Winterfestguy

Pretty sure management took notice in 2019 after Planet Snoopy lost the Golden Ticket award to Dollywood for Best Kids Area. Previously, Planet Snoopy held this award for 18 consecutive years, so the loss of the Golden Ticket award would definitely be noticed by management (there were no park Golden Ticket awards in 2020 due to the Pandemic). The survey seems focused on how Dollywood successfully built their Wildwood Grove with innovative attractions, so will see what may or may not happen in Planet Snoopy (or at least hope for a renovation of Boo Blasters).

Some of the lights were likely left overs from 2019 Winterfest (assume when the pandemic hit in March 2020, work stopped on taking what was left down as some were just left in place). Look closely at the huge evergreens by Adventure Express entrance and in the beer garden that are still strung with their white lights. Also, if you look closely, several trees in the grassy area behind stunt coaster they also still have their white lights strung in their trees. Last Saturday around noon, there was a cord strung across the bricks in Tower Gardens turning on the red/white on several of the wrapped trees (thought that was to enhance the area of Spain with red in their flag), but by late afternoon, the cord disappeared and the red/white lights were off. I don’t remember the Tower Garden tree trunks being wrapped when the park opened this year, but the other white lights in trees were definitely there earlier this year.

It would really help the lines if they sold the tasting cards at a separate location(s) like the information booth or a new separate dedicated booth and just focus on serving food at each of the locations instead to trying to do both (sell the tasting cards and order food). On Saturday, we were third in line when France opened, and each transaction of purchasing a tasting card and then ordering food of those in front was taking about 5-6 minutes each - so took us 15 minutes to pick up our season pass tasting cards (we purchased in advance) and order food. Over to Spain and the wait took us about 16 minutes and we were forth in line. Germany was the worst where we waited 25 minutes to even order food. Several people behind us left the line saying they only have four items so how can it take that long? However, by 7:30 when most people already had purchased their cards, lines seem to move a bit faster. The cards were a very heavy plastic, very difficult to punch, and found a location that wouldn’t even punch or mark off for each item ordered. Another station just used an ink pen and made X instead of a punch. Since the computer system keeps track of tastes used, the punches are really for our benefit, so maybe the ink pen or stickers would be much easier than the punch of the thick plastic. Also agree they need rope queues to help (like those at the blue ice cream this year) direct the booth line out of major traffic areas. There were definitely bottlenecks of the masses in China, Italy, and Germany on Saturday.

This is a really neat event, but does cause a bottleneck with a large group of people and jams things up for others trying to get back to Orion or Flight of Fear entrances at the end of the night. Just seems strange that this small area location seems to go against KIs own Code of Conduct “Gathering in Groups that Block Midways” - definitely should consider a larger location away from ride entrances if continued next season.

Looks great, just surprised they are using red bulbs in some of the gold garlands since carnival colors are traditionally purple, green, and gold (unless it’s a supply chain issue where they could not obtain the purple and green bulbs to use this year). Red bulbs just seems more of a Winterfest color. One of the very few official things about Carnival is the colors — purple, green and gold. Rex introduced them in 1872 in advance of his first parade.

KK in their 4D theater with the moving seats has Yogi Bears Picnic movie - the movie has been very popular with guests this season. Could something be in the works to bring more characters other than King Louie to KK?

Hoping registration packets are sent out in the next few days, especially since some may be traveling for the July 4th holiday.

We’ll probably not good news for CW non-Canadian visitors this summer, especially after they just announced their early July opening

The park should make an early morning tour for the 50th (before park opening), charging something like $39.95, and one of the tour items would be to view from the 50 foot deck (only for those taking the tour, thereby making the park pure profit). Other tour items could be backstage of Kings Island Theater (some really cool things from the past used to exists in storage), phantom theater, train storage, maybe memorabilia from the past 50 years etc. If the rumor is true about a certain coaster being torn down at CP after this season to make room for their new coaster, they could salvage the external ADA elevator lift from that coaster and relocate to KI for the 50’ platform for ADA tour guests only. One daily small tour group of about 15 people paying $40 over the course of approximately 90 operating days could generate the park approximately $50K of pure profit in honor of the 50th anniversary.

