shark6495

this question is loaded for one side to win this argument and the other to lose horribly. You (people, most of you) are assuming that KI would open today (2010) with the same tech., rides, and other features that existed in 1972, while competing against other parks with new great tech. Lets be real here. First if the park was to open today it would not open with just The Racer, it would open with a ride similar to Diamondback. So to say the park from 1972 in its entirety to be opened in 1972 is not a fair question at all. Thats like saying would Cedar Point of 1912 survive today? Would DisneyLand of 1955 survive today. Of course any of these parks (including KI) would survive if the tech is allowed to be of todays fair. So with that being said, a more fair question would be "Would the business tasks and attitudes that opened the park in 1972 be profitable and would the park thrive in 2010?" As goodyellowKorn has pointed out the answer would be a resounding yes. So a KI that had a few rides, but was well maintained, worked towards creating a family fun environment, and had great customer service would become a wonderful park, similar to a Busch Gardens. But would a park that has a hannah Barabara Land, 1 wooden roller coaster, and big tower in the middle of it survive? probably not.

how does that work. Coasters I know (or at least I thought so) you work (worked) at coney. Do you guys just put everything that can float away on a truck and drive it somewhere?

well it breaks down to just lil over 10 million per restaurant/bar/game place. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/041510dnbusdavebusterearns.24824d12a.html they lost money last year.... who knows if this will be a good deal or not

hopefully what they mean by untapped markets does not mean aggressive and over zealous expansion....

speaking of him.... has anyone seen or heard from him lately? I feel the board is slightly lost with out him around and congrats on your 8000 post

emphasis added. Look goodyellowkorn, im not in the mood to start a flame war with you. I never once suggested world's biggest bonfire. I never once said tear it down or keep it standing. I have always sided (as long as I can remember since joining) in the middle, that the rides future will be determined by the parks management. So before you go making blanket statements and adding words to my mouth (computer) please do not lump me into the burn the ride to the ground..... with that being said I apologize because they way you have been sounding lately is you believe the ride still has a future as it is. It seemed you were ignoring rational thoughts and stances, that is why I assumed, wrongly, that you want SoB to reopen as it is right now...... back to the facts.... SoB is closed this summer and only time will tell what the future of the ride will be

or ride it, question the ability of the park to maintain a ride for safety reasons. This may surprise you but for a while I lived in upstate ny, over 9 hours away from cincy. People have heard of Kings Island. they even, gasp, went to the park for vacations. Believe me people have heard of the park. Goodyellowkorn, SoB may not be geared towards families of four, but The Beast can be ridden by parents, actually any ride can be. Each area has the kiddie pen near the exit to corral the young kids in while the parents ride the rides. Goodyellow I understand you like SOB but try to see the other side of a discussion and its easier to come up with solutions instead of just starting a fire and leaving

goodyellow, i understand your frustrations but seriously people have heard of KI. If not because of the rides, or the paramount hawking of it back in the day, or because of the brady bunch. Either way people have heard of the park. the individual rides, maybe maybe not. Moving on to the other points you have tried to make again and again. Cedar Fair may or may not care about the teenagers who ride that ride, but they care about the families of 4 not riding that ride. one less ride means the family is at the park for 1 less hour. 1 less hour means they are not as hungry. 1 less ride people want to ride means they will have less reasons to return to the park in the future....

Your question is irrelevant. It's 2010, not 2050. 10 years later, I should be able to get on SOB and get a quality ride, just like day # 1. actually its not. if your first ride came after the failure of the ride, the removal of the loop, the lighter trains, then you are not getting the original experience..... but its cool i understand where you are coming from. But even after year 1 the ride (any ride) will not be the same. wood ages, bows, stretches, etc.....

First off, huge congrats on getting a job. and as I stated a while back, either in this topic or another SoB topic, that plans can and do change... Now I have a question, did you have to take a class where you pass the blame to someone else? (ie. it was the guy who designed it, or the guy who built it.... ) okay bad joke i know but huge congrats..... now that you have a grown up job, can you tell us exactly where SoB went wrong? and follow up... how do we fix it hehe

you know if you go to RCDB, and look at the pics of the ride in its glory days what a sweet loop.... Sweetness not as sweet

to everyone who didnt like the ride during their first rides, may i ask when you rode it first? Im not calling you out, but it seems that anyone who rode it prior to 2003/2004 loved their first rides, and anyone after that did not like their first rides....

