bkroz

Have we determined yet if the poster with the username The Beach Waterpark is in any way affiliated with the water park of the same name in Mason, Ohio? If so, the user needs to be a bit more selective about their wording and posts here... You're literally speaking as the park. At LEAST identify yourself as "PR" in your username, and please add a signature identifying your position and name, or at least initials. As it is, your words (off-putting, snarky, and unprofessional as they can be) are being understood as official canon delivered from The Beach Waterpark and Adventure Landing. Even with "PR" in your name, I can't imagine posting with the attitude you have in your posts. Imagine if The Beach Waterpark had an unofficial fan site and a user named "Kings Island" reprimanded and sarcastically eye-rolled users once in a while. So professional. So respectful. If that user is not affiliated with the park, they ought to change their name. I certainly won't be visiting The Beach Waterpark just from the dozen or so sassy posts I've read from the user of that name on here. If they're affiliated with the park, they should know that. If they're not affiliated with the park, then the park should know that.

It's pretty obvious were I got this (for all those playing at home it's a little thing I like to call Facebook and on a page titled: Kings Island)Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk Not sure how your screen grab of your phone is obvious where you got it. Use that exact excuse in lieu of a proper citation on a school paper, please. Let's see what happens. When you re-post the words, thoughts, photos, or announcements of others without explaining where they're from, you're plagiarizing. It may not seem like much to you, but it's important. As if we didn't know it enough, the park explicitly asked us to be sure to link back to their various sites when borrowing their words, photos, or thoughts. It matters. And when a news site stops here to pick up the latest buzz, it may not be 'obvious' to them.

My favorite is how, when unloading, the creepy overhead voice from the Outer Limits intro says: "Thank you for participating in our experiment. We now know what happens when the human body is pushed to..." And then ends. Haha! Cracks me up every time. It's also important to note that The Outer Limits references were removed for the 2001 season when the park was still Paramount's Kings Island. The removal of the Outer Limits name was not due to the sale to Cedar Fair, and in fact predated it by five years. That's probably a good thing. If Cedar Fair inherited it with branding, they probably would've freaked out and whitewashed it, removing way more than they needed to. Since Paramount did the editing for them, it was a smooth transition and very little seemed to change under Cedar Fair. Even under Paramount, the change from The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear to Flight of Fear was about as consequential as the change from Drop Zone to Drop Tower. Not a whole lot changed besides the logo and safety spiel. Originally, the queue line video was synced up to in-house lighting, so a power surge would drop the lights. Throughout the pre-show video, the lights in the hangar would adjust and change to match the mood of the video. Which makes sense - those theatrical lights can be thousands and thousands of dollars each, so when a park installs them, it's because they intend to use them. Part of that lighting / sound package also included a lot of detail on and around the UFO itself, including bass speakers that gave a nice undertone rumble to the whole hangar as if the ship was powered up. However, I can't say whether or not Kings Island disabled a lot of those theatrical elements and lighting shows during the switch to Flight of Fear (2001) or for Cedar Fair (2006). At one point under Cedar Fair, the whole thing was in pretty bad shape, with no pre-show video, the houselights turned up, and almost none of the theatrical lights working. Two years ago, we were all surprised to suddenly find the hangar darkened with the theatrical lights and sounds back as if they'd simply decided mid-season to flip the switch and replace the bulbs. They also added lasers to the launch, which are disorienting and pretty cool. (Are those still around?) This season (?) the pre-show video was restored, and on brand new TVs. Pretty awesome. I was disappointed upon visiting this year to find the garage door into the spaghetti bowl open, flooding the room with sunlight. Why? Ah well. Everything else is great (including paging announcements out in the Press Holding box outside). Here's hoping they keep it up. Last time I was at Kings Dominion (2 years ago or so?) their ship had all of the lights and sounds working. However, their hangar hosts a haunted house during the fall, and they keep it up all year. So their hangar has no switchbacks - just tall black wooden walls that force you around the perimeter and up onto the ship. It's pretty horrific. And every time I've been, theirs takes place in complete pitch black darkness. I much prefer our way of having disorienting red and purple spotlights angled randomly around the room because it shows off the close encounters and makes it nearly impossible to tell if you're right-side-up or upside-down for the first few seconds.

