TombRaiderFTW

That yellow one would be Dominator at Kings Dominion. That cobra roll is probably one of my favorites.

Given the lack of a teaser or two at this point, I'm doubtful we're getting a sizable coaster for next year. Maybe something small, if that. If we're getting anything (and remember, we just got a significant waterpark overhaul), my money's on a flat ride or more 2011-esque general park improvements.

FAMILY RIDES (15 rides & attractions) Backlot Stunt Coaster Zephyr Monster Adventure Express Scrambler Shake, Rattle, & Roll Congo Falls Viking Fury Eiffel Tower Dodgem Boo Blasters on Boo Hill White Water Canyon K.I. & MV Railroad Grand Carousel Thunder Alley ($) My Score: 14/15 THRILL RIDES (15 rides & attractions) Diamondback The Beast Delirium Drop Tower Firehawk Flight of Fear Invertigo The Racer: Red The Racer: Blue Vortex WindSeeker Flight Deck Sling Shot ($) Xtreme Skyflyer ($) Son of Beast (SBNO) My Score: 15/15 Planet Snoopy (18 rides & attractions) Surf Dog Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Flying Ace Aerial Chase Peanuts 500 Kite Eating Tree Joe Cool's Dodgem School The Great Pumpkin Coaster Peanuts Off-Road Rally Snoopy's Splash Dance Charlie Brown's Wind Up Woodstock Express Woodstock Whirlybirds Sally's Sea Plane Linus' Beetle Bugs Snoopy's Junction Linus' Launcher Snoopy vs. Red Baron Character Carousel My Score: 10/18 Soak City WATERPARK (16 slides & attractions) Note: Link to KI Soak City page for pictures to help determine what is what as this may confuse some- I am aware most people don't remember waterslide names: http://www.visitking...-city-waterpark Aruba Tuba Breakers Bay Tidal Wave Bay Castaway Cove Splash Landing Coconut Cove Lookout Lagoon Pipeline Paradise Mondo Monsoon Zoom Flume Paradise Plunge Thunder Falls Rendezvous Run Tropical Twister Pineapple Pipeline Splash River My Score: 1/16 (It's been forever since I went to KI's waterpark, so I don't know what I've been on and what I haven't, save for the original wave pool. I went once when Boomerang Bay was new, and the only time I remember before that was when it was Waterworks and King Cobra was still around.) Dinosaurs Alive! (2 attractions) Dinosaurs Alive! ($) Dinosaurs Alive! 3D My Score: 1/2 Total Score: 41/66 rides, slides, & attractions BONUS!!!: DEFUNCT RIDES The Crypt/Tomb Raider: The Ride Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle Flying Eagles Antique Cars Phantom Theater Scooby's Ghoster Coaster My Score: 6 Total Score with Bonus: 47/72 I'm not sure if Tomb Raider and The Crypt count as separate rides like Phantom Theater and BBoBH. I feel like they count as separate, but I feel like it's too much of a stretch to just assume that's okay.

So many great pictures in this awesome trip report. You've made me realize how much I miss Hershey. I went there for my first time last year, and Storm Runner, Fahrenheit, Great Bear, and Comet (among others) totally caught me off-guard with how good they were. If Skyrush is as good as everyone says, I need to get back, and soon!

Yeah, I'd have to agree with McSalsa's friend. At least in theory, LoCoSuMo has the worst capacity in the park, as it's got a relatively comparable ride time to Steel Hawg but only one 8-person train (from what I've seen.) I've only been there once, but Steel Hawg's operations added to the effect, so Steel Hawg churned people right through, whereas LoCoSuMo absolutely crawled. Assuming the operations are decent parkwide*, Lost Coaster will likely be your worst line, so I'd probably head there first. (*They weren't when I visited--Cornball Express' ops were content to take a break to talk between each lap bar check and then another 3-minute conversation before sending the train, so the tiny line was still somewhere around a 15-minute wait. That's been two years and only one visit, though, so I probably wouldn't take my experience as the norm.)

Cool trip report. Thanks for sharing. Just one thing, though: your friend may have been mistaken about Son of Beast. The State of Ohio's 2006 accident report clearly states (with pictures) that the support failure was in the rose bowl towards the lowest point. Maybe he was referring to the helix as a "loop"? (It's what Six Flags over Georgia would do, anyway. )

The greatest hits, in no particular order: Pretty much any given turn on The Legend (except maybe the one prior to the lift) The entirety of The Raven Everything after the two large camelbacks at the beginning of The Voyage, as well as the first drop (when seated in the last car) The low-to-the-ground turns on Tig'rr (Indiana Beach) Blue Streak (Cedar Point) in the front car, especially when it's just rained Magnum XL-200 in the front car, especially when it's just rained, and especially when the trims are off, too Wicked Twister's launch The entirety of Adventure Express and Beast The "underground" portion of Backlot Stunt Coaster (KI or KD) Flight of Fear's launch and run from the MCBR onward (KI or KD, but especially KD) Either Racer in the first car at dusk All of Fahrenheit and Storm Runner Great Bear's run over the river, and especially the corkscrew Sky Rocket's zero-G roll All of Thunderbolt (Kennywood) Tennessee Tornado's first drop Everything after the station fly-by on Thunderhead Wild Eagle's zero-G roll All of Dominator (KD) I305's first drop and crazy banking transitions Volcano's launch and drop to the brakes

This back and forth between you two is making me self-conscious about my username. I gotta say that I was expecting it to be jam-packed, too. Glad that wasn't totally the case, BB1.

