TombRaiderFTW

^ Gemini is super underrated and gets constantly overlooked for all the bigger rides at Cedar Point. It really is a great ride. It just doesn't make my list of favorite first drops.

I've had a bit of a crazy weekend, but now that I finally have a chance to write about it: I was at the announcement for Thunderbird. A few thoughts: 1. Coming out of the legal battles, I didn't really know what I thought of either Koch involved. If the plan is to have Leah and Lauren Koch eventually take ownership of the park, I think I'm now okay with the status of things, and not because of Thunderbird. I love Leah's and Lauren's passions and their dedications to their dad's vision for the place. We will see next year what moves the park makes to adapt to the increased business from Thunderbird, but for now, I will say that I'm very impressed with how they have stepped up and with their excitement for the future of the park. It was like watching Will all over again. 2. I was a little hesitant about the idea of a Wing Coaster at Holiday World before, as I haven't been enamored with the ones I have ridden. Tentatively, I do feel inclined to think that the launch and the terrain aspect of Thunderbird will make it a decent ride. My ultimate judgement, of course, will be withheld until I actually ride the ride, but the layout does seem to have more in common with Wild Eagle than X-Flight or Gatekeeper. I'm not particularly in love with Wild Eagle, but I do also realize that the park seems to be looking for more of a standard looping coaster (apart from the launch) than anything else. Unlike Dollywood, SFGAm, and Cedar Point, Holiday World does not have any other looping coaster in the area that its Wing Coaster needs to differentiate itself from. We'll see how it rides come next year! 3. I thought the "66 Days at Sea" blog was a cool idea, but I didn't see how relevant it could be to whatever they had planned, apart from confirming that the ride would be in the Thanksgiving area. That announcement video was incredible and gave me a whole new mindset for the blog. And also a boatload (heh, heh) of cold chills. It was an awesome announcement, and I'm pretty sure I felt Ed Hart cringing all the way from Santa Claus. 4. Is the path between the Splashin' Safari entrance in Thanksgiving and Hyena Falls going to be considered part of both parks at this point and in the future? It seems like the distinction between the two parks is lost at that point. Will Thunderbird allow riders to ride in swimsuits, or will there be a security guard placed at the entrance (like at the Splashin' Safari entrance in Thanksgiving?) It seems like that path is going to be a central part of future expansion. EDIT: Not to mention: It's surreal going to an amusement park where the people making a new ride announcement can a small, indirect reference to a late owner with the words "Will Power" and instantly have the whole audience go "awww." I didn't realize just how well-known the Koch family was in and around southern Indiana. It was touching.

1. El Toro at SFGAdv/NJFTP in the last row. (It's the only place I've ridden that ride in.) 2. Boss at SFStL in the last row. You can't beat, airtime, then crazy head-choppers, then surprise airtime. 3. Raven at Holiday World in the last row. The aspect of half the train starting down the first drop while you're still rounding the turn to the drop is one of my favorite "this is gonna be good" moments on any coaster. 4. Kentucky Rumber at Beech Bend in the last row. Kentucky Rumber is one of the few GCI's I prefer in the last row, and that drop is way more fun than POV's and photos make it look. 5. Thunderbolt at Kennywood in the last row. While it is big, it looks innocent until you actually go down it. It's really unusual to experience significant airtime within a few seconds of leaving the station on a coaster, which is why Thunderbolt is such a cool ride.

^ It's funny you mention that, because I saw a 5-to-6 year-old boy at Beech Bend peeing in the trashcan in the station for Kentucky Rumbler on Saturday. The ride op at the control booth was laughing so hard that she could only motion for the other op to walk over to her so that she could tell him about it. Of course, she told him to clean up the trash can and surrounding area, which he did. That was, by far, the funniest/strangest thing I've ever witnessed in an amusement park.

My reactions: 1. Uh... Apparently there are mythical beasts involved in the average Holiday World Thanksgiving festivities? Either that, or this journal thing is taking a really dark turn by having the author hallucinate. 2. It would be a sneaky little move to throw in a false clue pointing towards a B&M Wing Coaster at this point. My inner selfish enthusiast is kinda hoping this is one such instance, as the Wing Coasters I have ridden were somewhat forgettable beyond the first drop. Of course, even if the ride is a B&M Wing Coaster, that doesn't mean that a Holiday World version of it would necessarily be the same way. We'll see!

Did they take the queue apart, too? It kinda looks like it in Boddah's first picture.

^ After my visit to Camden Park last year, I told my coworkers about the brakes on the Haunted House. They now ask me jokingly after I visit a new park if it has brakes as good as Camden's.

^ Actually, The Crypt experienced downtown. It even said so on the park's website AND the old WordPress blog they used to use!

Or it would probably mean a beefier structure and/or heavier duty/bigger bearings and/or bigger shafts and bigger motors, which in turn leads to higher initial cost for the park and possibly more sensors (I'd imagine you would want more redundancy as the ride size increases) that could act up and lead to downtime. Or downtown, which, coincidentally enough, is what my phone tried to correct "downtime" to.

