Oldiesmann

Weekdays are better crowd-wise than weekends. My sister and I have been to the park each of the past 3 Wednesdays (because I'm always off on Wednesdays) and have both been able to ride everything we wanted to ride in the 10 hours the park was open (the park, prior to this week, was only open until 8 during the week). Last week it was noticeably more crowded than the previous week, but the lines were still pretty short.

Guess I'll be having another Surf Dog marathon during ERT again this week, assuming it's back up (it wasn't running this past Wednesday and my sister said it was down the previous Saturday as well).

I hope a judge and/or Disney makes them pay back all those fraudulent charges they racked up. I'm assuming they'll also be banned from Disney World for life after that stunt.

I would recommend sticking to the "ultra tame" rides - Boo Blasters, Carousel, Sally's Sea Plane, Shake Rattle & Roll, WindSeeker, Woodstock's Whirly Birds and Zephyr. However, as others have suggested, it's best to get the advice of the folks in Guest Services as well.

Since there's going to be a large group of you, maybe you can do this rendition of "Crazy Train"... Back on topic, here are a couple of other ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfOwmiGp0bo

Considering that it's only supposed to be 65 today I'm surprised it's opening at all.

A couple more things I've noticed recently... Just before the national anthem plays (at 9am now instead of 10), they blast "Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day" by Bowling For Soup (better known as the theme song to Disney's Phineas and Ferb apparently) and all the admissions employees run out of guest services cheering and high-fiving the guests. Also, guests now get to assist with "officially" opening Kings Island, though I'm not sure how they choose who gets to do this. The guests count down from 10 and after getting to 1 announce "Kings Island is now officially open!". I would assume both of those are due to new management. The last one seems especially Disney-esque.

Overheard in line for Flight of Fear: "Diamondback is WAY scarier than Drop Tower!".

My account has now registered 4 visits, which includes both opening day and today. I spent a bit at the park today as well (2 cheese coneys and a souvenir cup refill), but have not leveled up or received any new rewards.

I emailed them about that Labor Day date. I was told that it is indeed supposed to be Monday and they're going to contact the appropriate person to fix the date on their site.

Yes you can. It's a bit tricky to get a souvenir cup under there though.

You should be able to get the wristband from the FunPerks booth near the front gate between the season pass building and the ticket/lost and found building. Most (if not all) food stands sell the same drinks, with the exception being Hank's Burrito Shack (due to the Coke Freestyle machines). You order a drink like usual and show them your wristband. It is only for the smaller sized fountain drinks, not for the bottled soda.

Here's a good look at it from Bing Maps: http://binged.it/L2Tb7B Not sure how old that image is, but it gives you a good idea of what might be lying around out there.

Not necessarily. The park always had a "buy one get one free" sale on passes towards the end of the season, and they had multiple levels of season passes. Still, you would think with that many passes being sold that they'd have money to pay bills and make other improvements to the park. Why do you think they would be able to pay the bills with that? Obviously they couldnt if they closed. If the water was turned off, then it was likely not paid. I think we are all underestimating how much the bills at the park would cost. While the passes sold would give the mark just under a million dollars, thats for the year, not a month. If the park only made 1 M then thats just a little more than $83K per month. If the park has to pay creditors (people that financed the park), bills (electric, water), Maintence (paint, fixing of rides), crew (people have to do the work and run the rides), training, goods (shirts, food, etc), and other bills. All is said, does not seem like enough money. What I meant is that they didn't necessarily make $792k off the season passes. Sorry for the confusion.

Plenty of people from New Albany and surrounding cities in Indiana. Takes 10 minutes to get there from my cousin's house in New Albany, Indiana. There are less than 40,000 people in New Albany...

Hopefully, Flash isn't required, like it is to buy tickets/passes (a very dumb thing, Mac). The only flash on the site is the informational video.

There's probably more to it than just not wanting to lose profits on alcohol sales. At Kroger, alcohol sales don't count towards your fuel rewards points. It could be that there's a state law preventing them from counting alcohol sales towards Fun Perks rewards.

That is what I meant by "too" successful - it's possible that they were selling out sooner than they had planned and the demand was far greater than the amount they were willing to sell. It will be interesting to see if KI has a similar increase in their FL prices within the coming weeks.

Not necessarily. The park always had a "buy one get one free" sale on passes towards the end of the season, and they had multiple levels of season passes. Still, you would think with that many passes being sold that they'd have money to pay bills and make other improvements to the park.

With the grand opening of the newly expanded waterpark and temperatures forecast to be in the low 90s tomorrow, I would definitely expect large crowds. My sister was at KI last Saturday for the VIP waterpark preview and said she hasn't seen it that crowded before expect during the park's annual Spirit Song festival (a three-day Christian music festival).

Interestingly enough, Cedar Point has increased their Fast Lane price by $5, and they're an additional $5 each on Saturdays (so $55 for one during the week and $60 on Saturdays). Sounds like maybe it's been a bit too successful up there.

My 2nd visit has now been counted. I'm still at the One Star level but now have the free popcorn, free cotton candy and free Thunder Alley rewards available.

I'm curious as to how they expect to get 150,000 visitors from out of state.

This is definitely just for show. I did a bit more research on this, because I was wondering why he filed the lawsuit in Hamilton County when The Beach is in Warren County. As it turns out, Mike DeWine's son Pat is a judge on the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas. In addition, Pat is running for a seat on the state's First District Court of Appeals this fall - the very same district which covers Hamilton County...

I can understand the hyphen in "Carowinds" in the mobile version since "winds" is on a separate line from "Caro", but one would think they'd fix that for the full article ("Caro- winds" as it says). The version in the Toledo paper is at least better than the one in the Sandusky paper: http://www.sanduskyregister.com/sandusky/news/cedar-fair/cedar-fair-takes-meeting-south Besides the fact that you have to subscribe to the electronic edition to read the entire article (seriously? You can't even read all of today's news for free?), they've got oddball spacing to prevent having to break lines in the middle of words, and the link at the end of the article to the "e*Paper" version is broken.