Unfortunately, when seasonal labor cost is doubled, there has to be an increase of income coming in to maintain pre-pandemic profitability and keeping the shareholders happy (dividends still suspended so really not a good stock to hold onto right now). It will remain to be seen this fall of how much of an increase in Season Passes, Dining Plans, and Drink Plans there will be to cover the increased labor charges, not to mention daily ticket price increases. There likely is a price point where people will not renew or visit the park so it is a very delicate balance.

For the 50th, KI should add a drone show in addition to the Royal Fountain fireworks (similar to what Dollywood is doing this year). It also would be nice to see the strobe lights back on the Eiffel Tower (like they were for the Peanuts starlight spectacular years ago). Parton and the Dollywood team are constantly coming up with new experiences for guests, including the new Intel Drone Light Shows during Dollywood's Sweet Summer Nights and the new upcoming resort. The show will include nearly 400 drones and fireworks for a spectacular event during the park's Summer Celebration.

I have not seen any public privacy policy on how CF as a corporation (or KI) will handle the text message hidden metadata (or from the picture) texted from your personal phone or how it is intended to be used in the future. If you SMS to their number, its likely EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) metadata is also automatically sent in the background, primarily location data (and of course they have your phone number from which many details about you can be obtained from searching other databases). I am surprised that there is not an “opt in” message before using their texting service to report a security issue giving the park permission to use your data. One should just be aware of any background information being sent from your personal phone if you utilize this approach (and in any court case, if things go that far, you might get a subpoena as part of the discoverable evidence).

The parks are gambling on the J1 visa program being back next year where they can pay international students much less, back to the $10/hr level - it’s a big gamble because they can see via social media that the parks can afford to pay much more if they want to, and may decide not to come to the US in 2022 for less than $18-20/hr.

Two sets of my friends had their vacation plans impacted by the Tuesday/Wednesday closures (only because I let them know). After 4 days of the reservation phone lines being busy every time they tried to call, they finally got through today. They both can now only stay one night at Breakers because they were told by the reservation agent Breakers is sold out for every Friday and Saturday all through the entire month of June. They both felt they were not treated as a valued customer as all this was just shoved down their throats. I did warn them that with CP hotel/cabin sell outs for Friday (and all those automatically have a park reservation), the park will likely be very crowded if they decide to enter the park on Friday morning after checking out. They both said they will never return if this is the way the park wants to run their business always changing days/hours of park operations after being published and not caring about the customer - too difficult to plan a vacation. I don’t blame them.

It does seem obvious that management is a bit scrambled on the closure messages and updating the appropriate sites (likely because IT only works 8-5pm, and the announcement was sent after they went home, which is no excuse - management should be able to coordinate better). And to make matters worse announcing Soak City will open Saturday with an obvious forecast high of 59 (when it likely won’t open at all due to the temperature), just adds to their PR issues. With no fireworks on a Holiday weekend and the postponement of the dance party on June 10 due to the new 8pm closure, people will be very disappointed. People plan their vacations around the published calendar hours and published events. Between KI and CP shrinking their calendars/hours/events, it has definitely been a PR nightmare. Will be interesting to see when Grand Carnival rolls around, what, if any, calendar changes happen. Hopefully, people will vote with their wallets on how acceptable all these changes have been to them.

