malem

I've only seen the video playing once this season, when the indoor queue was filled, and it was too noisy inside to hear much dialog at all.

If B&M recommends shoes as a requirement for their coasters with floors, the park - of course - would have to follow this. I'd wager that the reason has more to do with stepping on and off the coaster train than specifically for MCBR evacuations. Inverted and floorless coasters don't have this requirement, for obvious reasons, but still have the potential for such an evacuation. I do wonder what the owners of the flip flops caught in the nets around the final brake run do after losing them. Does the Diamondback gift/photo store sell replacements?

Even if the manufacturer doesn't view them as absolutely necessary, the park can of course choose to add them. I'm not sure about you, but I feel more secure with a simple, rider-controlled backup restraint on certain rides. Even if the primary restraint is sufficiently redundant, the average rider might not know this. As long as a seatbelt doesn't kill the ride capacity, the park gets even more redundancy and riders get to feel more secure at a low cost.

This is why using Twitter and/or two-way radios would be better, so one person doesn't have to be responsible for updating everyone else. Also, if some people have Fast Lane/Fright Lane and others don't, the group could be split up in different lines. It would be really hard for one person to keep track of this.

It sounds like Fast Lane really made the day. Did you get any glares from Diamondback's standby line during the group marathon? If there's a KIC Night during the Haunt, I'd definitely try to go. Getting everyone to buy Fast Lane+Fright Lane for Saturday or finding a Friday that works for everyone may be hard, though. Since there will never be a single date that works for everyone, and many people from here will go more than once, perhaps schedule two? Next time, to avoid splitting up, someone should tweet the location of the group. Everyone could then use either a smartphone or text messaging to get these tweets, and no one would have to maintain a list of phone numbers. People not carrying phones could bring a cheap 2-way FRS radio, to get location updates in what's now an old fashioned way. (For what it's worth, when I bring radios, I set them all to channel 13 squelch 37. Use the same channel and we could end up meeting!)

Your picture is just begging for a caption. How about "48 inchez?? Wen do i haz dem?"

Policies against cameras don't include an exception for those strapped to your person. So, presumably he's just breaking park rules without getting caught.

I sent a PM to request a display name change to something pronounceable. It's been a few days, so I'm just bumping this so that the PM is (hopefully) noticed.

Anyone that looks enough like him could clone his pass and try to get into the park with it. He has a photo in his avatar, presumably of himself, after all. Either someone scams their way in, or the park notices fraud and revokes the pass.

See also Ed Hart's op-ed piece: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120531/OPINION02/305310018/State-fails-Kentucky-Kingdom-s-next-act?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Home|s

Dirty tables and cleanliness still gets 9/10?

You need a Kroger Plus card, which you'll get immediately before you give them your name/address. Even if you never give them back the form, the card will still work and you'll still get your fuel discount. I'd suggest filling it out and simply leaving the address (and any other info you don't have or don't want to give) blank. $34.99 tickets are available at AAA Ohio locations to AAA members. This includes AAA stores in the counties in white below:

Season passes aren't sold in Columbus area stores. Stop at the Kroger on Kings Mills Rd (if you go I-71) or at the junction of US-42 and the 42 bypass (if you go US-42). You'll save $0.40/gallon on fuel for each pass if you buy it on/after May 21. Obviously, you need to do so before May 28.

You're thinking about the Magic Kingdom.

The $99.99 KI prepaid cards at Kroger are gold memberships, as long as you process them on/before May 28. And they do qualify for double fuel points. This is preferable to purchasing online, as there's no $5 processing fee and no buggy flash-based Accesso store to deal with.

Doesn't anyone want a Diamondback model train? There still haven't been 20 correct replies, hours after the question was posted. (There have been 15, give or take, as some people may have deleted an earlier reply to try again) Hint: the answer is in a forum reply on this site. (Don't forget to follow @KingsIslandPR first and include hashtag #KingsIsland40)

If only Chipotle would work on reducing the saltiness of everything on the menu, I might start going there again. Really, Abuelo's isn't much more for lunch and has a better environment with much better tasting food. (Also, chips and salsa are free)

Why would holders of secured debt want to block the deal, unless these entities also hold stock? APO seems less likely to default on debt than WOLF.

