WoodVengeance

I mean, an indoor family attraction can be a great addition if something like Fire in the Hole is anything to go by. It would be a better use for that building than what it's currently being used for.

Kings Island's primarily role in the chain right now is to be a cash cow for the local family demographic, who is the demographic most likely to spend the most money at the park. The park knows it can get away with not installing major new additions because the local demographic will renew their season passes regardless as there's not much competition within the immediate area. Kentucky Kingdom and Holiday World are somewhat close by, but if you're a KI local, you're looking anywhere between 1.5 hours and 3 hours to get to those parks and neither of them are nearly to the same scale as Kings Island. Cedar Point's role will always be to be "the roller coaster capital of the world", building up an elite collection of coasters and rides to attract people from around the world, and that includes Kings Island's local demographic. Cedar Fair/Six Flags wants to keep the elite record-breaking coasters exclusive to Cedar Point so passholders of Kings Island who want to experience that stuff will need to travel north to do so. (and gives them more incentive to buy the all-park passport which is also very important) I do think there will come a time when Kings Island will add a new thrill coaster to the park. Likewise, I think there will come a time when Cedar Point will add a new family attraction similar to how they just added Wild Mouse. Just because these parks focus on different demographics doesn't mean they will exclusively add attractions to cater to those different demographics. With the families being the main priority for Kings Island right now, it may be some time before we see that thrill coaster come. In addition, don't expect the coaster to be an elite coaster that outdoes something at Cedar Point.

They'd likely only sell it inside the park, so that would be a 9-10 hour drive assuming you're from the Kings Island area.

That wouldn't be the worst thing. At least that would make a B&M Dive Coaster a realistic possibility unlike right now.

That seems to suggest we're going to be looking at another situation like when Cedar Fair acquired the Paramount Parks. Where the newly-acquired parks get the most investments (Canada's Wonderland, Kings Island, Carowinds), while less attention is spent on the older parks (Valleyfair, Dorney, Worlds of Fun)

Yes,

Six Flags has stated that the launch coaster for 2026 will be "completely new", so it doesn't seem like it's going to be a reimagining.

I don't get how anyone can look at a coaster with a 300ft drop, goes 91mph and a 54" height requirement, then consider it a "family coaster".

Seems that's the case from what I've heard, but it's worth noting that some of the companies on here, like GCI and Zamperla, are holdovers from previous projects.

Since 2026 isn't on this one, I assume this is probably just for the Soak City expansion. However, I am curious as to why we didn't see a Notice of Commencement for 2023-2024 with the addition of Camp Snoopy. If Vekoma was on this Notice, I'd assume it would've been because of Snoopy's Soap Box Racers, but nothing on here seems to related to Camp Snoopy in any way.

I second this. The only legacy Six Flags park I've been to is Great America and I was very impressed with the theming in the queue area for Batman the Ride. I didn't get to ride Dark Knight, but I imagine the theming was good in there too. However, it does make me wonder why Batman in particular seems to get more attention in regards to theming compared to the other DC characters. Superman was pretty much just a parking lot coaster and Flash didn't really have much theming at all other than an image of him at the ride entrance. I personally wouldn't mind if we saw DC come to our park if the theming was consistent of that from what I saw of Batman at Great America, but not so much if there's not a lot of effort put into the other characters.

Yes, but Valravn has white paint on the bottom of the track. For a 1:1 paint job to Vortex, both the track and supports would be painted dark blue, with just the rails on the track painted orange.

I agree. Personally, I don't really understand the hype for a Vekoma Madhouse when it doesn't really look like that impressive of a ride to begin with. To me it just looks like a room with a rotating wall, that's it. Might be a unique experience for one ride, but not one I could see myself riding more than once.

Yeah, I was mainly talking about the model itself. I highly doubt we would see nearly the amount of theming and effects that are present on Voltron Nevera.

It is starting to look like 2026 will probably be the year for The Vortex replacement, but we've talked about it ad nauseam for the past five years. So, I wish to bring up some stuff the park could do in the years afterwards: Address the dead area of the park between the Eiffel Tower and Rivertown. I was thinking of a restaurant similar to The Farmhouse Kitchen and Grill at Cedar Point with outdoor seating and a band stage for live entertainment while eating. Bonus if they locate the restaurant across from the Rivertown bathrooms, that way you get a really good view of Diamondback's splashdown while eating. Unpopular take, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Planet Snoopy part of our kids section rethemed to DC or Looney Tunes. It would help add some variety to that section of the park, while also keeping Camp Snoopy intact so the Peanuts IP still has a place at the park. A multi-year expansion project for Action Zone, similar to what Kings Dominion is currently doing with Jungle Xpedition. The first phase involving a new flat ride like an S&S Screamin' Swing, then the second phase introducing a new coaster that also includes a renovation to the front gate of the park. Either put in a new dark ride or a hybrid between an indoor/outdoor ride using the Crypt building.

