McSalsa

1. Hmm...I have had lots and lots of awesome, memorable visits to Kings Island so this one is tough to choose. I am gonna have to go with my visit in 2009- I returned to the park, conquered my fear of roller coasters, and just had a blast. Had that day not gone smoothly I might not be here now. 2. Delirium 3. Enter Sandman by Metallica, fittingly in line for Beast for a night ride in 2014. The song fit so well. "EXIT LIGHT...ENTER NIGHT!" 4. Not needed and I know PTC is probably against it, but if Kings Island found a way, it would be cool to bring it back. I never got to try it backwards. 5. Being unable to ride ANY roller coasters unless going to a Florida park or something. 6. Probably a dark ride-like section with screens or animatronics. Also the transfer track and stuff will probably be in there but not visible under normal conditions.

Huh, I saw that video beforehand but didn't realize someone from here made it. Awesome video BTW. On the topic said video is about, I perfer Beast, but a big part of that is its awesome night rides, which I have yet to get on Voyage since it is a bit tougher to visit Holiday World after dark without going to an enthusiast event or visiting them during the fall (when their waterpark- a huge draw for Holiday World- is closed), and it was very rough (and airtimeless somehow!) in 2011 and had a rough 2nd half in 2013 (though that time there was good airtime at least) when I last rode it. If Holiday World got it running smoothly and I got a night ride on it then, that might change though. Granted I also have a soft spot for Beast since it was also the ride that broke my fear of roller coasters 8 years ago in 2009, opening Pandora's Coaster Box for me if you will...so any new coasters I ride and love now, I kinda owe to Beast...

^ I looked on the web site for Valleyfair, California's Great America, and Worlds of Fun and Renegade, Gold Striker, and Prowler are all also rated at 4's (and those are also GCI's built at Cedar Fair parks). Mystic Timbers will probably be at least on par with those in terms of intensity. And all 3 of those rides are very highly regarded and often mentioned on best wood coaster lists in spite of Cedar Fair giving them a "4" thrill factor rating.

I did- it was pretty crazy. I would even go as far as to say running like that, FOF was more intense than any other coaster in the park (Invertigo may pull slightly stronger G's, but that ride is over much quicker to boot). I wonder if they are gonna keep it running like that, or resume using the MCBR once the 2017 season starts...

It's OK- and you were right, I was merely suggesting Banshee may have gotten more hype from being the first major thrill ride after SOB was demolished and the fact it sat near where (and a bit on) where SOB once stood. Also... ...I actually forgot that factor. Mystic Timbers is indeed gonna attract the 48' crowd that Banshee couldn't, not to mention the wooden coasters lovers, and it isn't as high on capacity (They are stating 1200pph for MT, Banshee is 1600pph). With that in mind, Mystic Timbers probably will have at least a 3-4 hour line on opening day so long as the weather is nice if the conditions are similar (aka warm, sunny, and a packed park craving roller coasters after a long offseason).

I actually did wait 4 1/2 though- one of the people in our group timed it. Not sure how that might have happened- maybe a bunch of Fast Lane users were slowing the line down or something. We got in line around an hour and a half after park opening BTW on I-Street, not far from Festhaus. (We waited 45 minutes for Backlot Stunt Coaster and 30 minutes to get in before we got in line for Banshee that day) Also I know Banshee would probably have still opened in 2014 elsewhere in the park had SOB still existed, but it was the first major addition since SOB was demolished and did use some of the land SOB once sat on (mainly lift hill+2nd helix). Being the first major addition since the hyped-but-failed SOB was demolished probably added to the Banshee hype. (Son of Beast is even shown being destroyed during the Banshee reveal teaser) Perfect weather that day probably helped too- 1 year later when Holiday World opened Thunderbird, the weather was crud (cold+rainy) and when I looked on their webcams the ride was running and open but had no wait.

