This is a long post, but one I feel pretty passionately about. I hope you can make it through the whole thing. I will be modifying it as a letter to Cedar Fair sometime later tonight.
Without further adieu...
I’ve been a huge fan of Kings Island basically my entire life. I fondly recall going there as a child (I’m now 39); I remember truly old-school attractions such as the Rotor (I’d love to see that back), the Sausage Haus (I’d love to NEVER see that back), Enchanted Voyage, King Cobra, Gulliver’s Rub-a-Dub, and countless others. In my youth, my family went at least once a year, and even as I got older and moved to Indianapolis, I still tried to go at least every other year. Recent changes in my life (got married, had a child), kinda trumped visits, so it had been about five years since I was last there. As my boy just turned three, I thought, “it’s time to introduce him to Kings Island…and start my own family tradition, just had my parents had done thirty years ago with me and my brother.” I was excited for weeks. I couldn’t wait to get back.
When I did, wow…this was not the Kings Island I remembered.
Not the one from my youth; not even the one from five years ago.
It would be easy to take that statement as a negative one, and in ways, perhaps many ways, it is. So I should probably preface my statements by saying that we had a good time, and will no doubt go back many times as my son gets older. It’s just that Kings Island no longer feels like a park for a family. It’s a park for very young children and thrill seekers.
But not families.
I remember going to Cedar Point about ten years ago, and thinking, “So there’s one small section for real little kids, but the rest of the park is all thrill rides, primarily roller coasters. Cool!” I liked it because it was different. It was on an entirely opposite end of the spectrum from a park like Disney World, which was focused entirely on families. Kings Island, to me, had the best of both worlds.
After visiting yesterday, that’s no longer the case. Kings Island is becoming a clone of Cedar Point. Which makes sense, I suppose, because they are both owned by the same company. Still, it makes me long for the days when there were plenty of thrill rides, plenty of rides for little kids, and plenty of rides for families. While we still have the first two, the latter option is very lacking.
I hate to say, “We need this ride back or that ride back”, because that’s unrealistic. The world has evolved, and Kings Island has too. It must if it wants to survive. I guess I just miss rides that I would ride with my Mom and Dad, like the Keelboat Canal. Yes, I am aware that the small log flume still exists, as does Congo Falls. But the former is now riddled with kiddy characters while the latter is simply a loop with a hill. Something is missing with the exclusion of a bigger, more interesting flume.
I also miss the old tyme cars, because the whole family could fit in there and laugh at the silliness of the day. You weren’t rushing through anything…you were just riding around together. It was especially cool at night, when you could see lights all over the park and there was a sense of wonder of it all.
That sense of wonder, or more accurately, theater, has all but vanished from the park, and that may be the thing that hurts more than this ride or that ride or the over-emphasis of coasters. Maybe I’m just spoiled by a few trips to Disney, but Kings Island no longer feels like a theme park. It feels like a collection of rides. With the exception of Nickelodeon Universe, there’s no sense of being in different locations in the park. Rivertown was once its own little world…it made you feel like you were in a place different from the rest of the park. Ditto Oktoberfest. The rides were themed to fit the area in which they were located, as were the buildings, restaurants, games, etc.. Heck, even the paths between the different areas were interesting – remember the vine tunnel between the kiddy land and River town? It made everything feel different and unique.
Like you’d go to Rivertown, and you were in a old fashioned river town. Everything fit the theme of whatever land you were in. You had a log flume in Rivertown, you had an old time train. Off in the distance were the old tyme cars. So everything kinda fit. Now the train is nothing more than transportation to the water park with bad country music, and the shooting range has been replace by a basketball shooting game with NBA jerseys. And while I have no doubt Diamondback will be incredible, a giant steel coaster in the middle of Rivertown looks so completely out of place that it seems like coaster after coaster is just being shoehorned into the park anywhere they fit.
It doesn’t help that all the restaurants are now restaurants that I see when I go to the mall. Hey, I love Chick-Fil-A as much as the next guy (I’ve even been to the original Dwarf House and waited all night in a parking lot to get free CFA for a year), but when I see that or Subway in the middle of Coney Island, well, the experience loses a lot of its luster. (Which is exacerbated by the food being three times the cost it is in the “real world.”)
Even the music is just completely random, standard rock music that I hear driving to work. It’s not different. It’s exactly the same, and in some locations, it’s just completely out of place. Is it really that hard to have different music for the different locations? I should also add that while I’m no prude, the music videos being played in FestHaus (with some very scantily clad women) just seemed wildly inappropriate for a family park like Kings Island.
Now there were things I really enjoyed. My son had a great time in Nickelodeon Universe, especially Scooby Doo’s Castle and Dora’s trains. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t help but be humored by the fact that his two favorite rides, by far, were the Monster and the Fairly Odd Coaster…formerly the Scooby Doo / Beasty. Two rides that had been there since day one.
I guess for now I’ll just wait for him to be old enough to enjoy all the coasters…and hope my old bones can handle going on them with him when he’s old enough!
As I’ve said, Kings Island has to change, it has to evolve. I understand that. I just wish they could recapture some of the magic that made Kings Island the Kings Island of my youth…I’d love to be able to share that sense of wonder with my son, and for him to pass it along to his children as well.
I look forward to what anyone else may have to say.
Thanks!
RD
