept (below) was made prior to the announcement of Adventure Port. I originally had it to where one station stood where the basketball game was while the other one was where Shake Rattle n Roll currently is (I relocated it across from Killmart.) In theory, you could still have a skyride there, just move it down a bit: I always thought that they should relocate SRR and expand the pathway where Coney Mall bends, especially with KMAA jetting into the midway. Make it one straight midway and you could have the skyride end there by Vortex’s old station

Nice to see attendance increased by 14% compared to 2021. Still working to catch up to 2019 numbers, but they will get there I’m sure, with everything they’re doing.

It's nice to see debt levels normalize. Brian Witherow During the 9-month period, we also generated $310 million in the sale leaseback of the land at our Great America park in Santa Clara, California. Through the first 9 months of the year, we used $264 million to fully repay the company's term loan, bringing total debt outstanding down to $2.3 billion and net leverage back to pre-pandemic levels at 3.7x trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA at the end of the quarter. Richard Zimmerman "Ben, the other thing that I'll jump back to. When we went into the pandemic, a lot of question marks, we issued a $1 billion bond in April of 2020 to make sure we had adequate liquidity. Yes, you look at what we've done on the capital structure, paying down 90 -- more than 90% of the debt that we incurred to survive the pandemic and get us through. The reinstitution of the distribution, getting down to that 3.7. I'm really pleased with the rapid recovery, if I could put it that way. And I’m really pleased with what we’ve been able to do with the free cash flow to set the foundation on the capital allocation side for how we create some – create even more value for our unitholders. I don’t want to step over that because I think the impact of that rapid recovery has really let us get healthy very quickly. And that’s going to let us drive growth in the future."

It gets hit several times a year, as it is basically a lightning rod LOL. Eiffel Tower gets hit as well, along with WindSeeker and the big steel coasters get hit on occasion as well. Most of the time the grounding works as intended, but sometimes lightning does its own thing. Sometimes it is even caught on camera LOL:

More than likely accessibility has a lot to do with it. Skyrides such as CGA's were installed before being wheelchair and motor-skooter equipped were law.

Although it would slightly reduce capacity I would love to see the front car have a train theme like Carowinds Goldrusher. It looks great. CF has been theming front coaster cars in the recent years like Carowinds did in the 70s. I doubt if it happens They will probably do some knickknack theming in the station and maybe queue like they have done at Jungje Expedition at Kings Dominion. Someone is having a good time at flea market treasure hunts! it would be nice if the fog returns. Any on ride theming should be done in the 2nd and final tunnels. The reset of the ride is too fast to see theming. I hope they leave the first tunnel dark. It’s great at night. This isn’t theming but the biggest improvement they could make to the current coaster is removing that stupid kink in the helix. Arrow really knew how to make a coaster unnecessarily janky.

I can’t believe how dramatically Diamondback altered/ruined that area of the park. They quite literally removed every tree they could for that project. Definitely removed some of the charm from Rivertown.

Hard disagree. Where's their abandoned strata coaster?

Essentially, they think that increased expenses will eat into Cedar Fair`s profit margins. Based on what I saw at KI this fall, people were still showing up and were definitely paying for up charge things like Fast Lane and Fright Lane. We will know more tomorrow when Cedar Fair posts their quarterly results. They will likely give an update on operations through the end of October (the fiscal quarter ended at the end of September).

I totally forgot about The Beast’s retracking! At first I didn’t know what to think (as it was smoother than ever), but I eventually grew to enjoy it - so much so that I now think Mystic Timbers is rough by comparison!

Best Element/Addition : All the TLC the rides got. Racer paint job, Beast track work, and the other paint jobs Best Conventional Show : Phantom Theater Encore (agreed) Best Hidden Gem : While I would agree with you on Off the rails, I’d rather say seeing everyone enjoying the park in by far its finest moment. I loved seeing people checking out the 50th anniversary boards around the park, looking in awe at the new racer paint job, watching and listening to everyone enjoying The Beast again, especially now in the final brake run where people were more in awe at what just happened rather than moans of pain in previous years. I loved watching people take a trip through history at the Tower Gardens, or even seeing a kid fast asleep as their family were leaving after a long day in the park. It’s not something that makes up the entire day but it’s these small things that add up over multiple visits that make it such a gem to me. Biggest Miss : taking too long to put the parking signs back up Not getting The Racers retro raised lettering back on the front of The Racer trains. At the ACE conference last December at GWL, the park said they wanted to bring that back. The Racer trains did not change from the stickers. I don't know whether this was a logistical, construction, or a maintenance issue but nonetheless they were not brought back. Best Specialty Food Item : Beast Burger Best 50th Merch : The 50th Coin stuff Biggest Surprise : I was not expecting how quickly they got Bat back up and running after it’s partial derailment. I thought it’d be down for most if not the rest of the season to fully re-inspect the entire rides track.