If I am somehow there during the Madness of opening day (unless the weather is bad reducing crowds)? It'll probably depend how crazy the line for Mystic Timbers gets, if it is 4+ hours like Banshee was then I'll probably go to Flight of Fear, Banshee or something else outside Rivertown since literally everything else would have a shorter line. Hopefully they have some kind of plan to prevent Fast Lane users from spamming Mystic Timbers so much the line slows to a crawl and the T-Shirts are 1 per person. Though Mystic Timbers might not be as hyped up as Banshee was (Banshee was a much larger ride and was replacing Son of Beast). If the line is only 2 hours or less, Mystic Timbers it probably will be. Though I will probably not even be there opening day, so I have little idea what ride I will actually do first. In 2014, oddly, it was Backlot Stunt Coaster on opening day as the ride we wanted to ride, Flight of Fear, broke down and we were waiting for the Banshee line to whittle down a bit first.

I visited Kings Island for the first time during the Paramount years as a kid in 2000, however I developed a fear of roller coasters after being shocked at how large Son of Beast was and didn't know what airtime was when I rode Racer, so I didn't have interest in returning until around 2008 or so, when my sister went and then Diamondback was announced. So I returned in 2009, rode The Beast for the first time and broke the fear of roller coasters and fell in love. I didn't get a chance to return until 2010, when I visited twice (once during May and again for Haunt), returned for a 4th time in May 2011, and a 5th in May 2012. 2013 fell through and I didn't visit that year, but got a season pass and showed up 3 times in 2014, including my first ever opening day for Banshee which was bonkers. But then I missed 2015, but returned twice (regular season and haunt) in 2016. Due to Mystic Timbers I will probably show up again in 2017 at some point. In short, my total so far: 6 seasons, 11 visits over those 6 seasons.

^ You rode Mystic Timbers already!?!? WTH IT NOT EVEN BUILT YET!!! As for my own ratings: (Scale: 5 Amazing, 4 Good, 3 OK, 2 Meh, 1 Bad, 0 Garbage) (These are also sorted from my favorite to least favorite) The Beast- 5/5 (Can drop to 4/5 if trains not fully loaded and trims biting hard, but night rides feel like 6/5!) Diamondback- 5/5 (So...much...airtime...) Banshee- 5/5 (Incredible pacing and fun inversions while being silky smooth) Flight of Fear- 4.5/5 (Very forceful and fun, can be rough, becomes insane with MCBR off...) Vortex- 4/5 (Not as bad as everyone claims IMO...great layout and forces) The Bat- 4/5 (Very fast and intense but too short) The Racer- 4/5 (Can approach a 5/5 if running at its absolute best and can also drop to around a 2.5/5 if running very bad...I have experienced both...same rating overall for both sides...) Backlot Stunt Coaster- 4/5 (A Underrated little coaster IMO) Adventure Express- 4/5 (Can be a 3/5 on a bad day when theming not working 100%, usually a very fun family coaster though) Firehawk- 4/5 (I have not ridden this one in a while due to its crazy long lines, it can also drop to a 3/5 if it's running rough) Surf Dog- 3.5/5 (Fun flat ride, I don't count it as a coaster but if I did this is what I think of it) Invertigo- 3/5 (Super forceful, but not super comfortable and can headbang) Woodstock Express- 3/5 (Have not ridden since a kid...remember it being OK though...) Great Pumpkin Coaster- NA (Have not ridden since a kid and barely remember it...) Flying Ace Aerial Chase- NA (The one KI coaster I have yet to ride, besides Mystic Timbers of course...) As you can guess by the lack of anything below a 3/5, I like nearly all of the coasters Kings Island offers so far.

