CoastersRZ

True, they just painted the Scrambler this season. But remember that they painted King Cobra in 1999 and it was removed after the 2001 season. Although I douobt Scrambler is a maintenance problem like King Cobra was.

Cedar Point announced today that they will build maXair. The ride will belocated by the space spiral. It should be interesting to note that maXair is being manufactured by Huss and is in fact a Giant Frisbee, just like Delirium at PKI. The one difference is that maXair will have a minumum height of 52", or 2" shorter than Delirium`s minumum height.

Yeah, I think that this new ride could impact the traffic flow within the park. I definantly think that Coney Mall by the Dodgems and Flight of Fear could be busier this season. Although, since the restraint change on Flight of Fear, it has been busy most days. I don`t think it will have too much of an impact on Vortex, because Vortex is such a high capacity ride. Hopefully, it will thin out some of the huge crowds that congregat in the Action Zone. I had not heard of the rumor about the Antique cars returning themed to the Addams family. I had only heard about them returning as a Nickelodeon car wash themed attraction, although I don`t know how well water and the cars would work maintenance wise.

Yeah, I too was excited about the renovated Paramount Theater. But I was sorely dissapointed with the show in which they had in it. I would have liked it if they brought back a show like Graveyard shift. Being the only in door performance place in the park (since Festhaus only show Q-TV now) I would have thought that they would have put a higher quality show than Magic of the Movies.

Personally, I like the early ride times. There is virtually no one riding the rides during the early ride times! This is especially true when Action Zone has its early ride time. Face Off, Drop Zone, Delirium, and Son of Beast all have walk on lines, and you can ride all four within an hour, which usually doesn`t happen during normal hours. I`ve always wanted to try the two-for Tuesday, but I have either never been at the park on those days, or I never went on those rides.

I really love the new site design. It is a lot easier to navigate then the old one. This is truly the PKI fan mega site now! I look forward to seeing the history section, when it comes online! Again, great work guys!

While it is true that Coney Mall is undergoing a renovation this season as well as in 2004. I still think Coney Mall could use another new attraction added to that area of the park. I mean, AZ got Face Off, Drop Zone and Son of Beast in 1999 and 2000 and then Delirium in 2003. I do agree though that rides like Face Off and Drop Zone are showing there age and could use a paint shop and freshening up. The rust spots on Face Off are becoming more obvious. As far as need for new rides though, I still think Coney Mall is in need more than AZ. An added benefit that Coney has for expansion is that traffic flows really well through it since it is not clogged by dead end paths.

Yeah. I remember hearing that Paramount Parks are over conservative on their block setup. Particularly in The Beast, they want to have a minumum of one unoccupied block seperating the trains, or something similar to that. The Problem with The Beast, is that the first llift hill is usually slowed, waiting for the second train to clear the seond lift. Because the train on lift one is slowed, that means that the train in the station is usually cleared and ready to dispatch, before the train on lift 1 is gone. This creates a bottleneck. Usually, though, from my experience, the crew has been very efficient with checking the lap bars, and almost always is waiting for the train to clear lift one. Numerous times this year, the train that is coming off of lift two has slowed, but not stopped in the brakes before the station. On days when the crew is that efficient, the crew is getting as many people through the ride as the ride will possibly let them. I understand how only having 4 or five people to run a ride can be tough. At Coney, I often worked the Scrambler by myself. At Coney, they don`t have two start buttons like the one at PKI. It is extremely difficult on busy days, to count enough people, make sure they have wristbands on, and make sure they are tall enough to ride. It often got chaotic. On days when there were two of us at Scrambler, it made things go a lot smoother and more efficiently.

Thanks a lot Dane! Very speedy response to I might add. Keep up the great work with the site. I look forward to continued posting in the PKIC forums!

What about combining post counts from PKIU and here that were different? I was Coasterrz over on PKIU and over here, I have an s in my screen name. If possible, I would like my post count combined to my CoastersRZ here. I only ask this because I had over 1,000 posts (I think, if not, it was close to 1,000). over on PKIU and only recently started posting a lot on PKIC, mostly since PKIC bought PKIU. If it is too much trouble, don`t worry about it.

Did any one else catch The Beast 25th anniversary article in the latest issude of RollerCoaster magazine from ACE? The article was written by Scott and Carol Holmes. The article details the design and construction of the PKI`s signature ride. The article included many construction pictures of the ride , supplied by PKI. It was a really interesting article and the construction pictures were wonderful. There was even a picture of John Allen and Jeff Gramke standing next to The Racer under construction!