Hey I never said the ride was a mistake from the beginning. I even said I enjoyed the ride the first year or two. It was rough but not bad rough. It was 80 mph rough and I could take it. The hill was great. Going into the first set of helix was not bad, it threw you to the side, but you were turning at 80. Coming up and out to go into the loop was nice. The second helix more of the first. The only part i did not enjoy was the drop out of the station. It was only slightly rough in that area. But around year 4 or 5 it just started getting worse for me. The coaster had lost some of its earlier magic. The first helix didnt seem one smooth turn but just a bunch of quick juts (as in my body bounced more side to side). The loop was still nice on the ride though. It got to the point that I would ride it but only to "get it out of the way" on my daily ride every ride in the park phase. Then the accident happened in year 6. The following year I rerode it thinking it had become better. It just felt jumpy to me and much rougher than I remembered it was. Could the ride have gotten worse (they did replace the trains) or was it that I was getting older and couldnt take the beating anymore? Who knows. But after 06 I would ride it once a year just to see how it was doing and it never seemed to reciprocate the love to me.

http://www.flickr.co...s/49728734@N02/ the photos are posted... too many to swamp this board with..... but maybe it could bring back some memories for the board members Photos now have descriptors.....

ok so I went back to the park today. Took the pictures. I will post them when I can. So it looks like I misspoke before. I got a picture of the dipper and also a white coaster located near what looks like white water canyon ride.

now lets be rationale many buildings have issues when being built

Son of Beast is an engineering marvel. Your an architect (well might be after college), just think if you built the tallest building ever built using wood. The building would be pretty big, but being made of wood it would need tons of maintenance. Many people think the building is ugly, or it can't support all the weight and only a certain amount of people can be on it (or some other flaw). Eventually an important piece of wood cracks making the building dangerous to be in. Don't you think it would still be an engineering marvel even though it ended up failing? you have a point, but many would consider a marvel to be something that has stood the test of time. Has been able to stay standing even though it should have collapsed, or been unsafe. I wouldnt nominate SOB as an engineering marvel, but I wouldnt say it was an engineering mistake. Instead look at it like the first test run of wooden superstructures. The Beast would be a marvel because it was so long and it has stood the tests of time. http://www.impactlab.com/2008/09/08/20-modern-engineering-marvels/ however these are modern marvels..... Kingda Ka made the list.

coaster junky anything could have happened but the park thought it could have been SOB's fault as well......

So I took a trip out there today to scout the park, with out my camera. Man just driving by the park is sad. The green tarp might as well be a funeral shroud, with the Dipper standing defiantly among the dead. With that being said I drove around the whole park, down 43, taking a right and coming up the backside of the park. From that angle you get a beautiful view of the dipper. The ride looks to be in decent condition (again all things considered, not being run and driving by at 25 MPH). But driving by the park just reminds me how sad that place has become. The water park is hidden from sight (from the road) and the remnants of the parks "glory days" are all over the surrounding area. Be it the wide open desolate parking lots, or the business surrounding the park. Ill go back in a week or so with the camera to see what I can take from the road.

