CoastersRZ

The real excitement factor in dive machines is the vertical drops. (And the hang time at the top). After that, it is just like a standard floorless. I personally enjoy dive coasters. I have been on Valravn, Griffon at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and SheiKra at Busch Gardens Tampa. My least favorite of the three is likely Shiekra. Partly because it was the first one I rode. Also, it seems to have less elements compared to the other two. That being said, I would love to get up to Canada`s Wonderland next year and ride Yukon Striker. I just don`t think I will make it up there. Canada`s Wonderland is a fantastic park, and well worth a trip up there if you have never been there.

I do like the green track in that one image. And I think it would be cool to tie into the Flight of Fear theme in some way.

Also, as far as going with manufacturer`s that the chain is familiar with, until this year`s installation of Hang Time at Knott`s Berry Farm, I do not believe that Cedar Fair had worked with Gerstlauer before either. I think the same could be said for Rocky Mountain Construction (and they got one brand new creation from them and two conversions in the same season).

I would imagine that as long as the track gauge matches, and a park wanted to purchase the new trains, then they would gladly sell them to existing GCI designed coasters. Looks like Ryan and I were thinking similar things. Trains are a highly expensive piece of hardware. And as Ryan said, unless the existing rolling stock is falling apart, most parks would rather fix their existing trains then shell out the money for new trains.

That would be extremely expensive to paint all the coasters every off season. And not really necessary every single off season. Yes, Diamondback`s supports are starting to fade. As are Vortex`s. Keep in mind also that painting coasters is not a very cheap undertaking. We are talking in the six figure range, at least.

If you pause the timelapse video, you can clearly see a crane on the Planet Snoopy side of the fountain (by the fudge shop), lift one of the fountain pedestals off. I didn`t go ice skating last year. I will need to try it out this year.

As I previously stated, do not look for anything big to be added for next season. Just minor park improvements.

We will be able to tell next Friday when the park opens for Winterfest. There will obviously be some new walls up by Flight of Fear. But you should be able to tell at least if some of the high stuff has been removed.

Here is a pretty cool timelapse that WCPO post showing the transformation of the Royal Fountain into Snowflake Lake ice skating rink: https://www.wcpo.com/entertainment/time-lapse-kings-island-fountain-transformed-into-winterfest-ice-rink

The zoo states on their website what the temperature has to be in order for them to be out. I went a couple weeks ago. We went to the hippo exhibit first thing and we couldn`t see Fiona. Right before we left, we made the trek all the way out to the hippo exhibit (it is on a really long path with one way in and one way out, not unlike getting to The Bat in the Action Zone. It is still amazing to think that the entire Giraffe Ridge and hippo area used to be a parking lot.

Well, to be fair, Knott`s is just down the road from Disneyland. They have to do stuff to keep the park fresh and competitive. I really enjoyed my visit out to Knott`s when I was on my honeymoon with my wife back in 2015, and that was even with Xcelerator down for maintenance during our visit.

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Yes, there was value. The cookies that I saw people had decorated were huge. Definitely made it seem like the price was worth it. And the amount of things to see and do were amazing. I went four or five times last year and still feel like I didn`t get to experience everything there was to do.

Per the latest Holiday World Podcast, Coastermania and Holiwood nights will not coincide on the same date(s) in 2019. https://www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2018/11/09/podcast-airtime/

Yes, the photo section on here has quite a lot of historical pictures. We just need to make it more user friendly. For right now, these seem to still be working for me: https://kicentral.com/history/photos/ There were lots more photo galleries, especially of some of the special events from the early 2000s that need to be organized, etc.

I agree that they would make good Cedar Fair parks. I would rather they be Cedar Fair parks than Six Flags parks.

I think that Cedar Fair would be a much better fit for the Sea World parks, compared to Six Flags. Also, keep in mind that the last time Cedar Fair added any parks was when they purchased Paramount Parks back in 2006. However, as others have stated, is the price right? Cedar Fair is still paying off the debt from purchasing the Paramount Parks. Sea World would give Cedar Fair several more parks that are open year round, and other than Busch Gardens Williamsburg, none of the parks directly overlap markets with current Cedar Fair parks.

The parade was a cool experience. That was back when they were also doing the Nickelodeon Celebration Parade at the Paramount Parks (it rotated across all five parks throughout the course of summer for a couple of years). Definitely added a lot of energy to the park. All in all, the entertainment at Winterfest last year was amazing. Everywhere you turned there was live entertainment of some sort. That was not the case for Winterfest in 2005. I did attend the original Winterfest in the late 80s, but I was only three to four years old, so I do not remember much of that event to compare.

Back when GWL was built, Kings Island had a small ownership interest in it in exchange for giving GWL the land. I believe, and I will have to dig into this to confirm, but at the time Cedar Fair purchased the Paramount Parks, they did not purchase the ownership interest in the Great Wolf Lodge (Castaway Bay in Sandusky, owned by Cedar Fair competes with the Great Wolf Lodge Sandusky). Eventually CBS, who owned Paramount Parks when they sold them to Cedar Fair, sold their interest in the GWL to Great Wolf. In a weird bit of fate, Apollo Global Management, who almost took Cedar Fair private back at the end of 2009 and early 2010, eventually purchased Great Wolf Lodge and took them private.

You hit the nail on the head. They are opening hotels at Canada`s Wonderland and at Carowinds. That should help increase their out of park revenues. Especially as they stretch the season at their parks with Winterfest. It would be cool to see a new hotel on property at KI. But there is a lot of competition for hotel rooms just north and to the south of the park (they are building an approximately 8 story hotel down at Fields Ertel Road exit of 71 that can be clearly seen from the highway.

I can dig up some information on this. I have a book that details some of these long lost parks. There was also Chester Parkm which was a main competitor to Coney in the 1920s. Sometime this off season I will detail the history of some of these long lost parks.

Based on my ride on the train on closing day, it looks like we can expect a near identical experience on the train for this year`s WinterFest (using the same lights from last year). I too think they could have done more. I still loved the train experience from the 2005 version of WinterFest, that featured some live entertainment in the station and on the train. It really reminded me a lot of Dollywood`s entertainment.

They almost always do that every season at the end of the season, regardless of how well the passes/attendance have been. I believe that they are scheduled (Cedar Fair) to release third quarter numbers tomorrow. Will be interesting to see how things shake out. All the times I visited Haunt this year (Fridays) the park seemed really busy.

I highly doubt that it will be reused. Firehawk is set up for the dual station, with the egress for the exit in the center. Unless they do extensive modifications, I just don`t see them reusing the station. It would likely cost just as much to alter the station than to tear down the old station and build new. The stations for Banshee and Diamondback are not was wide as what the station for Firehawk is. If they end up installing a Giga, I would think that the ride itself will head out towards the front of the park/Banshee Bat area in more of the Son of Beast area, and not towards the Dinosaurs Alive area.

No way should The Beast get the RMC treatment. The ride is fine the way it is. Remember, that back when you exited by Slaughterhouse there was actually a fourth queue house. (The station, middle one and the lower one are all that remain today). It used to reside where the fence and ride photo is today. Also back around 2009 or so they removed the center divider queue rail on the ramp. You used to have to decide front or back of the train at the bottom of the ramp up into the station.