I mean, I've ridden two floorless coasters (Dominator and Bizarro) and they were fun rides. The floorless aspect is unique but not drastically different from a standard sit-down coaster unless you sit in the front row. I think Mantis would make a decent floorless coaster, but I feel like making that change would really only matter to enthusiasts.

Or they're somehow confusing our Racer with La Ronde's Monstre, which DID open one side a year after the other.

^ Yeah, I'm not talking about the corkscrew, like goodyellowkorn said. I'm talking about the rider heartline, which is the axis that all track banking on the ride is based around.

In theory, any offset between the standing heartline and the sitting heartline could be fixed by having a taller chassis so that the seats sit higher than the standard floorless trains' seats. Of course, any change in trains will require a change to the station, which I imagine would be a significant cost. I don't know if the price would be low enough for the park to want to do all that to an 18 year-old coaster that seems to work well enough and be popular enough as it is. EDIT: Not to mention that the weight of the train would ideally (and probably should) be close to the weight of the stand-up trains, as the weight will affect the support structure, braking configuration, minimum operating temperature, minimum number of riders required to send a train, and overall service life of the ride.

Woo! I'm gonna need to ride the Grand Carousel VERY soon.

WHAT. I am so there. Planning a trip to Idlewild now...

10. Eiffel Tower. I realize there's an identical model in Virginia, but you seriously can't beat the Eiffel Tower. There's nothing at any other park I've been to that's nearly as iconic as Kings Island's Eiffel Tower. It looks awesome on the skyline, can be seen for miles, and catches your eye no matter where you are in the park. Ever since I was little, seeing it just gets me excited to go to the park. Finding it on the horizon while driving to the park is a quintessential part of the drive. It's great! (And, on that note: the farthest I've ever been able to see the tower from is the north side of Lebanon. Anyone ever seen it from farther away? And no, before some snarky little punk speaks up: webcams do not count! ) 9. Baba Louie's Buggies. When I was really little (as in kindergarten-aged), roller coasters--and most everything else in the world, if we're being honest--scared the pants off of me. One of the very few things that didn't was Baba Louie's Buggies. I thought that was the coolest dang ride ever. To be honest, I'm a little surprised that a "grown-up" equivalent doesn't exist at somewhere like Kennywood, because I still think it's a neat idea, even if it probably wouldn't be wildly popular. The only place I've been that had them since KI removed them is Camden Park, and I'm a little too big to ride them now, I think. 8. Viking Fury. When I kinda-sorta started warming up to rides as I got older, I would ride Viking Fury... and then get really freaked out by it and regret that decision. I never really liked it. Now, I think it's great. Part of its placement at #8 is because of how much I like it, and part of it is because of the memories I have of riding it (and hating it) with family when I was younger. It's half fun, half nostalgia on this one. 7. Phantom Theater. I rode Phantom Theater a resounding one time in my life. At the time, I was something significantly less than ten years old, and it absolutely scared the bejabbers out of me. Never rode it again. Now that I'm older, I look back at this ride and kick myself for not riding it more when it was around. Licensed property-themed rides can be interesting, but original themes that you can't find anywhere else are a lot of I LOVE about amusement parks. It's why I love things like Monster Mansion at SFOG and Noah's Ark at Kennywood and Haunted Mansion at Knoebel's. Not to mention that this ride combined a lot of classic funhouse ideas (e.g. Laffing Sals seem like inspiration for the Maestro's laughter) with a unique idea (ghosts inhabiting an abandoned theater.) If Kings Island ever gets a new dark ride--and I really hope they strongly consider doing so--I really hope they'll consider at least acknowledging Phantom Theater in the theme of it. It's really a gem of an idea that's dying to be redone with modern effects. 6. Banshee. The marketing and excitement around this ride was unique and had everyone guessing what the ride was right up to the announcement. The announcement was incredibly well done (and to this day, I can't listen to "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" by Fall Out Boy without thinking of August 8, 2013.) The theme actually played off The Beast "family" by having a Banshee actually be the creature that "kills" Son of Beast. And that's not even mentioning how awesome of a ride Banshee is--and it is awesome! It's the best B&M inverted coaster I've ridden, and it even has--gasp--theming! It's really a quality experience. 5. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. It's just a classic. That's really the whole explanation. I just really like this log flume. It makes me wonder how well I would have liked Kenton's Cove Keelboat Canal if I had gotten the chance to ride it when I actually liked amusement park rides. 4. Antique Cars. These types of rides are more common than I thought, but the ones that Kings Island had had the best placement out of the ones I've ridden. That area also needs something relaxing that doesn't go in circles; spinning can and does alienate members of the family who aren't into intense rides. The Antique Cars filled that niche, and they added a lot more atmosphere to the park than The Italian Job Stunt Track/Backlot Stunt Coaster ever did. It would be awesome to see them take the area beside the International Showplace, around the floral clock and BLSC, and behind the Juke Box Diner and put in a nice, long antique car course with covered bridges and LOTS of foliage. The could even use the Juke Box Diner building as an air-conditioned queue, as far as I'm concerned. 3. Flying Eagles. This ride was just a wonderful classic, and it's something I rode a lot when I was younger. I think I hit them up on a bad day at Carowinds this year since I couldn't quite get them to snap, but I vividly remember what they're capable of. (If they ran them at Knoebels speeds, I think they'd be easier to snap, but that's beside the point.) They looked much nicer in their last location at Kings Island than a basketball games does in that spot. I'd even settle for Larson scooters back at KI, because those are still decent rides even if they don't snap easily. 2. Adventure Express. Without repeating myself for the thousandth time, I was probably most afraid of this ride out of all the ones I rode when I was little. I probably have the most memories of riding this ride than I do of any other. Now that I'm all growed up (hah), I enjoy it as being one of the most well-rounded rides I've ever ridden. It's not the most intense ride, but what it does, it does well and it does it well consistently throughout the ride. It's not my favorite ride in the world, but it's doubtlessly the best ride in the park right now. Banshee's very, very good, but Adventure Express still has the lead as far as I'm concerned. I just wish the theming would get more love. 1. Tomb Raider: The Ride. Don't look so surprised. This ride has given me unreasonably high expectations for anything I ride that has a preshow video, and just about every ride I dream up in my head tends to follow an "increasingly themed queue -> preshow room that separates next group of riders from rest of queue -> preshow that warns riders not to proceed -> ride that features a clash with a numinous entity" procedure. It's also why I like HUSS Top Spins so dang much and a lot of the reason why I ever made it to Kings Dominion for the first time. That ride was amazing, and I have yet to start missing it any less than I did the day it left. Somewhere out there on the interwebs, it is possible to find full queue walkthrough videos. I once compiled several queue walkthrough videos, a preshow video, and a POV back when MySpace was a thing, but I made the really, really stupid decision once to delete my account without downloading those videos. I've never found them since. If anyone ever happens to run into video of a TR:TR queue walkthrough, PLEASE let me know.

