malem

The "bring a friend" discount isn't supposed to be a "send a friend" discount, even though some people have done this. A half-off admission coupon could presumably be given to a friend who isn't visiting with you.

The meal is a prepaid ticket, and there's no mention of added tax or gratuity, so keep that in mind when comparing prices. That $35 dish would be $45 after tip and tax. This seems to be all-inclusive. (Well, all-inclusive except for the $5 online "service" fee to reserve in advance)

Meals in the Picnic Pavilion and (presumably) in the International Restaurant start at 5:30pm this year, so at least some guests will be needing to get past the turnstiles before 6pm.

The meal options are now listed on the Haunt site; both meals start at 5:30pm. Interestingly, the new option is a pricy dining experience tied to the new Madam Fatale house. There's no mention of where the meal is served, but I'm assuming it's in the International Restaurant unless a dining room was built in the Crypt building. In any case, it's nice to see a "fine dining" option available at KI again, even if it's only a limited experience during Haunt. Also notably, the "Backyard Barbecue" (Fright Feast) is only $9.99 during Haunt, presumably priced low to tempt those who would otherwise dine before coming to the park. This might be a compelling option for a KIC Day at Haunt, if one ends up happening, especially if there's an extra season pass discount.

On Haunt Fridays without early entry, at what time are guests allowed through the turnstiles onto International Street?

KI recommends Haunt for people 13+. It would be difficult to enforce this age limit, since children who are "old enough" may not be carrying ID. And, as others have said, age and maturity don't always go hand-in-hand. KI can't be a substitute parent. Knott's new upcharge Haunt maze has an age limit of 18, and presumably ID is checked for people who look close to 18. If an attraction at KI is added that's only appropriate for adults, checking ID would be a very good thing.

If you take took the passenger cabin off at ground level, you'd have the problem of the counterweight dropping from the top. By keeping the counterweight at the bottom (and the cabin at the top), they only had to worry about one heavy object falling to the ground during demo. Notice that the cabin moves upward and actually strikes the top of the tower, as it's still being pulled by its counterweight while it falls. Since they knew exactly where the cabin would impact the ground, at the top of the tower, they dug a hole there to soften the impact. Removing the cabin/counterweight before demolition would have been dangerous work at the midpoint of the tower, 150ft up. I imagine it was much cheaper to simply drop it intact in a predictable fashion.

Cedar Point added theirs along with Luminosity. The young kids most interested in the dinos can't even ride WindSeeker and might not be interested in a nighttime dance party atmosphere. Older guests aren't as likely to pay to walk through a childrens' educational exhibit. Besides, the dinos pay for themselves.

^ Don't look straight ahead, keep your mouth firmly closed, and tilt your head downwards. If you haven't been in the front seat before, it's worth hitting some bugs. Just take an extra-long shower when you get home.

Have you been there? When I was there, restrooms in both parks were very clean, there was no trash to be found anywhere, and walkways were kept free of debris and looking clean. The lack of debris on walkways is especially important in the waterpark, and this is definitely something you can't say about Soak City. If the water in a properly treated public bathing facility bothers you, you don't have to get in. (Yes, nasty stuff does find its way into swimming pool water.) Arguing whether Holiday World is cleaner than vastly different Disney parks is a trivial point. Keeping impeccable grounds is a big accomplishment regardless of meaningless rankings as to who keeps them cleanest. It's an especially big achievement when comparing the resources of Holiday World to the resources of Disney.

Just in case anyone familiar with Cedar Fair had any question as to the meaning of that banner, they had to remove absolutely all doubt with the filename.

With explosives. Thanks to a member on PointBuzz:

You could put your season pass barcode into an app like this already and use it for FUN Perks, as long as you could convince cashiers to scan your phone. What they will most likely support is loading tickets onto the "pass book", so that people don't have to waste paper. You're still going to want to print out your tickets, lest an outage leave you at the gate without a ticket in-hand. See what happened to United travelers relying on an electronic boarding pass when United's website went down for a few hours. Since Cedar Fair relies on signatures for multi-day tickets, presumably paperless won't even be an option for all. Now, if only making ticket purchases was possible from these devices that don't support Flash, Accesso would really be taking a step forward. This does have the nice side effect of protecting full gate price revenue by making it really hard to buy discounted tickets when not at home. Or at home, even. Typing a credit card number into a Flash object hosted on an unencrypted web page is really bad form.

Apparently because the ride was designed not to run at all if a fault is detected, so the gondola must be lowered by hand. Which apparently takes 3 hours. If someone would have had a medical issue while stuck at 300', that wait could have been very bad.

You seem to be aware that you're not the only park employee who reads this forum. Flipping off other readers might not be the best career move. Also see the section in the terms of service of this site about "respect".

