Losantiville Mining Co.

LMC here again with an update to my Rivertown expansion idea. I've been thinking about what flat rides Kings Island needs, and I've come to the conclusion that it could be nice to have another Drop Tower in the park. This one would be a mid-size space shot tower around 100-150ft tall. The launch upward would differentiate it from Drop Tower while the lower height could be more appealing to families. Drop Tower's 300ft height may be too intimidating and the Kite Eating Tree isn't a ride for adults. Another 1-2 towers would add capacity if needed. I'm not sure how many towers would fit in the space I allocated for it, but my map was also just for visualization purposes. Rivertown really needs a traditional flat ride to add to its collection of three coasters, water ride, and railroad. It would be even better if Linus Launchers and CBRRLR could be folded into Rivertown and rethemed to match the area.

It looks really nice, but my biggest issue with it is that the inspiration feels like it was taken from the wrong Coney Island. I think the description even says that it was inspired by Luna Park (at Coney Island in NYC). If we get a renovation of Coney Mall I'd prefer it to at least be in the spirit of our old Coney. A new Grand Pavilion-style restaurant with the look of Moonlite Gardens would be really good replacement for KillMart's building. That would also allow for the midway to be realigned and get rid of that odd kink in the path created by KMAA. Keep Shake, Rattle, and Roll and let The Vortex successor rise above it. If WindSeeker gets demolished then that would be a good plaza for a new big dark ride on the plot of Action Theater.

Update on this: I was trying to figure out how to capture evidence that it's happening and finally got a screenshot tonight when I logged on and went to check the 2026 KI Food Reviews discussion. As you can see I've posted in that thread at least three times since July 28th, but it still started me out before super7's post when I clicked the button to start me at the first unread. I can't figure out why it would do this beyond something not counting posts as being "read" correctly.

I emailed Enchanted Parks at least 1.5 weeks ago with a question about my pass and haven't even gotten anything back from them! That is, aside from the very long process of me attempting to reset my password. Fun fact: you cannot see whose passes you have scanned into your Enchanted Parks mobile app, nor can someone else add a pass to their account once it's been added to yours. (Great work team! That will definitely help on my upcoming trip! /s) On the topic of Haunt events, ValleyScare is now a separately-ticketed event and it sounds like the rest of the Enchanted parks will be moving to that model as well in 2027. I appreciate that Kings Island and Six Flags are only using maze upcharges to help run their various Haunts and Fright Fests.

I think it could work out for a while, but if KI splits I think it should bring a few other parks with it. Some independent parks are run wonderfully while others miss the mark due to poor management. An overhead corporation might help to ensure the park has some wiggle room in the event that something unfortunate happens. (I want a new KECO soooo bad!)

I could see that plot being used sooner than Vortex's plot, especially if Six Flags wants to prop up Magic Mountain even more. It may all depend on how much they have to pay during/after these all of these lawsuits. If the park does wait to add a new ride to that area then I hope they fit the new ride better with the layout of the paths. The current location has a great presence at the entrance to the parking lot, but is so far from everything else. I don't know that the park needs to have the most coasters out of any other park while they work to fix the longstanding issues it's had for years.

It's so that webcam watchers like us can't see them replacing all of the Peanuts items with cheap Looney Tunes props from Six Flags America! /s My actual theory is that the something related to that webcam got jostled around in a storm and they haven't sent anyone to fix it yet. Park staff seem to be going slower than in previous years (as seen by the fact that Pumpkin Eater is almost entirely assembled but nothing else for Haunt or Tricks and Treats is). Meanwhile, Cedar Point have a ton of their HalloWeekends decorations up already and are visibly building new items as well. There's been a lot of doom and gloom online about the Six Flags parks within the past week between the new news about X2, the guy saying he worked for Carowinds' ride maintenance and now does not trust their safety, and the people who are rumoring that Haunt will see some massive cuts this season. I'm not going to think too hard about it lest I go into a spiral, but for now I'll take all of those with a grain of salt. The company is currently in hard times and is trying to get through it. I'll just keep looking forward to going to my happy park.

An important note for Enchanted Parks: the "Mid America" name should include a hyphen since it is describing the location of "Mid-America". Without the hyphen it gets opened up to being a completely separate word. Luckily they've included a star where the hyphen should be on the logo, it's just in plain text where they've left it out. My biggest criticism about the new logo is the inclusion of the stars on the left and water splashes on the right. I don't think they needed those at all. I wonder what they're going to rename Hurricane Harbor to. I think the two HH locations and Schlitterbahn Galveston are the last "parks" that need to be renamed before 2027. (SG has the name "Galveston Island Waterpark" on its website, but that's an incredibly bland name that I can't see sticking around.) I could see the waterparks receiving WildWater Adventure-style names.

