Coasterteam

Curious how busy today is gonna be.

I saw this thread at the home page and thought “oh my god are they bringing it back???” Nice job finding the music!

They mentioned that often times when they remove a ride they have an idea what’s gonna go there next. With Vortex there was nothing on the table. Take that with the pandemic and an average length of 2 years from concept to open, it will be a while.

If you consider service life to be 30 years, then a few current coasters will be reaching that within 5-10 years. Estimated 30ish year service life Not including Racer/Beast, both have gotten a lot of track work recently and remain very popular. This is applying to steel coasters. Adventure Express - 2031 (not very intense might be a 40 year lifespan) (1991) <9 years (The) Bat - 2023 (1993) <1 year - (hopefully it’ll be serviced longer!) FoF - 2026 (1996) <4 years Invertigo - 2029 (1999) <7 years — not for a while haha — Backlot - 2005 (2035) >10 years Diamondback - 2039 (2009) >10 years etc these are not hard dates nor anything to really go by but it’s put into perspective what the park has to decide when it comes to a ride reaching its end of life and deciding whether to remove it or redo it. Bat still is pretty popular and they seem to have an interest in repairing it, unlikely it will be removed in the next 5 years. FoF/Invertigo are up for debate; still popular but low capacity.

SoB station demolition would be the final goodbye but could spark the beginning of a revamped Action Zone. A phase 2 of Beast trackwork... will be keeping an eye on Beast in the off-season/winterfest to see if anything starts up; if not then thats fine too

Could they be on the list if they're just replacing steel track? Would be interested in seeing some parts of Diamondback get new track put in like the rough patch before the trim brake. A lot of people think we could see a Vortex replacement as early as 2024, but I'm more towards 2025/2026 since everything was pushed back a year or two after the pandemic. If we are getting something in 2024, we would likely start seeing teasers early into the next season.

Swear some of those people have automatic bots to practically check for new park related documents for them Also don't think the park would purposefully lie on their city documents to annoy some random enthusiasts.

Kings Island is often considered chained by Cedar Point. Some can argue that the park is already better than Cedar Point in terms of employees, operations, and atmosphere. (I certainly prefer KI over Cedar Point, it's too much of a tourist attraction for me and needs to regain a lot of its lost rider capacity) Since SoB Kings Island leadership have stuck to those 5 points you have made. So far they're pretty good at keeping to those points. An RMC would be risky since capacity can be an issue as well as reliability; i.e. Steel Vengeance has a lot of issues. RMC did learn a lot from that and they seem to be doing better. Intensity is up for debate but it would easily be the most intense coaster at the park; which would risk another point. Seeing a ground up RMC is very unlikely but a scaled down version could be an option if CF still wants to work with them. A B&M and GCI would check off all these points. A new Mack could have good capacity, Copperhead has an estimated 1200/hour capacity. Not sure how well it actually hits that. I have not heard of Copperhead or Time traveler being unreliable. The intensity is not on a level of intimidator 305. The fact few extreme spinners exist right now could make the ride seem more of a concept and risky in the complexity point. Might be too much of a crowd drawer since the only one currently in the US is in SDC. One thing people often miss is how Cedar Fair is starting to really head in the "nostalgia" direction. Could we see a modernization of a former ride come back? New B&M standup? Something like Bavarian Beetle? Some old flats come back?

They mentioned it being a goal for next year; so that can be taken different ways. Hoping it does though! Seeing Baynum on the list is very good and makes it more likely it'll happen!

I mentioned this earlier in the reddit thread that popped up for this document. If we saw companies like Gerstlauer, RMC or Mack on this then speculation would begin to run rampant. While I'd love to see a Vortex replacement soon, this is likely just additional trackwork and/or parts for current rides. Either way as I've said before, time will tell!