Have you ever seen the movie Airplane? This post is like every scene in that movie with the jive talking. Please, be my Barbara Billingsley. (I'm just jerking your chain. But, for real--you lost me a little there with all the medical talk.)

Personally, I believe it's mostly psychology that's keeping all the seats from being made "fluffy-friendly". Two rows with longer seatbelts/bigger seats/whatever is a gesture that you can market. Making all the seats more accommodating isn't something that can immediately be proved in the way that having someone sit in row 7 and not fitting, then moving to row 4 and fitting is. If the seats are all made more accommodating, and then people don't fit: "Why don't they make these seats so that bigger people can sit in them? I can't believe I wasted all this money coming into the park [etc.]" If the park is making a pointed gesture of providing more accommodating seats, then it takes some of the blame away from them. I could entirely be wrong, but that seems like motivation enough to have different seats. I personally wish there was a way of restraining everyone without needing "special seats" (overweight folks and people with disabilities alike), but until someone invents a reasonably affordable way of magnetically holding people into roller coaster trains, I guess that's the world we live in.

I prefer the Britannica Roll. It sounds much more refined and sophisticated. Truly a high class roll. Even fancier than a Kaiser Roll.Wouldn't it be a Kaiser Roll if you came out of it with public relations knowledge, with an emphasis on crisis management concerning wooden roller coaster incidents?If you came out of the roll with several geese, it would be a Gaggle Roll. (Or you would be Fabio several times over.)

The announcement date and time is listed on the webcam page: July 24th at 8:30pm, which is closing time that day at the park.

I didn't realize Dive Machines were that cheap. For some reason, I had them closer to $20 million. Given the existing wide concrete pool that's accessible from both parks (cough cough, splashdown), the fact that the nearest identical model is in Virginia, and the pricetag, a Dive Machine seems natural. No idea how they'd tie it into Thanksgiving, especially with the Mayflower name already taken, but I'm sure they've got something good up their sleeves no matter what ride it is.

I haven't followed this project as closely as I followed Banshee (probably because I seriously don't see any hints in the posts on the teaser site), but the fact that there aren't oodles and oodles of footers going in says to me that it's a steel coaster.

Consider me interested, at least until the pricing is announced. If there's one thing I could ask for out of KI's haunted houses, it's more of a storyline.

I agree with the sentiment that animatronics or other props really make a dark ride. Due to some technical issues, I haven't visited Canada's Wonderland this year to ride Wonder Mountain's Guardian, but the whole idea of strictly using 3D video game-esque screens for the whole ride seems a little plain. (I still think the idea behind WMG is awesome, though. It just doesn't meet my criteria for a dark ride.) I personally like the video-projected-onto-a-physical-object effect that has been seen at Haunt within the last few years. I cannot remember what years exactly that it was there, but there was a bust in the window by the International Restaurant entrance inside the park that had video of a face projected onto it. The face would unexpectedly morph into some evil expression and cackle as people walked by (or something to that effect). It was effective and believable with the way the lighting was set up. It would be neat to see something like that integrated into a dark ride someday.

I'd argue that drive tires constitute a launch. It's just rare that they're used as a primary launch for a train to complete a course. See also: Jet Rescue at Sea World in Australia.