In addition to the park just being a cool place to hang out and relax, as several others have said, it also helps that if you do decide to ride things (which 99% of the time I assume most will unless you are sick/old/too scared) that the rides themselves are mostly at least good too, and there are plenty of them so if you have a group even if you have a full day you shouldn't run out fun rides to do very quickly- and there is great variety, from mild and relaxing to pretty darn intense. I'd be pretty surprised if someone went to Kings Island, tried a bunch of the rides, and hated ALL of them. Also it helps that I have never had an issue with Kings Island's staff. Ride Ops, Guest Services, etc etc. all seemed happy and willing to help and never rude. That is always a plus in my book. It says something that I have been to Kings Island 10 times over the last few years (since 2009- I know, 10 times is nothing to some of you guys who go 100+ times a year), and still have yet to leave in a worse mood than when I came. Even the time we went for Banshee Opening Day in 2014, only rode 3 roller coasters (and nothing else though we did do Dinosaurs Alive!) and got in a minor hit-and-run on our way into the park (the guy who did it got caught BTW) and I still left in a great mood. Then again, Beast at Night seems to be one of the things that will make me happy no matter my mood beforehand.

With every new picture, Mystic Timbers just looks better and better. Also seeing the blueprints for the Plaza (via the Twitter) shows that Matt Ouimet's plans for every new coaster to have epic entrances plazas will continue with Mystic Timbers, which IMO is great because so far none of these plazas have come out bad IMO (Banshee's came out awesome, and from the pics I have seen rides like Fury 325, Gatekeeper, Valravn and Leviathan also have great-looking ones). Every time I see new info on this ride, my excitement for it somehow manages to keep increasing. It clicks so many boxes for me- it's gonna be a wooden coaster (I love wood coasters), it promises lots of airtime (something I felt the park needed more of outside of Diamondback, Racer, and Vortex's 1st drop from the rear cars) and it is gonna have lots of theming and a interesting backstory... April cannot come soon enough.

I don't have money to actually do it, but based on the system requirements for Planet Coaster and what KIBeast said his budget was, I would probably build something like this (OS not included)...I went over by about $100 though due to the expensive i7...: Sub $800 i7 build- https://pcpartpicker.com/list/YvdqNN To get it under $700, you could try swapping the i7 out for an i5 though...not sure how much worse it would make Planet Coaster run, but most other PC games probably wouldn't care much about the CPU downgrade (for 90% of games it is the GPU that really matters- many budget builds even use i3's or worse and are fine). Planet Coaster is probably CPU heavy though due to all the simulation aspects. I also tried to make a "budget friendly" planet coaster build, but due to the game needing a pretty beefy CPU according to its system requirements, I could only really go down to around $500-ish with Intel and AMD has expensive motherboards... https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TDFPvV To be fair to this PC it would be great for 1080p gaming in most cases though and is decent for the price- aka probably what I would get if I suddenly had $550 or so to spend on buying myself a new PC. (Currently I have a laptop. It has a decent i5, but the integrated graphics are very meh and can only play older games well...) Edit: Edited the budget build a little due to comment below mine having more advice- swapped the single stick of RAM for 2 4GB sticks.

Hmm. This ride looks pretty sweet- I am assuming they used No Limits and auto-generated the supports, which caused the head chopper in the video. (ProTip: When using No Limits to showcase your new ride, make sure that doesn't happen...people clearly will notice) If it is that way on the real ride, then whomever makes sure amusement rides are safe in Florida probably won't let this open.

Hmm...while there are plenty of fantasy trades I could think of, part of me was thinking "What about realistic trades if they were actually possible"...in that sense, Kings Island would not be able to get a ride like Fury 325, El Toro or Maverick without losing a HUGE chunk of its current rides lineup since those rides are signature rides and staples at their respective parks, and Kings Island isn't gonna wanna give up rides like Beast, Banshee, or Diamondback either. I'd also imagine age and reliability would be a factor in such trades, since a park would feel screwed if they traded for a ride and 2 years later they needed to demolish it or it was giving them maintenance nightmares. (Dollywood would probably jump on that "proposed" Beast for Lightning Rod trade due to this- no longer do they have to worry about the mechanical headaches that ride has given them so far, that'd be KI's problem now, and they get a tried-and-tested wooden coaster legend in Beast which due to the nature of wooden coasters still has plenty of life left in it...Kings Island would then be scrambling to get Lightning Rod to work correctly in their place, though if they did then they could potentially have a amazing coaster. They would also have to deal with the backlash of trading away a beloved iconic ride in Beast though...) But what Kings Island might be able to do is say trade Invertigo for a couple (3+) of flat rides to a smaller park- that seems fair and would improve Kings Island, while the loss of Invertigo wouldn't mean much now that Banshee is at the park. The smaller park might get a nice boost simply from having a "new" coaster to boot, and might have a few extra flats it really doesn't need that much- which KI could really use to be honest.