Excellent!! It's the days like this that you'll remember forever! I bet your friend is glad she came.

I submit another contributing factor. All summer, Kings Island is a thrill seekers paradise with big coasters, mediocre food, generic and 300% price-inflated merchandise, carny games, and choose-your-decade musical revues. Fine. It is what it is. But to say, "This December, Kings Island will be open.... without the coasters!" That isn't likely to get anyone too excited because it leaves mediocre food, generic and expensive merchandise, carny midway games, and standard musical revues. Granted, that's changing one season at a time. But I still don't think we're at the point where "Kings Island Without The Coasters" is likely to be a hugely successful marketing push. Parks like Busch Gardens have wonderful food, beautiful theming, detailed gardens, extravagant entertainment, local craftsmen, and animal encounters all year long. It's not a tremendous stretch to imagine Busch Gardens Without Coasters. The park markets to history buffs, garden enthusiasts, families, grandparents, and travelers all year round. It also happens to have some great thrill rides. But especially up to a few years ago, to suddenly market Kings Island as a family destination where entertainment and dining and unique retail options are the highlight would be a 180-degree about-face from Ride Warriors and tasteless burgers and musical revues the rest of the season. It would feel disingenuous and I think it would be. Again, that's slowly changing. Still leaves the tremendous manpower, salt, snow plows, staffing, and inconsistent weather as MAJOR hurdles though.

The Picnic Grove will have a new entrance. No doubt that's part of the reason the theater is leaving. Not a bad idea, either. That'll make it more accessible to groups that book and more obvious that it exists at all for groups who might want to book but don't know that's an option. Also great if they return to using it for Snoopy's Halloween Party or similar events, so they can keep all the activities in one general area. When reading that the Planet Snoopy theater will become a petting zoo, did anyone else think they meant the Enchanted Theater inside the dark ride building? I hoped that ventilating fans were part of the conversion...

Petition to rename the new scooters ride Flying Beagles anyone? IT'S SO OBVIOUS. Thank Ty Mullins on Twitter. But c'mon. Flying Beagles.

Awesome news, obviously! The unfortunate thing is that it's not just a Flying Eagles ride folks want. It's our Flying Eagles. I can't say I remember having the pleasure of riding it, but supposedly our version of the ride was vastly superior to some of the newer, clunkier models. So if we do get one of the new sets that's coming around to Cedar Fair parks, it will be contending with the reputation (perhaps inflated and exaggerated by time, and these things tend to be?) of the set that's now at Carowinds. Anyone been on Cedar Point's? How does it compare?

If you are on an IEP, you take the standardized test. If you have extreme extenuating circumstances, an alternative assessment may be given with permissions first if that's written into the IEP. There are exceptions, but in general you cannot get out of a standardized test if you can take it with accommodations. Students with cognitive disabilities still take the standardized test in MOST situations. The first choice is ALWAYS to take the test with accommodations. Some kids have alternate assessments, but this is not common or easy to do. It is sincerely called "The 1% Rule." Only 1% of a district's students may be deemed proficient by the use of an alternate assessment. THAT is federal law. Some of the labels you listed are based on a medical doctor's diagnosis - a vast majority of OHI diagnoses are AD/HD. IDEA cites OHI as disorders causing students to "have limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that— (a) is due to chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis [a kidney disorder], rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome; and adversely affects a child’s educational performance." Oh yeah, super strict. If you have limited OR heightened alertness in an educational environment and your educational performance is affected, you qualify for OHI according to IDEA. Students were labeled with this haphazardly to keep low-performers from having to take standardized tests. Those teachers should be stripped of their licenses? If you say so. Teachers didn't want their own scores to plummet (and now, it affects their salary, too), and doing what they did put low-performing kids in a position to get federally-assured help. Right? Wrong? Black and white? If you say so. Any science teacher will tell you to isolate the variable. Students are affected by thousands of variables every hour, but teachers pay is lowered if they don't do well on standardized tests? Hmm... "Teach to the test." You're obviously not understanding the way the phrase is used. The idea here is that teachers would like to teach students a certain curriculum, but because of the high stakes testing, they have to 1) focus only on the concepts that the high stakes standardized test will cover and not the applicable, real-life lessons they'd like to teach; and they have to 2) spend valuable educational time teaching students how to take a standardized test. That is, how to eliminate wrong answers from a series of four choices; how long a 2-point OAA extended response answer is expected to be vs. the length of a 4-point OAA extended response answer; how to answer x amount of questions in a y amount of time; what key words to include in short answer questions; how to format a short answer or extended response question according to OAA guidelines, etc. I'm a licensed special education teacher in the state of Ohio. I had to use a whole lot of class time teaching my students the expectations of an extended response question and how to use the grid paper provided on the OAA to write paragraphs. That's not what my students should've been tested on, or what my effectiveness as a teacher should be judged on. Of course we want students to pass tests. The question is, is the test worthwhile? Standardized tests, we're lead to believe, are valid and reliable (in terms of the scientific meaning of those words). But if a teacher would like to teach her students (say, a 6th grade special education class on IEPS) how to balance a checkbook but must instead teach long division without a calculator because that's what the 6th grade OAA requires. Do you see? Does that make sense? "Teaching the test" means that teachers are forced to change their curriculum to match the test instead of the test matching their curriculum. It's top-down management.

