Oldiesmann

Congrats on your promotion Jesse!

For those curious, the Soundhound app I have on my phone identified this music as "Omaha Beach" from the Saving Private Ryan soundtrack.

Are you serious? Like, visible during the daytime, or only at night? Lights that replicate sparks of showers, or little bullets of light flying past, or little strobes in the helicopter's gun barrels? I can't tell you how excited I am by the small details like this... Especially when last year, Canada's Wonderland's was reprogrammed to not even come to a complete stop at that brake run (why do it if there's nothing - not even a spinning helicopter rotor - to look at?) and Kings Dominion's had absolutely no flames! Either way, this will only increase my longstanding claim that Backlot Stunt Coaster is one of the top night rides of the 102 roller coasters I've been on... GYK, who unapologetically names Backlot Stunt Coaster as his second favorite roller coaster experience at Kings Island... Really! I don't know if they're visible during the day, but they were visible at night. They just look like little red lights flashing on and off simulating gun shots, and on the helicopter, there are 6 to 8 of them which light up in a circular pattern, simulating automatic gunfire. Also, another thing I noticed yesterday... The Eurobobbles are gone this season. In their place is a new "Pre-Historic Party Pavilion", which can be rented out for birthdays, group outings and other special events.

A few things I noticed yesterday: All of the old red restraints on Delirium have been replaced with the newer black and red ones There are now LED light effects in the shooting scene on Backlot Stunt Coaster simulating gunshots Many of the swings on Zephyr have new straps on them (nice bright yellow ones) - last year some of the straps were pretty frayed

The "WindSeeker1" cam is now either the Diamondback camera or the I-Street camera. Nice to see that they've put the WindSeeker2 cam back on their webcams page as well.

Good to see that the WindSeeker2 cam is back up, even though it's not on their website anymore. Thanks!

Something must have bumped the camera... It was pointing directly at the pine tree to the left of The Vortex station, and is now offline again

The remaining sections of the fence are being installed. Won't be long now

A Piper Cub, how interesting. Random you say? Inconspicuous by most maybe, but I shall say far from random..........Oh what's that Terpy term? Oh yes; saying just enough so I don't say too much. (Very nice pictures by the way) I figured there was a reason for that plane to be flying overhead, but I said random because I didn't expect to see it

Which one, there's like four of them on i-Street? Also, Flight of the Valkyries? On MY Backlot Stunt Coaster?! This sounds way too good to be true! The one directly to the left of Starbucks.

Here are some highlights of the photos I took on opening day. Since I spent the majority of the day hanging out with Brad and Jesse, you can read Brad's trip report for more info on what we did A shot of WindSeeker, showing the new location of the vending machines near The Vortex exit: A triceratops next to what will be the entrance to Dinosaurs Alive: The really cool looking WindSeeker sign: Various KICers being evacuated from Racer: A shot of Racer and various other parts of Coney Mall (this was an attempt to get all of Racer in one shot): Mob scene at Chic-Fil-A: A shot of Diamondback whizzing by, taken from the train: Another creative Diamondback shot from the train: A shot of the train, taken from the train : Random airplane flying around near WindSeeker: WindSeeker seats waiting to be hung: Lights on the top of WindSeeker: WindSeeker tower all lit up: WindSeeker all lit up (this was taken using the "Vivid" shooting mode on my camera, which makes the colors stand out more): Jesse and Brad in front of WindSeeker: Brad and I in front of WindSeeker (photo by Jesse):

Now the main "WindSeeker1" cam is down as well. If I try to view the image directly (which is what I usually do since the actual image is much larger than the size they display it at on their webpage), I just get a "404 not found" error :| The Fox19 camera is still up though.

That was a fun experience, even though we didn't get to ride it. Here are a couple of photos I took after I got off...

I renewed my 2010 gold pass online back in October and had no problems with it yesterday.

The park hasn't confirmed or denied that yet, and it's difficult to really guess from the info that's available. They don't have a webcam on it (and still have the old Paramount-era website), but from the photos they've posted on their Facebook page, it appears that they're further behind KI, and their park opens just 8 days after KI (on May 8th).

Before Paramount, the park shared the local 398 prefix. 754 came along a few years after Paramount bought the park. Interesting. I figured 754 spelling "PKI" was just a coincidence. Guess not!

I'd be surprised if they opened Action Theater for ERT. Racer seems like the most logical choice since it's in the same general area (or even Shake, Rattle & Roll).

My guess is that they will open Racer or another ride in that general area if WindSeeker isn't done in time, though I know most of us would prefer that big snake over in Rivertown.

Ovo has now been canceled for the rest of this week as well as for Sunday. They're expecting to resume next Tuesday, May 3rd. http://www.facebook.com/OVOCirque

I'll actually be a bit surprised if it's finished by Saturday. They still have a lot of work to do between now and then!

What webcam are you watching? The seats have been on for a few days now.

I can only imagine the outcome of that situation then.

I'm still debating about whether or not I want to see this. $30-$40 is a lot of money for a show like that, but it does look interesting. There is of course the flooding issue again - with all this rain we're supposed to get over the next several days, it could be a bit more difficult to get to Coney from points west.

Twitpic won't let you show the full image on external websites - the URL includes an access key and a timestamp indicating when said key expires. That's why those images stop working after a short period of time. The best you can do is embed a thumbnail, using the "Put this photo on your website" code that they give you, like this: <a href="http://twitpic.com/4ns37q" title="PHOTO: Work has begun on building the queue for the new 301'... on Twitpic"><img src="http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/4ns37q.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="PHOTO: Work has begun on building the queue for the new 301'... on Twitpic"></a>

No surprise there. Will be interesting to see what this guy tries next.