This is exactly what I was thinking of when I meant wild mouse. It seems like fun! I've been on Exterminator at Kennywood, and it's really good. I wasn't that wowed by the other spinning wild mouse I've been on (Fairly Odd Coaster at Nickelodeon Universe), but I really enjoyed that one. I don't know if there's enough room in the building for a wild mouse, but if it's possible, that would be an excellent use for that space, in my opinion (even if it's only dark and theme-less in there!)

I don't know about you, but I like it when you're not Selective about your posts. Also, to contribute to the thread at hand: as I discovered at Holiday World on last Thursday, the second-to-last turn on The Legend (meaning the one you pass just as you enter the station) will soon fall over as the train passes and kill the people waiting in line. The number of people ranting in line about how unsafe it looks was surprisingly high. I'll be the first to admit that the structure unnervingly flexes quite a bit at that point, but I've never heard that many people go on about how it was "about to break." (Fortunately for us, it didn't.) An aside: it then proceeded to deliver some of the best Legend rides I've ever had. Easily the most intense coaster in the park that day, and the first time I've ever genuinely appreciated a PTC seatbelt. The ejector airtime in the last row coming down the large hill just before the underground tunnel was absolutely ridiculous, and it hurt more than the Magnum lapbar. Honest! Whatever they did to the Splashin' Safari turnaround (I suspect jetpacks) has that ride absolutely flying, a la The Beast track work this year. But I'll stop fanboying now.

Couldn't you argue that Tomb Raider: The Ride was video game-themed, too?

A zero-G roll would be incredible, but that's not something I'm expecting out of RMC, for some reason. There's really no basis for that at all, except that it just seems... odd. I'm more expecting that to be a ridiculously fast transition into a heavily banked overbank turn, but it would be awesome to be proven wrong.

Oh, I don't doubt that one bit. You only have to take a stroll through the oldest topics on these forums to see that KI used to be more involved here. I was moreso talking about before the latest SoB incident--I can't remember when every topic didn't somehow end up involving Son of Beast in some way, shape, or form.

Is it sad that I've actually forgotten what these forums were like prior to June 2009?

Ding ding ding, we have a winner*. Bryan Edwards (a marketing manager from Cedar Point) said just this at the ACE Northern Ohio Holiday Party back in December. He also added on that we'd likely see a competition of sorts between the brands to get a contract renewal for 2013 and onward. Guess that's where the Freestyle machines and Luminosity sponsorships are coming from. *Well, mostly. You're pretty much wrong about Pepsi being better.

More or less. The few times this year I've gotten my hand stamped, it's been reasonably resilient. (I think it was an opaque blue? I don't quite remember.)

I kind of agree. Where WindSeeker is is nice, but I think I would have preferred it be in the grassy area between BLSC and the picnic area adjacent to Scrambler. That probably would have required more landscaping, but I think it would have still drawn attention to Coney Mall and made it usable for Vortex/WindSeeker ERT. (That, and I liked the old Action Theater entrance. But I'm sure I'm probably close to alone on that one.) That being said, I do still appreciate WindSeeker. I recently rode Sparkler at Holiday World, and I preferred WindSeeker to that. Sparkler's good, but, for me, it rotates almost too quickly. (Could be due to its much smaller size, but still. Anyone been on the taller Six Flags SkyScreamers?) Still a great addition for HW, though, as it's much tamer and adult-friendly than HalloSwings and has caused the Star-Spangled Carousel to move to a central position in the Fourth of July that will earn it many more riders once it opens. (It's now the centerpiece of the area, which is a title that didn't quite fit Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, in my opinion.) EDIT: From personal experience, I know it's free for the movie this year and $5 for the walk-through for Dinosaurs Alive. The 3D is much better than Spongebob!