It's a new model Mack Rides has put out. There's only one currently at Europa Park called Voltron Nevera. Think of it kind of like Mack Ride's take on a Gerstlauer Infinity.

I compared those two specifically because they're arguably the most popular/famous rides in their respective parks.

Imagine if Kings Island was planning to close The Beast after 2024 and kept it a secret from the general public. Then imagine walking into Rivertown at the start of the 2025 season and The Beast is completely gone. The pathway to The Beast is completely blocked off and you didn't get a chance to get a final ride in 2024 because you assumed it was still going to be there and thought "it's the park's most famous ride, so why would they get rid of it?" Could you imagine the immense backlash that would occur on social media and on this very forum if the park did something like that? That's what the general public at Great Adventure are currently dealing with. Kingda Ka, arguably their most famous ride, as well as Green Lantern are getting removed without a peep from the park. Again, I understand that rides will eventually close for one reason or another, but why on earth would you keep that a secret and not let people know to get their last rides in? There have been influencers and YouTube creators that have went through the effort of spreading the word about the recent ride removals, but not everyone who goes to parks like Great Adventure or Over Texas will watch those videos.

Here's an overlay of the land that's being opened up near Frontier Town due to recent ride removals. Orange being the land left over by Snake River Falls and Frontier Fling, while purple being if they wanted to expand out towards the former Forbidden Frontier area. I do 100% believe Cedar Point already has something planned given their repeated use of the term "future expansion" and my guess is it will primarily reside in the orange area, though some of it could go out into the purple area if the park really wanted to. For what type of attraction(s) this will be or when it will open, only time will tell.

Probably would've been more convenient to remove it now since they already have the demolition crew there to take down Snake River Falls.

Interesting. Frontier Fling is located right next to Snake River Falls, which the park already announced was being removed for "future expansion". It seems the Snake River Falls replacement will also require Frontier Fling to be removed as well. As for Kings Island, I think Xtreme Skyflyer will stay at the park until they have something planned for its plot of land. All of the upcharge attractions that were removed in the chain recently, including our own Slingshot, were done to make way for some sort of future expansion. With The Vortex replacement rumored to be built for 2026, I think it'll be a few years before we see a major renovation to Action Zone. There are multiple attractions in that area that I could realistically see getting axe'd, and that includes EXtreme Skyflyer. Also, here's an image of Frontier Fling getting removed for those who don't want to join the Cedar Point Passholder's group.

Like I said for the other Cedar Fair parks, I don't expect the general public to notice any significant changes to Kings Island under the new Six Flags chain other than having Six Flags parks added to the all-park passport. However, this is only based on my observation of the new chain from less than a single season of operation, so we'll need more time to accurately gauge the effects of the merger. I think the merger would be more obvious to people if we started seeing stuff like Looney Tunes or DC come to the park, or the park literally rebranding itself as a Six Flags park. I don't think either of these are very likely to happen, but crazier things have happened in the amusement industry.

I think it depends on the parks they're from. It seems new Six Flags is going in a more Cedar Fair-centric direction when it comes to things like passes, add-ons, food, maintenance, additions, etc. so I don't expect the former Cedar Fair parks to change all that much post-merger unless we begin seeing DC or Looney Tunes IP introduced to those parks. I think the most notable changes will come from the former Six Flags parks, especially larger parks like Magic Mountain, Great America and Great Adventure. I believe those parks will change a lot for better or worse if they begin adopting Cedar Fair's method of running their parks and the general public will notice the changes greatly. Other than that, I think the most obvious difference for people throughout both of the chains is that the all-park passport can be used to go to both former Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks. For people who have Kings Island as their home park and want to buy the all-park passport for Cedar Point since it's nearby, they will also gain access to Great America as well. Likewise, people who have Great America as their home park will now be able to visit Kings Island and Cedar Point if they get the all-park passport.

If I'm going to be honest, this addition doesn't seem like it was added to make Soak City a competitor for the best water park in the area. More like "well it's been nine years since we added Tropical Plunge so we might as well add something to Soak City so it doesn't look like we forgot about it".

To be fair, there was a shipping document that was posted online a month or two before AlpenFury's announcement that showed that the manufacturer was going to be premier rides, so it wouldn't exactly be accurate to say "nothing got out". Also, we've had Notice of Commencements and blueprints found in public records for several past additions, so I'm not sure if that's going to stop with a new director of communications. However, I do hope that future additions do become more "secretive" from now on to help fuel speculation throughout the season. I feel as if the decoding season for Orion back in 2019 was somewhat ruined by the fact that the blueprints were posted on here very early in the season. Going back to the 2020 decoding thread, there was only a period of 19 days between the start of the speculation on passholder preview day (April 19th) to when the blueprints were posted with the full layout (May 8th), so at that point there wasn't really much left to decode other than debating if the name was going to be Polaris or Orion.