wow I leave for 1 day and there are 3 new pages of rational and irrational posts, good all KIC, I jest. Ya'll are seriously taking the car to coaster comparison to seriously. A car is cheaper than a coaster but a car is expensive to the person buying it. Just like a coaster may be a large investment to the company buying it. Its all relative to the person. Same thing with buying dinner, one person may think 7 dollars for a meal is average while another person will spend 40 bucks on a meal. But people complain about the 7 dollar meal just as much as the 40 dollar meal. Shaggy has made some very rational neutral thoughts on the ride. He is right. Taking into account the sunk costs, its still a risk investing more money. FF EKU you say you are a economy major (or business or something similar) so you understand calculated risks. The more fixes done to SOB causes the ride to become more of a risk. The first fix was to see if they could get it right. Then they got new trains. The park has to look at it from a business sense that says how many more times can we fix this ride? Do we continue to pour money into this ride or do we cut our losses and invest in something new. Its a gamble. People will always say oh it was one more fix from being perfect, and some will say its perfect that way it is. Hate to break it to anyone but if the park was not happy with the ride given to the guests then the ride will not open. End of story. The company has itself to worry about. If it thinks it will get another lawsuit over a rough ride then the ride is gone. FF EKU, saying anyone who ignored their doctors warnings and gets hurt on this ride is absurd. A few people who have suffered injuries, the latest included, did not know they had the "pre-existing" concerns to cause a future injury. For a ride to cause a minor pre-existing condition to turn into a life threatening sitatuion is not a good thing at all. You say she waited to long to go to the doctors? Have you ever heard of people "twisting" their ankle and thought nothing of it. Then a week later they go to the doctors to find out that "twist" tore all of the ligaments? or caused a fracture? The lady could have been riding the ride, gotten off and felt slight pang of injury in her temple (common spot for burst blood vessels). If its a slow bleeder nothing else should have hurt her, except maybe for a slight headache (which she may have thought was just the ride caused a headache.) She went about the day but thought nothing of it, how many times have we (KIC Community left a ride and thought man I got a headache, oh well two aspirin will fix it). She went home, continued doing her motherly details, but still a headache, and no real reason for it. Her husband gets home (from a business trip or what have you) she mentions that she has had a headache since she got off the ride. He says we should go to the emergency room. At the ER they find out blood has been leaking onto the brain (you may not know this but blood is actually bad for the brain, it will kill it if the blood comes into contact with brain tissue) and she is put into ICU. After that she says hey SOB caused the injury. That time line does not sound soo far off base.....

well the box being removed does not mean for me that its closed forever. however moving the que line back like they did does make me wonder about the ride. To be truthful though I wont believe its done for till they start dismantling some part of the ride or remove the que completely.

maybe

to be fair though KD is not in the state of Ohio. If Ceder Fair had to say, sell some or all of the paramount parks, why would they want to make one of their competing parks better than the flag ship park. Thats only saying they would sell KI. Who knows CF could just slowly dismantle the park over time, there is no way of knowing their business plan, unless you are the main guy who owns them. But if they are trying to recoup 1.6 billion, and selling parks is an option do not look to see SoB remodeled or a big world record coaster put in its place. The problem, one of many, when one company owns a bunch of parks, is that there may be less competition. With KI and CP being so close, one park would have to try and out do the other one. If they are owned by the same company then its less about numbers at the one park but numbers for the company as a whole. For example SoB and Millenium Force both opened in 2000. Why? Well both parks wanted new guests to come to their park and not the other. Raptor in 94, Flight of Fear in 96.....

as the discussion goes on in here with some inform and some not informed people I would venture a guess that these same discussions have happened behind closed doors with some informed and some not informed company people. With all that being said.... The rattler video... my goodness did yall see how much movement the ride structure had? and on to SoB..... As enthusiasts its easy to say "throw money at it and it will fix it." But as I said in the original SoB thread, Son of Beast is this generation's Bat. A ride that experienced some irrepairable flaws, that was liked and hated, and was around for a short time period. Heck even 10 years is a long time for some rides. I think we forget how luck we are in South Western Ohio. Most of our rides have not been removed from out home park. New Rides come in and the old rides (most) have stayed. Some of the best ones are from the parks original 10 years. In other parks rides are removed and replaced somewhat regularly. So with that perspective SoB was just a short timer in KI. Out like King Kobra and The Bat. Do I wish it would stay? Only if they could fix it, but seriously I doubt we'll see much work done to it.

i had no issues with his vegetarian menu post. He seemed very nice and seemed very interested in making friends, etc. We (terp and I along with others) helped him fine tune his vegetarian menu (jello no longer on it, etc.) What I got a problem with was the way he dismissed the facts and just inserted his own rumors and "facts" with disregard to what others were saying. Instead of just saying "oh I was wrong" it was more like cool ill go back and add an edit, but never admit i was wrong type of deal. It just seems for a person of his age he should have known better. Oh well... self policing worked in this scenario.... And lastly (more like a p.s.) the part about the deaths just irked me so much. For a person who was there and was friends with (or somehow knew the guy who died) he was not fairly good with the facts. If this was a 12 year old kid, then benefit of the doubt, a 33 year old man.... well yeah you say a false "fact" in the day of google (of something that is searchable, heck searchable on this website), you should be called out.