X2 may be a good ride but I agree that it's probably time to pull the plug. It's a dead coaster model with a bad reputation and an has had increasingly variable uptime. Hopefully the park can find something good to replace it quickly enough while keeping Ninja and Viper open a little while longer. I've been hearing that there are a few Intamin coasters for sale, so maybe one of those? This would be a great opportunity to start a rebuild of the entrance plaza as well in case that's something Magic Mountain is wanting to do.

What are the chances that this move and possible downsizing will prepare for / lead to a private equity takeover? Someone introduced the thought into my head and I'd like to read some more thoughts on the matter. I still think the move is based on Texas' favorable conditions for corporations and that it won't mean anything major for which parks do/don't get additions. Cedar Point got lots of big budget additions each year because it was Cedar Point, and that didn't change with the move from Sandusky to Charlotte. They didn't receive anything in 2026 because, like other parks in the chain, they had received major investment in 2025. One thing I am hoping for with this move is that they take that godawful legacy Six Flags logo off of the walls and at least replace it with the new corporate logo. The same goes for their corporate presence online. If they want to be seen as a different company than before then it needs to happen.

Even with this corporate move I still think the Cedar Fair playbook is still being used a lot more than the legacy Six Flags playbook. As was said above, Texas is generally becoming a more corporation-friendly state since they're trying to entice businesses to move there. This feels like a cost-saving measure than a "Six Flags is continuing to ruin everything" move. If they already had all of the space they needed in one city then there's no reason why they should stay in both. Of course there will still be a lot of folks who lament this move and claim that it's another reason why the companies never should have merged. Call me crazy, but I still trust John Reilly and his team. They can include Fiesta Texas or Knott's as a fifth park to offset the loss of CGA ;)

This past weekend we took a brief trip up to Michigan's Adventure to visit it before our passes no longer work there. Our drive up to the park wasn't too bad since we stopped for the night at a hotel in/near Lansing and set back off the next morning for the rest of the drive. My license expired and I haven't gotten my new/renewed one in the mail yet so I couldn't drive at all, but we had enough people who could drive to make it better. We arrived around 10:30/10:45AM and were able to use my Enchanted Parks app to receive a Preferred Parking placard. There were a ton of employees directing cars between the General and Preferred parking lots, but they directed us toward General Parking so we didn't get to use our placard. It was fine since the difference was only about 100ft of walking. Most of their parking spots (at least where we parked) are angled which helped to get us into the spot more efficiently with the help of the parking attendant. That's something I've only really experienced at Disney World! The park opened at 11AM as expected. I was able to scan in with my Enchanted Parks app, but my other two group members were not able to add their passes to their apps. Since EP can't scan a Six Flags QR code, the manager(?) who scanned me in directed them to the ticket window to pick up a paper receipt and scan back in using that. Once they got into the park we headed to the Guest Services counters to ask what we'd need to do to redeem our drink plans. This is where it gets interesting: at no point did the employees ask to see our passes. It was odd since they didn't even see our drink plans listed in the Six Flags app. That might just be a consequence of EP not having access to anything guests bought from SF. They said we had the option to each get a drink wristband or to each get an all-day souvenir bottle. We each went for the bottle. After that we headed to one of their stores to scout out the merchandise. There was a wide array of items, including things brought in by both Cedar Fair/Six Flags and Enchanted Parks. I enjoyed the items that had their classic logo on it with a neat "70th Anniversary" sign above it. One strange piece of merch caught my eye more than the others. It was a simple hat with the word "ENCHANTED" printed/embroidered backwards as if it were the word "AMBULANCE" on the hood of an ambulance. I wonder if that is some kind of trend or a way to make the hat stand out more. Two of us rode Drummer Boy, a teacups ride with drum shapes, and got it spinning kind of fast for a carnival ride. Cargo Loco and Tip Top (Stricker's Grove) still have it beat out, but it was fun. We stopped by their petting zoo and got to experience a nice shady part of the park with the animals. I've heard that it was just brought back this year, which I think was a positive move by Enchanted. Their train is a neat little CP Huntington (I think that's the model) like Dorney has at the top of the hill. I liked how deep it went into the woods, though it could use some maintenance to knock back the overgrowth. The stops at Grand Rapids Station and Timbertown Station were each cute little structures. I'd love to see a fountain in the pond next to GR Station if they could manage it: that might at least calm the algae growth/. Since we were short on time I didn't ride any of their roller coasters, but based on the POVs I think I might've enjoyed Wolverine Wildcat more than Shivering Timbers.

I will say that it doesn't do it every time I click into a forum, I've mainly noticed it in the Trip Reports and some of the Off-Topic forums. It could entirely be something weird on my computer if you can't find anything wrong on the website's end. Thanks for looking into it!