Oddly I had a dream about the Mean Streak RMC conversion last night. It had a runaway train theme (my mind probably based that on Tony's tweet calling the track "railroad track" when he was asked a few weeks ago- did he just hint at the theme?), and for some reason, a "shed"-like dark ride section for the MCBR (not at the end of the ride like Mystic Timbers will have- also I doubt the real ride will have that feature) and there were more airtime hills/banked turns/inversions afterwards. It looked very fun and I woke up excited, then realized it was a dream.

Oh- thanks for filling me on that. I'd still say he did a pretty good job though. Rarely have I had an issue with any of those things at the park.

Oh wow...I wish Greg the best of luck. While there were some hiccups, overall I'd say he did a great job as Kings Island GM based on my visits from 2009-2016. Mike Koontz has big shoes to fill. Tony Carovillano also did a heck of a job- on nearly all of my visits to KI in said time frame, most coasters had great ride crews that were getting trains out fast and safely (minus maybe Firehawk- but flying coasters supposedly have terrible capacity anyway so it's really not the ride ops fault). Whoever replaces him also has big shoes to fill.

A Triotech Dark Ride is probably very possible, but what throws a wrench into picking that is that those are not always considered roller coasters. Wonder Mountain's Guardian is, but not Voyage to the Iron Reef. I still went ahead and said that for what I think will be next, coaster or not. I expect a B&M Giga will likely follow suit. As for what I'd want? A Giga Coaster would be great for the park's 50th birthday or so (don't really care too much about manufacturer but B&M has the reliability and capacity and both the GP and Enthusiasts adored Fury 325- so I'd go with them). A Blitz-type coaster (which due to Intamin issues would probably come from Mack Rides or some other builder) would also be a great fit and I'd probably love it. A B&M Floorless would probably be a great addition if they wanna add another looping coaster. And while it probably won't happen- I think the park would think Racer, Woodstock Express, Beast, and Mystic Timbers are more than enough woodies I could still easily see something like a RMC (granted I don't think their topper track rides are even truly wooden) or Intamin Plug & Play being added and not doing any harm to the other woodies as they'd still be very different from one another. And I heard Riverview Park in Chicago (which is closed now) once had EIGHT wooden roller coasters! Why can't Kings Island have five (six if you count Racer as 2) then!?!?

Yikes...as I said, I have not been on many coasters to date, but Voyage in 2011 is among those that I have, and that so far is the roughest roller coaster ride I have ever taken (I never got to ride infamously rough wooden rides such as Mean Streak or Son of Beast). If Hoosier Hurricane has gotten that bad, I hope it gets some major work done soon.

Hoosier Hurricane was my very first "large" roller coaster back in 1999- I remember riding it with my dad and loving it so much I rode it like 3 times in a row because there was also no wait. Hearing it has potentially become rough saddens me. I have also been on Raven & Legend at Holiday World, much more recently (in 2010, 2011, and 2013) and I loved both of those- Legend is my current #2 roller coaster behind Beast, and Raven is #6 on my overall list. Granted I haven't even broken 20 coasters yet (having only been to KI, HW, and IB and IB was in '99) so there is still plenty of room for those to drop lower- I don't think they will ever fall too low though, I can't see THAT many coasters being better than Raven. It's also kinda sad that CCI's get rough fairly easily- when I last rode it in 2013, Raven had a few potholes (nothing horrible but they were there), and I already stated I am saddened that Hoosier Hurricane has apparently not aged that well either. Ironically I never had any issues with Legend on any of my rides on it though, and it was the one that ended up getting a GCI overhaul this year. I want to get back and see how that has changed it (as well as ride Thunderbird of course). To be honest though, at this point, I would say CCI is actually my favorite roller coaster company ATM of the ones I have ridden rides from (with B&M in 2nd place), though as I ride more coasters at more parks that may change (I have yet to ride a GCI, RMC, or Intamin ride yet- need to get on those...).

