TombRaiderFTW

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?

A friend of mine's favorite coaster was Son of Beast. After its demolition, it was Firehawk. I told them in no uncertain terms that they're not allowed to like Adventure Express. @VortexBFForever, that was a wonderful trip report, as usual. I so enjoy reading your reflections on your day, so this was an extra treat, even if the occasion wasn't the happiest.

I recognize that what I'm suggesting goes against the ToS, but I'd almost argue that Shaggy IS a source. He knows people. I can't think of a time where he spoke with certainty about something where it ended up being blatantly untrue. He's even the author of several posts on Kings Island's blog.

They're gonna do WHAT to @selective?

^ Yes, because Morgan's not a company anymore. Chance Rides absorbed them, though, and may be up to the challenge if the money is right.

Speaking of that Bat station picture (which is awesome, by the way): how did the post-station, pre-lift transfer track work? In my head, I always imagined The Bat's transfer track being like Vortex's, but that's not what's shown there. And there's such a slope on each track that it makes me feel like that transfer track must have been at a strange angle.

Okay, I get why enthusiasts don't like Six Flags. Train wraps aren't pretty. Magic Mountain and SFA are dumps. SFNE's operations almost seem like they're intended to be as exasperating and slow as possible. This post, however, is hyperbolic. You realize that Six Flags parks HAVE PR folks, right? And many SF parks have decent operations? And some of their parks like Great America, Great Adventure, Over Texas, Over Georgia, and Fiesta Texas are, dare I say it, pretty? This is like saying all Cedar Fair parks are sterile because you maybe didn't like how treeless and concrete-y Michigan's Adventure and Dorney Park are. A lot of enthusiasts are determined to paint the entire SIX chain with broad strokes, and I personally don't feel like that's particularly fair. Not to mention that the folks at SIX HQ aren't the same ones who acquired parks twenty years ago, and we have no true indication yet how this administration will handle the Six Flags-ification of places like Darien Lake and Frontier City (outside of a name change.) The people at the top surely aren't robots who sit in meetings and go, "Beep boop, must change the ride names to DC characters' names." Note that both parks' 2020 additions do not feature IP. I think that sort of polarized expectation makes more sense for Kinzel's Cedar Fair, actually. Anyway, I'm not a fan of the idea of SIX buying FUN. Why? Because, if I can do some armchair CEOing, I honestly don't feel like SIX's current "add something to every park every year" is that great of a business model. Perhaps that brings in people, but the scope of the rides they're adding feel a little small across the board, except for whichever park happens to get the coaster for the year. It feels like the highly-performing parks are carrying the dead weight of the underperforming ones. That, combined with the "guess when it's gonna open" construction schedule, makes a lot of their additions feel a little forgettable. But at the same time, they're adding flat rides, which Cedar Fair seems to be a little hesitant to do across all of their parks, so it's not the worst thing ever. At least they don't have any completely stagnant parks.

Honestly, I feel exactly the same way about Son of Beast. When it was operating, there were a handful of enthusiasts on here who liked elements of it, but almost no one was out here declaring it their favorite coaster. Then it went SBNO for 3 years and all of these fans and people who were obsessed with the idea of The Beast "family" started popping out of the woodwork. Which, like, is fine--y'all do you--but I find myself wondering often if they actually rode the thing or just thought it looked cool and really liked the name and marketing. (Source.)

"Hmm, I wonder what that would feel like? Please, tell me more," pondered the Tomb Raider: The Ride/The Crypt fan aloud.

