XGatorHead 8904

I'm glad you enjoyed your trip! HW is one of my favorite parks, and I agree with you about the funnel cakes. I've been there 4 times this year and I still haven't gotten one, and I only have one more trip there this year! I know your food was free this time, but if it isn't next time I suggest eating at Plymouth Rock Cafe. For a very reasonable price, you can get a full Thanksgiving meal. One meal there and I'm good for the day, and the quality is better than anything KI has to offer. Also, the fudge at Mrs. Klaus' Kitchen is excellent. Splashin' Safari is a very good waterpark and has a lot to offer. I had my best Scrambler ride ever on Scarecrow Scrambler during Holiwood Nights this year. Of course, the ride op knew a lot of us and was able to give us a good ride on it! I first met Mrs. Koch on my first visit when she was walking through the park with a pan & broom. That's when I first realized how much they care for this park. There's only been one trip to the park when I haven't seen her and it just wasn't the same not stopping to talk to her. Everyone I've met there has been wonderful. I'm looking forward to my visit there this Monday, it'll be Mrs. Gator and GatorGirl's first visit there since 2008.

Ah, yes. Raging Thunder, the flume where the ride op was smoking in the all-wooden station while telling people to get in the boats, and where they stopped every single log on the top of the lift so that they could pull the plug out of the back of each and every boat to drain it. My one and only trip to LeSourdsville Lake was in 2002, when Mr. Couch hired that fly-by-night group of thugs to operate the rides. Raging Thunder was just one of many issues I had that day, which ended up being my worst experience ever at a park, tied with my one and only trip to Kentucky Kingdom.

I know you're a little younger than me, but please tell me you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books! I used to love those things! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure I don't know, maybe they weren't as popular by the time you got to elementary school...

King Cobra is my favorite stand up coaster. I've been to Wonderland twice ('96 & '97) and I didn't ride SkyRider then because I heard it was a clone of KC, and KC was still around (I didn't ride Shockwave at KD when I went there in '01 for the same reason). I would gladly ride either one of those coasters now! Wonderland was a beautiful park, I'd love to make it back up there sometime.

You definitely caught me off guard! Who are you?

Page 67 You give your $3.75 to the cashier, and he soon hands you your blue ice cream cone. You go to the nearest bench to enjoy this treat. Even though you typically complain about Cedar Fair's food prices, even as recently as yesterday, as soon as you take your first taste of the sweetness that is the blue ice cream you are quickly reminded that it is one of the few food items at Kings Island that you will gladly hand over money for without reservation. The $1.10 soft serve from down the street just doesn't compare to that blueberry goodness. As you work your way down to the cone, you get lost deep in memories of your childhood, remembering all those trips from long ago when your mom would buy you a blue ice cream cone as that special treat you just had to have every time. Before you know it, you look down at your hand and you've eaten the entire thing. The thought flashes through your mind to get another, but you quickly suppress that because you really don't need the extra calories. Besides, after relaxing with a cool treat, you're now in the mood to get the adrenaline going again. Turn to page 47 if you want to ride Delirium next. Turn to page 39 if you want to go to Diamondback.

One thing to keep in mind too is that Sunday is Father's Day. The park offers the Bring A Friend deal for gold pass holders on both Mother's Day and Father's Day to try to get more people into the park, because without that the attendance is slightly lower than a typical Sunday. Being the kind of father that I am, one perfect Father's Day scenario would be to spend the day at a park with the family, but not all fathers feel the same way!

The sign yesterday still said that it was opening June 15th, so we were surprised when we walked by later in the day to see people sitting in Showplace with the pre-show music playing. We figured that they were just letting people in to watch a dress rehearsal.

When GatorGirl is finally tall enough to ride FD, I'm making certain her first ride is in 1-1! Easily the best seat on there.

^Thanks for letting us know the BB price. Twice what Splashin' Safari charges... Somehow I'm not surprised. At Schlitterbahn we had the option of getting the money back or getting a souvenir cup. We took the cup because it was our first time there.

I never leave valuables sitting out at Boomerang Bay. When I'm going there, everything gets left at home and I have my pass, some money and my car key on me. But even non-valuable stuff gets stolen there. Last year or the year before I had my KI refillable cup stolen from underneath our chair near the wavepool. Not valuable, but still annoying. When I'm at another waterpark, such as Schlitterbahn last year and Splashin' Safari this year, it's impossible to leave the valuables at home so I get a locker. I know Splashin' Safari's locker rentals are pretty reasonable, $10 with $5 of that being a deposit that you get back. I'll have to walk by BB's this weekend to see how much they're charging now, just out of curiosity.

