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There are some nice YouTube videos online from Cedar Point's Winter Chill Out events where the maintenance staff talk about roller coaster wheels, etc. Based on a lot of that information, it would seem to be very unlikely that "the wheels" would be the cause of roughness on Banshee, at least not in a simple sense. The wheels are definitely inspected nightly, with any that are too worn being replaced. The wheels used on at least GateKeeper and Rougarou are a mix of nylon and polyurethane wheels. This is mostly to regulate speed, as all polyurethane wheels would be much more likely to result in a valley on cold weather days. All the trains are stripped down to basically nothing during the offseason. I wonder how much changes to the track outside play a part in the roughness on Banshee, as well as on how often some of the more internal parts like bearings are replaced. It is also worth noting that Banshee has the "new" B&M invert trains, which could also being aging differently than the old variety. These are all interesting topics that maybe someday a Kings Island ride maintenance person could be asked or talk about during a Q&A session.

I think there was more data behind the name changes than you think. It certainly seems like they did not think the Boomerang Bay name was a good one, as all the other Boomerang Bays have all been renamed as well. Valleyfair had its water park (Whitewater Country) changed to Soak City, but Canada's Wonderland, Michigan's Adventure, and Worlds of Fun all retained their existing water park names. I agree that the name Soak City is too generic. They have chosen more distinct names for more recent re-brandings (Cedar Point Shores, South Bay Shores, Carolina Harbor). A lot of other Cedar Fair parks also include the water park on a regular season pass. At Worlds of Fun, they actually changed the water park from being a separate gate to being included on the season pass when it was renovated in 2013. I wonder if the sale of meal plans has anything to do with that change.

I hope they put a security guard next to the Orion line attendant around 9pm...

We are very fortunate. I can imagine there are many disappointed season pass holders for the parks that didn't even get to open this year who would have loved to have the chance to go to their park even while wearing a mask and doing social distancing. I think it also makes the lawsuit that Cedar Fair began to file back in June look silly. I have not done an exact count, but it looks like less than half of amusement parks in the United States are going to open at all this year. Back in April, I would have guessed that either all the parks would either open or stay closed. It is so strange that we ended up with quite a mix of what opened and what did not.

Seems like the rain threat on Saturday pushed a lot of people to wait until Sunday.

I don't think Holiday World will have any problem with adjusting to having masks be required. I cannot say the same for Indiana Beach.

Kings Island has always been challenged to keep people in the park until closing time. Families come in the morning to go to Planet Snoopy (and during normal years, Soak City), but by dinner time are often ready to go home. In a year like this, the number of people who would still be in the park after say 8pm has likely been estimated to be very low. I agree that it is a bummer. Unfortunately the "families with kids" crowd is likely a lot larger than the "visit in the evening" crowd.

I think the only reason they had slots to begin with was to limit the arrival times as well as total park capacity. Indications are they are coming nowhere near to their limited capacity cap. Worlds of Fun has dropped the need for a reservation completely. I think Kings Island is not far behind. They likely have a capacity number for the health check tents and probably have not been close to it, thus there is a lot less worry about being "overwhelmed".

Just catching up, but seems like several of the big rides, including Orion were down until about 3pm today? That really hurts on a weekend day, especially when the park is only open until 7.

I like this theory, but I don't think it is realistic. It is kinda like the old NFL black out rules. There are not enough people in the park, so turn off the cameras to encourage more people to come! The Mystic Timbers camera could not be used as any kind of attendance indication whatsoever, it only showed whether 3 rides were operating or not (train, Mystic, and Diamondback). So you're saying that the webcams, which had been operating just fine for months while the park was closed, suddenly were moved or had network issues around the same time that the park opened? I'm not buying it. Not to mention tweets like this one... In the grand scheme of things, the webcams are not that big of a deal, but in my opinion the message here is that Kings Island is not 100% comfortable with showing the Internet the status inside the park at the moment.

The Mayor of Cleveland ordered the use of masks in the city until further notice. Dayton, Cincinnati, and Cleveland have all issued some sort of mask order now. Columbus might be next?

