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Agree Terpy, Moonlite is one of the best as if not the best when it comes to BBQ. We have found that you can indeed have BBQ at Kings Island Backyard BBQ, You just need to remember to pick-up a couple packets of BBQ sauce at Potato Works or at the Outback Shack before you go, then add it to the chicken or hamburger. Hope that helped.

Nice interview I am really looking forward to seeing the opening day new look to River Town. Great Job KICentral team you guys always bring us fun informative information.

Thanks Gabe for the information, I have wanted to go west and tour the parks for some time now maybe in the next 2-3 years. Also for everybody else keep in mind Gabe was talking about Disneyland and not Disney World, similar in many ways but a few differences between the parks and expectations. You brought up a very good point Gabe about planning guides, if you plan to spend thousands of dollars for a trip you may want to invest in a paid informative resource to give you some great valuable tips. I have been a member of Tour Guide Mike for some time and knowing now how great my yearly vacations have been I would pay handsomely for that advice and will be willing to shell out $20.00 to make any vacation to any destination in the future go more smoothly.

FREE DINNING 09 ALERT!!!!! Some May know this by now but on Monday 3/30/09 Disney will offer their Disney Dinning Plan for FREE, for stays of 3 nights or more and everyone in the room will need to purchase a minimum of a one day ticket. The dates are for check-ins from 8/16-10/3/09 with a maximum stay of 14 nights, you can stay past the 10/3/09 check-in time but you must check-in on or before 10/3/09. Unless you get a 40% code for a deluxe resort the free dinning is the best savings discount Disney offers. I suggest this to others but they say they have friend/parents in the area (I do as well) so they will stay with them to save money. I can honestly tell you it is MUCH cheaper to stay at Disney Value resort with the free dinning plan than it would be for me to stay with my brother for free. It would be like Disney offering you; If you will eat at one of our counter service and one sit down restaurant and purchase one snack per person per day, we will pay for your room that night and give you $45.00. Just another way to look at it adds up the same. Gator you give good advice as we hardly ever in 3 years had any issues with the buss service, in fact we have not rented a car in our past 3 trips. You can rent a car on Disney property and the car company will transport you to and from the car agency, friends of ours did this a couple years ago. As far as leaving any park at closing you will be waiting and for the buses with little ones and you may be standing on the buses. TIP always plan to leave 30 minutes after the park closes, find a nice bench share a snack or story with each other then leave in a very uncrowded main street and you can be assured a nice seat while holding the young ones back to the resorts, unless you enjoy rubbing body parts against other tired irritated park goers. In other words while many are standing in line for a bus others are sitting patently and waiting for the park to clear out, but make no mistake both groups are waiting somewhere, in the end one may get back 10-15 minutes before the other. Also I have stayed at a Disney Moderate and when leaving at park closing there was still a wait. We have found with a little planning ahead that the no resort to resort bus line was only a minor inconvenience. Such if we spent the day at a water park we would shower and change there then get in the bus line to a deluxe resort to go to dinner as we usually already have a reservation for, then tour that resort and enjoy it's amenities. Going back is taking a bus to the park closes to your home resort and transfer or sometime we take a bus to Downtown Disney and tell the bus driver as we enter that we are trying to get back to POP Century and about 75% of the time the driver will radio his dispatcher and get permission to make his next stop after the Downtown Disney stop to be the POP Century so we don't need to change buses again. Never hurts to ask, Disney wants you happy and awed. I believe in the free dinning promotion so much that if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask and in fact I know some great tips to maximize that plan even more in some cases, I just can not reveal on an open forum.

Thing is I would not mind the heterogeneous aspects of the park over the last several years if there was a master plan of direction versus the hodge-podge placement of attractions and food shops.

I have been keeping an eye out for this one too as I am intrigued with how they are putting a lot of new technology into this one (bit worried for first generation coaster though). Notice that the writer says he knows little about exact specifications but says unless it's Jesus like then it will flop. Wow and Kings Islands thinks they have tough critics, I mean how does one live up to those expectations. I wonder if even Diamondback could live up to those expectations.

Tommybear85 – First off welcome to KICentral, you definitely came to the right place for suggestive advice. My family is from Indianapolis and through the years we have really enjoyed spending some vacation time in Cincinnati as there is a lot a family can do together in the area. Without knowing how many days your family is planning to stay in the area I'll try to give you a few suggestive tips that we have found to work well for us. I think two days will be plenty for a family your size and considering the ages of the children. Too much of a good thing can spoil the mood, besides if you leave wanting more then you'll find yourself back in time. We try not to do two days of any amusement park in a row and when vacationing in Cincinnati we try to fit in one of the other family destinations in between the Kings Island days. I believe when you decide how many days will be best for your family you can check back here or check out Kings Islands specials at the time to pick which ticket option will work best for you. Again welcome to KICentral and feel free to ask more questions or offer your opinion in some of the many topics here. Avatar

Great Idea and sounds like you have put a lot of thought into it. Looking forward to issue 1

Lastairbender07Welcome to KICentral glad your here and look forward to hearing from you more. Just a tip for you though this topic would be better suited in the Off-Topic forum as it does not relate to Kings Island. Sorry folks I have given my last ride to Miss Rae a few years back so please don't ask and I think Lastairbender07 was referring to riding Avatar the ride at Kings Island.

