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And also, Woodstock's Air Rail is labeled as simply "Woodstock's."

Which is unfortunate for Kings Island, but it's not like Six Flags really cares about winning any Golden Ticket Awards anyways

Kings Island's Halloween Haunt and Tricks and Treats map has been released on Facebook! Still no PDF link available on the website though. Unfortunately, it looks like whoever was making it didn't finish their work before being forced to export it. There is still a lot of green in the middle of the map (we saw this on the 2017 Winterfest map as well), none of the Haunt stores or bars can be found on it, the Haunted Attractions Pass redemption locations use a different icon than every other park, and Delirium's name plate has been inexplicably moved next to Drop Tower. I'll also mention that the day after the park got publicly called out on not yet releasing a T&T menu they put something out and the day after the park got called out on not releasing the map they put something out. No mention of the new bar or store for The Conjuring either. It's nice to have the map, but I have to wonder why it took so long to make and why it's different from the other maps like at Canada's Wonderland, Carowinds, and Cedar Point. Link to the Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F9PigVT5w/

Here’s a piece I wrote for Theme Parks By Don on Dollywood’s new 50M attraction opening in 2026. It won’t win a Pulitzer, but I think it captures the spirit of the thing. https://themeparksbydon.com/dollywood-nightflight-expedition-2026/

Six Flags...well Cedar Fair moved the KI arcades to a third party vendor a few years ago. I think they are doing well from what I've seen. I haven't heard of anyone complaining that the arcades are not operated by KI.

Merlin did outsource food service a few years ago (in the UK & US), but instead of outsourcing each unit to different franchisees they outsourced the whole F&B operation at each park to Aramark. All of the food service employees were terminated from Merlin and converted to Aramark employees. This was done toward the end of my time there, and I have no idea whether or not they realized the cost savings/operational improvements they expected, or if they eventually backed off that strategy. Similarly, one of the last projects I worked on at SeaWorld was the reorganization to outsource all games to a third party company. It was a similar situation in that a single third-party was selected to run all of the games, and the existing employees were converted to that company. In this case, I thought the strategy made a little more sense, since the vendor specialized in games and had some economies of scale and training. The goal in both cases was that the outsourcing would be transparent to park guests. Most parks (I’m assuming Six Flags as well) outsource some of the more specialized skill positions that they don’t want to recruit or train for (like caricaturists, face painters, etc.) I’m not saying whether these strategies were good or not, but it’s not a unique approach in the industry.

I think the "flying" part will be screen based. I could even see it being a "turntable" type thing where cars can be cycled through then "rejoin" the track for the coaster part. I wonder if the "story" will have you raft, climb to the top of the mountain, soar, then "discover the hidden lake" then "dive down" - splash down, then calmly float through the secret lake to the unload.

I would love it if they put a R.I.P. Boo Blasters Tombstone right in front of The Phantom Theater one!

No, my position is not that what you are proposing "would not work." I'm saying that there are known built in disadvantages to what you are proposing, and that whatever advantages you're suggesting exist are either nonsensical or not well defined (e.g. "the free market will win the day!", "the human factor!"). And therefore the proposal is, on balance, worse than the modern status quo of fewer, larger centralized food service locations. What you are proposing are not remotely novel concepts. It's not as though parks don't understand the cost-benefit balance with having an outside vendor sell stuff in their parks compared to selling that stuff themselves. And it's not as though parks don't understand the cost-benefit balance of having multiple small food service locations compared to fewer, larger venues. So, the downsides are that product costs (lower volume, more waste), operations/infrastructure costs (rent, utilities, etc.), and labor costs (both number of employees and, now, wages) will increase, while overall efficiency/throughput will decrease. It seems, therefore, that quality would have to improve by a massive margin to make it even a wash, much less an improvement.

There are a lot of benefits by having a centralized food service that @DispatchMaster has mentioned, but the main reason the parks do it is for a better profit margin. An independent vendor is essentially a middle man taking a piece of the profit pie.

