The Interpreter

http://www.pointbuzz.com/news.htm?id=935

Well, it did NOT open with the park today, nor did it at least two of the days on opening weekend. One of the ACE walkbacks on opening weekend was to Avatar because Beast was not ready.

....which tells you something about how business WinterFest got compared to what they were expecting, IMHO. Then there was the night it was cancelled due to winter weather! I will never forget the headline in the Charlotte Observer about PCWi's WinterFest: Walking In An Empty Wonderland

Pat Koch is an ordained minister! She just went to divinity school in recent years! And she used to be a nun! They don't come much better than that woman, if they do at all!

I wish I could say I was kidding. I am not. They also had CBS cups--$8. MADE IN CHINA. If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does. And CSI ones, too.

Both Beast and Son of Beast have three bench trains, but the wheel design is different. On either, the middle seat of a CAR will be far smoother than the front or back of that CAR (NOT train, CAR). On Beast, the front of a car is smoother than the back, and almost as smooth as the middle seat. Son of Beast is a far different story. The fronts are, in my opinion, even rougher than the back, with 4-1 (pre-train truncating), being the roughest seat of all. 6-2 used to be, by far, the smoothest seat on the train. That all being said, today I rode 6-2. I found it MUCH improved from last year, but nowhere near as smooth as when it reopened after the initial closure its first year. Not painful, mind you, but not exactly fun, either. I also rode 1-1 on The Beast, and had a delightful time there. I heard that this morning's ACE walkback was to FaceOff, as Beast was apparently not ready, as it often is not these days. Staffing issues in getting the two BIG woodies running at opening. Delirium also started running later in the day, when it had not run inthe morning or last night...

As an aside, large Charley Brown Pez dispensers were prominently on display in the fudge shop at PKI today. Knowing one of the supers there, I wonder if there was more than a little irony intended!

I think this belongs in this thread: PKI Merchandise. Today, I noticed many, many Top Gun: The Jet Coaster T-shirts....established 1999 (yep, the Jet Coaster, 1999, that's Carowinds). But the bottom line of the T Shirt said: Paramount's Kings Island. Never saw these before. Wrong coaster name, wrong established year and/or wrong park. You get to pick! They had many different designs, all with this same error.

Well, I guess I will find out in a few hours. Must get to park. Must stop posting and go ride!

Cedar Fair is a VERY conservative company. I don't see any fire sale coming. The average member of the public won't even realize the park name changed, if it does change to Kings Island. Ironically, twenty years from now, some people will STILL be calling it Paramount's Kings Island. A few others never stopped calling it anything but Kings Island. One reason I had suspected a coming sale for about the past 18 months to two years is the fact the parks themselves were starting to occasionally call themselves just Kings Island, Kings Dominion, etc. At one time last summer, PKI tested calling itself just PKI. Strangely, they even ran a few radio ads in some markets that used the ride names Racer, Beast, etc., then referred to the parks as PKI. They didn't run very long, though. Then there was that survey about renaming the parks after CBS took over...

Uh, Scooby has been at Six Flags for quite some time, now. Only natural, since he is a WB property and Six Flags has a license on the WB characters. At one time, Taft owned Scooby, and you only saw him at the Kings parks... As for Nick, on the one hand, you have the considerable (and justifiably so) Cedar Fair company pride and desire to remove someone else's name from the park vs. the fact that doing so will cost money, and not just a little. I still think the Paramount theming will go, while Nick stays, at least for now. I could even see Nick going to all the Cedar Fair parks at some point. Maybe Cedar Fair could charge Paramount Studios to keep its name on the park--and the fee could be exactly the same as the Nick license. Nah, that won't happen.

Knowing how tight both Cedar Fair and CBS can be, I bet anything the contract says anything removed goes to one or the other. They'll probably sell it at auction to the highest bidder! Then again, Cedar Fair is known for being a very conservative company, and will not have a great deal of additional cash laying around for retheming.

I'm jealous! I love that ride, and getting stuck on that lift hill would be like fulfillment of a dream! And you just knew that, didn't you? The only thing better would be getting a rollback on Kingda Ka, which STILL hasn't happened to me yet, and I am beginning to think never will! I've gotten to sit at the top of the second lift on Beast several times, and gotten rides with me as the only person on the train. Both experiences were just grand.

Sounds Like Fandango.com. Is it called Parkdango? Ummm....no. I am pretty sure they universally do NOT call it that.

Parks ought to think about that. At Universal, one can buy the tickets online and pick them up at an automated kiosk in the front of the park by inserting the same credit card they were charged to...out they pop!

http://www.pointbuzz.com/news.htm?id=932 Although it quotes Carole Sanderson of ACE, the article itself says very little...

By now, the kid is probably tall enough to ride every ride in the park. The question is, does he?

And everybody knows that morons and vandals don't go to Disney or Universal. With extensive theming must come a commitment to theming maintenance, on a DAILY basis. Disney or Uni would NOT operate IJST the way PP does/did. Nor TRTR, nor Adventure Express, nor even Scooby and the Haunted Castle. I don't see Cedar Fair making that commitment to do so, nor do I see Cedar Fair offering the public poorly maintained themed rides (okay, kid in the back row, jeering and throwing paper wads...yes, YOU, the one who yelled out Disaster Transport!--you gotta point!) Any way, I see Cedar Fair gradually removing most of the theming. Or fixing it all and KEEPING it fixed. One or the other. What I really wonder about is how they will run their shows and entertainment, but that is a topic for another thread. For this one, they will maintain and operate Vortex as long as it is economically feasible to do so. Cedar Fair is REALLY good at steel coaster maintenance. The better question is what will they do with Son of Beast? Especially if it continues to require massive expenditures year after year for maintenance?

Nah. Nobody's perfect! He said this: Now, I am NOT picking on him. And I was impressed with the report. But 7:41 to 8:08 is only 27 minutes. He must have spent the other 11 minutes waiting for Outer Limits, back when it opened!

That's fairly odd.

Well, even if the FearFest is retained at Kings Island, you must admit it is still true that: Halloweekends is coming! Halloweekends is coming! You'd just have to get to the Point to experience them!

Halloweekends is coming! Halloweekends is coming! (And Winterfest may well be going).

WHAT??? No it doesn't. Yeah, reports from the CDC (Based Right Here in Atlanta) show compelling evidence in the connection beteew Plague and Pepsi. Atlanta, huh? Where COCA-COLA is based? But the local pediatrician in Purchase, New York denies it...

Yep. They even got Flying Scooters this year. From Larson.

Yah, in my case it is called....shoeleather! I usually get there well before the trams start running, and leave long after they have stopped!