Nice I think these films/videos are some of the best archived videos I have seen the narration is great. Wow what memories, a complete joy to watch. thank-you

One of my treasured recent memories of the Kings Island was last years Knievel day last year. Yes for the all the great activities but one in particular that I felt kinda glued the days events together. It was a couple live band stages set up with various band s playing. I really enjoyed the atmosphere it provided and watching guests walking around and rides running their cycles while watching the bands. I am for one super excited about a live band performing on opening day and it will give me something to look forward to after my ride on Diamondback. At this point if I ride Diamondback, eat at the Rivertown Junction (so I can review it) and watch Parrots of the Caribbean, the day will be complete and everything else is a bonus. I hope more live bands are planned throughout the year. One of the best crowd pleasing performances I have seen at the park was an Elvis impersonator, I know I went out of curiosity but the crowd loved him and he had them all fired up like no other performance I have seen before.

Angrybeaver good to see you made it downtown safe and looks like you had some good site seeing days. Enjoyed the report felt like I went to work as I was reading and seeing your pictures.The Hoosier Lottery building has 2 ice rinks inside and below street level. glad you got that I also noticed in the first picture on Sunday looks like you where at I-65 & I-70 south split and not I-465. I liked the picture that was looking straight up at the Chase Bank Tower and thought you might like a picture in it looking straight down. also one on the other side looking towards the other War monuments. Unrelated; a good friend of ours is one of the window installers for Regions but they have put off working up there till winter is over. From your self portrait it looks like you could still use a good haircut and what gets me is you must have passed 20 barber shops on your way into the downtown area. LOL The monument you did not know the name to is the Indiana World War Memorial and every serviceman that served in the war from Indiana is etched in stone somewhere throughout the memorial. So if you have relatives who did you can go and find their name. Nice report and thanks for taking the time to do it.

Sounds cool Ryan, it is something different that we have not seen before and I would be up to a KIC group going back to spend a day there in the Summer too.

Yes it was interesting, but in my opinion a gamble. I was distracted by the guys voice and knew it was from Disney. I played some audio of attractions I thought he did like the monorail and then it dawned on me. He makes all the prerecorded announcements on the resort buses.

Maestro – thanks for the find and posting the video, like everyone else I have enjoyed it immensely. Shawn – thank you for taking the time to upload some of your Archives and as you can tell you have a very interested audience. I for one was not at Kings Island for opening day but did attend at some point that year and many years that followed. I did go to your site and looked at the pictures and they really captured the mood and feel of the park. I love Kings Island now and I loved Kings Island back in the days and thanks to you I can put more images with those memories. Also if I may ask one of my fond memories was the canoe boats rides, if you have any photos of that attraction I would love to view that. Thanks again for taking time in your busy day to upload the video/photos and to share your comments with us.

Also keep in mind it is quicker to walk to Boomerang Bay unless you so happen to get to the Kings Island Miami Valley Railroad as a train is pulling in. this is especially true if they are only running one train. If you are doing it because you want to ride the train then the advice above is correct.

A sea side park how novel these days, that would steal ones heart. Like the audio attached to the story too.

Skaterboy22101 – I am sorry, but I do not understand what your saying. I went back to read everybody's post and the title of the thread but evidently I must have missed something.

You guys are right gosh I have not joined either and it is not for everybody but I do know my way around the Disney sites enough to know they will have more than enough members to call it a success. Kings Island does not need ace like Disney will not need Club 23 but unlike Kings Island Disney will be able to control and make some money from it's fan group.

I am going to offer another over looked Reason why this may be a great deal to Disney fans and to Disney Corporation. Stay with me though. I think Cedar Fair and individual Parks would find a lot of interest if they offered some gimmick knickknacks, special park opportunities, exclusive merchandise and Inside information from a variety of sources and subjects, all for $11.00 per year. That is in essence what Disney is offering and what a lot of Disney fans have been begging for. A quick Google search will show ones how many dedicated sites and forums there is out there and the age and demographic groups is one that spends a lot not even counting the thousands and thousands who have bought time share vacations from Disney. In short Disney as a huge audience who is begging for more and want to be a part of it in some way. Disney has just started to put out a quarterly magazine which is offered to the general public through their stores as well as local community book stores. It is a well done magazine which offers a lot of information and some breath taking pictures and the ones who have one say it is more like a coffee table book than an magazine. We all know to keep something like that coming out quarterly they will need a base of subscribers. Well this is where Disney may be onto something because they are offering a fan club type membership which includes this new venture for them, which in turn will help that magazine to build membership to sustain itself. Most Disney fans stay on site and frequent the parks often and will look at the whole package of benefits to see if it fits their desires but most would be able to afford to fork over their $75.00 and many will do it just for the bragging rights. This actually may be a great thing for Disney and unlike the author I did not need to leave out perks to get my point across. DeLorean Rider – Don't be fooled there are a lot of Disney Fans on here, your not alone.

I would agree too but the author of the article left out the biggest perk which if added up in full retail price would cost $63.96. So that would make the club and the benefits he listed to cost only $11.04 plus a undisclosed surprise gift at some point. Many are talking about the cost and membership, but i wish published reports would check their facts better as this makes me doubt future articles from them.

Disney World Tower of Terror cost 140 million. http://www.squidoo.com/disneyworldtowerofterror

Keiko_coaster – I am enjoying your trip report complete with pictures, looking forward to the rest. It really looks like you all had a great time so far and the iced up foot rinse picture was great.

You were probably sleeping like most who started to ride that attraction midday to get a cool quick nap in. In truth it was not bad to do once and now to be able to say I rode one of the longest rides ever built.It was at least that long while some list the time at 45 minutes I went with the Wiki and kept it a conservative 40 minuets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_of_Energy If we are going to keep this to Kings Island then I would have to say the old train ride when it was used to shuttle guests through various old west scenes while actors interacted with those scenes.

Well the title says the longest ride you have ridden, so just about every coaster around is out if you have at least rode Scooby-Doo Haunted Castle. I think the longest ride I have ever ridden is Universe of Energy at EPCOT which has a listed ride duration of 40 minutes, but seemed much longer.