FUN Perks certificates can only be redeemed at the park. There's no way to input one into the online store. Renewing at the park is slightly a better option anyway, since a $5 processing fee is always added to online orders.

At least when Cedar Point's broke down, riders only had to be manually cranked downwards. Those already afraid of the ride must have been absolutely petrified when they realized they were being hand-cranked to the top. At least at 7:20pm, dehydration and sunburn probably weren't issues. I hope they all received just compensation, as a 3-hour evacuation time is ridiculous from a guest standpoint.

The Voyage should finally have its long-delayed new trains in 2013, so perhaps they will give it a bump next year. Perhaps they'll even smoothen out some bumps. For me, it's almost intolerable in the back seats of its cars and towards the back of the train. It's not surprising that a poll of enthusiasts prefers the water coaster filled with lots of airtime and more intense launches. Mammoth's lack of being in the top 5 could simply be that they didn't want to crowd the category with two similar rides at the same park. (It did win best new waterpark ride)

If you want more than 200 photos visible on flickr, add them to a public group pool. Then, everyone (including you) can see your photos by looking at this pool. The annual fee on flickr is quite reasonable if you find that you're using it often.

Really, they're using a generic feed?! There are plenty of commercial music services that allow custom playlists, so they really don't need any infrastructure at all for this. Many businesses do extensive research to figure out which background music will cause their patrons to buy more and stay longer. I'd like to think that a very loud soundtrack at an amusement park would have a bigger effect than the music piped into Meijer stores. After all, the entire point of operating an amusement park is to keep people in high spirits - and spending money - all day long. Even if not at the individual park level, someone could be in charge of music chain-wide. There's really no excuse at all for throwing on a CHR feed and calling it a day, from an investor standpoint or from a guest standpoint. By the way, I don't think themed music in each section is essential - it would be much better to have a great playlist parkwide than bad playlists done by section. Still, Coney Mall really shouldn't be playing any music newer than the 80s.

I don't think I've heard any rap on the playlist. The type and era of music isn't as important as the mood it sets. Songs like "Rumor Has It" and "Somebody That I Used To Know" definitely should have been left off. Mixing in some popular, current hits can be a positive thing, as these are the songs the current generation can sing along to. Just pick those hits that will set a festive mood, even in those who don't sing along to current Top 40 songs on their ipod all day long. Also, if the soundtrack needs to be audible throughout the park, more and better speakers should be added to avoid uncomfortable volume levels in certain places.

If you think Paramount era names are bad at this point, I saw one guest who was surprised that they could no longer follow The Beast footprints to the ride. The music has annoyed more than a few people this year. Here's to hoping that the playlist and the acoustics will be improved for next season, especially in Coney Mall.

Except that it's probably not just water vapor. Fog machines usually use other ingredients to make the fog denser and longer-lasting. It's not toxic, of course, but breathing it for 6 consecutive hours doesn't sound fun at all.

Yes. He was probably talking about Discovery Island, the small park at Disney World that closed when the Animal Kingdom resort opened. It was included free in multi-day Park Hopper tickets in the 90s, so some people took a trip over to the island for a break from the much more crowded theme parks. If I recall correctly, most of the buildings and animal enclosures on this island are still there, rotting away. I remember seeing an unauthorized photo tour of this at one point; I'll edit this post and link to it if I can find it again. EDIT: It's not in the Caribbean, but it's the only Disney "park" that I'm aware of that's closed without being demolished. Here's the link to the unauthorized "exploration" of the island: http://shaneperez.bl...ery-island.html . Wikipedia also has a lot of information on it now. There could be a port of call once visited by Disney ships that is now unused, but calling such a destination a Disney resort may be a stretch.

Right. And it now sits atop what was Sea World Ohio. (My attempt at a joke based on westcoaster's desire to see what SeaWorld would have done with KI) I'm sure if Disney owned KI, people from this forum would be taking a lot more trips to Disney Parks. Sadly, not everyone is an amusement park enthusiast who would take multiple trips to each of KI, WDW, and DL each year. If you could meet Mickey Mouse and ride a couple E-Tickets at KI, some families (obviously not yours) would accept this as a substitute for visiting Orlando or Anaheim. WDW and DL might seem less "special", as you could drive <100 miles for a similar experience. These families might use the money and time saved on a non-theme-park vacation. But you're right - Disney's Kings Island could try to get people to make this vacation a Disney destination, even if it's not to a Disney Park. However, I'd prefer that KI try to give guests their "best day of the year" at the park rather than book them on a trip for it. Letting the vacation industry buy the "staycation industry" doesn't seem very good for competition, either.