bkroz

Certainly! But don't let this be your "rose colored glasses" moment that you look back on later. Ed Hart is a shrewd businessman. The second he saw the opportunity to sell Kentucky Kingdom at massive personal profit, he did. He floated down from the purchase on a golden parachute as a very wealthy man. His passion is business, not amusement parks. Ever seen a house flipping program on HGTV? Ed Hart today is very wealthy, and maneuvered very specifically to own and operate Kentucky Kingdom with very, very, very little personal risk. If the park fails, Mr. Hart will still be a very wealthy man. The taxpayers won't be. The prodigal son. He bailed once. Like you said... " If hes done it once he can do it again its only the first year." I can't think of a single amusement park I don't like, even on principle. Should I find myself within reasonable proximity, I will absolutely go out of my way to visit the park (even if at least one member here has revoked my invitation) and I don't doubt that I'll have an enjoyable experience. Alls I'm saying is, no one here is blindly bashing the park, nor is anyone being overly optimistic about its current operation or its future. We're having a realistic back-and-forth – a discussion. EDIT: My advice to new members is ALWAYS to hang back. Read more than you write. Listen to way we talk here. Look at the way we talk. It's like starting a new school. You'll do much better for the next four years if you take a week to listen. Coming in here saying we're dissing a park and that we should have better things to do wasn't a great impression, right? So learn from it and look at the realistic way we discuss things. It'll help if you (hopefully) stick around for a very long time!

It could be worse in the "un-navigable map" department.

Welcome! Back and forth is called "discussion" here. That's what discussion boards are for! When you get a lot of people together who all care greatly about a singular topic, egos clash, ideas clash, and opinions clash. Kentucky Kingdom is a special case, because it's closing and re-opening have been surrounded in controversy to begin with, only made worse by the unfortunate decisions of a few "so-called" employees and the powers that be at the park. Lots of people are waiting for Kentucky Kingdom to fail just to say "I told you so," and no, I don't think that's fair. That said, so far we know that leadership at the park has admitted to ignoring federal ADA guidelines, used their employees lack of training as an excuse, and been represented by individuals who have only reinforced the park's sour reputation in some social aspects. Is discussing that amongst a group of enthusiasts "dissing" the park? I don't think so... And sort of blindly praising the park by saying "no negative thoughts here" is really actually not constructive or thoughtful. Really? Nothing you would change? Nothing the park should do differently, given what you've read here and in the news? When I was a teenager, Kings Island was called Paramount's Kings Island. Through those rosy glasses, I see only myself visiting the park with my friends, TOMB RAIDER: The Ride, working on-board audio, Italian Job, Top Gun, Paramount Story, and that beautiful royal blue mountain logo in front of the sparkling Royal Fountains. Now, a few years wiser and a little more learned in the industry, I can admit that that was also an era of low-quality park entertainment, declining interest from the owner, Six-Flags-level in-park advertisement for outside brands, and a real shift away from the family park Kings Island had been. That's not "dissing" the park. It's looking realistically. It would be a disservice to me and to the park if I said, "Everything is great. No negative thoughts here!" No business is rosy 24/7. No business makes perfect decisions. And like it or not, theme parks are businesses.

Here's what I don't get. Supposedly X-Flight was supposed to lower on the lift hill and raise as it was re-entering the station. Clearly whatever plan they had for that didn't just get passed over, it was entirely obliterated. Just the mechanical process of those seats behind lowered, I don't see how they even could've imagined doing that on a lift hill. Is it that the plan they originally had just didn't come about so they re-engineered everything from scratch to do it in the station?

How do you shape a team into a family? How do you empower your employees while keeping them in line with the necessary hierarchy of power? How do you convince workers that their attitude is contagious, as are their behaviors? How do you keep them lively and energetic while reminding them that their actions reflect in a major way? How do you take a bunch of local kids and convince them to treat this place like it's home? And unlike Kings Island where last year's returning employees can help guide the new generation, everyone is new this year. Except Mr. Hart, I guess. But if he's content doing things the way he did in the 1990s, budget included, then he may as well be new, too.

But then there's this: Scooby Doo and the Mystery of the Scary Swamp at Six Flags St. Louis (which is closing forever on September 14th - get your last ride in!) re-used a BOAT RIDE with added laser guns, and still riders' shots are visible. Granted, it looks like the cone-based light emission of Men In Black more than the pinpoint laser of the other Boo Blasters. Still, if a boat can be supplied with the energy to run "real" interactive guns, then that sort of destroys my theory in the post above... ...unless it's a budget thing.

