TombRaiderFTW

Google Fi user here. Originally had a moto X4, now have a Pixel 3a XL. Fi uses T-Mobile's and Sprint's networks, and there's a way you can force your phone to use one or the other. On T-Mobile, unless the park is super busy, I have great coverage and data speeds. On Sprint, I have similar coverage, but almost never any data. But, that's also an issue outside the park as well, and I think that's more of a Fi issue than a Sprint issue.

I'm intrigued to read, but I think the link is broken.

Maybe putting the trains back on the track?

Yeah! I dunno if you've ever ridden another Top Spin, but they're very different ride experiences from what ours did. They're very disorienting and noticeably faster. They're worth a try, though I think the only one left in the U.S. at this point is at Six Flags Great Adventure. All the Cedar Fair ones are gone now.

^ I wouldn't say "misused." It was the only ride of its size and type, and the Ohio ride licensing department (Department of Agriculture) doesn't allow rides to operate outside of manufacturer recommendations. It's more that the design itself was safe, but it wasn't a great concept for a ride system for how big it was. Standard HUSS Top Spin models (Top Spin, Top Spin 2, Suspended Top Spin) are much smaller and more nimble with how they move. Ours was the only Giant Top Spin ever made, and its movements felt very... I guess the word I'd use is clunky? It was just very obvious how much power was going into moving the very heavy components. Like, I have no doubts that figuring out how to power the thing was a big hurdle for the park. You know how giants in movies are characterized by how slowly they talk and move because of how big they are, and they can accidentally punt normal-sized people into the next country with how grand and sweeping and powerful their movements are? It was like that, except for a ride. So when they started running the intense first cycle as The Crypt, the clunks got clunkier. It wasn't anything unsafe, but it just felt like the whole system was being strained more. (The fact that they removed an entire row of seats from the gondola before that cycle was implemented does give the impression that the whole thing was too heavy to do the intense cycle as it was originally built.) And apparently it was being strained more, because its final ride cycle was incredibly tame--the ride spun like a ferris wheel, rotating forward twice (and locking the gondola once so you'd flip once), then rotating backward twice (again locking once so you'd flip once.) It was a gentler cycle, and again, you could kinda get the vibe that it was easier on the ride, too.

It wasn't. The best comparison I can think of is Beast, but with a slightly larger budget for queue theming? Like, the architecture was well done and gave it a vibe, but there were no moving parts besides the ride itself and flames coming out of the top of the faux mountain it was built into. Definitely no story or anything like that. I just thought the vibe was really cool. And nope, it wasn't themed to any movie to my knowledge.

Wow, I am having SO many flashbacks to my life on here and KIExtreme from 2008-2011. It's also really entertaining to me that Defunctland's video about Tomb Raider: The Ride is being shared around here and quoted. Many of his videos are inspired by and based on the Theme Park Tourist articles written by @bkroz (with permission.) He, TombraiderTy, myself, and many others used to speculate quite a bit about The Crypt's future and how it could have been rethemed back in those days. It's just really interesting seeing all that stuff come full circle, in a way, ten-ish years later. I'm old. So, if I could remember where I saw this, I'd link to it, but its location has been lost to the sands of time. I'm fairly certain it was here, but I haven't been able to find it via the search engine. It's been years, so this may not be accurate to what the original person said, if they were correct at all. Someone who worked for the park (in maintenance, I want to say?) once said that Tomb Raider's effects were designed in such a way that made them very difficult to repair without hiring the theming manufacturer(s) to repair them. I believe that person suggested that it was to help sell warranties, but the park/Paramount Parks didn't go for it. I want to say that the same thing was mentioned about Italian Job: Stunt Track? Even though Paramount by far wasn't doing a great job with theming upkeep, how nonfunctional TRTR's theming became in its later days would suggest that something was up. I DO definitively remember someone (@Shaggy? @The Interpreter? someone else?) saying that TRTR was possibly intended to be the start of a huge transformation of the park, if it had been successful. Given the Universal-like budget and nature of the ride, I love to daydream about what could have been. I can't imagine Paramount would have stuck to the original themed areas forever. I think Cedar Fair eventually got the hint that theming is what made TRTR what it was. In its last season (2011), the queue and ride cycle featured pieces of the Inception score. It wasn't the TRTR score or experience by any means, but I honestly think I appreciated that ride in 2011 more than any other year it operated as The Crypt. Lame as the ride cycle was, the Inception bwaah bwaaaaahs made it more of its own experience instead of it simply being "that ride that used to be Tomb Raider." It still was that, of course, but less so. I don't remember the exact track they originally played, but up till 2011, I know they played the Adventure Express "blowing wind" effect from before its second tunnel while The Crypt was loading/unloading riders. The Inception score just added more mystique to the whole thing. The Crypt ride cycle switch was so jarring, too. If they weren't using Kings Dominion's Crypt's exact cycle from 2008 to mid-2009, they were using one very similar to it. It was forceful as heck. You'd go into repeated spins, and it'd about plaster you into the seats. And then it went to a ferris wheel that did flips. Like, it wasn't shocking that the ride was tearing itself apart. Even in the ferris wheel cycle, there was such a powerful CLUNK when the gondola would lock during the cycle to flip you upside down. I'm speculating, but it just felt like the ride system wasn't capable of doing much more than what it did as Tomb Raider. It just didn't feel built for intensity. Tomb Raider: The Ride was such an anomaly. I truly don't think we'll ever see a seasonal park try something on that scale again. It was sincerely the sort of thing you'd find at a Disney or Universal park. I thought it was incredible: it's what got me interested in the industry. I also accuse it of giving me a preference for jungle adventure-y themes and rides and experiences, because visiting Ta Prohm in Cambodia is on my bucket list, and Volcano at KD, Crypt at KD, and Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland were/are some of my favorite rides, too. It's very odd and sad for me to see some of them go. But, that's the amusement industry and life.

