malem

Here's a scale diagram of the building:

Now that's funny. Did he steal it from your video, or is that from Don's footage? That issue has been fixed on Gatekeeper, and it was confirmed that it won't be an issue on Banshee.

Perhaps it's the name for whatever is replacing Knott's Berry Farm's WindSeeker.

Even if there are heavy crowds, they will be much lighter than Saturday's crowds. Plan your time well, and you should be able to get a lot done regardless. Get to the gate early; absolutely no later than 5:30pm. Plan to do haunts that will attract long lines (Madam Fatale's, Wolf Pack, CarnEvil, Tombstone Terror-tory, Slaughterhouse) either very early (6pm-7pm) or very late (11:30pm-1am). If a line is unreasonably long, skip it and do something else. If ride lines are long, try to get night rides on Beast and Diamondback just after nightfall (~7:30pm) and/or in the last hour of park operation. If lines for everything are long, ride Flight Deck, Adventure Express, and/or Vortex. (Do this even if the lines aren't long.) Crowds tend to get heavier towards the end of Haunt, but Kings Island attendance is highly influenced by weather. Cold temperatures will undoubtedly keep some people away. Trying to predict crowds is usually futile; just go and have a good time.

^ GK rode great on the left side in the 4th car. No shuffling at all, and (of course) no noticeable tightness in the restraint. As for props, the scenes were great, but they seemed sparser and were less well-lit than those at KI. The purpose is to scare, not provide visuals, so I guess it works. That creeper guy must not mind people walking into him, if he's going to creep around narrow, dark hallways dressed in black.

^ I was expecting decently sized crowds, with HalloWeekends and perfect weather. I was surprised at how quickly rides like Magnum and Corkscrew filled their queues, though. (Albeit, Corkscrew was stacking with just two trains on the track.) I waited under an hour for everything I rode, and I rode all the major rides except Raptor. Granted, I did a lot of speed walking around the park to find rides with reasonable waits. Millennium and Maverick had long lines all day; luckily, I hit them early. Raptor was closed a good chunk of the day, so the line stayed around 1hr until closing. Gatekeeper had a 1hr+ wait most of the day, but it was down to 20min by closing. I made that my last night ride, since I had no desire to stick around in Millennium's queue for 2 hours. TTD's wait was around an hour for a lot of the day, but I managed to wait only 25min by hitting it right after downtime ended. Winning Tony's Tweetup let me skip a full Maverick queue - that felt good. Wicked Twister had a minimal wait most of the day, and Magnum's queue was highly variable throughout the day. Mean Streak's queue got up to about 45min shortly after Eden Musse opened, but it was ~15min most of the day. Pretty much everything except Millennium, Maverick, TTD, Gatekeeper, and Raptor had a minimal wait after 6:00pm. The mazes had rather long waits today, so I only did one. I waited about 25 minutes for Eden Musse right after it opened. The props in Madam Fatale's are a lot better, but the scaractors seemed better at hiding than most at KI. Several "scares" made me jump. (The biggest scare was accidentally walking into an actor, hidden in dark clothing, standing in the middle of an unlit walkway. I apologized, of course.) This was my first HalloWeekends as well. I had a good time, but I'll probably be more inclined to pick non-HW days in the future. I think I prefer Kings Island's Haunt. As for wearing shorts and a t-shirt, it was definitely nice being properly dressed later in the day. Granted, Millennium Force was a bit chilly at 11:00am.

Almost to Sandusky. EDIT: I think I'm the only person in this park wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

I'm still trying to decide whether to go to CP tomorrow. (I don't mind chilly temperatures, but the forecast wind gusts have me worried about whether everything will open.)

^ Next time it happens on your desktop, fire up Firefox's console (CTRL+SHIFT+K) or Chrome Inspector (CTRL+SHIFT+J) and see what the delay is. If in Firefox, check the status bar at the bottom left or bottom right of the browser. You're looking for network activity. Without experiencing it myself or having any data, I can only speculate.