I wouldn`t expect much soon. I believe I heard somewhere that the track is supposed to start arriving in Mid-December. When track arrives, they usually park it in the parking lot until it is need at the actual site. When the track is in the parking lot, you will be able to see it from Kings Island Drive. As far as photo updates, there probably is not much to see other than footers and more general prep work. I`m sure there will be some sort of construction tour, or marketing will post pictures on the PKI website like they did for Delirium and Scooby Doo in 2003.

The lady that died on Flight Commander did not undo her restraint. Instead, she slid under the restraint (she was legally intoxicated). The park was not faulted for the incident, because the Ohio Department of Agriculture determined the restraint was improperly designed to allow single riders to be able to slip under the restraints. So it was the manufacturer (Intamin) who was ultimately responsible, although, it might not have happened if she wasn`t intoxicated.

Another reason why Cedar Point can dispatch trains faster has to deal with staffing. At Kings Island, they will have only two or three people checking lapbars at a time. While at Cedar Point they will have four or five checking bars at a time, so the operators are checking less bars on the train, and can thus safely dispatch it quicker, if the block ahead is clear. For example on The Beast, I know numerous times when the train was checked and ready to be sent out. But the other train was still on lift one, so the train in the station couldn`t be sent until the train on the lift was off of the lift and out of the block.

Personally, I woult think twice about riding Son of Beast if it has no line! The last couple of times I have ridden that ride I have gotten beaten to death. True, if there is a wait of ten minutes for AE, it probably isn`t worth it, but when it has a line that long, the park is probably pretty crowded. Since AE is a high capacity ride, it will generally have a shorter line, even at ten minutes, then the rest of the park on a busy day, does that make sense? Yeah, IJST will not be a high capacity ride. But then again, neither were the Eagles or Tiques. I believe that we may have not seen the end of the Tiques! I have a inkling they may return in 2006 under a new name and theme.

I have riden every single ride at PKI except for Slingshot and Xtreme Skyflier. Got to ride Days of Thunder at past P&G days when P&G rented it out and made it free. Unfortunatly, they did not do that this year, but instead made Slinshot and Days of Thunder reduced prices.

Ok thanks Dan. That`s what I thought was happening but I got a little confused. Thanks for clearing things up.

Well, I would like to have my post count transfered. I don`t know why, but I just would. So is this the end of PKIU? I thought that it was just being moved to a new server!?

Yeah, I agree. The Nick parade was pretty awesome. On top of that everyone I saw seemed to really enjoy the parade. I think the parade will be a tradition at PKi for years to come. I don`t think they will relocate their picnic grounds, they may remove a couple of the shelteres in favor of an expansion, but they`re not going to remove all of them. I could foresee the Antique Cars returning in some themed way to Nick Central in 2006. I could also see another Huss giant flat or some other manufacturer flat ride coming to the park in 2006 to compliment the Nick expansion.

Actually, the location of the PKI campground is close to the highway. Although a direct view is blocked by the Showace Cinemas and Kings Island Resort and Conference Center. They probably are discussing issues like described above, who will have access to it (although it would probably be only for guests staying at the resort, but they might offer discounts to season pass holders). It will certainly be interesting to see what develops. After seeing the one in Sandusky this summer, which seemed to be doing a pretty good business, I would imagine PKI would want the resort to be built as it would probably bring in guests. However, they probably don`t want to also loose their campground. If this is built, then there will be three waterparks within a ten minute drive of each other!

Cool, so if you have accounts with the same name on both, it erases all of your posts from over at PKIU? If you have a different screen name over on PKIU can you merge the accounts, and will the post numbers then be added? I look forward to seeing what details emerge from this test and what the future holds.

I wonder if Great Wolf could use that land. That land is still extremely close to the park. I could imagine why the campgroung would be a big sticking point. I don`t think the lodge will be ready by the end of the 2005 season if things are eventually ironed out in January. There simply wouldn`t be enough time to build everything.

I seem to recall that Premier Rides, the builders of FoF, Son of Beast`s trains and IJST, bought the US division of Togo, and pretty much shut it down. I`m not sure about Togo in Japan though. You might try searching over on RCDB for Togo and see what you can dig up.

Yeah, I can see how on a busy day, the Magic Kingdom`s midways would be packed. I was just impressed with the overall atmosphere in the Disney parks. I agree though, that Paramount Parks offers a full collection of rides, lots for the little kids and lots of major thrill rides.

There was some news about the Great Wolf Lodge in the News Brief section of the Local News section in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Here is the link to it online. Essentially, they have asked the city of Mason for an extension of the planned meeting until January, This is the second time since October that they have asked for an extension. The short article cited certain "open issues" with Paramount`s Kings Island. I can only imagine that those issues deal with the campground, and whether or not to relocate it as well as if PKI will sell the land to Great Wolf Lodges or lease it. Just thought I`d post this to update everyone since this thing has been out of the discussions and news for awhile.