violakat03

Does anyone notice a pattern here that everyone keeps bringing up The Beast crew? Gee...I wonder why that it? Maybe because Beast crew ROCKS...that's why! AGREED!!

Being a member of the GP at the time of Tomb Raider's opening, I can say I definitely believed it would be a coaster, as did the 3 friends I rode it with. We were expecting something like Flight of Fear with the way it was being advertised. Posted from my BlackBerry mobile device.

Yeah, we had one of those 'camnesia' moments during our visit last week. When leaving Flight Deck, the sun was hitting Son of Beast and turning it this beautiful orange-yellow color. I snapped a few photos with my cell phone but really wished I'd had my actual camera so that they were better quality.

I prefer to shoot on the highest setting. I use the pictures as wallpapers on my computer and if I use the lowest settings they don't look good full screen.

^ I shoot with a 4gb camera too but it'll only hold 3k pictures on the resolution I use, or 90 minutes of video. I usually use up most of it with video.

That part, yes! Big miss. The rest of it though was very close if not exact.

Why the heck was he still holding on when it launched?!

http://www.KICentral.com/forums/index.php?...st&p=164125 The poster's name is Reon. He mentions putting the station in between Nick U and the Montgomery Inn BBQ building, putting the brake run or launch in the woods behind the buildings next to the lake, but he says going around the lake instead of through it.

markr - Line length is dramatically different depending on how 'on' the crew is, don't forget. I have waited in line for The Beast when the queues before the ramp were filled but the first set (that are next to the exit) were not. I timed it from beginning to end and it was 1 hour and 45 minutes. I had honestly expected an hour or less! The line seemed to be barely moving. For BLSC in it's opening year, we waited 1 hour and 15 minutes with a completely full queue. For Diamondback on Thursday, the lower queues were filled and it should have been a 15-20 minute wait but it took us over a half hour. If it's a slow crew, I could very easily see the wait times named being true. With the way some crews (such as Beast and Racer) have been moving trains this year, I'd say not. But we all know that crews have bad days (or even bad years) and that has a big effect.

It actually is a little eerie how closely that poster nailed it. The location of the station, the integration of the lake, the entrance, the loose theming (though DB doesn't have a true theme, it's vaguely western or classic American), and the name.

I'm not sure what's up with whistles on coasters. Someone had one on Joker's Jinx last time I was at Six Flags America.

Yeah, I think it used to be a tram stop. I kind of like still having it there because it gives you ample room to make a sharp turn into some of the first spots in row 51 instead of having to come at them from the other direction or back into them. Also notice how row 51 has one spot less than the other rows? There's one spot that's a no-parking zone to allow you to make that corner easier, but a lot of people like to invent a parking spot out of it. I get really annoyed when people do that and their car sits there for hours without getting towed.

The Beast at Kings Island Millennium Force at Cedar Point X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain Space Mountain at Walt Disney World or Disneyland Big Bad Wolf at Busch Gardens Europe Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point It's hard for me to pick specific coasters. I'd say there's definitely certain types of coasters that everyone should ride, but those are the specific coasters that I think everyone should ride for the unique experience they give. I'd say every coaster fan should ride one of the following types of coasters: B&M hyper B&M invert B&M flyer Intamin hyper Intamin rocket/accelerator Intamin pre-fab wood Intamin LIM inverted Arrow suspended Gravity Group wood hybrid GCII wood Premier LIM spaghetti bowl

Give me a big enough memory card and I can easily shoot 1000 photos in a day. I've been doing video this year and have shot over 3 hours of video at the various parks I've been to. I've posted a lot of it online, but there is a lot I haven't posted and a lot of scenes I wish I'd shot! And this is keeping in mind that of my 20 or so visits to KI this year, I've only taken my camera in 3 times.

Most coasters at KI really weren't landmark in any way. Being the last of it's kind or being a 'good' coaster, or having some minor advancement (like a splashdown on a hyper) does not make it a landmark. Look at why Racer and Beast have the award. Racer started the second golden age of roller coasters and breathed new life into the amusement industry as a whole. The Beast sparked off the records craze of the 80's and 90's with it's extraordinary length, as well as it's drop and speed records. Other landmark coasters include Leap the Dips (not just for being the oldest operating coaster, but for the amount of work that was put into restoring and reopening it), Magnum XL-200 (first hyper), Revolution (first inverting modern coaster), and Matterhorn Bobsleds (first tubular steel tracked coaster). There has to be a significant contribution to coaster history to be named a coaster landmark. The two I'd argue for would be Son of Beast and Flight of Fear. Son of Beast was revolutionary. It was and still is the only wooden hypercoaster. It is the only 180+ ft woodie that was tracked the traditional way instead of pre-fabricated. It was the first modern wood coaster to attempt an inversion. I honestly believe that the original success of Son of Beast (because it is a very well known coaster and was insanely popular in it's first 5 years) is what led to coasters such as The Voyage, El Toro and T Express, and helped re-spark an interest in wood coasters. Look at what else was being built around that time - Millennium Force, Goliath, Kraken and Medusa opened the same year. Previous to Son of Beast, there weren't really that many 'great' wood coasters being built, a total of maybe 5 or 6 really good ones in the 90s. Since SOB, we've gotten Voyage, El Toro, Prowler, Kentucky Rumbler, Boardwalk Bullet ... the list goes on! Flight of Fear was the first LIM lanched coaster. It remains a point of success in coaster technology advancements, 13 years after being built. It opened the way for other LIM and LSM launched coasters like Superman: The Escape, Revenge of the Mummy, Volcano and California Screamin'.

I always get wet in row 16, that's one of my favorite parts of that row! My husband's gotten it the best I've seen so far. He leaned way over and stuck both arms in the splash. His entire shirt, part of his shorts, both arms, and his head were completely soaked. He looked like he'd gotten off a water ride, not a roller coaster!