Just added Opening Day 2023 to my calendar! Thanks for the news, @Imperial79!

Snapped this leaving the hotel haunt maze on Friday, love the way the colors look!

Not that CF has used non royalty free music before (IE WindSeeker). Most of the music from TRTR came from paramount IPs. Such as the preshow ambient music, that is actually a snippet from the show Survivor. The only music Cedar Fair owns outright is the ride music, preshow video music, and the loading drum beat as those were created for the ride by Rob Portoff and the park owns that music. Same idea as IMA score. While I would love to see the old outdoor queue music for TRTR to make a return to this area it is music from the (old) Tomb Raider movie, (old) Jumanji, and the film Baraka. I have attempted to try and upload the indoor and outdoor queue music on YouTube but alas the music police always remove the audio. I'm not against the idea of using the music from TRTR though. It would work perfectly for this area!

Elimination of the FunTVs in the queue. Actually, this doesn’t just go for Adventure Express—how about the entire park?

Words cannot 'Express' how perfect this concept is. I didn't exactly weep over the death of Slingshot either.

We wanted to have someone on who’s actually finished a documentary. BURN

Agree with you 100%. I think a lot of people miss this. Quite simple, yet effective. But they tell a cohesive story and the overall experience “works.” Unfortunately, BBoBH (in my opinion) suffers from a lack of story, derelict effects/scenery, and a non-working gimmick in the shooting aspect. I make it a point to ride BBoBH every visit, and as of the end of the regular reason my/our guns only worked 30%-ish of the time. If that’s such a big aspect of the ride, you’d think it would be a priority to have it work. To your original point, three dimensional figures with basic articulation would probably be more than effective. I think time, as it often does, softens our memories and if you were to look back at the PT POV’s you’ll see that most of those animatronics weren’t incredibly dynamic. Which is fine. Many of the characters featured limited articulation. But again, they’re incredibly fun and effective. The intensity, cost, and upkeep of those animatronics are greatly over exaggerated in comparison to those featured in other attractions throughout the industry. That’s not to say they’re not a lot of work and/or not impressive or expensive. It’s sort of become another KIC-ism over time similar to “Winterfest won’t return because of (XYZ Reason).” And we know what became of that. There’s a lot of irony in perpetuating the “too expensive” rhetoric and then turning around and saying that the non-working shooting gimmick is essential to the ride experience. They could do something really special. Especially when you look at the recent thematic elements /additions in Mystic Timbers’ shed. They could do it right. Whether or not they would is up for debate. I think anything that goes in that building is going to be held to a higher caliber by fans because of the history of attractions in that spot. I definitely thinks that’s why SDATHC and BBoBH were/are met with a resounding “meh” from fans. They were both progressively cheaper reskins of an impressive attraction and as result they ultimately fell short. Hearing Rick Batsrup talk about a potential reincarnation of the ride with yet to be revealed characters and a new Garbonzo-centric finale makes me believe that, if they were to involve R&R, then it would be done correctly. One can only dream.

nothing upsets me more than when you go to something that's billed with animatronics and static props only to see a plywood cutout that may/mayn't be well painted but its appearance is just flat on an actuators to make it pop out from where its hiding. and im also not a fan of shooters cause i feel that takes away from the experience. what if something with significance is supposed to pop out and it doesn't cause you missed the target.

You might be 100% correct. I think we can all agree that it is time to update BBOBH at this point.

Maybe they could do two skyrides. One over the original path now that Sling Shot is gone and a second over Coney Mall.

I have been showing my kids some old videos of the old Sky Ride and they are so disappointed that the park doesn't have one now. I would love to see one make its return.