violakat03

Whoa, Gabe does exist!

Consider going to the Cincinnati Museum Center too. The Newport Aquarium is a great aquarium and definitely worth a stop. The US Air Force museum is up here in Dayton - it's around an hour's drive, but it's worth it, the AF Museum is nothing short of amazing.

The first suit set the precedent. If it's been proven once that the ride ops didn't know what they were doing, then more and more people will come forward with similar claims. While some may be bogus, this is a pretty common phenomena. The same thing happens any time faulty products are found. All it takes is one person to spark it off and the rest come like a waterfall. How many of them are legitimate, as you said, we may never know.

In reading the article, it said he yelled to the ride op to stop and she said they couldn't. Judging by the fact in the original lawsuit, the ride ops for that ride also did not know how to shut down the ride, it seems like the ride ops are completely untrained in how to do anything other than start the ride.

It sounds like they left themselves wide open to lawsuits by allowing poorly or untrained workers to operate the rides. I mean seriously, how does a ride op NOT know how to stop a ride? That should be one of the first things given in training. It might be a bogus claim if the only thing that happened was that the man fell off - that was his own fault - but it became the park's problem and a valid claim when the ride op failed to perform an emergency stop on the ride because they didn't know how. That is absolutely ridiculous. Now the drop ceiling falling claim, that one seems ridiculous too. That's just someone jumping on the gravy train. I'm sorry but I've had all sorts of mishaps through my childhood and we never once sued anybody. I remember tripping over something in an aisle and cutting my leg open on a shelf at Meijer when I was about 5 - they bandaged me up, gave me a token for the penny pony, and I was content. I got pushed down a set of stone steps in kindergarten and had to have stitches under my eye. Did my mom sue the family of the girl who pushed me? It never even crossed her mind.

Mine was Flight of Fear in 1996. I was 11. I also rode Vortex and King Cobra that day and it marked the beginning of the coaster obsession.

Of the times that I visited CP last year, the week in July and the Halloweekends Saturday were the busiest. The weekdays in July that I went were on par with normal Saturday crowds. I have seen CP busy and I have seen it deserted, and they were at the upper end of that spectrum. The only ride I caught as a walk-on was Blue Streak. Everything else I had to wait anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes (not counting the 1+ hour waits already mentioned). I was incredibly surprised because by everything I had been reading up until that point, the park should have been much emptier than it actually was. The Sunday during Halloweekends that I went, I waited 15-20 minutes for night rides on MF, skipped TTD and Maverick, and walked on every other ride in the park. It wasn't completely dead, but it was very close to it. I think I made it on 10 laps around Gemini in one day, plus managed to ride Magnum, Millie (twice), Raptor (twice), Disaster Transport, Wicked Twister and all the flat rides that I enjoy.

I personally still access it via pki.com, which redirects. Call me lazy (and I know Terpy won't miss the chance I left wide open for him), but pki.com is so much easier to type in than visitkingsisland.com is.

Honestly, I went through the week on the last week of July last year and was very surprised at how busy it was. The water park was absolutely packed and I waited 1 1/2 hours for Maverick, even though I got in line during the ERT in the morning! TTD was no less than a 1 hour wait, and Raptor averaged 45 minutes. We spent four days there (Monday-Thursday) and it was pretty consistent each day. I'd say avoid July if possible. Also definitely avoid Halloweekend Saturdays, I went on one of those and it was a big mistake. Giga is not kidding about the wait time. I spent 45 minutes in line for Gemini. The next day was much, much much better - 30 minutes got me on to Millennium Force and many other coasters were walk on.

Cruises = best honeymoon ever. We took one for ours too. They spoil you rotten.

They had that same sign on the registers both times I've been there. Maybe they're waiting for a part for it or something.

Yeah, Skyscraper was still closed. I got the impression it had been closed for a long time.