All students have to take standardized tests because before that was written in cement - back when an IEP granted permission to skip the test - schools (naturally, if amorally) took any and all low-achieving students and assigned them a special education label. Any troublemaker or low-achiever was given an IEP for a learning disability, or "other health impairment." Their IEP would simply say "complete grade level appropriate curriculum with peers with extra time on unit assessments in language arts" or something like that. So nothing had to actually be done on the school's part, but they "qualified for special ed," which got them out of the standardized test and raised the school's scores. The result was kids being labeled inappropriately just to keep school's scores high. So now, everyone takes the test. Period.

Obviously it should be quality over quantity. I, too, am a licensed teacher of special education. This is going to be long so I'm spoiler-tagging it. If you're interested in the inside view, expand. Imagine being a teacher. "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

Six Flags America was virtually empty, I am told.... And just think, if they didn't have a local amusement park, those youths might be out vandalizing cars and stealing. GYK, cross-threading, cross-parking.

I like it, too. Texture-mapping is the newest tool in Disney's arsenal. They're using projections and texture mapping all over the place. It's a big wow moment for relatively little expense. See the new Alice in Wonderland at Disneyland, Big Thunder Mountain and its explosive finale at Disneyland, Temple of the Forbidden Eye and its eerie intro scene at Disneyland... Disneyland's "it's a small world" has had its own projected nighttime show with the same title and premise as Magic Kingdom's castle show (since Disneyland's castle is much too small for such a spectacle). That show at Magic Kingdom and World of Color at Disney California Adventure were purposefully designed to utilize new technologies like that. The idea was that instead of resetting insanely expensive pyrotechnics or paying performers for nighttime parades, shows based on water or projection practically run themselves. Just hit the green button and watch. Not a bad idea. The two concepts coalesced in Disneyland Paris' Disney Dreams show, which uses World of Color style fountains embedded in the lagoon around Sleeping Beauty's Castle mixed with a projection show like Magic Kingdom's. It's truly incredible. Look for more pyro-free installations at Epcot, and a show using World of Color's fountain tech is already announced for Animal Kingdom. Before you go thinking texture mapping is something only the big guys can afford or pull off... Canada's Wonderland. Made even better this year with the new fountains. Sincerely Disney-esque.

Education is so difficult. There are so many problems and so few agreeable solutions. As we run it today, education is an outdated and outmoded model that makes some pretty heinous and seemingly arbitrary assumptions (for example, that all children of age X should be able to perform similarly to one another, or that education should be mandatory for every child through age 16). Funds are cut as expectations rise. Ridiculous federal programs have lead to a practical witch hunt wherein teachers are blamed, children are medicated for an inability to sit for countless hours (well, duh) and all the while class numbers rise and school days grow longer. We're in a bad spot with it. Not sure where the answer lies, because a lot of separate things would need separately reversed. And given politics, what's best for the children of the United States and our future is unlikely to be enough to instigate that change. I was formally educated to educate formally with a degree and teaching license for K-12 education. I bypassed the classroom entirely and went right into informal ed, and am finding myself much happier; learning more, and maybe teaching more. Odd, that.