Mine has been doing that, but it takes be back about 10-15 posts from the start of my "unread" posts each time I click the star/circle. It's been like that for about a month so it might be an issue with how the server tracks what posts have been read by a user. I'm also still not seeing the most recent post for a few topics, but it appears to be better than it was before I went on my trip this past weekend.

I agree that they need a new wood coaster (especially one like Don said), but even a new wood coaster would cost a lot of money that Six Flags doesn't really have. Plus, the park is already stacked with its current lineup as long as they don't remove anything yet. Maybe once they get their Fast Lane queues and general staffing issues more under control then I'd be more open to the idea. I personally think their next addition should be a large Phantom Theater-style dark ride though.

The new design looks really good! It may just be my setup, but I am having a little trouble with the forum previews showing the wrong post as being most recent and having the correct number of pages. For example, the 2026 KI Discussion only showed 18 pages until I made a post to it. Only then did it show me the 2-3 posts on page 19 alongside mine. Again, this might only be on my end but it's something to watch out for. Keep up the good work!

A lot of new wood track on Blue Streak would be really nice to see instead of a whole new coaster!

Am I missing something? What was Tony Clark's position called if it wasn't Regional PR director/manager? It would be nice to have the park-specific positions back either way.

If you're meaning benefits like the VIP Lounge access and early entry, then yes. I don't know if you can use your two annual free BAF tickets away from your home park though.

One of you may know better than I do on this: What are the odds that the legacy Cedar Fair parks stop using the current style of plastic shopping bag next year? Every bag I've gotten with a purchase from Kings Island this season has had all of the old Cedar Fair parks on it, including Michigan's Adventure, Valleyfair, and Worlds of Fun. Would it be standard practice to just use them into next season until they run out — even though those parks are no longer in the chain — or is there a chance that Six Flags has to now redesign/buy new bags? I still have a bag from years ago with Geauga Lake's Wildwater Kingdom on it, but I don't remember when I would've gotten it. Some of the legacy Six Flags parks could also use new bags. The one I got from Chicago's Great America is from 2017 and very much looks the part. I did get a nice brown paper bag from Six Flags America last year, but it had the old SF logo on it which I would hate to see more of in the Cedar Fair parks.

I'd take an incredibly well-themed "family" coaster (in quotes because Orion was also allegedly a family coaster) over a high-thrill coaster, but I think Werewolf Gorge is going to set a theming baseline that Kings Island has yet to reach. There should be more than just posters and props in the queue cattlepens. It plays into my "Kings Island should be a good theme park" ideology, although despite my repeating of this idea I still have a lot more to say on the matter. Nightflight Expedition in particular would be a great base that seems similar to the suspended powered coaster concept found on the most recent round of ride surveys. Hence why I keep pushing for a new park company to be spun off of Six Flags XD A brand new KECO would be nice, but I'd take someone who continues to treat Kings Island well and expand the passholder/ticket base. (I know Six Flags has said KI is their most penetrated park. I'm almost certain that there is still a way to expand passes and ticket sales even more that doesn't require giving away the gate!)

It will be where Hotel St. Michelle was in Action Theater.

I think they will hold the line on the current pass prices being the lowest for 2027 prices. Where the company could backtrack is with the inclusion of drink plans and/or meal deals. We'll still see a lot of complaints no matter what, but then again there are many people online who don't seem to understand what the word "sale" means.

The new Unlimited option works at all parks with a Prestige Pass/Membership, it's only with a Gold Pass/Membership that it only works within your region.

Double post to separate my thoughts from the announcement. I think a new scare zone may come in 2027 or 2028 after some of the other mazes are replaced. There were a few parks that announced 4+ new experiences (mazes, scare zones, and shows) today and I'm hoping that Kings Island will see some of that same love in the coming years. We desperately need some more shows and a few new scare zones (that aren't just a short/narrow pathway); although I have a feeling that some of the legacy Six Flags parks also needed that as well. Kings Dominion is now going to host their own Wake the Dead show in the Kings Dominion Theater, so maybe it will be a test run for KI to have it as well? I think it would mostly fit in front of the Tinker's Jingle Bell Ball set depending on how the character blocking is done. That "Die-In Movie" concept would be really cool as long as they still manage to have a good place for the ride graveyard. Set up almost all of the same items as for Winterfest, but change out a few props and make the movie clips be classic horror films. I'm also a little sad that there was no Phantom Theater overlay announced — not that it ever had a chance of happening in the first place — but the opportunity for it will remain open if the park ever chooses to do so. An easy seasonal ride reprogramming is the kind of thing that I think Six Flags would be up for since it wouldn't require much after the initial setup.