johnjniehaus

I will die on the hill of BRING BACK PHANTOM THEATER. We have had a low quality, uninteresting dark ride long enough. I do not under any circumstances want to see boo Blaster turned into a screen based ride. I'll always take half working animatronics over a screen. The peanuts ride makes sense for the location but I feel like Kings Island fans and the general public have proven time and time over that they want to see those former attractions restored. Maybe the GP is a little less vocal about it but my family who definitely are not enthusiasts were all excited about the return of the flying scooter ride and the antique autos.

It's interesting how long they can keep a ride that has seemingly reached the end of its service life with band-aid fixes. I personally think a lot of ride that "reach the end of their service lives" have done their time but the park removes them when it is advantageous to do so... I personally think Vortex would have lasted a few seasons longer but you could tell it's age was showing. The park probably just chose to remove it instead of making any additional band-aid fixes because they knew Orion was opening the following spring.

I wonder if they are removing it due to low ridership, scarcity of parts, or if they just need the land? I do agree it's sad to see another water ride at CP bite the dust leaving only the absolute drencher Thunder Canyon. I also think it sucks losing another ride in frontier town after the antique Cars went a few years back. Hopefully they are cooking up a cool replacement attraction!

I'm for sure trying to get back down to KD and BGW next summer (2025). It'll be interesting to see if the rumors of BGW 2025 coaster pan out. If so I'll have 3 new coasters to ride seeing as I haven't been to BGW since before darkoaster opened

I'd actually love to see Backlot get rethemed to a safari jeep style coaster or something. Remove some of the concrete and shipping containers that are so unsightly.

I was able to get my first ride on Invertigo tonight since the ACE Spring Conference and it was the smoothest, hands down best ride I've ever had on that coaster. Not once did it bang my head and it delivered two grey out moments. By far the most intense coaster in the park! Not sure why the ride was so smooth tonight but if it ran like that all the time, it would easily move several spots ahead in my rankings. Its so great seeing it back in operation as I never realized how much I missed it until it was closed for a few weeks. Walking up to the park and watching it, riding Congo falls and watching it, riding Drop Tower and watching it, and of course standing in line for it watching it zoom above and past you in the station! If/when it is removed sometime in the future I genuinely will miss it. I really want to try and ride it again before the summer season is over. Curious if it'll be super smooth a second time...

I wouldn't mind a coaster with the same layout if it was super new and smooth. Vortex had great elements. Whatever goes there I really hope has a boomerang inversion where the old one was on Vortex because that was an amazing photo spot

It's on my bucket list. I've been to Yellowstone 3x but I've always stayed outside the park in West Yellowstone. I could spend days at the upper geyser basin just waiting around for something to happen. Of course the waiting game is helped by the fact there are many predictable geyers in that basin to watch while you are waiting for any sign of getting to see a more rare geyser erupt. I need to get back out there sometime

Hey according to Tower Topics you get free parking if you are visiting the cemetery... I'd love to know how the park would respond to a parking request to visit the cemetery. Would they refuse? Would they send security to make sure the cemetery visitors are respectful? What would the park response be if someone told a parking attendant they were there to visit their great great uncle's grave?

While something like this would scare the crap out of me I still want to see something like this in person at least once in my life! Even something like the Yellowstone explosion would have been unforgettable to witness

I have not been to Worlds of Fun but I know that we are very spoiled at Kings Island with solid maintenance and reliable rides. It's very rare for us to have any rides that are closed the entire season or even months on end. Even looking at parks like six flags great America which I love dearly, they have rides which remained closed for very long periods of time. Maintenance is such a vital part of park operations and KI has always been really solid

Evan with the "cuts" I think the CP Boardwalk and Camp Snoopy at KI are vast improvements over how it was before. Same with adventure port. Absolutely love all the colors in that area and the flats really do add some excitement to the area

I Street: Bring back the old music and it's a pipedream but I wish to God we could have our old fountains back Planet Snoopy: Phantom Theater 2.0 replaces Boo Blaster Camp Snoopy: love this area... maybe more trees? Rivertown: Vekoma madhouse in Crypt building. Coney Mall: New coaster in Vortex Spot. I think it would be cool to do a new mini section that is kind of 1950s route 66 American road trip themed with the far end of Coney where it is no longer two lane path. New area would include Backlot, antique Cars, shake rattle n roll (which is already named for a 1950s song), WindSeeker, and a new rollercoaster that ties into that theme Area 72: Maybe a flat ride? I'm not sure I think it's pretty good as is. Adventure Port: Again pretty good as is. I'd like to see continued maintenance on Adv Ex to keep all the effects working Octoberfest: relocate the berserker from CAGA to Octoberfest...not sure where it would fit but currently Viking Fury is the lone ride in this forgotten section of the park Action Zone: Unpopular opinion but if we are going to take advantage of the DC comic IP, this is the section to do it. I think The Bat would look really cool with a Batman theme. Maybe a new coaster once Invertigo and Congo Falls reach the end of their service life.