Two. My personal record is 3, which I hit back in 2014. This is due to me being an hour and half away from the park, and the fact we can't keep dropping $20 for gas every day even if we have gold passes- which we sometimes don't and thus need tickets. Still, I have had plenty of fun on my not-so-many visits, and I haven't been too overexposed to the park so it still feels special whenever we first see the park driving up.

I visited twice this year (which is normal for me, 3x a year is my current best and that was from 2014) and both visits were pretty good- the first was back in early June during the Banshee Brew Festival (which I didn't partake in since I don't drink beer or wine) and then a few weeks ago for Haunt. I did have a few firsts this year- I got to try Flight of Fear with the MCBR off, which was pretty intense, saw my first show at KI (Blood Drums- it was epic) and ate my first food from a food truck. The only real downsides I noticed to 2016 was the slow food service towards the start of the year (seemed fixed by Haunt though) and the over-doing of the fog during Haunt (though that seems to be the case every year so it's not a 2016 thing). The rides were running great, and the ride crews did a great job usually. 2017 also looks promising since they are adding a new modern wooden coaster (something I have wanted ever since Son of Beast came crashing down) and bringing back Winterfest, something I have yet to try. In short: I loved 2016 and hope 2017 is even better- which it should be as long as they even match 2016's performance since Mystic Timbers and Winterfest should be pluses.

I also approve of this choice.

Sorry this response was delayed- sadly no, but thankfully the 2 other posters showed of the Flight of Fear and Mystic Timbers ones. Son of Beast didn't have a box like that, the reference to it is that where The "Beast Canyon Mining Co." sign usually is (at the main entrance above the soda machines), it said Outpost 5 Mining Co. (or something similar) instead. Outpost 5 was the secret government area where, in storyline, Son of Beast was being held I believe the Son of Beast crate is in the entrance plaza and The Beast crate to the right of the queue bridge, FOF and Mystic are to the left of the bridge. You could tell someone took alot of time to create The Beast Haunt display this season. Someone should get more pictures this weekend during the day and night. Oh, I didn't even notice that one. I also did see The Beast crate but forgot to mention it. Also apparently Beast got new "Do Not Stand Up" signs at the top of both lift hills with the added touch of Beast claws grabbing them. I thought that was a neat new addition as well.

Sorry this response was delayed- sadly no, but thankfully the 2 other posters showed of the Flight of Fear and Mystic Timbers ones. Son of Beast didn't have a box like that, the reference to it is that where The "Beast Canyon Mining Co." sign usually is (at the main entrance above the soda machines), it said Outpost 5 Mining Co. (or something similar) instead. Outpost 5 was the secret government area where, in storyline, Son of Beast was being held, and "Track 1" of Adventure Express was supposed to head there but for some unknown reason something goes wrong and you go on the abandoned Track 2 instead. (Source: the old station music which can be heard on KIExtreme's KITunes section, select "Adventure Express- Station Master"). I also find it very cool and interesting that if you read up on all the official stories KI has made for many of its coasters over the years, you can connect the themes of The Beast, Son of Beast, Banshee, Mystic Timbers, Adventure Express, Flight of Fear, Firehawk, and even squirm in The Bat/Flight Deck/TOP GUN (you have to use a little headcanon for that one in its current theme though) and make one huge story about a small little town near a river in Ohio and a secret government facility. (The other major coasters/rides either have themes that are too generic or don't match up and thus they don't really fit said story sadly)