Humanity is better off. Anaconda does not abide by the Geneva Convention. I think I honestly had to process Vortex's removal a bit before posting my full thoughts. I don't have too much love for it, but it's been at the park since my childhood. It was my first looping coaster. Seeing the double loop from the midway is as synonymous with Kings Island as The Beast or the Eiffel Tower for me. It's a bit like losing that coworker you've worked with for years and didn't particularly like, but you could rely on them to be there and do their job. I think one of the parts of this I'm sad about is losing the sound of its lift hill and brakes, because those are such iconic summer sounds for me. But, of course, everything has its time. I don't mean this in some backhanded, outraged way, but I do feel like the park's lineup grew a little more homogeneous with this announcement. I'm not about to swear off the park or anything, but there was something cool about the mix of old and new we had going on. A classic Arrow looper isn't something that any other company offers something comparable to. There's just something about the way an Arrow rides, for better or for worse, that has never been duplicated and likely never will. I feel about this how I felt when Wildcat and Disaster Transport left CP--I think their replacements were better experiences, but the ride lineup lost a little diversity that I had previously enjoyed. But again, I'm sure there's more to this announcement than the park just deciding to ruin everyone's day, haha. If metal fatigue was the cause, then a full-scale replacement a la Hulk would be in order... Is Vortex worth that compared to a new ride in that spot? As others have mentioned, the answer is likely "no," if such a thing is even possible with a 32 year-old Arrow. I do think that whatever replaces it also needs to be iconic. I love B&M, and they make great and reliable rides, but in my opinion, a B&M is pretty rarely iconic. Fury 325 and Thunderbird? Absolutely--because both break the mold and offer something distinct from start to finish that is not only unique to the parks they're in, but also to the roller coaster world as a whole. But honestly, a lot of B&Ms offer a supporting role that round out a park experience but do kind of fit the generic roller coaster experience. They're fun and fast but kind of forgettable? Like, I like Rougarou and think it helps make Cedar Point what it is, but how many people, enthusiast or general public, are going to Cedar Point specifically to ride it? (I only single out B&M because of Cedar Fair's reliance on them, which I don't think is a bad thing--it's just a thing.) I think Vortex's removal is a really special opportunity for the park. They've just removed a looping coaster with a 48" height restriction. It's more accessible to the younguns than Invertigo, Banshee, or Flight of Fear, and I'd wager a guess that it was many people's first looping coaster. I don't personally feel like the best replacement is a gigantic, ultra-intense record-setter with a 54" height restriction. That made sense with the transition from Son of Beast to Banshee, but I don't feel like that's the case here. And the 48" looping coaster world is an interesting one--that's where you find rides like Hangtime at Knott's, Railblazer at Great America, and Twisted Timbers at Kings Dominion. And I'm curious to know what Cedar Fair's feelings are with RMC since Steel Vengeance. Especially now that we've gotten that giga, I'm really intrigued to see what they do with that area. There's not a particular model that leaps out at me as a possibility.

There's a little part of me that remembers @bkroz's re-imagining of Kings Island and kinda wants to see a Zamperla Moto Coaster with cars themed to horses or something like Verbolten (but with a unique theme) in that area. Especially if they used the area outlined by @Klabergian Empire and even maybe put Action Theater out of its misery in the process. I just really hope it's something unique and family-oriented and maybe a little terrain-y. I'm a little weary of the big coaster cycle (I like B&M, but I'm getting a little tired of Cedar Fair's dependence on them), and we're losing something with a 48" height restriction. Not to mention that Valravn is only 3 years old, so it'd be a little surprising to see a dive coaster show up at KI that soon since a lot of KI's customer base seems to be aware of CP's existence. Complete pipe dream incoming: it'd be even cooler if that was where a dark ride was put in and the exterior was themed to a carnival sideshow of sorts. Or something thematically appropriate for an amusement park from yesterday. Or even a reimagining of Coney Island's Lost River. Or literally anything besides another -est-iest B&M, haha.

No no, they're installing lift track, not side track. Also, I don't know of a way to narrow B&Ms down by height on RCDB, but I'm sure the Family Inverted Coaster they did for Happy Valley in Beijing is in the running. According to RCDB, it's 65.6' tall. Link.

(Source.) It's fine, I'm not bitter towards that ride after working it or anything. I do agree with this, though. VF has a really beautiful location in the park. When its day comes, I hope its replacement is equally as picturesque.

...Were they not before? I feel like I've read about those being prohibited in the rules for a lot of major parks for a while now. Does this just mean they'll enforce it?

I would imagine that "attraction" does not exclude non-coaster installations. Smuggler's Run could not win Best New Roller Coaster, but it could be in the running for Best New Attraction Installation.

This might very well be the best post I've read on here in a very long time.