Was it on an iDevice? Does it only occur when posting, or can it happen when reading a page? Does it ever fail entirely and go to an error message of some sort?

^^ The article doesn't say anything about the ride being named "Banshee". Rather, that's the name of the creatures from Avatar which are featured in the ride. Perhaps this is why FUN's "Banshee" trademark was filed so early.

No lagging here, on any device. (Albeit, I don't use any Apple devices.) Do you use any other forums with InvisionPowerBoard? If so, do they ever lag? iOS doesn't support persistent http connections, which are often at-fault with random lagging problems on certain corporate networks. This type of issue affecting only one site (and, apparently, only you) is rather odd.

^ Unwinding third party ticket distribution deals (Kroger, etc) was also a goal, but that hasn't happened. It remains to be seen how much dynamic pricing the market will bear. Online admission "discounts" are already highly variable.

^ Here's my favorite spot to park: I'm out of that lot and onto the causeway within a minute!

^ Knott's and Worlds of Fun are the two parks trying it. Presumably there's a Gatekeeper directing those with the pass into the upcharge rooms. It's an add-on to a Fright Lane lanyard. I actually like the idea, as long as they're not hurting the normal experience. Standard haunts are designed to push lots of people through as smoothly as possible, whereas these could be more interactive. Sam probably wouldn't be very happy if he got locked in such a room, though.

Some would. Many more would leave much earlier. Adding causeway lanes to CP in 2013 would be very, very expensive. A much easier solution to this problem is to prevent too many people from leaving at the same time. The newsworthy problems happened when people started leaving. You do raise a good point though. Although closing a single-gate destination park isn't workable, as Terp noted, perhaps highway signs noting delays would have helped. Some guests might have chosen not to wait if there was a 1-hour delay to get onto the peninsula. According to Terp, it's currently posted private property. Cedar Fair owns both ends of it, and supposedly it's (officially) reserved for residents. In any case, those residents would not be happy to have 900 cars per hour shoved down their way.

From a quick scan of Saturday night's Twitter posts about Cedar Point, it seems that many had a good time despite long lines at attractions. Tweets turn rather angry in hours 2, 3, and 4 of waiting to exit the parking lot. With ~11,000 parking spaces (according to cedarpoint.com) and ~2500 cars/hour maximum causeway capacity, traffic management could only do so much. If the park's near capacity at the scheduled closing time, they should keep attraction(s) open later to spread out the exiting crowd. Running Millennium and Gatekeeper until 2:00am might have prevented much frustration at a relatively low cost.

Nice report - glad you all had fun! Perhaps I should make the ~130mi drive next year. Organizing a mini-golf tournament was a great idea. I may have embarrassed myself, though; I had the highest score in a group of ~40 the last time I played mini-golf.

It sounds like they should have extended the park hours.

^ Other Cedar Fair parks have introduced a "Skeleton Key" add-on this year. Pay more, and you get admitted to extra rooms inside the standard haunts.

^ He did, via Twitter last week.

The water is trapped and is apparently never treated. It's constantly "washing" the back of the train, the track, and certain riders. Think protein spills, bird droppings, dead animals, and any other debris that makes its way in. Take a look from the tower, or smell your arm after getting it wet in Diamondback's rear seat. Depending on the wind, you can get a nice mist of it from the midway.

There's a theme selector, but I have no idea which color selector you're talking about. The theme is set for each user in the database on the server, not by a cookie. If this green color setting is being set by a cookie, then just set it on each of your five device/OS combinations and you're good to go.

^ If your 2013 pass is gold or platinum, it already includes unlimited visits to KI's Haunt in 2013. If your 2013 pass is a regular season pass, it expired after Labor Day. If you purchase a new 2014 Kings Island gold or platinum pass, you will get one free visit to Kings Island this fall. You'll have to pay for parking during your one free visit, but parking will be included for all of 2014. (If you have a 2013 gold/platinum pass, you don't need the free visit since you already have unlimited admission and parking this year.)

That's what staging servers are for.