Losantiville Mining Co.

Last year I would've said you were more perceptive because of the Six Flags label. This year I still think people are far too reliant on blaming everything on Six Flags, but there does seem to be a tightening of the belt going on with everything around the park. It's not surprising considering almost every penny the company earns is going toward paying down their debt. I also don't believe the hullabaloo of a restraint failing on Beast's lifthill: I probably will continue to be skeptic about it until real evidence comes out or it gets reported on by reputable sources. As disco2000 said, maintenance has been getting the rides/trains back up after they go down. Drop Tower staying down after Labor Day feels like an anomaly. I still have faith in the park's maintenance team and hope they can continue to operate wonderfully despite the company's financial challenges. Something that's been bugging me recently is the idea that Kings Island could be the next Kings Dominion/Dorney Park/Worlds of Fun of the Six Flags chain. Today's release of the 2025 Themed Entertainment Association (TEA)'s Global Experience Index and its park attendance helped assuage my fears since Kings Island was ranked #18 overall, #8 outside of Disney/Universal parks, and #4 among Six Flags parks. I can also keep reminding myself that the company is in a general slump right now. Will we see a new major attraction before 2030? Is the park going to be sold before then? Am I saying this just to put it out into the world? Only time will tell. Second side note: On the announcement of the blasters and targets from Boo Blasters, I noticed that the plaques and certificates attached to each item said "Kings Island Amusement Park". I wish they would've just left the "Amusement Park" part off of it. It made it look tackier than it needed to be and did not play into my personal headcanon that KI needs to be more of a thrilling theme park than a themed amusement park. (This is partially satire. Rant over, LMC out.)

I imagine the fact that most of them only had about 2-3 weekends left in operation this season had something to do with why they're still closed. The parks have performed periodic testing just in case they're told to reopen, but it looks more like they'll just reopen in 2027 — well, at least the Cedar Fair clamshell coasters that is. After the investigation is finished I would expect rigorous inspections of the rest of the rides in Six Flags Over Georgia. Whatever plans John Reilly had in place are going to be thrown to the sideline until him and the rest of the corporate team can figure out what they're going to do about the deferred maintenance across half of their parks. At this point I expect more park sales sometime in 2027 and more money being diverted to maintenance no matter what.

Theoretically there should be about 81 blasters, yes?

I'm curious why you think some of this is being taken out of Kings Island's Winterfest budget and not, for example, some of it being reused props from Kings Dominion? (genuine question) I can believe that Six Flags would do that, though I feel like they would redirect money from a lesser-performing holiday event instead of taking it from last year's #2 ranked holiday event from the USA Today awards. There have been rumblings that stuff has already been cut, but I remember when people said that Tinker's wouldn't be returning for 2025 only to see it reimagined into a better show.

I suspect that the message from Arlington was given to every park to ensure that SF corporate could control their side of the narrative. You can't argue that different parks said different things when it's all one message coming from the top. There is still a broad lack of communication between each park, so everyone putting out the same message at the very least helps the corporate legal team who have a long road ahead. (I'm not trying to excuse the practice, I just wanted to point out the possible reasoning.) Some SFOG visitors this weekend have noted that the park is, understandably, very locked in at every operating attraction. No more trying to make guests fit, tighter seat tolerances where applicable, no phones in the station, and a very serious attitude. Also, the issue with personal phones in the station is a management/training/enforcement problem. A lot of loud voices online seem to think it's an issue of "nobody wants to work anymore" and not the fact that younger workers are being failed by the system. I can confirm that Millennium Force reopened last night after seeing it with my own two eyes. Cedar Point's associates are giving more information on how you have to fit in a test seat now as well. Shoutout to the associate at Maverick's test seat last night! More thoughts overall to come after I head to Kings Island tonight.

