XGatorHead 8904

^Snowflakes? I was with stalkerchick on Thursday, and she bought a pair. Uncle Henry and I of course made fun of her for wasting her money, until she put them on and let us try them too. In her pair, all the white lights turned into hearts!

I was shocked when I found out from rotag on Facebook. I never got to meet him, but spoke with Pat on 3 of my 4 visits to the park. I love Holiday World, it's a legacy which he could be proud of. Thoughts and prayers go out to the Koch family, as well as the entire Holiday World family. He was so young, it just shows you never know what can happen. Appreciate your loved ones while you can, and savor every moment you have together.

Actually, if you look a little closer at the list you linked to, there are not 6, but 4 (or more accurately, 3 now). Pepsi-Cola Loop at Ocean Beach Amusement Park and Pepsi-Cola Loop at Ffrith Beach Fun Parc are the same coaster but relocated, and Pepsi Ripsaw and Pepsi Orange Streak at Mall of America are the same coaster but renamed. So a Pepsi sponsership is even rarer than you thought! Off topic, but in looking at the other Pepsi coasters, this image struck me: http://www.rcdb.com/909.htm?p=4275. I've never seen a modern coaster with a loop that is that much of a perfect circle. A large majority of loops are more elliptical than that one!

From the article Terpy posted in post #1: What parks has the author been frequenting? None of the ones I've been going to! Although I imagine that if you're not a fan of rides, you could have this opinion... EDIT: Actually, I can think of one park I've been to like that. My one and only trip to Lesourdsville Lake, the one year it reopened. *shudder*

One ringy dingy.... two ringy dingy... I took off work August 6th, 2008 so I could go to the announcement. I was standing in the planter area underneath the trees so I could get a clear view of the stage. And for those of you that have asked if I wanted to go to places like Holiday World during the week, and I've turned you down because I'm saving the two vacation days I have that are still unscheduled, this is why. You never know when a public announcement may be scheduled that I want to be there for! My bosses know me too well that they could put two and two together if I were to call in "sick" on a day that KI has an announcment!

When we were in high school, a friend of mine worked that game. He could do it one handed, and loved to show off to the park guests "how easy it is to win". Of course, few did win. I loved watching him interact with the guests like that. It was so funny when they couldn't do it!

We went to Hersheypark last year we loved the amount of flats they had. This was one of the parks that I had in mind when I posted about other parks keeping flats... of course I didn't know that they hadn't been kept at HP, but had been newly installed. Thank you for this. I was going to head in this direction in my last post, but couldn't come up with a way to word it without sounding negative, so I deleted it. Traditional flats installed in a park like KI would be a capacity nightmare, but if there were several (or just a couple) put in at the same time, that would help alleviate that problem. Much like what they did in 1986 by installing Zephyr and Skylab at the same time. Ummm.... Zephyr's still there...

Speaking of flats, my company picnic is at Coney tomorrow. I walked into work today with a guy in my department and he asked me if we were going, I said yes. He asked "Since you go to Kings Island so much, doesn't Coney seem 'ghetto' to you? I mean, at KI you have The Beast, and Coney just has the Python." I told him "No, we love going to little parks that have different rides." People tend to undervalue the fun that can be had on traditional flats. Mrs. Gator, GatorGirl and I love tilt-a-whirls, trabants, flying bobs, ferris wheels, giant slides & scramblers (and if you've never ridden the Scrambler at Coney... KI's pales in comparison!). I would love to see some at KI... so many have been taken out over the years. When I look back to what was there in the 70's when I was a kid compared to now... so many fun rides now gone. I can't argue much with the choices they've made in ride installations over the years (with a very few exceptions), but I wish they could have kept a lot of the old rides too *cough*FlyingEagles*cough* like other parks have managed to do.

Let's see, according to Shaggy the good old days ended in 1988. I started working at the park in 1989 and every year until 2004... OMG! It was ME that ruined the park! I sincerely apologize, and will now go into hiding... -Gator, who misses that first year of selling doughnuts, brownies, elephant ears and cookies at Bakery on International Street...

Not too long ago, there was a third water ride in Rivertown... Kenton Cove Keelboat Canal. There's several of us on here that miss that ride, even if it was close to two others...

What a great looking ride! Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is one of my all-time favorite parks. I just completely love the atmosphere there. I'd love to get back there sometime, especially with the addition of this ride. When we went, we had only planned to stay about two hours but spent almost all day there (and then had to drive the curvy Pacific Coast Highway to San Simeon in the dark!) Thanks for posting the link, Shaggy! Now how many SCBB enthusiasts are on websites saying "ZOMG I hate the name Haunted Castle! It's so generic! How hard can it be to come up with something more creative?"

I wonder if the ESPN Club at Disney's Boardwalk Resort in Orlando is going to remain open. The article didn't mention this one, but if the restaurant at Disneyland is staying open hopefully there's a good chance this one will too.

Nice TR. I love taking quick little trips like this. I'm actually planning on taking one for a couple hours after work tomorrow, mainly to see the Rock Band show since I won't have any other time to see it before it ends Sunday. Hopefully the rain stays away for me! I agree that the ride ops have been helpful with trying to accomodate us larger riders. I've never had them be more helpful with this than they have been this year. Kudos to the ride ops!

This Sunday, at 7:00 eastern, NBC is showing "The Making of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter". The description according to tvguide.com: I haven't read any of the HP books, and have seen only parts of 2 HP movies (I'll see them all eventually... I plan on watching them in a marathon over several days once they're all released), but I'm excited about this. I'll definitely be recording this special. We're talking about going back to Universal next year, since the last time we were there was a month after IOA first opened to the public... yeah, it's been a few years! I'm wondering just how much of the new dark ride they're going to show... that's what I'm most interested in. Just thought a few of you would be interested and would want to know about this special!

