BoddaH1994

Please pardon me while I disagree. While the Red Racer IS running well...it is nowhere near the way it was in the 70's...what with cushy soft seating, no seat dividers, no individual lap bars, no seat belts (different, and not in a good way), skid brakes, much more airtime than now and a final bunny hill that has been removed, brand new track, and the red, white and blue paint job...along with just refurbished rolling stock from the Coney Island Shooting Star (two trains) and two brand new trains (the other two trains)...the ride was substantially different (and, for the most part, far better than) it is now. It is certainly not back to the way it was in the 1970's. I actually just got a message from Kings Island's PR, Don Helbig, about what you just posted. Apparently the rumor that two of the trains from The Racer were originally from the Shooting Star at Coney Island is completely false. All four trains were brand new in 1972 when The Racer debuted with the park. The two trains from the Shooting Star were actually sitting in the station and on the transfer track of the ride until it was demolished after The Racer was open to the public. The whereabouts of the trains is unknown.

How is Final Cut with special effects? After Effects is great for some things, but you have to render it out and put it in a different compiler if you want to logically cut a video. It does however have a good option of compiling in an Adobe Premier format.

Teenageninja is right. The golf course on Waterpark Dr. became Nightmare Estates and existed for about five years. It was actually a lot of fun. Definitely a little more "R Rated" than most haunted houses. You'd walk in and there would be a casket with a dummy in it and a man would communicate with the crowd over a loud speaker, simulating that you're talking to the corpse's spirit. The man on the speaker was known as Bonehead and wouldn't hesitate to drop a few "F-Bombs" and harass the women in the crowd, but it was all in good fun. They had an expanded clown house, where the head clown, Bludzo, would find the ones in the groups who were afraid of clowns and victimize them, commonly by backing them into corners with his co-clowns. This was one of those mazes where if they found out your name, they'd spread it throughout the whole place. You eventually went outside and would enter an old school bus full of dummies and inherently one of them would be real. You'd walk over bridges (mainly over the old mini gold obsticles) and would end up in the woods outside of the place. Ultimately you were chased out of the maze of your typical chainsaw guys. The owner of the place, the guy called himself Bonehead, hosted it at that location for several years. Ultimately he could not come to terms with the owner of the location and they ceased the project. They were immediately approached by The Beach and asked to create a haunted house there and basically transferred Nightmare Estates down the street to become Nightmare at the Beach. Due to the rigorous operating schedule at The Beach, they only had 13 days to set up and be ready to open. Although the project was a success, it never saw a return after the initial year. Today, many of the performers from Nightmare Estates and Nightmare at the Beach both help operate and perform at the schoolhouse in Dent. That's another wonderful attraction that should be checked out if we can pull you away from Halloween Haunt for a night this year.

Looks like they replaced the spot where S:TOP was with nothing. Are there any remnants of the ride left? It used to be immediately behind that SFKK sign that you uploaded a photo of. Cool trip report.

Thanks for all of the feedback. I made this as more of a test of what can be done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with another Knievel video. Hopefully I can sharpen my skills and make more elaborate KIC videos in the future.

I think the price goes up to the $34.99-ballpark area... I'm not 100% positive on that, though.

They didn't open it at all? According to VisitKingsIsland.com, it opened daily on May 24th and doesn't have an operating calendar to say otherwise. I wonder what's up with that...

Actually, the scrolling marquis at the entrance to the park always display this info. Off the top of my head, yesterday's message was something like, "Park Open 10am-8pm. Boomerang Bay 11am-7pm. No fireworks display tonight. Modified ride operation."

I created this for two reasons. I must admit that it was mainly to toy around more with After Effects, which is a video editing program that I just required. Secondly, I've had people request that I cut a video of just jump footage, so here it is. This is a stripped down video that's just shy of 1 minute. Let me know what you think.

I'd be interested in seeing statistics on that. I'm a little surprised you didn't have access to that data back when you were serving food at the park.

I guess it's one of those deals where you just had to be there.... I've heard similar situations about NASCAR. I'm not a fan.. I think it's boring. However anyone who's a NASCAR fan will tell you that as soon as you go to one race and experience the excitement for yourself, you'll be hooked. Relevantly, seeing an animation of a guy jumping a motorcycle over 24 Coke Zero trucks may seem a little simplistic, but there was nothing like standing there in the seconds before the jump knowing that a man was risking his life right before your very eyes.

No, in general. Seemed like under Paramount it was Golden Ticket this and Golden Ticket that. I personally think that it's refreshing. Many people travel long distances to go to parks as a result of the Golden Ticket awards. It's a great marketing tool, but not exactly scientific data.

A lot of that has to do with the park's agreement with the credit card companies. PO Boxes are funny in some instances. You'll noticed that even a lot of eBay auctions refuse to ship to PO boxes. I'm glad that the Discover worked though. I'd say it's worth giving Visa a call to see what happened. They may be able to give you a better explanation.

The Golden Ticket thing is really political. I wouldn't doubt that KI would be recognized for being a clean park some time in the near future, but going from zero to hero rarely happens with that voting group.

I think he was talking about Miss Gibson. She'll be in Flashback: Totally 80s! this year. I wonder if they'll need any particular cars for that show... Oh come on... if they were going to use a Chevette hatchback, they'd have told us already.

The first year that the former Happy Days Diner was open, it was very similar in pricing yet it included drinks in the meals. After the first year, the prices were the same but did not include a drink. That basically bumped the price of the meal up from $10 to $14. By the way, I saw Indiana Jones yesterday and got a medium popcorn and a medium drink for $10. Makes KI's prices seem a little better.

All I did was splice the thing together. The big hand should go out to the many people who were VERY patient in filming the event. Mainly Gabe, Robbie and Bill... it really wouldn't have been possible without them.

I considered it, but then I realized that everyone would just pick all of them. lol

I found out that some German newspaper is using our video for this jump. Pretty cool. Below is a link to the English translation of the article, so some parts don't make much sense. http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?d...TrUrl=Translate

This looks like a trip report... so I'm going to put it with the other trip reports. I'm glad you can still make it up to KI for things like this.

It was great seeing you at the park on Saturday! You'd better give me a call sometime soon!!

So... what were your thoughts?

I have to disagree with the pain thing. Tomb Raider would KILL my collar bone but the Crypt doesn't do that. I like The Crypt's ride program better, but must admit that it needs something.... anything... in the ride area itself.

I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure the new slides (from the Boomerang Bay expansion) are temp controlled.

Check out KICentral's video tribute to Robbie Knievel's jump at Kings Island! **Please not that KICentral has permission to post this footage.