Just what Kings Island needs, another "racing" attraction (this is mostly sarcasm and a joke). I wonder if I can take my Kings Dominion BSC sketch and easily draw over it for my Kings Island QCSC idea... Every time I repeat the name Firefall Safari I keep thinking it needs another word in the name to make it sound better. It shouldn't be "Coaster" or any word with a suffix like they've been doing for the rest of the Jungle X rides, but I also feel like "Expedition" is too generic. Maybe "Adventure" could work? That feels a little weird to me for some reason. For a Queen City Stunt Coaster firefighter retheme, I think I'd like to go with something that sounds like Blazing Fury or Fire in the Hole. Neither of those rides are the standard definition of a coaster, but their names fit the bill well enough. Right now I'm between "Raging Inferno" (too harsh), "Inferno" (meh), and "Firebreak" (I'm hesitant toward anything that could be too simple or too close to Firehawk). I'll keep thinking

If we see more budget cuts stemming from these lawsuits, I believe they will be in the events and entertainment departments first. Then after that I'd expect more cuts to food & beverage. Ride maintenance budgets could go up so the company can claim/show increased ride safety at the legacy Six Flags parks. That would at least bring something to help them deal with their insurance costs. If this accident causes the chain to fall even closer to bankruptcy then I can see at least one major park closure and/or some major park sell-offs. This is already a bad economy for most things, so I don't want to imagine how a sell-off would go. I don't want private equity, I don't want Herschend, and I don't really want Six Flags anymore. Bad times had by all right now. I wonder how much a total rebrand would help at this point considering all eyes are now intently focused on Six Flags. The media outlets reporting on these recent situations would have the ability to spin it as "Six Flags rebranding after fatal accident" with a negative tone. Maybe a sale or total replacement of the CEO/C-suite/most of the Board could help avoid that? I just don't think they have an easy path ahead no matter which way they go. It would be a good start to remove the SF brand from the rest of their legacy parks, but changing the whole company right now seems like an invitation for more bad press.

I had a concept for KD's version where it turned into a safari-themed version (named Firefall Safari as a callback to former KD attractions), but I've been struggling with what to do with KI's version. Someone here on KIC shared an idea for a firefigter/firefighting based theme to match Cincinnati's first public fire company. I really liked that idea and think it'd be a great theme to be Kings Island's firefighter-themed ride like how Dollywood has Blazing Fury and SDC has Fire In The Hole. It could incorporate a flameless fire effect alongside a revamp of the scene around it. Lights, fans, and scrim don't need a ton of propane to keep working.

I don't think I updated on what I saw Friday night so I'll do it now. On our way into the park I noticed that the associates were using barcode scanners (blaster/horizontal phaser) instead of a QR code scanners (palm beacon) or the phones (PADD). (Star Trek doesn't have a great comparison to a smartphone scanner IMO.) The park was relatively busy and I had to park in the north section of the Preferred lot, and only got busier throughout the night. We saw a group of kids being ejected from the park with their security escort taking them out of Coney Mall. I didn't realize that the stack of skulls by WindSeeker was an interaction point until we walked up to it with our lantern and shoulder sitter. We ended up leaving the park after the 10PM fountain show since we were tired. I can now say that the center squiggle of fountains are definitely broken/off, while the rest of the effects (pyrotechnics, lasers, and other fountain nozzles) were mostly working as intended. If I had to guess, I think the center squiggle either has a broken/faulty flow regulator or a broken pipe. Either is a thing that would be better to repair during the off-season.

This is a particularly awful tragedy and I wish the best for all involved. I've read that the guest's larger size might've interfered with the restraint locking/not locking, in which case (as a chunkier park-goer myself) I can imagine how it might've failed. If Six Flags is determined to be at fault then I believe it will either be for allowing someone to ride who didn't fit (operator error) or for a broken piece of equipment (mechanical fault). The only way I can see the guest being at fault is if it's found that he either held the restraint up or if it's determined that he broke something. That's enough speculation from me. I don't think this was due to budget cuts or SF generally making bad business decisions. If Imperial79 is right then parks like SFOG could still be working under the legacy SF maintenance schedule where they don't do annual teardown/reassembly for every ride. Looking to the future, in the event that Six Flags makes it out of this situation then this would be a great time to start rebranding away from the legacy Six Flags brand. This is the exact kind of incident where guests across the country will think "I heard someone died on Goliath over at Six Flags" and could be referring to any of (at least) 3 different roller coasters. That looks bad and will certainly affect guest perception on top of everything that's happening now. All of this on top of the incidents that closed X2 worry me about the future of Six Flags and its parks. Correct, that is generally used as a derogatory term. I've never had an issue with seatbelts on roller coasters, but I believe the issue a lot of people have with them is the fact that they increase load/unload times while also (possibly) restricting airtime. Some enthusiasts even like to hold their restraint a up a little/manipulate their sitting position when it's being locked to make sure they have more room for airtime to take them out of the seat. It actively lessens the effectiveness of the restraint which is why the seatbelt is there as a secondary restraint. As others have said, if Goliath (SFOG) had seatbelts then that guest might've made it back to the station alive.

