XGatorHead 8904

Unfortunately, they're not back. (I'm the oddball in red in the picture.) They had just gotten together at the park today for a mini reunion.

For dancers, they'll take a small group of you and you'll be taught a short routine, after which you'll dance back in front of a panel of judges (about 3-5 people I believe).

Ah yes, the Sinking of the S.S. Gator. To this day, I have never gotten on another pedal boat, although Mrs. Gator & GatorGirl do them any chance they get. Traumatized forever! https://KICentral.com/forums/index.php?/topic/15880-holiday-fest-at-the-beach-tr-122708/

There is still a house of the night (which includes scarezones), but I haven't seen the statue this year.

Slaughterhouse opened in Action Zone in 2009 and moved to its current Rivertown location in 2014. Madame Fatale's opened in 2012, and KillMart in 2014.

I completely agree with you. Madame Fatale's and Hexed both have great decor inside of them, and to take two of the most well decorated houses and turn them into "find your way in the dark" situations just seemed an odd choice to me. I was Admissions Supervisor at the time, and Kings Island never cleared the park out completely for FearFest. During the planning stages of FearFest, there had been talk about us doing that because other parks do it, but my manager and I spoke up against it due to it being a logistical nightmare. To have the entire park empty out, have day guest/FearFest combo people wait in the area outside the front gate, with more people coming up to wait to get in, while having non-FearFest attendees exit into all those people who were just standing there waiting would have been a lot of unnecessary hassle in our opinion. Instead, FearFest attendees could redeem their FearFest ticket for a wristband at multiple locations. Day guests could stay in the park, but only those with wristbands could ride the rides and go through the houses. We turned the front gate into enter only, and had bike racks, signs and people set up on the inside of the front gate to direct people to exit through the old season pass gate. That way we could keep the traffic flowing in one way and out another.

I'm a lot older than you. My body can only take so much popping, sprinting, crouching and slouching! With these Sundays, I already feel like I need to start conditioning myself a lot better than I did this year.

Thanks for posting this! I had no idea the park even did this since I'm tucked back away at the back of the park.

Thank you for the kind words about Slaughterhouse. We had a good number of returners come back, and a lot of our new people are killing it (pun intended) this year! We've won Maze of the Night two out of the four nights so far.

Thanks for the flashbacks, TombRaiderFTW! I haven't been on a paddle boat since. Mrs. Gator & GatorGirl have done them at Coney Island, Lakemont and Sharon Woods in the 14 years since then, but I've steered clear. I just wait for them on dry land! For those of you who weren't around for it, here is the epic tale of the Sinking of the S.S. Gator:

One of the reasons I'm still in a house and never went to a scarezone... No Boos don't work in the houses, so everyone is fair game.

I just got the email today that my pre-order has shipped. I wish I had known it was going to be available in the park, or that I thought to wait to see that is was, before I placed my order. I would have waited and got my gold pass discount and saved on shipping on top of that. Oh well. I saw the email about the pre-sale late one night and ordered right then and there. It's the equivalent of a late-night QVC order I guess.

I'll be there!

I'm not sure that it would have been better that way, at least to me. I'm more of a fan of in-your-face scares. With the distance that would be required keeping the actors away from the trains, those wouldn't be possible unless they stopped the train at each scene, which could potentially make the wait time in line unbearable for a busy Haunt night. Although on the other hand, the train does have a high capacity and they did use it for Tombstone, but that was only one stop. Riding by scenes and not stopping would be good for people who like tamer attractions, but I think a lot of your typical Haunt patrons may be disappointed with that.

I'm not sure if the electric chair on Torture Tower is the exact same one, but if it isn't it did the same thing. I only did that attraction once, when I was able to get away from working the front gate one of the first few weekends (later weekends, it was so crazy busy that there was no escaping my post in Admissions). While it was cool being up on the tower, the attraction overall was kind of lame. Terrible capacity and too short. I'm not a big fan of attractions with obvious hiding places like walls or stacks of crates and that's basically what it was. That's why Tombstone Terror-tory was never one of my favorites. Walking along WWC's exit path... ooh, there's a stack of crates, someone's behind it... ooh, there's a stack of crates, someone's behind it... ooh, there's a stack of crates, someone's behind it... repeat over and over. I know some great scareactors that worked that attraction, I just didn't like the setup. I only went through The Freezer once too. It was a tent near the Eiffel Tower and if I remember correctly was a chain link fence maze. It was well done and I always considered it to be the inspiration for Maze of Madness/Death Row in later years. I don't know if they pumped cold air into the tent because I went through on a chilly night. I remember because it was the same night I did Terror Tower and it was cold up there.