Okay, this one is going to be kind of fun. Last night, three members of KIC (violakat03 (Kat), Gabe (the ultimate lurker) and gigacoaster2k (Angie)) and some friends (my husband Nick, Gabe's wife Deb, and my friends Woody and Lisa) went to Krazy City in the Tri-County Mall. When we arrived, we were a little surprised at how busy it was, and also learned that it closed at 11 rather than 1 a.m. like we thought. We got our $10 all-you-can-play cards at the counter and decided the mini-bowling alley looked less busy and thought we could hang out in there until it cleared out a little bit. This plan worked quite well, actually. The seven of us overthrew three lanes of the mini bowling and had at it. We learned three things - gigacoaster2k gets better the longer she plays, my friend Woody is very competitive, and Gabe's wife needs bumpers when she bowls. After a full game, some of us got bored with bowling and my hand was hurting (I'd spent most of the day detailing my car since it was so nice out) so we split into two groups. One group stayed bowling and one group decided to go play on some of the rides. We originally intended to go on the MoseRides SpringRide, but there was a line for it. Instead, we decided to go on the Wisdom Industries Tornado ride. Since Angie and Lisa get motion sick and Deb wasn't interested, Gabe and I jumped on it by ourselves. And I do mean literally by ourselves, we were the only two people on the ride. We got it spinning pretty good but I quickly realized I have no upper body strength it was wearing me out. Angie shot a video of us using my camera, seen here: After stumbling off of the Tornado, we hopped in line for the SpringRide. Deb opted out of this one too, giving us a "you guys are nuts" look as we got on. I learned that Gabe has never been on Drop Tower at KI and we decided we'd drag him onto it on opening day. After an invigorating ride and a good adrenaline rush, we decided that the trippy blacklight mini-golf would be fun. It's a really good thing we weren't keeping score, though I have a sneaking suspicion Gabe would have won if we were. There was a lot of entertaining mulligans and a couple of instances of just throwing the ball into the hole and calling it finished. We took a peak at the go-kart line and decided it was still longer than we wanted to wait, and headed for the bumper cars. For such little electric bumper cars, these things get up nice speed and you can get a really good bump out of them. All five of us rode on the bumper cars, along with a couple other people, so we had a lot of fun chasing each other around in them. I shot a POV from my car, seen here: Then we went back and collected Nick and Woody from the bowling alley and headed for the go karts. Gabe and Deb decided to call it a night at this point, though we did discuss plans for our next meet up. There was a fairly long line for the ride, we had to wait for several circuits before getting on. After piling five of us on, there were also about 4 other cars full of people not in our group. Unfortunately, the rest of the people didn't know how to drive and kept causing wrecks, so we spent most of our time stopped or speeding back up from stopping for a wreck. By the time we got done with the go karts we only had about 20 minutes left before closing, so we decided to take a couple more rides on the SpringRide. Angie and I got on it while the rest of the group headed for the concession stand (something about go karts made everyone parched), and I shot a POV, seen here: We jumped off and got back in line, and were joined by the rest of the group (minus Woody, who opted to continue enjoying his refreshments instead). Another POV was made of the four of us being goofs. After this ride, Krazy City was closed, so we headed out. We were all incredibly thirsty (except Woody, who was still enjoying his Diet Coke), and a couple were hungry, so we headed off to the nearest Perkins. I feel very sorry for our waitress and any one else who might have been there, because we were one of those loud, annoying groups who was having way too much fun to be in a restaurant at midnight. Overall, the night was a ton of fun. It was great getting a bunch of friends together, and this was the first time I'd hung out with Angie. We don't live all that far from each other so hopefully this won't be the last time either. There will probably be much scuba diving, KI-ing and other Krazy City nights this summer for all of us.

I could have sworn they had the picnic grove open. This would have been in like 2000 or 2001 or so. I do remember there being a lot of P&G advertising stuff but I thought nothing of it at the time. I know I've been there at least once where the picnic grove was open to everyone that was in the park. I may be remembering two different days though.

A park buyout. Read: A private group has in effect rented the park, and guaranteed the park revenue for the day, in exchange for exclusive use of the facilities. Wow - would be nice to be part of that private group with DB opening this year. I went during P&G's buyout day several years ago with a friend. Considering the companies that are big enough to buyout the park invite all their employees and usually a close to unlimited number of guests, the park will be pretty much just as crowded as a normal early-season Sunday in the park. I didn't even realize that P&G had the park to themselves until later in the day when we went to the picnic grove and they weren't checking tickets to get into it, since everyone in the park was with the group using it. To return to the topic at hand, I learned last night that my ride buddy for the day has never once ridden Drop Tower, so that will be a high priority. So now the plans include: 2 rides on Diamondback (one in front seat, one in back seat), a ride on Xtreme Skyflyer, and a ride on Drop Tower.

If you go back and read the first post, you'll see that the goal of this newsletter is to not repeat things that are already available on the site. It will be all exclusive content.

If they're only going to be there for 2 days, a season pass wouldn't be worth it. 2 tickets from AAA or many other local merchants such as Wright-Patt CU would be around $50, and parking for two days would be $20. If he pays full price for the tickets it would be $120 each person. Right now they're selling 2-for-1 tickets good any day of the season on KI's website. So for $47.99, you get two days in the park. If he stays for three days, a season pass becomes more feasible, though you can get discounted tickets easily enough that it still may be more expensive for just 3 days. For 3 days, the biggest reason to get a season pass will be the free parking. There is also the consideration of the ERT and extra perks that come with the gold pass. They don't have a specified monetary value, they're more whatever the passholder makes of them. If there is no interest in the ERT, and they don't play any games and don't eat any of the foods that are discounted, then the upgrades are worthless. To me, the ERT alone would make it worth an extra $10-$20 to get the gold pass.

I'll third it. I'll be very happy to make regular submissions whenever I can.

Ah. Then that's understandable. It tried to kill me with the old trains. The lapbar clicked down one more notch going around the bottom of that helix and it was one notch beyond the point I could breathe. I spent the rest of the ride in pretty much sheer terror fighting to breathe. I never rode in the front seat of the car after that.

Stupid question. Which portion of SOB is considered the "rose bowl"?

Hands up, almost always. I can think of two times I put them down - Vortex in the corkscrew (brace position) and Magnum in the bunny hills (painful ejector air). I love the freedom of hands up. Even on rides where you can't really get them up very well (Invertigo, Raptor), I still put them up. I'd much rather not hang on. Oh and I'm guilty of elbowing my husband in the head on The Beast in the helix. We now always ride with me on the right, since he's a hands down rider. Removes the problem completely.

Pout. I finally get to see the webcam during the day (usually it's not working when I look at it) and it would figure that they don't appear to be running tests. I have yet to catch a train on the track on the webcam.

Only 8 hours? I was thinking it was longer than that. Well, that's not bad at all - less than it takes to get to Memphis, actually! Definitely a one day's drive. I've never driven just to Atlanta from Ohio. When we went, we came from North Carolina and returned to Memphis.

The park itself is open to the public both days. Just the ERTs and other special events involved in RWW will be closed to the public.

Yeah, I noticed the same. We always either bring our own food or go out to eat off park property. I can't handle eating greasy, hot food on a hot day in the park.