I think the park ought to close for a day and have every employee - from Mr. Hart down - attend a huge training seminar / community-building experience. The weirdest thing about all these snafus is that employees aren't trained (which the park admits, hoping that'll be a defense? What?) yet all have some weird empowerment thing going on where they approach customers. Like, we wish that Kings Island employees would say something to smokers, or at least mention it to someone who can. At Kentucky Kingdom, these admittedly untrained employees are proud to go up to breastfeeding mothers, or disabled patrons, or folks in unusual swimwear and say something. It's all very odd. (Though to be fair, the trip reports I've read from you all say they mosey right past smokers...) It seems like they hired a young crop of locals, which is fine and good and wonderful in many ways. But no one knows the hierarchy or the structure or the rules or the laws, maybe not even Ed Hart himself. A day of the employees building relationships and learning the structure and learning their role vs. someone else's role would be very helpful. And if Mr. Hart is to make a success of the place, that may mean some tough love and a few moments where he stands in front of all of his workers and says, "You are representing me. You are representing my brand."

You have to assume it has to do with our omnimover vehicle, I guess? All the rest of the Scooby Doo dark rides were created from scratch with individual carts along a powered circuit. One can only imagine that those carts - being directly powered through the track - are somehow able to have real laser guns that ours can't. Our vehicles aren't (or weren't) individually supplied with lots of power that I can imagine (though I have no idea how that works), so in the conversion to Scooby Doo, the old system must've been rigged up with some kind of power supply to run the guns, necessitating infrared ones instead of the proper laser ones? I mean, maybe not. But it just doesn't make sense. Refresh my memory - was ours the first Scooby Doo ride to open, or did it open concurrently with another park's? Even then, Sally - being in on the dark ride game - would know better than to do infrared guns unless they had to, right? Then again, we are talking about Paramount's Kings Island, whose alleged cheap-way-out on Son of Beast and TOMB RAIDER cost both of those rides dearly.

This is just unreal. $2 million a year ought to be enough to keep the buildings painted. Or in terms of a new attraction, maybe a water slide. Not a water slide complex, mind you. Wow. Totally incredible. I bet Mr. Hart is hoping that bacon gets to sizzling pretty darn fast... his window of escape is becoming Indiana-Jones-style narrow. Kentucky Kingdom 2015 better impress an operator. And at this point, probably an inexperienced one.

Men In Black: Alien Attack has guns that release laser cones. Targets that are farther away are easier to hit because the laser's strike gets wider the farther it goes from the gun. That's not trivia, it's one of those "tips" they announce on their website / in the queue / in Behind the Scenes videos. Obviously this is an artist's rendering, but it captures the idea: It makes sense. When you think about the laser emitted by Boo Blasters' guns and the laser-sized opening they're expected to hit, it's like threading a needle. And with the other Boo Blasters rides, at least you can physically see where your laser is landing, if only by red dots on the wall. So are our lasers just magically "invisible?" Or are THAT many guns really broken?

The problem with that is that - at least if the ride is working properly - not hitting any targets means that nothing happens. Hitting the target is what triggers motion, animation, and effects in most interactive dark ride. Boo Blasters with no blasters is like riding a static black-light diorama. The incessant push for "interactive" is overkill. Folks pay almost no attention to the ride itself and it's more or less impossible to convey any kind of detailed story. Instead, you just sail past vague vignettes with flashing targets all over them. Even Disney is guilty of that. Their most famous interactive dark ride is Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters / Space Ranger Spin. The very vague story of "Zurg stole the batteries from the toys" is established before boarding. Then you just pass through many different sets shooting. There's no real plot. There can't be. Which I guess is fine once in a while, and it sells, and it's marketable. But that doesn't make it a quality dark ride. Compare that to DarKastle, Phantom Theater, Spider-Man, or Peter Pan's Flight where your attention is on the story (aka, where it should be).

From the ride's page on the official site:

I've posted my preview of the ride on Theme Park Tourist.

Nothing huge? Even if you think the ride is "lame" or some silly thing like that, it's 4,200 feet long and 170 feet tall with 6 inversions. Your personal preference for the ride aside, it's a BIG ride.

Did you read the journal entries? It's a massive animal that they encountered upon landing in Plymouth... possibly a Native American spirit. Either way, does it really matter? The viral campaign tied the ride to The Voyage and was a fun way to go about teasing "flying" and "winged creatures," etc. without talking about giant birds.

They could've led a viral marketing campaign centered around mashed potatoes and stuffing and this ride would still have taken most of us by surprise and been a stellar addition to the park.

So does Lightning Run.

Flying turkey?! lol I also don't see how the ship theme fits this ride It doesn't. It was a viral marketing campaign to tie the ride to the Voyage, and to a winged creature that the pilgrims encountered upon landing.

Call it Turkeybird if it makes you feel better.

http://www.holidayworld.com/thunderbird/

Wow! Launched B&M Wing Rider with incredible near-misses! Thunderbird 0 - 60 in 3.5 seconds.

Knott's fans won't be thrilled about Holiday World president claiming theirs was the first theme park in America... "nine years before Walt Disney World."

It's back up and working for me. Reload and switch to low quality?

Well that didn't take long!

We've got celebrities in the house!