The Racer is my 10 year old sister's favorite too! She has ridden everything except Invertigo. She does like Banshee alot too but she always wants to ride The Racer (blue side). She's always super disappointed if only the red side is running. As a kid my big two were always The Beast and Vortex. Then one day I got on Diamondback and everything changed!

I'm not getting in the middle of whether this story is true or false. I'm just going to put it out there that I'm not the biggest Chad fan but I don't want the guy to lose his job or anything. That's just being malicious. I personally think he writes uninteresting articles/stories. I just go to Tower Topics and KIC for my KI news now because anything coming out of the park's media department doesn't provide as good of content. Again this is all my personal opinion. I met Chad when he was running the ACE Largest Ride event that I attended and he was super friendly to all of us ACE members and even gave us all a single use fastlane for coming to the event. However, from what I saw he didn't treat the KI staff with the same super friendly attitude he portrayed towards us. I felt like he was kind of short with them and acted like they were just getting in the way. Now I obviously do not have all the facts, Chad might have been having a bad stressful day, maybe the KI staff were being super incompetent, maybe he was going though something in his personal life. I don't know and I'm not to judge. I don't personally know him or anything and I appreciate him running the ACE event for us.

Whatever it is that is causing the closure, I am just hoping the park is trying to get a part for it. Even if they have to wait to get it, I really do want to see Invertigo last awhile longer. I think we all know it's not going to last forever but it's still a very intense ride and I personally think it's been running a bit smoother lately... wondering if maybe they fixed it up a bit after Dorney closed Stinger...

A similar thing happened somewhere in the mid 2010s when The Vortex chain snapped and they were waiting on a new one resulting in the ride being closed nearly the entire summer. But at least with that one, somehow everyone seemed to know it was the chain. Not sure if there was news coverage of the fact the chain broke or if the park made an announcement. I was too young to remember if there was an official announcement but I distinctly remember everyone in the park and all the ops talking about it so it was definitely not a secret

Just putting it out there right now I have no official source for this information other than word of mouth. It was third hand information by the time it got to me so take it how you will. I am not confirming or denying the claims. I know a guy who is has a friend who is an Invertigo op and he said that there is a small crack in the cobra roll. Obviously with Vekoma not producing parts for this model anymore the park is waiting on a custom part to be built and installed. I hope the rumor that the park is investing in the ride by ordering and waiting on a part is true because we don't need to lose another coaster right now.

I heard from a friend that it's still closed... I hope they are just waiting on a part for it and not that they are closing it for good.

What I'm curious about is what happened to Invertigo to warrant this extended closure with no explanation? It seemingly was running fine in the early part of the season and then started experiencing major downtime resulting in it just being blocked off and closed for a few weeks now.... I really hope that this isn't the end for it. We need it at least until Vortex has been replaced.

I think they could do something like KI did with area 72 at KD with the end cap that FoF and Intimidator 305 are on. It would be kind of strange to me to see them both incorporated into jungle Expedition but I'm sure they could do it. Naming is really key though because a tacky name just sounds stupid when you are renaming a coaster. For example was anyone in love with Top Thrill 2 compared to Top Thrill Dragster? How about Intimidator at Carowinds being renamed to Thunder Striker when you already have copperhead strike in the same park? (Names were too similar in my opinion). Top Gun at Kings Island becoming Flight Deck? (Obviously remedied by renaming to The Bat in 2014). Regardless of what they decide to do, I-305 or whatever it's new name becomes is still my favorite rollercoaster I've ever ridden and I really really want to get back down to KD next year to ride the new winged coaster and to lap I-305 again!

That's great! Back when I was a kid it seemed that 70% of the ride ops at Strickers Grove in Ross, OH were senior citizens smoking cigarettes. I'm not sure when the park became a smoke free zone but I was telling my one friend that as soon as they put up the no smoking sign, I like to imagine half of the old employees walking off the job. This one old lady is permanently imbedded in my mind. She worked the flying elephant ride and was always super mean. She'd open the gate and snarl at all the kids, "Where's your adult?" My cousins and I would point to our parents and grandma who were in the line directly behind us and she'd say, "you need them with you!" Then you'd get a nice whiff of her cigarette smoke as you walked past her now holding your adult's hand so she knew you had one with you. Then she'd come around and fuss about the way you buckled the seatbelt the entire time puffing out more smoke. By the time she was done, there would be a nice haze around the entire ride and as a little kid the fun had just about been ruined.

I think it depends on your age and definition/tolerance for roughness. I personally think Teddy Bear is pretty smooth. It's not any worse than Woodstock Express at KI if you ask me. Tornado jostles you around a bit and has those two sharp ejector airtime moments. No it's not as smooth as the Gravity Group prefab track on The Racer but it is no where near as rough as The Racer was pre re-tracking. My 66 year old grandma is still riding the tornado multiple times with no complaints so I'd take that to mean it isn't that rough.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know whatever happened to the King Cobra sign? I know the park has auctioned off a few ride signs through the years but I have always been curious about the King Cobra one. During the ACE Spring Conference we did get to do a tour of the sign shop but I must say that the areas we saw did not include many ride signs at all. The slingshot one was in there but I really don't remember seeing any other significant ones.