[@]SixFlags, please send Kings Island's junkyard coaster to Darien Lake! Don't even worry about sending any of the theming with it, just send the track, supports, and trains. Although, at this rate, by the time Kings Island is able to replace QCSC I think it'd be about 30-35 years old.

Quick review of my food and beverage experience tonight. Location 1: Kings Island Prestige Lounge Very polite associate dealing with a long line of guests trying to either scan in or get their free snack. The current specialty snack (a 5.5oz bag of caramel M&M's pop'd) is nice and lists 5 servings per bag. I would say one bag is quite enough to feed each member of a family for a snack. Location 2: Coney Bar-B-Que I ordered a 3-Sides Platter with the bowl of mac & cheese, three hush puppies, and fries as my aforementioned three sides. Without a dining plan it would have been $19.99. While I had never expected to want anything from Coney Bar-B-Que before tonight, I have to say this was quite a nice meal. I thought that the mac & cheese was really good and that the hush puppies were good. They could have used a thinner coating of breading, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The fries were seasoned a little too well for my taste. I didn't try to put any condiments on them since I was getting full by that point. The checkout process was a little odd since there were two registers open with one associate helping the other at some points. While we were eating I even saw an associate coming around to sweep the ground and clean tables. The biggest hindrance to my night was with my drink plan that is included with my Prestige Membership. Both times I went to get a drink I was told that it was not showing up. I ended up being able to get a drink anyway (with plenty of ice) and enjoyed it with my meal. This is possibly an issue with the park's POS system not loading the included drink plan since it technically isn't an add-on. It was a little frustrating in the moment, but is definitely an issue with an easy solution. Overall this was a nice night for F&B at Kings Island. Shoutout to Chef Gibson for helping make sure that at least some ice was available in the park tonight: hopefully this is a trend that will only improve from here. I even bore witness to an ice restock in Coney Bar-B-Que as I was standing in line. Contrary to popular belief (and what people say on Facebook), some folks actually are trying to improve conditions around the park. It isn't easy to do when your parent company is still $5 billion in debt.

The moving flame throwers have been cut, but there were definitely fountain show flames the first two weekends and working fountains during the hourly fountain shows the first weekend. I wasn't able to make it to Haunt this past weekend to see if anything was fixed.

After a long weekend at work, we visited the park on Sunday for some Tricks and Treats and Relaxation — and I have some notes. I had heard that Saturday was going to be a busy day due to Amazon hosting their Family Day, and it turned out that they were hosting it on Sunday as well. Our visit wasn't terribly crowded by any means, but service was still a little slow. I enjoyed being able to ride the train with my group again and seeing the decorations. The use of only one engine with a three car compliment confused me. The crowd in the station wasn't that large though and all fit on the train. Our visit to the Miami River Brewhouse provided some friction; although I've seen much worse. There were only two registers open on one side while the other side was closed. I would rather have one register open on each side of the queue, but this worked well enough. It took about a half hour to receive our order of 5 meals. When our food arrived they were super hot and fresh! We also got plenty of ice in our drinks. I don't think any of these operational inefficiencies are entirely due to the park "not prioritizing" things like restocking ice/drinks. For things like cleaning tables it's more an issue with the current culture of the associates — who aren't paid enough for what they need to be doing — and a probable lack of upper management putting their managerial foot down. It's not "young people don't want to work anymore" either. Six Flags is still very deep in debt. They seem to be doing a lot of things to pay off their debt while also attempting to improve their image (*cough* get rid of the legacy SF branding *cough*) but it will still take a while to fix. This isn't all corporate greed or making the parks comfortably crowded. I think Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, and Holiday World can afford a lot more niceties than Six Flags can right now.

I think you should do it earlier in the night rather than later if you're hoping to not queue for 1 hour. Getting there when it opens is obviously a strategy, but the only times when I haven't seen it full of people is around 6:30PM on Friday and Saturday as well as earlier on Thursdays and Sundays. The scares may not be as good when it has a shorter line for a number of reasons, but the sets and effects are really good nonetheless.