Even if you have Flash, the store will sometimes inexplicitly fail to load with a numerical error code. (I get "Error #2046", which I haven't got around to troubleshooting yet. I'm guessing it's an SSL connection error.) Not to mention the accessibility, international input, disability access, and security issues created by having the store use Flash. Since the page hosting the Flash store isn't on a secure server, the store is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle hijacking. People using screen readers to browse the web would find the Flash overlay impossible to use. Hopefully Cedar Fair will get Accesso to fix the issues and offer a non-Flash store. I can't imagine that Cedar Fair would accept blocking all iPads and iPhones from the store, as well as people in corporate settings where Flash is banned. Or having a website that isn't accessible to people with disabilities. I would encourage anyone having problems with the store to e-mail Kings Island PR, so they can get forwarded to Cedar Fair's web team and their vendors.

The location of the printer (network vs USB) probably won't have an effect here. Which type of printer do you have, and which OS are you using? You may want to email Kings Island and let them know the exact situation that is producing the failure, so they can communicate this to Accesso and/or Cedar Fair's web team. If you have an old or uncommon printer driver, the chance of a malfunction with Flash is greatly increased. If you can't get it to work after moving the printer and/or updating its driver, an easy trick is to install a 'PDF Printer'. This presents itself to the OS as a printer, but saves the output to a PDF file instead of printing. If you're using Windows, a good, free option is http://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator . On Mac or Linux, one is already built-in via CUPS. Be aware that Flash may block the PDF printer, as Flash printing has historically been used for printing documents like tickets and coupons. To make printing duplicates harder for the average computer user, some applications like to block or silently fail on PDF printers. (Not that printing duplicate tickets would matter for Accesso, as each barcode is good only once)

The new system for all Cedar Fair parks is Accesso, the same system the Columbus Zoo adopted last year. While it's a very capable system, unfortunately they prefer Flash for the store frontend. Flash seems to inexplicably fail to print on certain systems, and there's really no way to troubleshoot failures. Fortunately, the park can print anything you buy through Accesso at a ticket window - just ensure you have the credit card you paid with. Hopefully Cedar Fair is able to get a HTML frontend from Accesso soon. I can't imagine that they're happy that people on iOS devices can't buy tickets online. Also, I can't be the only person nervous about typing a credit card number into a flash widget on a non-encrypted page. (Yes, the credit card number is sent to an Accesso server over TLS - but there's no way for the user to verify this through the browser.)

Google Cache to the rescue: http://imgur.com/G5WkP The menus are likely still in flux, so additions/deletions to a "what's new" page really aren't surprising.

Six Flags was paying ~$3M/year plus additional revenue sharing payments. They were also making tax payments to the city and state, resulting in significant additional revenue. It's fair to say that the renegotiated lease would have resulted in significantly more revenue for the state than this deal will 3 years later.

The rent of $400k increasing to $1M plus a share of gross revenue seems to value the existing park at $18-20M. It's interesting that the Kochs are expecting to attract 600k visitors in the first year - more than in the final year of Six Flags and with Chang - after making a (relatively) minimal capital investment. Given their conservative management style, they must see more potential in the park than is apparent. As for negative effects on Holiday World, the impact will almost certainly be less than if Kentucky Kingdom were operated as a competitor. Operating both parks together will realize some significant cost synergies, especially in marketing. Setting up a separate company and securing bank loans for the initial capital investment - the vast majority of which will be repairs to existing improvements owned by the state - reduces the risk to the Kochs and Holiday World significantly. One wonders, though, who will own new attractions added to the park. The Kochs don't want to be in a legal situation like Six Flags found themselves in after ending their lease. The most detailed article I've seen on this is http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120223/NEWS01/302230069/kentucky-kingdom-lease?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CHome , but I can't find information on how much capital investment the Fair Board is requiring and who will own these improvements.