That would be the Food Service department.

Unfortunately competition has gotten so much stronger than it was back in the 80's, and it's harder to book acts. When Riverbend opened, a lot of acts that used to play Timberwolf started going there. Jimmy Buffett is a prime example of this. Since then, smaller venues such as Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, which opened in 1991, and PNC Pavilion at Riverbend, which opened last year, have further tightened the market. These two venues in particular are more competition than Riverbend's main pavilion, since they are more similar in capacity to Timberwolf and therefore would be in more direct competition for acts that would draw similar sized crowds. With more places trying to book acts, the more difficult it is. Not to mention A LOT has to do with the media companies that own the radio stations and the promoters that book each venue. There is a lot of politics involved in booking acts to play various venues... I know through the years Kings Island and the promoter(s) they use have worked hard to try to bring quality acts to Timberwolf.

That explains a lot. Most of my time in that area on Saturday was between 9:00 and 9:30. A little before 9:30 we went over to Coney and went back to the SSLS area just before fireworks (or no fireworks as it turned out). No wonder I was underwhelmed. According to the park's website: We went as soon as we saw the lights on and didn't see any of the three shows. I guess technically by turning the lights on, it means the display has started, but we missed out on the main event. Why wouldn't they start doing the shows when they first turn the lights on? Why wait a half an hour? I don't know, it doesn't make sense to me. I'll give it another chance, believe me. But how was I (or any park guest) to know that there was more to it than what we saw between 9:00 and 9:30? Especially with the way the park's website is worded. It doesn't say anything about 9:30. Neither does the show schedule, which says "Dusk to Close". From the comments on KIC and Facebook, I seem to be in the minority in my opinion (which I consider that to be a good thing in this situation). I guess it was just a matter of being in the right place at the wrong time, and everyone else was there at the right time...

If this is the case, that would explain a lot behind my not so favorable comments in the Snoopy's Starlight Spectacular topic. Most of my time in that area was between 9:00 and 9:30. After that we went to Coney, then back to the SSLS area just before 10:00. I wonder why they wait half an hour before they start the shows. It would make sense to me to start the shows when the display starts...

I'm glad to see your trip went well! Sounds like your daughter surprised you, since you said she was a little bit of a chicken! I love taking my daughter there and having those experiences with her. There's nothing else like it.

Yup, I certainly didn't know about the three parts until you posted about them a little while ago. Who knows, maybe they'll change the format. I saw plenty of park management in that area tonight taking it all in!

I walked through that area today and completely missed the arch! What was I looking at? I did notice rather long poles along the walkway between the candy shop and BBoBH. Three poles each on either side of the walkway, about 10-15 ft high. They kind of looked like flagpoles but shorter. Wonder what these are for? We'll soon see...

^And for 20 nickels, you can buy 3-D glasses at all entrance points to Snoopy's Starlight Spectacular! Ryan, I must have hit it at the wrong time, and maybe they started the shows after I was there, even though we stood a good while in the lights.

^That's exactly what I'm thinking and hoping. I've been involved in plenty of events to know that they can be a learning process!

I went tonight and I liked certain things about it and disliked certain things. The lights looked very nice on the trees and bushes. The giant flowers that moved and opened and closed were great too... I wasn't expecting those. It certainly brought a lot of people into that area which typically wasn't all that busy before. The bubbles around the Sally light-up thing were a nice touch. But I was just expecting more. I thought I had read that the lights were supposed to sync up to the music. For the most part they didn't. The giant stars seemed to from time to time, but the lights on the trees and bushes didn't. They would dim and get brighter on occasion, but that's it. They were pretty much on all the time. They had characters out for people to meet, which was a nice touch. But the location was bad and caused traffic flow problems. Sally was out in front of the floral clock, with the line to meet her stretching towards the tower. So if you wanted to continue around the curved path from Rivertown to Coney or vice versa, you had to jut up the walkway towards the tower and go around the line, then back down again. I saw plenty of people who weren't aware of having to go around the line, and as they were inadvertantly stepping in the way of people taking pictures of their friends/family with Sally, Sally's escort had to redirect them around the line. Also, besides the "Charlie Brown stripe" on the 50 ft level of the tower, the LED lights on the tower weren't on very much. The only time I saw them on was when we were in line for Monster, and the white LED's were flashing all up and down the tower. They looked nice when they were on. We were in the area for a good amount of time... we were in the general vicinity from 8:30 to 10:00... in that time we rode Carousel, Scrambler, went to look at the lights, rode Monster, then went back to the lights and waited for the fireworks. So it wasn't like I was in a completely different section of the park and missed them. And then there was the fireworks epic fail. They announced the fireworks at 10:00 and played the soundtrack. No fireworks. We waited. At 10:15 they announced the fireworks and played the soundtrack. No fireworks. We waited. At about 10:25, they played the park closing announcement. No announcement that there were not going to be any fireworks. Pretty much just, "Hey, by the way, we're closing now." Most people got the hint from that, as we did. For me, it was pretty much "hey look at the pretty lights - ok, I'm done now". Maybe they were having opening night technical difficulties. Or maybe I misunderstood the concept of Snoopy's Starlight Spectacular. I don't know. It's a nice area to walk through, but based on tonight, that's about it. Hopefully it was just technical difficulties. We'll see. I know a lot of people worked hard to put it together.

You should be fine with that. Since Cincinnati's hockey team, the Cyclones, don't play the Pens, most people would probably be indifferent.