I’m just so appreciative to see parks investing in Dark Rides. The list for best new Dark ride for next years Golden Ticket Award is building! Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare at Kings Island. Sally Omnimover reskin. SeaQuest: Legend of the Deep at SeaWorld Orlando. VEKOMA suspended dark-ride NightFlight at Dollywood. MACK water-coaster hybrid

In my experience, Aramark can be kind of hit or miss in terms of their operations. Outsourcing games, caricature artists/face painters (Kaman's), ride/guest photo services (FunPix/Colorvision), app/website services (Six Flags used to use Amazon Web Services at least as their hosting), and park map services are somewhat common. I don't really know how things like the dining plan might be affected by outsourcing, but I can't imagine they'd immediately choose to keep them. I'll maintain my stance of hoping that Six Flags keeps their F&B in-house. It not only feels more authentic, but the third-party dining suppliers tend to care less about experience and more about standardization. What you may gain in monetary savings or manpower, you lose in guest experience. They are far more likely to change legacy recipes, over-standardize menu options, and skimp on portion sizes while raising prices where applicable; and they won't often even get blamed for any changes. Their employees wear the institution's uniforms and their food is branded as coming from the institution.

Alright a few thoughts from my trip last weekend 1. HHN is SOLID in terms of houses and scare zones, but seriously is lacking with the Tribute Store. The Mummy/Tribute Store integration just doesn't work and becomes a pain to get around the store and actually buy product. I'll post my rankings a little later as I'm still figuring it out (I'm tied between 3 houses being my #1 which is honestly telling of how good this year is!) 2. Epic still is pretty Epic, lines were long DK was down all day for me but nevertheless operations tried to keep cadence. 3. HHN Merch seriously needs some limits, half of the Fallout merch was sold out when I arrived on Thursday and even then what I actually wanted just wasn't in stock. I'll be back on the 3rd, then probably another visit the weekend of the 17th!

Considering that team was let go at SIX, it does not seem likely.

So, $40M in 2018- when Orion was ordered- is worth $51M today. What I infer from this is that for the cost of Orion (which is a cut-and-paste "taller/faster" coaster that grows on trees in the CF/Six chain)- KI could have installed a perennial line generator that sells passes and tickets on it's own merit?

Agreed, I do think they should make them and sell them at the Emporium for those that want to have the map added to their collection.

Quote of the day, shark. My kids never cared what the theme was of any ride when they were little. They just wanted to get on. My kids just saw Snoopy and company and enjoyed them for what they were. Prime example, look at Holiday World. They have their own characters for the kids area and I don't see anyone screaming for them to theme to a specific IP. As you say though, meeting a character from a TV show they watch on the daily would most definitely make their day a bit more, but not necessary.

I was thinking something similar to this in regards to the storyline. I hope that they use lots of large physical sets to make the ride even more immersive, and rely more on physical sets than screens

I personally don't really care to do TC:BF, so if it drives people away from the ride lines, I'm all for it!

The Crypt building is too small by comparison. I did a construction tour today and what Dollywood is building is massive.

What I'm proposing is novel at large parks which is why I didn't provide any examples of large parks doing it. If you are again trying to conflate what was done at Cedar Point—the license deals for the park to sell Chick-fil-A, Johnny Rockets, Subway, and Chickie's & Pete's with what I'm proposing—again, that is not at all the same thing. Separating the park from operations is entirely the point. Was the Kings Island Chick-fil-A ran as effectively as a real Chick-fil-A? No, not at all! Each restaurant has to stand on its own two feet. If you know of a large park that has third party food vendors not operated by the park I'd like to hear about it. Your assumption is that my model would not work because no large parks are doing it. You are trying to somehow disprove the viability of something before it's even been tested. You also assume that scale and reduced cost of goods sold provide a nearly insurmountable advantage in the restaurant business. If that were the case, you there would be almost no independent restaurants out there today. Lastly you are not seeing or are dismissing disadvantages of the park's current model. The current model crushes flexibility that might be beneficial in the restaurant business. For example, a private business might decide it is in their interest to pay its employees more than Kings Island's existing food server wage. It might decide that it will have waitstaff that will work on tips. It might decide to have sales or promos. It would have expertise in its business and allow for specialization of its staff that the current model doesn't support. Most importantly the human factor is big. There is next to nothing that incentivizes performance under the current model. A private business might offer employees bonuses for throughput or seasonal bonuses. The manager and owner will truly care how the business does since they will be personally affected.