(Image source: visitkingsisland.com. Modified with: imgflip.com. Hotel: Trivago.)

He's tiptoeing the line. The 11th Commandment is not broken but is highly suspicious of his shenanigans.

This isn't much of a contribution, but I just want to say: as someone who grew up in the Paramount era and developed an initial love of the industry because of Paramount's later-era additions, I'm really enjoying and appreciating all of the backstory and insight being shared here. Thanks for sharing, everyone. Following Dave Cobb on Twitter and YouTube a while back has given me a taste of this kind of stuff, but this has been really nice.

I don't remember if this was enthusiast speculation or actually based on things park officials have said, but I vaguely recall it being said here a while back that the park has a 5-year plan that might include, say, "add a coaster in 4 years," but maybe the finer details of that coaster aren't decided until this two-ish year period mentioned here. Like, maybe the park decided in 2015 or something that they'd add a coaster in 2020, but they didn't start soliciting ideas from manufacturers until 2017 or 2018.

I respectfully disagree. I think the least they could do is inform everyone of its closing prior to the end of the season so that everyone can get in last rides. Which they did. And even that used to not be the norm in the amusement park world. "There are even exceptions to that these days," mused this longtime fan of Volcano: The Blast Coaster, Tomb Raider: The Ride, The Crypt at Kings Dominion, and Curse of DarKastle. Anything above and beyond a fair warning in advance of closing is wonderful and greatly appreciated, but I hesitate at agreeing that it's "the least they could do". For whatever reason, parks seem hesitant to livestream deconstruction and testing. It's been a thing for years now that webcams quietly go down when testing starts on new coasters. To me, it makes sense that parks would be extremely hesitant to show those kinds of events, as amusement parks carry a stigma with the public as being unsafe. If something goes wrong during deconstruction or testing, it's going to come across as "the park is unsafe." You don't want to provide any evidence for that idea, because parks that are seen as unsafe don't have guests coming through the turnstiles. See also: Alton Towers after the Smiler crash, and especially after investigation revealed the park was to blame. There's a lot of emotion involved in tearing down a 30+ year old roller coaster, but at the end of the day, the park is a business, and they're going to do what they're going to do to keep money flowing in. I understand that it's frustrating to not see Vortex's deconstruction (or Orion's lift hill topping, or any new coaster's initial test runs), but we're on the downhill side of the off season (not including Winterfest since it's not really coaster-riding season). In two months and some change, we're gonna be riding Orion and seeing what the park looks like without an Arrow looper in it. I hope it doesn't take that long to get a webcam back or a view of Vortex's deconstruction looks like, but if it is, it's not going to be the end of the world. And in comparison to how far we were from opening day 2020 at the end of Haunt 2019, these two months of waiting aren't that long.

Off the top of my head, that tropical-themed stand between the Eiffel Tower and Rivertown whose name escapes me. But on the other hand, it's barely ever open, so I'm not sure it really counts.