I think in 2007 we had a fairly strong economy so people were taking vacations out of state. I'm betting park attendance dropped that year. Then in 2008 as the economy started slowing down, and especially this year, people went back to 'stay-cations' and started visiting their home attractions like Cedar Point and Kings Island. When they post ridership numbers for this year, I would not be at all surprised to see a big jump.

Saturdays in July are always pretty insane. It's fairly normal for companies to have their picnics at KI on Saturdays in July. They've been doing it for years so anyone who's been going to the park for years should know the park will be packed on Saturdays in July. But I've seen the park worse than that. At least it was still open when you guys got there. Bring a Friend Free day (also known as Bring a Crowd Free) in 2002 shut the park down. You want to talk about ridiculous? How about an hour wait just to get a locker in the water park? I was working that day. I arrived for my shift at around noon (started at 2) and was planning to grab a ride or two before work. At noon, Racer's queue house was full and out into the midway, past the basketball games and to around where the fudge shop is. Approximate wait, 2 hours. Moved on to Flight of Fear. Inside and outside queues full, and all the way back to the games. Yes, past The Racer lift hill, and almost into the Coney midway. Remember this is pre-Firehawk, and FOF was normally less than a 30 minute wait. Approximate wait time, 3 hours. Vortex was lined up like in the pictures pcc posted. Beast was not only out of the queue house, but past where DB's helix is now, all the way across the midway, alongside then-Swan Lake, and back to about where the restrooms are! Approximate wait, 4 to 5 hours. I headed to work early without riding a thing. I left the park for lunch around 4 pm. The employee cafeteria was always insanely packed on busy Saturdays, so I just avoided it and hit the fast food on 741. As I returned to the park, I saw something I never thought I'd see, and have never seen again. PARK CLOSED. In big flashing letters on the marquee, and on temporary signs set up in front of the toll booths. Park closed due to capacity. I heard horror stories about it all day. People waiting 5 or even 6 hours for Son of Beast. Tomb Raider, the new attraction for the year, was averaging 4 hours. Even running both trains, there was an hour wait just to ride the train over to the water park. We had to set up temporary queues, including a couple switchbacks, for the locker kiosk. That's the one time I ever saw us run out of lockers! We had to send people to the auxiliary locker location out by the wave pool for an hour or two because we were out of lockers. The clean up process at the end of the night, such as putting the keys away, which normally took 10-20 minutes, took us almost 2 hours. It got to the point where the managers had to send some of us home before we finished because of minor labor laws. Saturdays in July were always insane. They were in 2002. They are now. That is when companies have picnics and few of them rent the park. I wouldn't be surprised if Dollar General was actually one of ten or so companies there that day, they were just the biggest. That is when families whose parents work through the week are able to go. In other words, I do not go to the park on Saturdays. I usually don't even go to the park on Saturdays in pre-season because I know there's a high chance it will look like that.

Walked your phone into a pool... now that's a description I haven't heard before! But then, my BlackBerry ended up in the shower yesterday morning and I still haven't figured out how. Amazingly, after dismantling it completely and letting it thoroughly dry before putting it back together, my phone works perfectly! And yes, 8 laps! And I was indeed with Gator.

Wow, way to flip out over nothing. Ever heard the phrase you catch more flies with honey than vinegar? There's no faster way to make enemies than saying everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. Most of us were respectfully disagreeing with you based on our own experiences at the parks, and to decide that makes us idiots ... well, I don't need to complete that sentence. And yes, Gemini and CCMR (and Adventure Express) are steel coasters. They are wood-structure hybrid steel coasters, meaning they run on a tubular steel track but have a wooden support structure. It is a fairly rare type of coaster, and I believe Cedar Point is the only park in the world to have two wood-steel hybrids. There are also many steel-wood hybrids, such as the Voyage at Holiday World, which have a steel support structure and wood track.

You can't compare Flight Deck to Iron Dragon? No. Because I'll never understand how Iron Dragon sucks so badly when Flight Deck and Big Bad Wolf are so great.

I stared at you for a good five minutes trying to figure out who you were. I knew I'd met you before - we met in at Flight of Fear during RWW. BTW, if you'd run into us just a couple hours earlier, I was with Jackson (Beast1979) and Adam (pkiboy), but they left at 5.

My first ride on The Beast was in 1996 when I was 11, also immediately after conquering Flight of Fear. Flight of Fear did not scare me as much as that first drop on The Beast did. Cresting over that hill and seeing that we were about to fall into that small dark hole was terrifying. I'm white as a ghost in my ORP from that ride. I got off it all smiles and have loved that mass of wood ever since.

I don't like the hassle of carrying in a camera. After losing my phone off a coaster earlier this year, I try to have as little of value in my pockets as I possibly can.

It also gets busier as it gets closer to Halloween. The Fridays will get a little more crowded, but the Sundays will thin out since everyone wants to do the haunt attractions. Early in the off peak season, Fridays will be absolutely dead, kinda like they were in April and May. I went to every single Halloween Haunt day this year except one weekend I went to Cedar Point. The job I was working at the time, I got off at either 9 or 10 on Fridays and Saturdays and the park was open till 1, so my husband and I would go enjoy a few hours of rides. Strangely, even though Saturdays are packed during the day, they all go to the haunts at night, so at these very late hours, all the coasters were walk ons! Cedar Point has one weekend each Halloweekends where the haunts are open on Sunday. DO NOT GO ON THIS WEEKEND. It is the busiest weekend of the year. I waited 2 hours for Gemini on Saturday night. That was the only thing we rode that day. Sunday was more like an average summer Saturday. Luckily, the crowds thinned as the night wore on, and we got Millie at a 30 minute wait in the last hour of park operation.