Except decentralized food service has been done. The only difference you're proposing is that parks have less control over how those food service stands are operated, which isn't a novel idea either. I also think it's telling that you keep pointing to two relatively tiny parks - IB and Knoebels - as "evidence" that this model can be easily and successfully scaled up, and without providing examples of other similarly sized parks that have done so. Just because it is your anecdotal experience that the modern food service setup is unsatisfactory does not mean that the average guest agrees. And even if that were the case, the decentralized food service model offers few, if any, built in advantages that would improve things like quality control, throughput, etc., that would be necessary to improve guest satisfaction.

Can't wait to see the display Friday evening.

If I had to guess I’m 99% certain it’s for a Phantom Theater thing, since people have already posted a display being made for it. Would not be surprised if lighting was added to it or if there’s a small speaker that plays audio from the original attraction (along the lines of the lantern activation, which I’m also very curious to see if that returns this season/anything for Boo Blasters being acknowledged or put on display) Honestly, I would think it would be really fun though if they just straight up had another ride closure announcement to surprise people on the first night of Haunt. Especially something like Congo Falls or Invertigo where they closed without last rides given lol.

^^Or could that be the Phantom Theater tombstone and the lighting effect could be for the "phantoms" rising from the dead for Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare?

I know it is probably nothing, but this little setup of lights is very interesting. One pair flanking the pathway and another 2-3 seemingly pointing at something. Could this be for the new Phantom Theater with its bones rising around the headstone, or could it be the announcement of another ride retiring like we saw with Firehawk?

From the KI passholders group

Paul Bonifield shared this on Linkedin a few weeks back. For those who don't know, Paul was one of the many who were unfortunately laid off by Six Flags back in May. Also in the comments, Chad Showalter (who was also let go) commented a bit about it. Based on those comments, it sounds like this project was planned for awhile and may have been the "family thrill attraction" planned all along. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulbonifield_phantom-theater-returns-to-kings-island-ugcPost-7366851910231855104-Oe2X

Honestly KI just needs more indoor attractions in general. If they want to add more dates into the fall and winter, they need more attractions that can handle the cold and other rain/snow. I love dark rides, so would love to see some unique additions like this!

I agree they are mostly for bragging rights and don't mean much outside of the enthusiast community. As for the investment side of things, I think we know which park gets more investment than any other park in this chain and it's worth noting that park took home ZERO golden tickets. Don't get me wrong I'm not a Cedar Point hater (it's my favorite park) I'm just saying they have potential to be better than they already are. I was once told that you never profess to be the best because you can only go down from there and you should always look for ways to improve. SF seems to have a motto that is always looking for ways to make cuts

I wonder if Mike will be here for Haunt this year...

When the merger was announced, I said on the Tower Topics podcast one of the things people would see is the mazes being an upcharge at Kings Island and legacy Cedar Fair parks. I was told by a lot of people that I was wrong, that wouldn’t happen. I haven’t heard from any of those people today.

The expanded Halloween Haunt hours make me hopeful that we'll see a better event this year, but all of the drops in park quality over the past few months make me doubt that. Maybe things like the Haunted Attractions Pass will thin out the amount of young children at the event. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think young children (especially those in strollers) should be allowed into the night time event. Haunt has suffered from being made more family-friendly, and it's about time for it to return to its gory goodness. Tricks and Treats should still exist and be a high-quality event, but there is a separation between the daytime and nighttime Halloween events for a reason. Those new operating days/hours could either mean that guests spread themselves out over more days (lessening the crowds overall), that the budget will be spread even thinner (upping the chances of a bad event), or that there are some good plans for this Haunt season that may entice guests to go more often.

If the mazes themselves receive upgrades and they actually pour in the effort, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit shorter lines to actually be able to do the mazes for a change. But like some of you have said, this move may end up driving up the ride lines even more. And I definitely do not envy guest service folks roles with all these changes. I know people are going to be absolutely livid when the see upcharges for Haunt. The reality we are currently in is this: these places are no longer an easy thing to just walk in and enjoy anymore. The parks are 100% pay to play if you truly want to have a good time, and this right here is yet another example of that. Gone are the days of "just' buying a pass and tolerating long lines here and there. There is quite literally an upcharge for everything. Everything will cost you. I actually feel the most sorry for people who buy single day tickets and realize that ticket is literally only good to get you in and anything beyond that its "cha-ching cha ching cha ching!"