Waltny

I wasnt so much worried about the trees or lack of them in area 72 as I was about trees on military installations.

If you want to this to be taken literally as the kids would say, I would ask this... what base/post and what section of that installation? Plenty that I have been on or stationed at were heavy on the trees.

I had some issue with the audio and instead of trying to fix I just deleted the original audio and used royalty free youtube music. Disclaimer: This is edited footage. Once the train drops behind the dorms, that footage is clipped till it gets back to the airtime hill. Due to angles, I wasnt able to squeeze that into the frame and amounts to 10 secs or so of dead space.

Yes, going in the brake run I think it going to be a sleeper element. Watching it before the trees flushed out, it looked like it comes in with a bit of speed and it looks very aggressive for B&M especially with how late in the ride it is. It will be a good time on wet rainy days riding all over that train and finding out for myself... one day, hopefully soon.

I hope so on that speed hill considering the drop on that turn around is listed at 202. As for Arrow, I would agree. When I first started coming back to the parks with my son, I wasnt a fan at first of the serious pops you would get sitting up front on Vortex, and then as for Magnum... I swear multiple times that the train itself left the track on the air time hills and the upstop wheels were working overtime!

I would agree that B&M are masters at floater air, but depending on where you sit you can experience some serious ejector air. I think in the first 2 cars on DB there is some pretty serious ejector... enough to try to fold you over the the restraint. Then as you get a little further back you get that little pop with a sustained floater with the farther back you go, a little bit more force on the pop with the sustained air on the backend. With Orion's speed, I wonder how this will play out on those air time hills in the 4x8 trains.

Its been cycling most of the day, all 3 trains. It was the same yesterday and you could clearly see when the train that was running the circuit hit the appropriate block and then the one on the lift picked up speed .

The Orion service lights have been on all week and racers lifthill lights have been coming on since Tuesday.

Its actually wisteria, and gives of a very heavy sweet scent when in bloom. Everytime I smell it, Im riding Diamondback on a late spring night where you also hit those chilling thermals in the valleys...

It's for your entertainment only.

I get the chance to drive by the park at least once a day and I haven’t seen anyone up on the lift. The only lights on in the park(ridewise) since the stay at home order was put in place is the Eiffel Tower and Congo Falls. What we do know is that the maintenance lights have been installed along the lift and brake run. From my own images of the lift from the drop off and what has been shown of the lift via drone footage I would feel safe in saying there is a blue LED strip on the upper hand rail, the white bar I though might have been a light strip on the middle bar is the safety strap rail and the jury is still out on if there is a lighting element of some kind along the lower hand rail. We have still not seen lighting on, at or near the base of the supports that would suggest the lighting that was alluded to by a screenshot of the webcam by Collin earlier in the thread. That’s my speculation for now, I guess we will know when we finally see it lit.

That extra construction probably has nothing to do with Orion's "complete" date. I have no idea how it works in the amusement park world, but in alot of medical devices they will use a shipped or in service date, or some that need more construction like CT, MR Linear Accelerators they get commissioned by a governing body(physics) who signs off and it may be before the rest of the vault or suite is completed. Im willing to guess that the "commissioning" date is the the time that all safety cycles are completed and B&M along with the State Ag rep will be on hand to say its good to go(for the coaster as a whole, but not the individual modules). Im sure they try to do that as close as possible to opening day and Im sure that is what is causing the testing to stop. Anyhow, what kind of warranty to you think a roller coasters gets ? I would think there are multiple and its through the each of the multiple vendors with various signoffs. I doubt that Kings Island says "Everyone be here at 0500 on 2 May and we will work through this with each of you"

Nothing new is happening. I can say that WindSeeker went up the pole and back down slowly yesterday morning around 0945. Other than that all the lights were off in the park yesterday evening. Here is the tower going blue for first responders and healthcare workers.

So, this morning my alarm goes off at 0330. What the... as I check the time. Odd. It goes off for the next 15 mins to 0430(yes I am a multiple alarm person). I’m asking myself, why did I set those and punish myself? Then, as I’m laying there wondering if I should check to see if there is another due to go off, it comes to me why... I set them the moment I found out when the date and time for media day was announced. I had planned to get up and shoot the stream of folks rolling in and then “cover” it, if in vain where I spend most of my time covering Orion being constructed; GWL parking lot or the river trail and at least get some pictures of full trains along with a live feed on FB and/or IG. Who knows, maybe some of that enthusiasm will come back and I’ll still do it anyhow; but for now it’s the what would have and could have been.

Found it. Interesting angle on that one.

Was it posted today on IG?