Haunt does feel crowded. I'm always astounded by wait times at Kings Island on Saturdays during the fall. Doesn't mean that the park is at its determined capacity, which is often below the capacity set by the fire marshal anyway, right?

Soon, both will be a distant memory. "Wow, remember when they did that?" Mickey was apparently just dropping limbs and accessories all over Central Florida. They should've had his tail curled around the tree of life and a glove over Cinderella Castle's highest tower.

You can't miss it. Seriously. It's absolute absurdity. I could see temporary placement as a stage for the 100 Years of Magic celebration (which is what it was meant to be). But to have this meticulously re-created 1930s Hollywood Blvd. that's period specific and beautifully detailed and lovely, with a Cinderella-Castle-esque majestic recreation of the Chinese Theatre at the end of the street drawing you in... And then to put a 122-foot-tall hat in front of it? Huh? A fantastic example of how simply absurd it is: Parkeology conducted a MUST-READ "interview with an Imagineer" who discussed the painstaking detail and effort put into Disney California Adventure's Buena Vista Street. The Imagineer discusses the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into recreating a 1920s Los Angeles with authentic tiles, textures, fountains, bricks, colors, and craftsmen. The Imagineer then excitedly breaks the news that the towering "Hat of Dreams" will be placed directly in front of the Carthay Circle Theatre recreation, with lasers, a stage, and Pin-trading inside. When the interviewer argues that Mickey Mouse wasn't even created in the 1920s, the Imagineer counters that in this exciting new backstory, the theme of the hat "is 'magic!' Or maybe it's 'fun' I'm not really sure." BEFORE AFTER It sounds absolutely unbelievably absurd and outrageous, but that's very sincerely EXACTLY what happened at Hollywood Studios! Haha! Jim Hill, famed Disney writer and enthusiast, reports that the park will be re-branded, and that the current name choice is... *drumroll please* Disney's Hollywood Adventure I also wouldn't be surprised if the Disney's loses its possessive. That's the new style. Disney Aladdin on Broadway, Disney California Adventure, Disney FastPass. I don't love it, but it's fine I suppose.

And don't forget that everything is subject to change, always!

My own ideal buildout version of the park was renamed Disney's Hollywoodland Park to celebrate the Golden Age of cinema and the idea of stepping into the movies. Not saying that's the best, but I think a name change would be in order. (I also removed the Sorcerer Hat. Because... duh.) For what it's worth, back when Disney's Hollywood Studios was announced as the name, Universal Orlando was supposedly doing exit interviews asking, "Where would you expect Disney's Hollywood Studios to be? What would you expect Disney's Hollywood Studios to be?" Allegedly they were giddy with the results as folks assumed it was a California park at best, a gated movie studio at worst. Not sure if that's true or not, but could be!

Rumors of a Disney California Adventure sized re-build are growing. On this (outdated) map, #9 (The Backlot Tram Tour) just closed. That clears up a whole lot of land. #11 (Toy Story Midway Mania!) is expected to expand into the empty soundstage (#11) to add a third track. (Sorely needed since the ride gets into the triple digits in terms of wait time most every single morning.) The small soundstage between #11 and #13 is currently the Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow walkthrough, which - it was announced today - will close forever on November 6, 2014. The Sorcerers Hat will disappear from the end of Hollywood Blvd., again creating a consistent 1930s Hollywood land. #7, The American Idol Experience, was supposed to close next year, but was rush-closed this fall to use the stage for a Frozen show, which is scheduled only through next spring. #5, #13, and #16 are theaters playing shows that started in the late 80s or early 90s. #8 is a desperately outdated playground. #1 and #6 are empty theaters. Yep, this park is ready for a full re-build, and things are looking good. Every week or two Disney announces another attraction that will close at Disney's Hollywood Studios. If it's not leading up to a whole bunch of openings, then they're crazy. EDITED for expansion