Governor DeWine revealed a county-by-county tracking system they are now using for Ohio today. https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/public-health-advisory-system/ What is interesting is that in Texas today, the governor issued an order mandating masks must be worn in public for counties with more than 20 Covid cases. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/texas-issues-state-wide-order-requiring-face-coverings.html I will cede to disco2000 who seems to know what he is talking about with regard to county laws in Ohio. Maybe that is why it was not mandated that counties with a level 3 or level 4 rating require masks in public?

I heard it's a smash hit.

Probably opening day network upgrades, eh?

Thanks for the correction. Yeah I wasn't 100% sure she was a mermaid since the time that she was covered, whenever that was. I did not look closely at the boat from the March blog post, but you are right that it appears that it had already been painted at that time.

I wonder if they painted the mermaid on the front, I mean bow, brown also.

I think it's a little soon to make too many assumptions about Worlds of Fun. Today was their first day open, and they are the first park in the Cedar Fair chain to do so. It would not surprise me if on the first day Kings Island is open that there are a lot of park personnel on ride platforms and in other places. They are assessing and getting used to how all the new procedures are going to work.

Well, in case anyone thought that anything related to the development of the Kings Island app has changed as a result of COVID-19, the answer is clearly "no". Having functionality be exposed to public access before it is ready seems pretty unprofessional, and this is not the first time it has happened.

Orion will definitely open this year, but I do think it might be considered a "soft" opening. If the situation with COVID-19 is improved next spring, I would not be surprised to see the park heavily market Orion as if it were a brand new ride.

Yes! I think pretty much the whole video was shot at KI. Here it is for those who haven't seen it. It definitely seems intended to apply to all Cedar Fair parks.

Security is likely to be greatly increased. I'm hoping employees working rides, food, or shops will not need to be the ones left to enforce any of the new rules. If a group of guests have all removed their masks, I'm hoping the instructions to an employee will be to alert security and let them handle it. Consider also that to get in the park there are likely to be temperature checks. If someone has a temp over 100.4 degrees, they are going to be denied access to the park. That is going to potentially cause problems when it happens to one person in a family or group. Security will need to be there. Social distancing will be expected when waiting in any line. There are likely to be markers on the ground. Will everyone follow this as expected? Security will need to be monitoring this to avoid any problems. This is all about feeling safe. If people don't feel safe going to the park, it is going to translate into negative publicity.

If Six Flags, Sea World, Disney, and Universal all independently made the decision that masks should be required in their parks, does that not hold any kind of weight? These kinds of things are debated and researched by committees before being decided. Many of these parks are located in places where the climate is worse than Ohio. Masks are inconvenient, but I think it may come down to the fact that it is unlikely that people will be able to maintain safe social distancing the entire time while at the park. Because of that, masks are the only way the park can maintain that they are doing their best to ensure every guest is being as protected as possible.

I was surprised by 2 things in Thursday's announcements. The first was that amusement parks were not mentioned in the announcement. The second was that the businesses that were mentioned are allowed to be open June 10th, which is next week. Cedar Fair is no doubt fed up with waiting for an announcement. The lawsuits are likely just as much to apply pressure as they are to obtain a favorable ruling. I can understand how they feel they are being held hostage by the governor's office at this point. It certainly doesn't seem like there has been much agreement behind the scenes between the 2 parties based on what happened on Thursday. The lack of announcement is frustrating, but the reality is that Kings Island has not fallen that far behind other parks in similar situations. Holiday World is not opening until June 17th. Kentucky Kingdom is not opening until June 29th. Disney is not opening until early July. Six Flags 3 biggest parks (Great Adventure, Great America, and Magic Mountain) have no announced date yet for when they will open.

So many interesting infrastructure questions! I would think that using wifi (private or not) would not be very desirable for reliability reasons. I would think the park would have a lot of fiber optic cable running all over the place in order to support a number of different things at this point (phones, points-of-sale, security cameras, etc.).

I have no issues with how the PTC trains run on any of Kings Island's coasters. I just wish they would make another update to the restraint system. The current ratcheting restraints and seat dividers are not original, and are currently the biggest drawback in my opinion.