If CCI had built Son of Beast, I'd wager it would have started with Gerstlauer trains, much like most (or all?) of the CCI creations from 2000. (I don't know why this was, and I'm very curious to know why. 2000 saw CCI almost strictly using Gerstlauer trains and much longer track transitions.) I'd say it would have much more resembled rides like Geauga Lake's Villain and Wild Adventures' Cheetah and would probably have become just as notorious for its roughness, as I've never heard anyone ever accuse those rides of tracking well. The only ride that comes to mind from this time that doesn't seem to fit this niche is The Legend at Holiday World, and I'm willing to chalk that up to the fact that it's at Holiday World and isn't running G-trains anymore. The only rides I've ridden from CCI's late era are Cornball Express and Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain. I wasn't wowed by CE and LoCoSuMo isn't exactly a standard example of a CCI ride, but I'm willing to bet I'd still probably have liked a CCI SoB more than the current ride. I've thought most of the other CCIs were at least decent (or, at the very least, they all had at least one endearing quirk--I'm looking at you, Shivering Timbers), so I might have liked some aspect of CCI's version a little more. I wonder if they ever drew up a sample layout.

Either Holiday World, Kennywood, or Kings Dominion.

You know, each time these sorts of topics come around, I'm never quite sure how to answer. There's never been one coaster model that I'd absolutely kill to see appear at KI, though there have been times where certain types seem more beneficial to the park than others. I've had ideas for other parks--I'd like to see a GCI at Cedar Point or a Vekoma Swinging Suspended model at Holiday World, for instance--but nothing's ever really hit me for KI. I haven't really read an idea from anyone else that really resonated with me, either, though you guys do have good suggestions. I think it's because I don't really see KI as a "big coasters, big thrills"-sort of park, which is why a lot of coaster models seem out-of-place to me, but I can't really explain it. I love the Intamin gigacoasters, but anywhere they might place one, in my mind, just seems awkward. I do think I'd like it if they expanded the flat ride collection, though, which is why sounds great to me.

Great photos, IndyGuy! It was cool getting to meet you.

I'm kind of impressed with myself. I've seen everyone's pictures, and with the exception of Don's official group photo taken right at the beginning, I avoided getting my face in any of them. I wasn't even trying! Like, your shot of the KIC group? Yeah, apparently I managed to stand right behind Fire-Beast-OF-FEAR so all you can see is my right ear in your picture. That's more or less all you can see of me in everyone else's versions, too. Apparently I was wrong when I thought I was visible enough standing there, haha! Ninjaness aside, you took some pretty cool pictures, standbyme. It was great getting to meet you!

^ I love me some Racer, but any third row was jackhammering the bejeezus out of me today, particularly on the first drop. Towards the middle of the afternoon, I learned how to lean forward to negate a lot of it, but it was pretty nasty in the third rows. Any other row was great, as usual! Which, of course, brings me to say my bit about the event, though I don't have enough to write a trip report: it was awesome. I got to meet standbyme, XGatorHead, Avatar, jlopez, jcgoble3, and Fire-Beast-OF FEAR, all of whom were incredibly nice! (I feel like I'm forgetting someone... If I met you today and didn't mention you just now, do know I was glad to meet you, too. Unlike certain Gators who were nice enough to remind me that they didn't have to be up at 5:30 to attend, I didn't run on a lot of sleep today, so my memory's exceptionally bad. ) I got about 62 rides in. When you read about Coasting for Kids events, you hear several people saying they got close to 100 rides, so anything not close to that can sound underwhelming, but... holy cow. There's apparently a technique for pacing yourself so you can hit big numbers, and it definitely doesn't involve riding in the first or last cars like I did for a lot of the event, haha. I didn't know The Racer could take it out of you, but I'm pooped. (I ended up leaving about an hour and a half earlier than I'd intended--I didn't make use enough of the water KI nicely provided, so I was feeling pretty yucky as the afternoon went on.) The Racer crew was pretty cool and energetic, too, and the GKTW lunch presentation was very nice. There were two families that had participated and volunteered, respectively, at the Give Kids the World Village in Orlando, and both had interesting and heartfelt testimonies. It was very nicely done. Thanks to GKTW and KI for putting this together! If you're considering attending CfK next year, stop considering and do it! I hesitated for 2011 and let it pass by, but I wish I'd done it now. It's for a fantastic cause, and it's really entertaining to marathon Racer with a train full of people doing the Hokey Pokey or Chicken Dance, pretending to be asleep*, or singing "We Are The Champions" by Queen as the train pulls into the station. I highly recommend it. I know I'll be back next year if I'm able! *Can I just say that this was hilarious? Seriously, the entire train was "asleep." That couldn't have been better if we'd rehearsed!

Okay, I think I've got a better idea of where this is. Thanks!

Okay, I don't know Mason as well as I thought I did. Can someone explain to me how to "enter the park from 1 Team Way located off Western Row"? I know how to get to Western Row Rd., but Google says 1 Team Way is in front of Mason High School. I figure it won't be too hard to figure out where to park once I get there, but it's getting there that confuses me. (I want to assume Columbia Road is the same thing as 1 Team Way, but I'm afraid I'll get lost if I do so.)