Leaderboard

I absolutely adore the ride I’ve ridden it twelve times now and I think we have to sorta come to the realization that it is an amazing dark ride that Kings Island is going to have to try diligently to keep maintaining. Having said that it is unreasonable to expect the ride to run perfectly every day or to have the scenes always running perfectly, mainly they need to try and get the flashlights working properly and the scenes can follow after, I know it’s frustrating when a certain scene doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to but I still enjoy it and I think we should all try to give the park benefit of the doubt in that they are trying to make the ride as good as they can but obviously like the other dark rides that have been in the building some days the ride will be working great and others not so great but I think trying to enjoy it the best we can is the main thing. I still can’t believe that I’m riding Phantom Theater again after all these years and especially given that the park is owned by Six Flags now.

I think it’s unrealistic to expect everything to be 100%, 100% of the time. Minor imperfections are always noticeable to those who frequently visit.

Just had a solid ride with the wife and kiddo. Only thing not working was the boiler screen. Seems like the issues are intermittent and probably vary from ride to ride. Really love this one.

As a technician who worked in shows just like our phantom friends, I have to strongly disagree with this particular point. All departments have a duty to make sure that each presentation of the show is like the last and we do that fairly regularly.

Why confuse things anymore than they are already by adding a new “membership”? Why not have a simple toggle button on season pass that simply says auto renew my current season pass and add ons each year or auto renew my current season pass and add ons each year with my Easy Pay?

Tell us about your Food & Wine fest experiences in this thread!

I’ll take 90% maybe 80% but under that becomes a bigger issue.

As one of the folks who go to the park almost every week, I agree that it's much easier to notice little things like these when you see it so often. I write my ride reports to simply update the forum on how things are going for the ride. We can get into more conversation about maintenance within the park, but Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare is well taken care of IMO. Kings Island still has not stooped to Cedar Point levels of being a maintenance nightmare — and I'm very thankful for that. I wonder how hard it would be to fit one of those Mystic Timbers trees (or a similar object) somewhere in the queue or elsewhere in the ride for a seasonal overlay...

These memberships are a scam to continue to get money out of people when they forget to stop their membership. With a season pass there’s no other action required. It ends at the end of the year. I would be very, very cautious to buy a Six Flags membership. The last time I had one there I actually had to stop my credit card to stop the billing when I wanted to cancel it. They made it absolutely impossible to cancel. They wanted you to input the transaction number on the original purchase in order to cancel. This company is known for bait switch and scamming customers. This is just another way for them to do that.

Even the Disney folks that visit the parks weekly notice imperfections. Although Disney will tend to the issue a lot faster in most cases because they have a bigger set of cast members to tend to these things.

Yes I agree, I think unfortunately that’s just the way the park has been, I hope long time they continue to upkeep Phantom Theater and it doesn’t end up looking terrible like the original version did towards the end of its life, so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised I’ve only had two rides where my flashlight didn’t work halfway through and that was both times In car #20

Six Flags or not, seasonal park or not, realism or not: Nemo is correct that a ride of this caliber requires significant maintenance and attention to detail day by day. A story-based attraction has to tell the same story at the same high level no matter what time of day or season, and anything less will not tell the right story. The park has already learned the impact of poor (and positive) SFX investment over the years. Adventure Express, Flight of Fear, Tomb Raider, The Crypt, Phantom Theater, and of course Boo Blasters have all taught valuable lessons for what theming can do to an attraction. The park chose to add this type of ride for this year knowing what it would take to put it at the top. What is conceivable to me is that they may not have the right people caring that those details are missed, or those people are limited by higher ups on what they can and can't do. While not a 1:1 example, I do think it represents the issue well. Take a look at how many burned out lightbulbs are around the park. Nearly every attraction, shop, menu, or roofline has something simple like this burned out, and they will go months at a time without fixing them. There's a park-wide permissiveness to let some things go. I think that's more of what we're seeing here.

it turns on and off, but I agree that the other day I didnt see it switch on at all.

Do y'all think the new Membership program will add even more complexity to Kings Island's pass program? I always saw Six Flags' memberships as just being a fancy form of Easy Pay with no need for yearly renewal. Personally, I don't like it yet. I'm not one of the people who are questioning why we'd be paying for months when the parks are closed, but I generally hate subscription services and how predatory they are for consumers.

How many parks will need to be sold by Six Flags before we can get back to having consistently clean tables?

I was at Phantasialand and Eftling this past month (still need to type up a trip report) and you'd never see anything like this at those parks. Absolutely gorgeous super clean parks. And restrooms all looked untouched they were so clean! Phantasialand was incredible on nearly every level and I think is better than Disney. Only complaint is they don't have very strong merchandise selection

I'm glad this statue on International Street is still here in 2026! I always enjoy seeing it whenever I'm in the park! 😊

Cleanliness is part of the culture at Holiday World and other parks outside of Six Flags. They know you can have the best rides but if the park isn’t clean guests don’t return. I just got back from visiting Epic Universe and the Disney World parks. As busy as they are they keep the parks clean.

I think the issue is two-fold. At the park level, they care, but they aren't given the resources to spend labor on things like cleaning tables, having a greeter at the Eiffel Tower so people don't mash the nonfunctional elevator buttons, etc. At the corporate level, they do not care, because, by the point you're in the park, they already have your money, so who cares if you have a clean place to enjoy your meal. Sad but true.