DoomPlague

Considering offenders aren't allowed to live within a certain distance of public parks, I would think the law itself requires them to stay away from amusement parks but I don't really know. Sounds like it varies a lot state to state..

Figured they would mostly leave around 7 to 8 but I was with someone with low tolerance for lines and just wanted go home. When I saw that massive fleet of buses when I pulled in, I was like "fuuuuu....."

I've only managed one ride. Front row. Took nearly 2 hours to get on. The line was reported as 120 minutes, but looked like a 60-70 minute line to me...but there was a technical delay once I got near the station. Almost like a prophecy from the park app. Obviously the front tends to be smooth but it was still noticeably smoother especially in the helix. However, on my ride, after the first tunnel for a second I thought I would get some air on the hill but then felt that trim more than I ever have in the past and got nothing. Hopefully I'll get multiple rides next Wednesday in different rows.

As far as I can tell, the incidents have been mostly early in the season on the more crowded days and have been a little exaggerated. You should be fine on weekdays. In any case, these incidents mostly affect a small group of people and innocent bystanders are not likely to be harmed as long as they keep their distance. I can't speak to the water park but Fast Lane shouldn't be necessary on the days you mention. Weekdays are usually pretty light. June tends to be better than July. Even without Fast Lane, you should be able to do all of the coasters and some other rides, even in one day at the dry park. Of course, that's not guaranteed to be the case, but you might "see how it goes" as you suggested. Some rides build up a bit of a line even on mild days because of capacity: Invertigo, Flight of Fear, Flying Ace Aerial Chase and Backlot Stunt Coaster. You can just try to hit those early on. Other major rides have good capacity and might have 5-to-15 minute waits all day on a weekday. FL could still be helpful even on mild days depending on how much you want to do but keep in mind: among the rides that require FL+ instead of the standard FL, it includes 2 coasters with high capacity: Orion and Beast and one with fairly good capacity: Mystic Timbers. Flight of Fear is the one coaster that builds up a big line and a lot of people hate that ride (Not me but I say just hit it right at opening and decide if its worth your trouble). Also, this probably goes without saying but some people don't realize how often it rains in the area: Watch the forecast and be prepared for the possibility that rain might try to ruin your trip. Though at least rain helps clear the crowds and can give you some fast rides on certain coasters.

My main annoyance with young kids is the small number of young men who think yelling at the top of their lungs right behind you (not even when a ride is moving) is the most hilarious thing in the world. Or similar things to that. But most of the young people I see are behaving themselves. In fact the only fight I've seen at the park was two middle aged guys trying to have it out after exiting The Beast last season, though they were broken up quickly by their groups, fortunately.

I don't even think of water park attractions by their names, though I'm not a big water park person anyways. Back to Screamin' Demon. I only have vague memories of the park before 1987, the year my family first got passes and started my lifelong love of coasters and KI. I didn't know until recently that the ride (apparently?) was called Demon at the time because everyone in my family called it Screamin' Demon. When did they officially change it?

I wonder how many people on KI Central are actually too young to know it as Drop Zone. Though it has been called Drop Tower longer than it was Drop Zone. I wish CF would have at least tried with the name.

I suspect that if they had more of the GG precut track (which is supposedly significantly stronger), you could potentially get a way with a lot less trimming. I've seen how fast the thing (before retrack) could barrel down the track after a good rain and it apparently doesn't completely tear the ride apart or cause injury. If it could run like that all the time, I would be thrilled.

It you look closely at the bottom of this, you can see that there's a second chain-track for the cable to return through: https://rcdb.com/11437.htm#p=122182 I think it just turns around tightly at the top of the hill.

This is probably meaningless but I walked by a group of associates on their way to Rivertown from Planet Snoopy and one guy said "Hey, that guy has our ride on his shirt" (referring to my Beast shirt)

You could fit a decent size coaster in that land if you go for a compact footprint and use the landscaped areas surrounding BLSC. Or you could go over the midway and use the areas next to Diamondback and the showplace or even The Vortex plot. Granted, I very much think they shouldn't do something like that. It makes more sense to build new coasters in the land surrounding the park that otherwise won't get used and keep the station near the midway. When BLSC meets it demise (I enjoy the ride and don't see an immediate need to remove it), that land would be better used for flat rides, food, shops, etc.