Plenty of other people would still see it for some distance. I still maintain they are testing them during the late day sun as its so bright off that lift it would be very difficult to tell. I dont think the show lights come on till we are at Media day or passholder day. Media day was scheduled to start at 5am Thursday, plenty dark enough to wow the attendees. I drove by the park late afternoon and didn't see any cars the by the offices today, but they could have been there earlier in the day.

Great Wolf Lodge Edit: The other post didn’t show when I clicked on the notification.

The park is dead from views around the park. The rumor is that even the gold tags were staying home for the last two weeks. I will say that I only did a drive by 3 times in the last two weeks One odd development during the last week is that a large number of cars have been parked in the far north corner over by GWL and I don’t think they have moved in a few days.

This is the understatement of forever on this forum. As some folks may or may not know I heavily covered both the Orion construction along with The Vortex deconstruction. While some fellow enthusiast pages gave me a grief over it, the GP couldnt get enough of The Vortex coverage. The messages, the requests for footage, could I score a piece of track and need to know via KI enthusiasts/fans FAR exceeded anything I experienced with Orion. I would say the fervor, excitement and energy for Vortex updates were easily 5 to 1 over Orion ones. The GP(not enthusiasts) have an idea that THEIR expectations of a suitable replacement should be met fully, somewhere along the line of being themed to Vortex if not a modern day clone. All one has to do is cruise facebook via the KISPH page as a starting point ending up over at The Vortex tribute page. There are a few other KI centric pages that are still milking The Vortex posts with plenty of sharing and opining for the past.

In this image it may look brighter due to the darker sky/background. I was out yesterday and took pictures for something else at various angles around the park and if you want I can post the ones of Drop Tower here. No possible way it was painted this offseason, and with as often as I at least did a drive by I would think I (or one of the others doing the same) would have seen it being painted

I saw them there today.

You want a picture or my word? I

They use the drop off parking lot for staging, checking the gear before getting back on the highway. Ive met a few there that followed me on IG during The Vortex removal. As for the military, I did 14 years active duty between the Marine Corp and Army. In my time in the the Army, I worked in the medical field as a medical equipment repairer. I got to work at the highest level at the US Army depot in Utah and it was what I did there that is important to the story at hand. Most NG and AR do not have organic medical repair'er and when we ramped up for OEF and OIF those unit deployed heavily and we sent contact teams out over 22 midwestern and mountain west states. I can tell you that there are well trained members that are sitting on 100+ bed hospitals that could go up in a day and be fully operational. I also know that there are multiple stored hospitals that sit ready in connex boxes ready to go(well save an inservice inspection and the consumables brought up to date) that could rival some country hospitals for what they could offer. IF.... IF the NG or AR were to be called up for reasons such as this you should consider yourself blessed that we have resources to do it with and most of these folks already work that profession in their regular life... As for Chad calling out that tweet as #fakenews? Good. The hysteria needs to be ratcheted down a few notches as she was throwing gas on those flames over in the KISPH group among others. I got a few messages as "one of the currently most active KI enthusiast" on what I might have seen over there. I know as of 1pm there were none on site and I wouldnt expect them to be...

Im am not sure I want to see it as bright as the sun either, BUT if what I saw is correct(and it is, sadly due to the nature of LED light its hard to pick up that light during the day opposed to say incandescent) this will be seen clearly to Middletown or greater(internet stats say a candle can be seen from 3-30 miles away at night). It should bathe the park in near daylight if they pulse it at full on, but I would hope it is used sparingly I think at that intensity. I would also think some lights on the trains or LED wheels would be great, but then everyone would complain when they dont work or the ride would have to shelf a train for maintenance to keep them running. I was able to zoom in on a few shots I haven't posted and when it was on "low" as Id call it, the white bar along the bottom of the catwalk had about 2x2 foot squares moving back and forth along the lift like in animation and I think that can show up well enough on a post here if I edit it to show that. I also think the main light strip may be backlit LED, but more like a scoreboard where it is programmable to do different things. On that, I think the rail above it may be a round LED strip (or just picked up a glow from the strip below it) along with the blue one above it being more like Fury's green strip. Ill have to add it as an edit to the post after the fact. I also believe they don't want to tip their hand on what they do have with the lights(as you cant please everyone) which is why they were doing it during the late day sun where its very difficult to see. If I wasn't standing there staring at it for a period of time I would have blew it off as you all have. It took me 10 mins to fully convince myself of what I was seeing, but at that point what good does breaking the news of the lights matter if it appears questionable and it isn't in their full grandeur at night? I give Don and Chad or whoever is the calling the shots on testing those lights full kudos on doing it with the sun to their full advantage.... The park 1.... chump enthusiast(me)...0. It sums up the line"The best place to hide is in plain sight" and Ill be darned if they aren't doing just that and doing it well, even high above the skyline.