I've been speculating a second phase of Beast work for a while now; so it's very interesting to see their name noted down. I don't know what would make a company appear on this document, whether that just be general talk between them and Kings Island or actual work being done with them, it's still intriguing. If we do get more trackwork on Beast, it'd likely be focused on finishing the Helix structure redesign and/or some spots after the midcourse tunnel and before the second lift. I still can believe the park might wanna get the track/structure to a point where it can handle reduced trims at the same wear. They have not said this so this could be completely wrong. Nonetheless any trackwork is beneficial. For all we know this could just be general off-season maintenance with a bunch of companies. Time will tell what happens, so we'll keep our eyes out especially at WinterFest.

Great stuff! Should point now as well; Baynum could be re-painting parts of Beast too because of all the new wood the coaster got this past season. They did do a job on it a while back so not out of the question. Wrecking company sounds interesting. GCI might just be Mystic Timbers improvements and/or trackwork and/or maybe Beast Titan track??? Diamondback got a new chain this past off-season. Hoping they do some trackwork on some of the rougher Diamondback parts!!! Loving all this stuff; thanks for posting. Looking forward to any (if any at all) off-season announcements as we enter into 2023.

No on lights in woods around Beast, would be cool though but would ruin a good part of the night rides. The ride already "roars" through the woods, especially in the tunnels. The intense squeals of the cars as it rounds the turn, it's riders making noise, and the wind in your face combined with the lack of sight generates a sense that you don't get to experience all that often. Fog in the woods during the day would be a benefit, but no lights at night unless you are super scarce in using them. (like tunnel entrances) I know it'll never happen but I will continue to talk about it; *inhale* custom Beast soundtrack.

I imagine some of these scare actors might be newer to scare acting; I likely would give it a few more nights to see if the scares improve at all.

Drop Towers been down for weeks at this point. Don’t think it operated this past weekend at the private P&G event.

The 2022 Haunt map was officially released today! Check it out: https://qr1.be/WUZV

inb4 second chaperone policy

When you buy a 2023 gold pass today; this will grant you access to the rest of this season (Haunt) plus the entire next season. This means you can use your new pass as your entry ticket (and parking ticket) on public operating days. (See the park calendar for all public hours) As a Gold Pass member, you are allowed 30 minutes early entry. This does not exclusively mean just entering early but it will allow you to get on select rides: https://www.visitkingsisland.com/season-passes/early-ride-times The parking lot opens around an hour before the park opens, or half an hour before early ride times start. For the remainder of the year, Diamondback and Mystic Timbers are open 30 minutes early to Gold Pass (and above) holders, as well as some kids rides.

That is a great point to make; I would rather the park be open about what they plan on doing but it seems more often than not they're very secretive behind closed doors. While I can't really blame them, as it's likely the way corporate wants them to deal with it, there's not much I can do to change that. More often then not the park is beaten to the announcement by enthusiasts who leak plans and/or on-going construction. The park is often not a fan of this sort of behavior too. Sometimes they purposefully "leak" things to get the ball rolling.

I still have speculation that the park might continue working on Beast with the goal of finishing the helix structure rebuild. Won’t find out until we enter the off-season, but the hopes are there. If not we’ll deal with waiting another year. I trust they have some good stuff in store for us.

Keep in mind just because the park doesn’t announce it doesn’t mean nothing is going to change. Every park gets an offseason budget to spice things up. Will we see more Beast work? Are they gonna paint DB? Will they do track work on Diamondback by the trim? Will the parking lot get more repaving? CF loves KI, it in my opinion is better than Cedar Point, it’s gonna get a Vortex replacement just give it time; stuff takes a while to plan. At this point you can know they likely are planning as it’s usually done 2 years in advance.

We should see the park post the official Haunt map sometime before the 23rd.

I used to see a lot of Kings Island ads; especially for Mystic Timbers. I never saw any TV ads for Orion.

Cedar Fair in general is a very quiet with how they handle situations and discuss their future plans. I feel the park PR people may be concerned about corporate getting angry at something said publicly and/or revealed accidentally, which is why news comes slowly or all at once. I could be completely wrong; but it seems that way in my eyes at least.