I was able to coordinate a long weekend trip with my new friends I made at the ACE spring conference. The one girl lives in Chicago and seeing as that is pretty centrally located i suggested that we all meet up there and she could show us around her home park. The plan of course grew to include the Wisconsin parks and Indiana Beach. So it begins - July 4: six flags great America - We were able to ride quite a bit during the holiday. Mainly stuck to coasters but it was a great day full of beautiful weather and fireworks at night. Consensus was that Goliath was the star rollercoaster in the park but our group actually ended up having an obsession with Demon too. Such an underrated arrow looper! Whizzer was fun and of course there were lots of bad jokes about how our significant others would feel about us sitting in each other's laps. American Eagle is such a great woodie and I really hope one day they can get it racing again. Gravity group maybe? Batman, Superman, & Viper were all good. I personally think X-Flight has too much of a rattle to be enjoyable but I was in the minority on that. I always end up getting a headache after that ride so to me it's not that great. GateKeeper is a superior winged coaster. I finally got my back row ride on raging bull which was ruined by the worst op I've ever experienced at an amusement park. This guy shoved the lapbars down hard and stapled my friend and I to the train. I was irritated so I said to my friend loud enough for the people around us to hear, "that was just unnecessary" my friend then made a comment to the op about how he was a little bit rough checking the restraints. My friend is the kindest guy ever so it wasn't said in an angry fashion at all. The op then replied, "do you want me to come push it down harder?". I was really ticked off so I told him to try but that he wasn't going to get it down any further. He then proceeded to come back over and saw that my friend was wearing a KI T-shirt and snarled, "oh so you're from Kings Island! Because of that I'm going to push it down extra hard" he then gave two hard thrusts against the bar which didn't go down any further. Of course one of the guys in the group who used to be a racer op yelled at him and called him a bunch of 4-letter words. Funny enough the guy working the teacups was super nice and was talking to everyone waiting in line and we mentioned how much we appreciated his effort and attitude after having a bad op on raging bull. The teacups guy then asked us, "did his name happen to be Rudy?" And we said yep that was him! He just rolled his eyes and shared our opinion that he's awful. Funny enough Rudy was working a flat ride at the end of the night so we got to experience his lovely attitude again! Needless to say I made a complaint to the park because responding in an antagonistic way to a guest is unprofessional regardless of what comment was made. He could have ignored the criticism or just apologized. Instead he made a huge scene about it and then proceeded to pick on someone based on them wearing a KI shirt. July 5: Six Flags Great America - second day at the park it was packed so we focused more on getting the remainder of the coasters (maxxforce, joker, flash, dark knight, and the two children's credits) I think that rue la dodge is the second best dogem I've ridden after the one at Knoebels. Cars are fast and hit hard! I also loved the lobster and realized how much more it spins than our Everly monster. Fiddler's Fling was a classic, got to do sky Trek tower. The only one we missed was condor as it was unfortunately closed both days of our visit. At the end of the night, we were looking in the gift shop and came across a maxxforce tshirt that had all incorrect stats. Speed was wrong, length of the track was wrong, number of inversions was wrong, etc. So hilarious I actually bought it! July 6: Little Amerricka and Mount Olympus - little Amerricka is such a strickers Grove type park. Loved the classic meteor and the chance tobbagan was super unique. I also found that I love an Allan Herschel Wild Mouse. Best flat in the park was their rollo-plane. I'd never ridden one so that was a wild experience. Of course the 30 min train ride is legendary! After a few hours there we hit mount Olympus and got all 4 major coasters and 2 go-kart tracks. I personally loved Zeus and Cyclops was also good. Pegasus had a weird rough layout that I wasn't a huge fan of. Hades 360 is a beast but it's so rough! I was near the back of the train which I've heard is worse than the front but this ride and El Toro are the only two coasters I've ever had intense back pain on and just had to ride it out and hope it would be over. Only two coasters that I've ever thought, "I hope this doesn't continue hurting me after the ride" thankfully the pain went away but it's such a tragedy that an amazing layout like that is so painful! July 7: Indiana Beach - totally walked out of my teenager years of stacking rides on top of another in a RCT park. Unfortunately Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain was down the entire time we were there so we didn't get that credit. However, we did survive the All American Triple Loop. We had heard very bad things about how rough it was and painful and I must say that both my rides were free of headbanging and pretty smooth. I liked it a lot. I did think the loops were less forceful because of the short trains. Tig'rr is another classic Schwarzkopf and did not disappoint. Hoosier Hurricane had a few bumps but was a good out n back. Cornball Express was the best ride in the park! Wonderful CCI laterals and airtime. Of course the cyclone was fun too. Got to ride some of the flats including my first time on a yo-yo swinger and a falling star. It was great to see the Coney Island flying Bobs from when I was a kid in its new home delighting kids and adults. Overall I loved IB and love everything they are doing up there to improve the park. Sorry that was so lengthy but a lot can happen over 4 days or coaster riding and park hopping!