Hurler. It's been a few years since I rode either of the Hurlers (as Hurler, anyway--Twisted Timbers is great, though), but when they're running well, they're very fun coasters. In my limited experience, though, Carowinds's was usually the one running better. Kings Dominion's was just kind of mean, and I remember liking Grizzly better.

Arrow: Adventure Express B&M: Fury 325 Intamin: Intimidator 305 Wood: GhostRider Vekoma: Nighthawk

I agree with this. The original Diamondback camera did not provide live video. It took individual pictures and would move from point to point around the ride. I don't remember when the change was, but this isn't the original Diamondback camera.

I couldn't agree more that Kings Island in 2010 is drastically different from Kings Island in 2020. As nostalgic as I am for the Paramount's Kings Island of my childhood, I love the direction the park has taken this decade, especially since 2014. Cirque, theming and attention to details in theming, Haunt's houses becoming higher quality, Carnivale, Banshee, Mystic Timbers, Orion... It's been a good decade for the park. I don't feel like it's living in the shadow of the de-Paramounting like it did 10 years ago. It's also been such an interesting decade in the amusement industry, period. Ten years ago, enthusiasts mostly didn't know who RMC was--they were just very curious to see this new red steel track design being installed on Texas Giant. Wooden coasters didn't do inversions. Six Flags went from bankruptcy recovery to new rides at every park every year. The Kinzel era of Cedar Fair mercifully ended and the Ouimet/Zimmerman eras began. China and the UAE exploded with parks. We had *zero* operating Harry Potter areas at Universal parks and *two* operating giga coasters in the world this time ten years ago. I'm excited to see where the next decade goes.

Someone pointed out here that almost all of the lift hills in the park point roughly in the same direction. When they pointed it out, I was curious if sound ordinances had something to do with that. Now that this has come up, I'm even more curious.

^ I think its original intent was to keep the skid brakes dry. Wet skid brakes do not function as well as dry ones. Why they keep it now, though, is beyond me. Carowinds and Kings Dominion had or have clones with much more pleasant-to-sit-on brake runs.

^^ So you want it to stay where it is, but in pieces and with concrete and zero trees for as far as the eye can see? You know... I hadn't really thought of Backlot being themed to a mine train, but I actually really like that idea. It'd be like our own little version of Hong Kong Disneyland's Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars. It could even be, like, a haunted mine train with lots of effects in the tunnel from the MCBR to the former splashdown. Aaaaand now I'm gonna be daydreaming about this all afternoon.

Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Disneyland, and Animal Kingdom, for sure. All of those offer immersive experiences just being in the park that no other park quite does for me. Visiting each of those for the first time changed how I thought about the amusement industry. They're incredible (although I think I'll always be a little salty that BGW doesn't have Curse of DarKastle anymore.)

I feel like that is more for noise reasons than a style choice. People live closer to the north side of the park than the south, and people scream on first drops.

Because whoever is in charge of choosing which rides KD has for WF is a Grinch?

Yeah, I'm with Joshua. I don't find the park's pizza appalling, but it's got so little in common with the restaurant version, which I like a lot more. I find it kind of interesting, actually, that LaRosa's puts their name on something that's so different from (and, in my humble opinion, so worse than) their actual project.

I've been lurking on this thread since I do also find the timing of this webcam blackout curious, even if there's nothing to it. (Which, for the record: the loss of a webcam is not some grave injustice. Disappointing? Sure. But some perspective might go a long way for some folks.) This is the first thing that has made a light go off in my head. *If* the park had any control over the timing of the webcam blackout, the Yukon Striker incident would make a lot of sense for why they chose when they did. I'm still leaning towards the "something big went wrong and they're fixing it" explanation, though. If they wanted to control 100% of what the public sees of the lift hill construction, they would have blacked out the Weatherbug camera, too. You could argue that maybe the Weatherbug camera is too far away to see anything of importance or doesn't refresh often enough to capture anything if there is an accident, and I wouldn't disagree. But I'm arbitrarily choosing to believe that this wasn't 100% under their control, and they're doing their best to fix it. Side note: didn't Chad say something somewhere about the old webcams reaching the end of their service lives? Am I mixing multiple things together and confusing myself? Is it possible that cameras of the quality the park uses aren't something you can have delivered quickly, so it's taking time to get their replacements?