If you look at the first quarter CF results and comments, management fully expected a record demand and attendance at all parks (So KI just like the CP management knew as they admitted in March that record crowds would flood the gates once parks opened in May). KI knew they were not fully staffed for May weekend openings based on their labor numbers, but went ahead anyway and opened the park to full capacity of everything acting like it was open (which is another issue in itself as it makes lines, especially for the limited food and limited drink refills extremely long). The park was also overcrowded so not sure how adding extra security can help prevent such an incident because they can’t be in every single queue and every place at the exact same time (not to mention rules at KI are never enforced). I am surprised that no official action plan has been made public by now, only casting doubts for some that KI can adequately address their issues in the coming weeks (overcrowding, lack of food/drink, re-entry policy, security, etc.). It’s probably too late now, but KI should go back to reservations on the dry side that matches what the park labor numbers can actually provide for the best day ever experience (which is why Disney World each week slowly increases its reservation amounts based on their labor numbers to staff things). Hopefully, the required reservations are being limited on the wet side to help the overcrowding and incidents such as this, but have my doubts (and will see this weekend how crowded Soak City actually will be).

From a labor seasonal budget perspective, the only way to increase wages is to decrease the hours/days the park is open (which keeps the same amount in the seasonal labor budget), so not too surprised CP appears to be closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays for three weeks in June. I do feel sorry for those that had CP expensive hotel reservations like Breakers already booked for the newly closed days (hopefully CP will allow a full refund without penalty or free rebook). For KI fans hopeful for Haunt in addition to the advertised Fall Fest, this should be a “nail in the coffin” that there will not be a Haunt at KI with late night hours as in prior years before the pandemic.

Definitely a front gate nightmare, especially basically checking photo ID for picture and date of birth of whomever the chaperone is. And I am not sure how the front gate will verify the actual age of the child. What’s not clear if this would apply to a family brining their children to the park (was likely intended for those vans that drop off their kids for the day). If families have to do this chaperone verification for their kids, I can see many just skipping KK and heading down to Holiday World. Just like those “no bag lines”, hope they have a “no chaperone line” to speed up entry into the park.

If the early line closure was a CF chain wide policy for all parks, then maybe that is the way it is. However, KI has not been closing lines early, so must be a CP specific policy (probably to save on labor costs). People definitely need to stop by guest services to complain so that the new CP general manager can take notice of all the customer feedback. It is sad that the employees have to take all the criticism from upset paying customers when the lines close early.

Not too sure Haunt will actually occur this year (that site advertising the return of Haunt in 2021 appeared immediately after the 2020 cancellation of Haunt last year, so not sure how current the information on that site really is). When looking at season pass benefit information for 2021, the word “Haunt” is specifically missing (and in all previous years “Haunt” has definitely been listed as a season pass benefit). “Every year, the benefits and value of being a Gold or Platinum Season Passholder keep getting better. Not only do you have unlimited admission to Kings Island, Soak City Water Park, Fall and WinterFest, but you also enjoy exclusive events” With the park conserving cash flow with reduced park hours this season, I believe the poster advertising a Fall Fest instead of Haunt is likely accurate.

Several years ago at Coasterstock it was suggested by several to invite a different local band each week to come perform at Timberwolf (CP is already doing something similar as part of their 150 celebration). This would make good use of the facility, especially during a pandemic using outside for another entertainment option. Maybe KI is cleaning things up in preparation for such idea.

Wonder when CF will implement the new 3 foot social distancing? Interesting development - “In a new study released earlier this week, the University of Central Florida (UCF) and International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) concluded that theme parks could safely lower physical distancing requirements from six feet to three feet.”

https://event.ontaptickets.com/events/hops-roller-coaster-drops-9-11-2021?mc_cid=ce693bc6ad&mc_eid=UNIQID This event with UNLIMITED craft beer samples in September looks fantastic. Wish KI would have thought of being the first to host this one of a kind largest amusement park event. Similar to CP Frontier Festival but with many, many more committed craft breweries attending (the list of craft brewery participants is long).

Sad that at the last minute Ed Hart at KK did not cut the check for this coaster on the day the pandemic hit last March, but glad Silverwood was able to pick up the coaster which was originally destined for KK. Definitely a great addition to Silverwood.

Camp Cedar is not opening until June per the website. Still much to do in the next two months from what I heard, but the warmer dry weather has definitely allowed faster progress.