Got to ride this in February, once during the day and once at night. Great ride, especially at night with the headlights on the bikes!

Another item to consider is staffing. July & August are when auditions for both Haunt & WinterFest are held. To audition and hire performers, make-up artists and park decor people would be a lot of wasted time & effort only to decide later not to have it, so in my opinion now was the right time to make the call. That was new this year. Haunt had been open until 1:00 a.m. in the past but when the original park schedule came out pre-Covid, it was listed that Haunt would close at midnight each day.

It may be me, but I always think that saying something is wrong with a ride when there actually isn't is a bad idea. Saying that there's danger ahead, beware of The Beast lurking in the woods, don't go in the shed etc. is fine. Just a fine line. Even during normal years and even on slow nights, groups that are well spaced at the beginning of the house WILL catch up to each other. If I'm visiting a haunt and leading my group, I'll slow down if I see the group ahead of me, just because I don't want to be jammed up in a conga line. Plus, it's illegal for minors to work past 11:00 on a school night, and many of us non-minors have day jobs too. WinterFest's long stretch of open nights is alright, but Haunt is more strenuous and rest on Sundays is always appreciated by my weary bones before I have to go back to the main job on Mondays. Being Sam the Butcher is definitely more of a workout than being Mr. Tannenbaum! They've tried expanding to more days in the past but attendance was light. In addition to no reasonable parent letting their child work then, no reasonable parent would let their child go as a guest then either. Plus, guests having to work the next day cuts it down too. Adulting is hard.

Nice! No, I was not involved in this boat sinking, however, I was at MK a few weeks earlier on February 14th, chaperoning my daughter's band trip there. We had a FastPass for Jungle Cruise first thing, but as we were getting off the bus and headed towards the ferry, my daughter asked me if I could add one more friend to our FastPass plans for the day. I was already in charge of lining up FPs for eight people, what was one more? I told her I would try but it would be doubtful. I kept trying to add her on to Jungle Cruise with no luck by the time we got to the ride, so I let her take my spot (I later found out something that would have gotten her on with us without me sitting out, which I used a few days later for Tower of Terror, but I'm not posting what it was). I used the time to rework our FP times to get her added on to everything else that day. So, the closest I came to the ride was right outside the exit. It wasn't me!

They have a 1:1 scale train display in Rivertown that you can actually ride! But seriously, that would be a nice addition. "Holiday Sing-Along" is, I assume, in Brewhouse. I know they had it there in 2017.

Carowinds is doing one this year. https://www.carowinds.com/play/winterfest/attractions/wonderland-parade I've talked to several other KI WinterFest performers and they (and I) would love to see that here too, but it's up to The Powers That Be. Who knows what the future holds...

...and sweaters/sweatshirts, and long pants, and gloves, and hats. Unless you're malem.

^ I hope so. The 2005 parade was good!

I agree with this. Cavern is one of the best decorated haunts the park has and with the current setup it's hard to tell. Same with Hexed at Cedar Point, which is one of the best decorated up there and it's Lights Out too. They tried that years ago and having worked it then, those nights were dead. However, Cedar Point has their indoor ones open on Sundays. My old body can only stand working Haunt two days a week though.

I remembered another one from this past weekend: I / Sam the Butcher was letting groups into Slaughterhouse and a couple with two small children, about 3 and 5 years old, came up with the children wearing No Boo necklaces. I told the mom, "Just to let you know, the No Boos aren't valid in the houses and you have to turn them off." The mom proceeded to turn the daughter's No Boo off and told her "Don't worry, they won't scare you, they'll still be able to see it." I told her "No, they WILL scare anyone who comes into the house, the No Boos don't work in there." The mom then told the girl again "No, they won't scare you." I let them in... I said "Well, I warned them..." to the two groups of guests that were next in line in the regular and Fright Lane lines. That then started a conversation between us about the No Boos. We don't purposely target those with No Boos, we target everyone, but a lot of times we'll go easy on the little kids. However, with the pop scares it can sometimes be impossible to tell who you're popping out at in a group. Needless to say, the kids came out crying.