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Tickets for next year's Winter Chill Out at Cedar Point on February 23, 2019 are on sale now, earlier than ever. The cost is $50 per participant, with all proceeds benefiting A Kid Again. Everyone gets a multi-hour behind-the-scenes tour of the park (including the new-for-2019 Forbidden Frontier), exclusive Q&A session, hot lunch, and other surprises. The event sells out every year, so purchase soon, especially if you want a specific timeslot. @acole5292 , @pianoman, @chugh43 and I just purchased tickets to the 9:30am tour. Who else is attending this year?

Any mobile app we publish would need to respect privacy, not hog battery life, and be completely optional. For those who love using mobile websites, we certainly wouldn't want to pressure anyone into installing an app. Push notifications and a in-park friend finder are great ideas. Certainly, an app could make it a lot easier to share photos and video to the forums with fewer steps. The audience for an app would extend beyond those participating on the forums, so we'd want to make it easy to get to (for example) current news and park info. Keep the ideas coming! Invision Community has served us well as forum software, but their progress on the mobile side has been slower than I had hoped. Moving to a community platform like Hivebrite would give us a mobile app out-of-the-box that we could customize, or we could look at creating something ourselves (within time and budget constraints).

My small leather wallet holding (only) my season pass, credit card and driver license was enough to set the metal detector off on Friday. It seemed to be on a more sensitive setting than they usually are.

^ I sure hope not. I'd much rather see continued success of efforts to repair the iconic SeaWorld brand. Getting rid of it would seem like giving into the narrative of the Blackfish filmmakers, which would be a sad day for those in the industry trying to tell their own stories.

The Reds Hall of Fame Grille buffet is on the dining plan. The price is $24.99, or $19.99 with a season pass, or a $5 upcharge as a dining plan redemption. The Fast Lane Plus entrance is indeed the single rider line for WinterFest.

Reports are that the second train is running on Flight of Fear tonight.

The new Christmas buffet at Reds Grille is well-worth the $5 dining plan upcharge. The menu options are similar to last year's International Restaurant buffet; I especially enjoyed the mashed red potatoes and maple glazed ham.

In general, Sunday should be the least busy night. This was the case on Opening Weekend last year. I don't worry too much about crowds at WinterFest, as there's plenty to do without waiting in lines.

I have a hard time envisioning Hershend (which doesn't sell alcohol in its parks) purchasing a park named after a brewery. If SEAS decided to spin off the Busch parks to another operator, I'd personally like to see them go to Merlin.

^ That's correct. Parking gates open one hour before the park opens, and turnstiles open 30 minutes prior, along with most of International Street. The park opens at 5:00 (4:00 on Saturdays), with the lighting ceremony at 5:30.

One more day! The park is looking great on the webcams tonight: https://www.visitkingsisland.com/explore/live-video As a reminder, Tinsel Town opens as a new area this season. Tinsel Town Diner (Juke Box Diner) features burgers, patty melts, and a turducken sandwich. Horse-drawn carriage rides are offered for $40 per group of up to six riders. The Enchanted Theater is open this year, with What The Dickens and A PEANUTS Guide To Christmas playing there. Coney Barbecue becomes Smokehouse Christmas, featuring roast beef, smoked turkey, Christmas sausage, and rotisserie chicken. Pull-apart cinnamon bread will be found this season at Claus Confectionary (Rivertown Funnel Cakes), along with funnel cakes, hot chocolate, and other treats. Can't wait to see everyone there tomorrow!

Nothing would fit the theming in New France quite like an advertising wrap for Snickers on one of Invadr's trains.

I'm curious how the pass situation would work out. Gold memberships including unlimited admission and parking to all Six Flags parks can be had for $80/year or less. The same level of access to SeaWorld parks costs at least $180 - and can be much higher depending on your home park.

There's also this photo gallery with more historical photos: https://kicentral.com/photos/ Once we get everything tagged and categorized, they'll all be in one location.

One issue with Cedar Fair purchasing the Busch Gardens and/or SeaWorld parks would be that they've never run animal parks, whereas Six Flags runs two. When Cedar Fair bought Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, the animals were not part of the purchase.

The temperature was part of the issue on the colder days last season, when getting the boiler to pressure took extra time. Really glad the train will have better capacity this year!

Firehawk is testing.

And it's not coming back up today, so Firehawk has already given its last rides.

That was a typo. 5A. Most modern phones won't charge effectively (if at all) below 2A.

I got the Pixel 3 last week and like it so far. I'm happy with the 5" display size, OLED panel, IP68 rating, really good camera, unlockable bootloader, flagship processor (Snapdragon 845) and loud speakers. As for Android Pie, the gesture button is much nicer to use than software buttons. It's enough of an improvement that I no longer miss physical buttons. I also like the Now Playing feature, which automatically displays and logs nearby music using a local database whenever the phone is turned on. The negatives are the lack of a headphone jack, battery life that could be better (I get about 26 hours), no expandable storage (though unlimited Google Drive storage for Pixel 3 photos/videos taken before 2022 somewhat makes it for it), and a very easy-to-scratch glass back. The 5W limit on Qi charging doesn't really bother me; I usually use a 2W charger to preserve the battery.

Cedars was closed permanently at the end of this past summer, replaced by additional new housing off-Point.

It was 37° when the ride started for Banshee's Media Day. That's well below its regular startup temperature, but B&M was on-site for the event and cleared it to open on schedule. Saturday was the first time I've ever left Kings Island when it was still open due to inclement weather. I was surprised to see people still pouring into the park around 7:30pm, high winds notwithstanding.

I made it to morning ERT at Kings Island this morning after staying at Cedar Point until close on Friday, managing to ride coasters at both parks on the same calendar day. Close enough? Six Disney parks on the same day is too crazy for even me. You'd spend more time traveling than actually enjoying anything.

I rode Wooden Warrior last year, and it's a thrilling ride with plenty of airtime despite its relatively small size. It's no Woodstock Express, even though it has the same height restriction. If Kentucky Flyer's experience is anything similar, we're in for a treat.