^^ The weirdest part is that PR can be done right pretty simply. That's not to say people in PR don't work hard and can't make a HUGE difference because they can and do. But having normal, average, fine PR is not nearly as hard as Kentucky Kingdom is making it. They're creating mountains out of molehills so to speak. No comment is an acceptable answer in some situations where Kentucky Kingdom has, inexplicably, insisted on commenting. See that early close where they apologized for closing due to weather, publicly stating on their Facebook page that they should've stayed open but there had been miscommunications and fumbles among managers. "Whoops!" Come back next time! they said. It won't happen again! Where a comment has been necessitated, Kentucky Kingdom has given two or three as they go through various levels of rewriting and reposting, all in the public eye! Speedos and security guards, breastfeeding, ADA compliance, Drop Towers, untrained employees, miscommunications among management, "Whoops!," water park rafts, September closure, failing to meet expected attendance, $5 admission (kind of), "no comment, but..." On and on. Each of those topics and Kentucky Kingdom's "response" could fuel a week of discussion in an introductory PR class. And that's to say nothing of the political and tax discussions leading up to the park's financing and continuing to this day and on to next fall.

It's almost offensive to my theme park sensibilities that they bothered to keep the inverted busts and took the time to glue red LEDs onto their eyes before boarding them up. Like, what was wrong with that incredible and unique effect? And if you must replace it with generic spooky eyes, why "defile" (to sound dramatic) the busts beneath by purposefully putting the LED eyes over the statues' eyes? C'mon.

At the VERY least, a blaster-free, charming, family dark ride themed to the Great Pumpkin would be incredible and appropriate. I don't even mind Sally's flat blacklight style and believe that it would lend itself just find to a Peanuts dark ride if it were done appropriately. See their Gobbler Getaway as a way to make a cute, autumn-colored dark ride in blacklight that's NOT glowing phosphorescent blue and green like Boo Blasters.

Part of Scooby's problem (which carried on to Boo Blasters) was having re-used the Phantom Theater Omnimover. Omnimover ride systems were revolutionary and - from an unnecessarily philosophical / storytelling way - allow guests to be immersed in a story where they can observe something unfolding around them. Haunted Mansion, Phantom Theater, Adventure Thru Inner Space, Spaceship Earth, etc. The Animatronics or animation can cycle continuously through their program as guests glide through scenes. The other kind of classic dark ride is cart-driven. Think Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Scary Adventures, Alice in Wonderland, even Indiana Jones Adventure. That also includes every Boo Blasters except ours. On those kinds of dark rides, a cart enters a room or scene and the environment reacts to that cart specifically. Once the cart passes through, the animatronics reset and wait for their sensor to be tripped again. One big complaint fans have about the new Little Mermaid ride at Disney Parks is that, in all other cases, dark rides that retell Disney's fairytales or stories are cart-based, and the characters appear to interact with you specifically. Little Mermaid uses an Omnimover, and you glide through scenes and see familiar sights and sounds, but it's not happening to you. You're just an observer. Again, maybe overly philosophical, but it matters. The two big selling point moments of Boo Blasters are invalidated by our Omnimover system. The first is the fog screen. On every other Boo Blasters, the screen remains unlit until the cart trips a sensor, which begins the projection. The Phantom's entire message is delivered and his eyes turn to flames just as you pass through the screen, then he's gone until that cart leaves the room and the next enters. The effect was lost by the constant stream of Omnimovers with no one getting the whole message and the darn thing repeating over and over and over as you approach it. The other big moment is the end, where your cart pulls into a garden with gnarled vines and skulls in the sky and thorns and prickers. The Phantom is under a stone arch covered in briars. "You'll never escape Bleakstone Manor, never!" If you shoot the targets around him, red fog blasts up from in front of him, he screams, the animatronic sinks into the ground, and then the blacklights hidden around the room go off and white lights turn on. When that happens, the briars become flowering vines, the sky turns blue and happy, and the curse is lifted. Ours doesn't have that capability since it's a continuous stream of Omnimovers, so he just continually screams and then laughs and then screams and then laughs. Which is fine, but the blacklight trick is a clever one. While it's not confirmed, I can only imagine that the Omnimover system has something to do with the invisible lasers (as opposed to the other ride's red targeting laser) and the inconsistent operation of the guns. That's just a guess though.

Does that fine print work in all cases? Of course not. But to say, 'Well, nobody reads it. I don't think it holds up in court.' The two aren't connected. That fine print is there for a reason and it has a purpose. Parks can still be at fault. My post was concerning whether or not that fine print is invalidated in court because not many people read it.