Thanks for posting these videos. It's nice to take a trip down memory lane to the glory days of Paramount. Note: I said the glory days of Paramount, referring to the time before Viacom and later CBS made a mess of things. The glory years of the the park are entirely different IMO. However, in posting these you've kind of proven me wrong. The first 10 seconds of the first video show the park's phone number was 513-573-5800. Back in April I said: Before Paramount, the park shared the local 398 prefix. 754 came along a few years after Paramount bought the park. So before the 754 prefix, it was the other Mason prefix 573. However, I do believe when I first started at the park in 1989 the phone number started with 398 so I'm going to say I'm still right and that you just expanded on what I said before!

When I first read the original post, I misread it as saying Kings Island's 80's rides, shows and attractions, as in the stuff that was there in the 1980s. I was wondering why a news crew would be doing a nostalgia piece this year (even though this is the 40th operating year, the more widely recognized 40th anniversary isn't until next year).

You've got a good point, Terpy. Maybe I should try to make it to Camden this year. Mrs. Gator won't particularly like that you've put that thought into my head though. She's starting to think that I've been to enough parks already this year (and yet what are all those red dates in my signature?)

On the subject of food at Holiday World, may I suggest Plymouth Rock Cafe. For a very reasonable price, you can get a full Thanksgiving type meal with your main dish and three sides. It's easily my favorite restaurant in the park and I eat there everytime I go (except for this past trip during Holiwood Nights because they were feeding us a buffet meal that night). One lunch there is enough to last me all day!

This is very sad that this happened, and I hope they catch the guy. I doubt they will, but hopefully someone will recognize him from the sketch. As the parent of a child around that age (GatorGirl is 6), this hits close to home. GatorGirl never leaves my sight at the park. If she has to go to the restroom, we go in there with her. Even though we're getting to the point where it's getting kind of awkward to take her into the men's room, I still do it if my wife isn't with us. For the number of people that go, KI is relatively safe but you can never be too careful. It's like one woman said on the news last night on one of the stations that covered this story, bad people go anywhere. You can live in the nicest of areas, but that doesn't stop someone bad from going there. For those of you questioning why the mother waited so long to report the assault, have you thought of the possibility that maybe her son didn't tell her about it until much later? Many vicitms of sexual assault feel ashamed of the incident, and at such a young age, or any age for that matter, it's difficult to process what happened. I can see it as very likely that the boy didn't tell anyone until they were home. The assailant could have even threatened the boy, saying something like if he told anyone he would find and hurt him. If that happened, once at home the boy may have felt safe enough to tell his mom. It's saddening to see a few people on here blaming the victim (or in this case, the victim's mother), as happens all too often in situations of sexual assault. Could there have been better supervision of the child? Possibly, but we don't know the whole situation. Place the blame where it truly belongs, with the creep that did this.

I'm doing my share to help them. I typically only go once a year on opening day, but this year I'm going five times. Well, only four of those days are helping them reach their record since the first visit, for the Bert the Conqueror taping, the park wasn't open to the public.

You just can't seem to win this one can you gator? I can't. Last year it was on July 29th and I was on vacation then too. I just looked at my 2010 calendar and I was at Schlitterbahn that day. I guess I just need to stop planning July vacations!

I was really looking forward to participating this year since I couldn't last year. Unfortunately, that's the day we're flying back from vacation so I can't do it again.

Thanks Oldiesmann for finding my post from last year. As soon as I saw the original post in this topic I was going to find it but you saved me the trouble! I will probably be going to the park tonight so I will try to remember to see if it's there or not. I hope it is!

Not only is the stunt show "idea" the "most likely", it's the truth. A few of us on here remember the Action Zone Stunt Show, and yes, Captain Nemo is correct in saying the tower is the old tech booth for that show.

There was an episode of CSI this season that featured Walking with Dinosaurs (although I don't remember if they referred to it by that name). The way the kid died was far fetched, but it was entertaining. In fact, that very episode is on tomorrow night, 9:00 on CBS. Episode description from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640840/: As long as none of our dinos bite, I think we're safe!

Simple answer to the question: No. It's park policy that you must have your season pass processed before entering the park. On rare occasions they may make exceptions to this rule, and that's typically ONLY if the season pass processing line is extremely long or if there is something wrong with the processing equipment. But that's extremely rare. And as DIeseltech said, you usually don't have to wait too long for processing at this time of year.

Thanks for the reports Delirium_Guy! I like themeing on coasters like Avatar does, and from the initial computer animation I knew this coaster would be right up my alley, especially the river portion. To see the POV of the actual ride confirmed that. We may just have to head over to Tampa next year once GatorGirl gets 48" (I'm already planning on WDW and Legoland for next year). Our last visit to BGT was in 1997 on our honeymoon, but we both loved the park. It's about time to get there again!

Rollin' rollin' rollin', keep them doggies rollin'...