Apparently Gerstlauer created the actual restraints If it does turn out that someone at the park adjusted the seats to allow larger riders, then whoever did that and whoever employed them is fully at fault rather than the manufacturer. As someone previously pointed out, the belts on KI's Drop Tower are more of a sizing mechanism. It sounds like the Orlando Freefall has sensors for that same purpose and, from the manufacturer perspective, doesn't need belts. And belts aren't going to stop an operator determined to let more people ride.

Sounds like it. My brother and I were next to you in line on Delirium and I had a Beast shirt under a purplish over-shirt. Thought about trying to say hi to some other KIC people but I haven't been active here that much and I'm not especially outgoing (quite the opposite). Pleasure meeting you anyway. Today was actually my first ride on FAAC or any Vekoma FSC. So I can't say how it was running but can see why people call them hang-n-bangs (though at my height there's no head banging at least). Despite aiming to ride some low capacity rides (Monster, Scrambler, Zephyr, FAAC), I still managed 30 rides total if you count a trip up the tower.

I missed the days special events (Apr 29), despite being there for 12 hours. But I'm so glad I was there. Ride operations were firing on all cylinders and crowds were mostly pretty light. Decided to ride a number of rides that I hadn't ridden in a while and one I had never ridden. Racer was looking pretty (even the restraints got a refresh). The walk up to Adventure Express is a bit odd with the trees missing and the queue painted white. Met a guy wearing a King Cobra shirt in the Delirium line. I meant to ask if he was a KICer but didn't get the chance. Oh, and I like the new fries at Coney BBQ. The burnt ends were pretty good too.

It probably depends on whether your husband has used the dining plan at all (or how much) but the only way to know for sure is to go to or contact guest services.

I don't think any of the issues mentioned are related to the quality of ride operations and really it just sounded like a bad day with unrelated things happening coincidentally on the same day. 3 hour lines happen on Saturdays because those are the most crowded days. You won't see it on a high capacity ride but on a ride with limited capacity, like FoF, you certainly will. Doesn't matter how good the operations are. Also, I expect there to be staffing shortages this early in the season when many of their seasonal works are still in school. Security problems also seem to be their worst on Saturdays. My advice is to simply never go on Saturday. I haven't been to an amusement park on a Saturday in decades for many reasons.

To me, "no refunds" includes even when "Acts of God" shut down the park. That includes weather and international pandemics. It's written on the ticket and its a risk we all accept when we buy and travel. Some people could have used that money, sure, but the pandemic hurt Cedar Fair more than it hurt the people who simply lost out on the 2020 season. Also, isn't closing early for super low attendance kind of an industry thing? I know Paramount did it. How long does the park keep visit records for passes? They could just offer a refund to anyone that didn't get 3 visits in 2020 and 2021 (and a partial refund to those with 1 or 2).

I've never seen the whole thing and don't need to. It's just people talking and the line usually moves too fast to let you see it. I do like the theming inside the building, especially the references to old rides. Building off the FOF lore would have been cool. They did bring back a character from that for the official audio that's played in Area 72 which is great.

Just out of curiosity I've been looking at crowd-counting systems. Seems like there are "density" sensors that, with some machine learning, could determine how many people are in the monitored area at any given time. I wonder if anyone is specifically working on such a thing for ride queues. Its an interesting topic. EDIT: I just remembered we're having this discussion in the thread meant for actual wait time updates. Whoops.

I actually use queue-times.com https://queue-times.com/en-US/parks/60/queue_times It just pulls data from the park's system, so when its off, this site is off. However, it lists everything in a more compact way that I can read quickly and sometimes people report the time they waited and it will say something like "Anonymous user waited 10 minutes, 30 minutes ago"

Honestly I was just now thinking about a simple sensor that counts people instead of a physical turnstile, which I assume won't ever come back. That would make more sense than my first suggestion

These days you could probably do it using some sort of facial recognition system. Arguably creepy but maybe not if its not saving the facial data for use later, Probably not cheap though.

If I'm at the park and need Fast Lane for Congo Falls, I'm there on the wrong day.

Honestly, I found the wait times to work decently last year except during Haunt and Winterfest.

I more or less had the same deal last year. They really need to clear that up when you order. Does your mobile app have the "voucher" for your pass when you tap "Me?" I had that last year before I got the physical pass and was able to scan it to park, and scanned it at the entrance and had to specifically ask for my card. Like IndyGuy4KI said, the email confirmation should have your bar code too.