WoodVengeance

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.

I would also be heartbroken if The Bat were to get removed in the near future. It's a coaster I try to ride every time I go to the park and I don't really mind the long walk it takes to get there. It usually doesn't have that bad of a wait and it's a pretty enjoyable ride experience even if it is a bit short. I would be shocked if it got removed before Invertigo.

In the event of a ground-up RMC coming to Kings Island, I would expect the park to use an all-steel support structure similar to ArieForce One. Kings Island has played it safe with their recent coaster additions as of the time Cedar Fair took over, and I think that would apply here as well by minimizing the risk of any potential structural issues like we've seen with Steel Vengeance for example. I wouldn't be surprised if no wood ended up being used at all. However, it's also because of the park playing it safe with their coaster additions that I believe an RMC at Kings Island is unlikely to begin with.

It's not related to the hot chocolate, but I did encounter an issue last week when I used a single meal plan and was told I couldn't get a drink because it's not on my plan (which if you go on Kings Island's website or on the app, it says clearly that it does in-fact come with a drink). Again, it was just a drink so it's not the biggest issue in the world and I also acknowledge that it was likely the employee was just mistaken. To reference what @DJSkyFoxx said, I really do not like the precedent that the park can tell you no for something you paid for, especially at a park like Kings Island where you'd expect the service to be exceptionally great given the park's reputation.

I personally haven't visited the Express hotel (yet), but that definitely looks rough considering it wasn't that long ago that they remodeled the hotel. I did stay at Castaway Bay a few years back after that hotel got remodeled. The water park was fine, but the rooms weren't really that great. Very small table that hardly had any space to put stuff on and I also wasn't a fan of the hard floor throughout the entire room. I have visited all three of the waterpark resorts in Sandusky with my most recent trip having stayed at the Kalahari, and I personally think Castaway Bay is the weakest of the three in my opinion. It's nice that you get early entry to Cedar Point, but that's really the only benefit you get as there's no transportation to and from the park. I can't really comment on Sawmill Creek since I haven't stayed there yet personally, but from what I've seen, Cedar Point could definitely improve their hotel properties not located on the peninsula. I'm sure Hotel Breakers is fine since that's located right next to the park and is the flagship hotel for Cedar Point, but it's definitely the most expensive resort you can stay at if you plan to visit Cedar Point.

If a lower height requirement is one of the goals for our next major addition, that actually does make Gerstlauer more favorable over Mack since Hangtime has a height requirement of 48", whereas Copperhead Strike has a 52" requirement.

I imagine Cedar Point will still be the favorite child of the Ohio parks. It's also worth noting Six Flags Great America is only about 5 hours away from Kings Island (6 if you want to factor in Chicago traffic) and that's now a park in our chain too. It's too early to say which of the two will get the most investments between Kings Island and Great America. Apparently it was brought up in a recent Tower Topics that Mike Koontz wanted Orion to appeal to families, hence the reason for the smaller stats. I can't confirm it personally but if it is true, I really have no idea what he was thinking with that. Giga coasters are supposed to be some of the most thrilling coasters out there and to try and turn one into a family coaster just seems like the wrong way to go about it. They can minimize the height or length as much as they want, at the end of the day it still has a 54 inch height requirement. Again, this is not confirmed to be the reasoning and I still think Orion is a great ride, but it is a baffling thought.

So if we were to enter this mindset for our next major coaster, thrill coasters should still be on the table if he considers Orion to be a family-friendly addition. Would that make it more likely that we could see another B&M since the rides they put out are more on the graceful side? Or perhaps a Vekoma launch coaster since those have a lower height requirement (A.K.A. more family friendly). We'll probably just have to wait and see what happens.