WoodVengeance

To be fair, there were legitimate reasons behind the 2023 and 2024 additions not being ready for opening day. Mike Koontz stated in an interview for Adventure Port that Cargo Loco and Sol Spin were planned very late, hence why Adventure Port was announced later than usual and why the parts for those rides weren't delivered until around the start of the 2023 season. As for 2024, Vekoma promised Holiday World that Good Gravy was going to be the first Family Boomerang to open in the states, so their priority was getting Good Gravy open before SSBR.

The Flash: Vertical Velocity at Great Adventure has already been announced to have a 48" height requirement. In addition: Lech Coaster, Fonix, Formula, and Abyssus all have a minimum height requirement of 120cm. (approximately 47 inches) It seems like 48" is the standard height requirement for modern Vekoma thrill coasters.

I think Vekoma would be a great candidate for our next coaster. Their newer coasters in Europe and Asia look great and it seems they're one of the only manufacturers out there that can rival B&M in terms of reliability and smoothness. Given that Kings Island is a park that likes to play it safe with their coaster additions (under Cedar Fair), I think Vekoma is a no-brainer unless they go with another B&M.

I always thought it was a huge missed opportunity that they didn't retheme Invertigo to Screamin' Demon. I think whatever goes in The Vortex plot could at least pay some sort of homage to Vortex. Regardless of how people thought about the roughness of the ride, it was still one of the more iconic coasters of the park. Not saying I want a Vortex 2, but it would be nice to see Vortex incorporated somewhere in the theme of the new ride, or the color scheme being orange and blue.

I screenshot my pass in case I can't get into the app

iPhone users have reported issues with their passes not showing up on Cedar Fair apps after a recent iOS update. Did you update your phone recently?

This goes for parks in the same chain as well. Just because Cedar Point was willing to bite the bullet on having Zamperla redo Top Thrill Dragster doesn't mean Kings Island would invest in something nearly that risky. Kings Island (under Cedar Fair) has mainly played it safe when it comes to new coaster additions with three B&Ms, a GCI, and a Vekoma Family Boomerang, all models that have been proven to be safe and reliable.

Weird. So someone needs to update the webpage then.

It must've just went down, because it was open when I was there yesterday.

Got my first ride on it today and it was in the front row. It's butter smooth and fun for a family coaster.

I saw on reddit that Cedar Point built a human claw machine near power tower. I imagine we'll see these pop up at other parks in the chain as well.

Maybe, or it could be something else as well. This was my thought when Canada's Wonderland put in Snoopy's Racing Railway that it was going to get cloned at the other major CF parks, but we got Snoopy's Soap Box Racers instead.

Also, I imagine Kings Island would want to keep the drones to the right of the Eiffel Tower if you're watching from International Street. Putting them by Action Theater would make them look too close to the fireworks.

Glad to see Kings Dominion finally get a ground-up B&M. (Dominator was a relocation) I'm curious how this coaster will stack up compared to Thunderbird at Holiday World.

I don't think this is going to be for a flat ride. Usually we wouldn't see construction for a new ride this early into the prior season unless it was for a major coaster. (Which given the plot, it's not) Given the size, I don't think it's going to be for anything significant. Think of something like a new gift shop, VIP area or a food/drink stand.

Could it be another Coke Refill station like what's being put in Action Zone?

Couldn't they move the drone plot farther back? Of course, they would likely need to remove some trees to make room, but I think it should be fine as long as it doesn't get too close to The Beast or Racer turnaround.

I would wait to do a Kings Dominion trip until you can find more time to fit in Busch Gardens Williamsburg as well. Both KD and BGW are highly acclaimed parks, and they're only an hour or so away from each other. I'm not going to suggest that one of these parks is better than the other, but personally, I think it would be a missed opportunity to only do one of those parks and not the other while you're in the Richmond, VA area. For two days, I think Carowinds would be the better option given it's easy to knock out that park within a day and there are no other amusement parks near the immediate area of Charlotte, NC.

They were too busy trying to fix Lightning Rod that they forgot to fix the park! All joking aside, I would expect to see more AI-generated garbage articles like this to pop up more frequently.

Maybe. The problem is Xcelerator's launch track is much shorter than Dragster's, and I'm not sure if there's enough room to put in an LSM launch that could get over that top hat. If they needed to, they could try to put some LSM's on the incline up the top hat. If they put in a spike like TT2, they will probably need to either remove or relocate Supreme Scream since that's located right behind Xcelerator's station. Just like with Dragster, Xcelerator has been a constant maintenance nightmare for Knotts, and they're probably going to need to do something about it at some point in the near future. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Knotts currently has their eyes glued to TT2 to see how reliable it is.

I would like that, too. Not sure if Kings Island would go with a swing launch coaster though considering Cedar Point just added Top Thrill 2.

Maybe one of those four coaster models, probably not the exact layouts they showed. I highly doubt we'll ever see that tower concept come to Kings Island or Cedar Point given how bad the capacity would be. It's also possible it could be something else entirely like how Canada's Wonderland did with their survey from last year.

From what I've heard, whenever a Cedar Fair park decides to build a new coaster, they usually go out to multiple manufacturers to hear their pitches for what they've been working on, and then the park will contract the manufacturer that works best for them. If Kings Island is planning a coaster for 2026, I imagine right now this would be the phase they're currently at. It's also worth noting that if this theoretical coaster were to be planned for The Vortex plot, that would have given the park an additional 4-5 years to think about what to put there from when that ride was removed. I want to make it clear that a survey like this does not confirm a coaster for 2026. We'll need to see more evidence pop up within the next year or so in order to make that assumption.

That's what I was thinking too. This might sound like weird reasoning, but if this proposed giga dive was 300ft on the mark, I think it would fit Carowinds better as it wouldn't really interfere with Fury 325 being the tallest coaster in the park, whereas it would take that title from Orion if it were to go to Kings Island. I could also see Cedar Point getting that tilt coaster since they were the only park that had it in their survey.

At the very least, I think it's possible one of these concepts may be used to influence our next coaster. One of the concepts that Canada's Wonderland had in their survey last year was a launched wing coaster that went through wonder mountain. Although now it looks as if it won't be a launched wing coaster, it still seems their 2025 project will be some sort of launch coaster that interacts with the mountain. The same goes for Carowinds having water attractions in their survey from last year, as the blueprints for their 2025 project show a new water ride and splash pads going to Camp Snoopy. The overall concept is still similar, albeit in a slightly different form. I think it's possible that whatever comes out of this survey, it could go down a similar path. A coaster that's not exactly a 1:1 comparison, but still uses one of those concepts as a basis to build upon.