malem

^ Castaway Bay (attached to this restaurant) is open year-round, and guests of that resort need to eat. With Sandusky being dead in the off-season, the hotel restaurant might be more important. The announcement stated that TGI Friday's will close January 1 for construction of the new restaurant, so it apparently was open in the off-season.

^ At least at Polaris (Columbus), this restaurant draws large crowds. They've apparently found some audience. I wasn't impressed the one time I ate there, but I'm definitely not their target customer.

^^ I'm all for unique restaurants, but this specific location might be better suited for a franchise. Park guests have already left the park and driven 2 miles by the time they get there. The only thing drawing them is a small roadside sign, so a familiar brand can help. Also, large groups (which this location caters to) tend to prefer establishments with a reputation for handling them efficiently. For what it's worth, Reds Hall of Game Grille did not handle large groups well last season.

2015's Opening Day will most likely be on a Saturday. Passholders who renewed in the fall will have access to a preview night on the preceding Friday. 2014's calendar was influenced by an abnormally late Easter and by the debut of Banshee. This year's calendar might be different.

Part 2: more photos! The attractions make good use of the available space. The hydromagnetic water coaster winds through a large portion of the waterpark building, and many of the slides go outside. Enjoying breakfast in the morning. DontWantToWait42Mar0 opening my gift, with some help from jcgoble3. That's a pretty big smile, Jonathan, for as much as you dislike the noodle. As featured in the random photo thread. I tried to get a group photo. Jonathan decided to run. Jeremy gave chase. You never know what will happen at a KIC meetup. Even though his (stolen) coasters got stolen again, MDMC01 was excited to get a cassette tape. More white elephant fun.

I was referring to the Premier ride currently being constructed at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

A certain park chain has yet to publicly announce their new-for-2015 roller coaster that has been under construction for months.

I asked this before in another thread, but perhaps it should be discussed again. What names might BGW and BGT take under the aforementioned park chains? Williamsburg Gardens? Six Flags Williamsburg?

An addition to your list: soap dispensers that use soap in replaceable bags. Refillable soap dispensers are never cleaned.

^ Perhaps some of the displaced employees in charge of said details will find jobs at FUN or SIX.

Specifically reducing the zoological focus at Busch Gardens could make sense if the goal is to find a wide field of bidders for those parks within 2 years. The general reductions? Do parks with declining attendance fetch top dollar?

^ Even I can't commit a year in advance. I'll probably start looking into this again in the spring. The date we choose will depend on competing event(s) and on the availability of those interested. December tends to be a busy time of the year. There will definitely be a meetup for Opening Day and for the preview night. Not to mention Coasterstock (for recognized coaster club members), Coasting for Kids, Closing Day, and random meetups that get scheduled during the season. Plus any KIC events that are announced. If it's a video of me on the lilly pads, no.

For the second year in a row, several KIC members organized a holiday party at Great Wolf Lodge, next to Kings Island. GWL Mason is a 400-suite, family-oriented resort with a large indoor waterpark as the main attraction. December is Snowland at GWL, and the resort features intricate holiday themeing and complimentary activities for registered guests. It was great to see everyone again and have a weekend escape from the off-season! Many of us are already good friends from various park events, but this was the first-ever KIC meetup for Thrill_Biscuit and the second-ever for Dontwant2wait42mar0. It's 36° outside, but it's 84° in here. The waterpark features several slides unique to the region, including a ProSlide "water coaster" that uses linear induction motors to rocket rafts up the hills. Other favorites included Coyote Cannon (the "toilet bowl", pictured below), the surprisingly intense Triple Twist (hold on tightly!), and the family raft slide. The latter is most fun when the tube is filled with 5 people. Triple Twist's nighttime LED lighting package unfortunately was down during our visit, but it was fun to ride in the dark. (If the lights are off, ride during the day for a tamer experience.) The view from the balcony never gets old. This year it featured a complete Banshee! (Shown here just before sunrise.) Looking at Kings Island from a slide tower. I didn't want to do the lilly pads, but ohiocolts offered to "maybe" do a Haunt maze next year if I would. Sam will be glad to know that I obliged. homestar92 and ohiocolts, among others, enjoyed them. The pizza party & white elephant gift exchange was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who brought such thoughtful gifts! ohiocolts volunteered to draw names. Name-brand coasters. For some reason, after Jeremy (Dontwant2wait42mar0) opened my gift, getting him and Jonathan in the same shot became challenging. Framed selfie with Don. A Chipmunks Christmas audio CD. Fearing the other gifts, Jonathan picked something "safe". Andy got a deluxe fanny pack, complete with water bottles and a Kings Island keychain. Dental floss. OhioColtsPapa stole the coasters! A rare shot of Amy. I got white elephants. Literally. Along with a ball that transforms into whatever is pictured below. Lucy got vintage Kings Island dinnerware, which her brother promptly stole with his turn. Thrill_Biscuit got a 2005 Kings Island park map, which includes a Winterfest promo on the back. Michael got a book illustrated by Melissa (Beastie1980). Someone else should have a better picture of this. We wore out MDMC01. Breakfast in the morning was excellent. Paw print waffles, multi-grain pancakes, french toast sticks, baked goods, various fruits, bacon, sausage, sliced ham, various cheeses, made-to-order eggs, breakfast potatoes, complimentary beverages, and much more. More waterpark fun. Where's Goble? Our server at Golden Corral remembered us from last year. We're what you might call a unique group. Melissa is very talented. The adult hot tub was a popular hang-out spot. Some members enjoyed magic performances in the lobby (incidentally, MDMC01 is a friend of the magician), free face painting, free cookies & hot chocolate, character appearances, and a nightly parade. Also featured were pictures with Santa, horse & carriage rides, snowfall in the lobby, and holiday shows with the singing trees. Jeremy, Andy & Jonathan spent a lot of time in the expansive (albeit pricey) arcade. Warning: repeat riding can be exhausting. By the time the waterpark closed Saturday night, only four of us had the energy to continue. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who helped me put this together. Organizing the event was frustrating at times, but the involvement of so many kind people makes it all worth it. I am pleased to report that we covered all expenses at the announced prices (with $1.42 to spare), and all cancellations received a full refund. I'll pick on a few people: Andy & Matt H offered to arrive extra early to help with check-in, Andy made great gift bags for everyone, and Laura spent a good deal of time helping me arrange reservations. I'd also like to thank Devan (devarious), who is no longer a member here, for coming up with the idea and helping start this tradition last year. As great as this event was, we're hoping to have even more fun with next year's party. If you'd like to be a part of it, try to keep your calendar open the first two weekends of December 2015 (Fri-Sat). Watch the meet-ups forum for details, and make sure to respond early with your interest and expected availability.

Ambitious? Expensive? This is from someone who entered the space tourism industry.

That looks like a case of a non-graphics person dabbling in Photoshop (or other raster editing software). The graphics work should be left to the graphics people.

I last visited (for my younger sister's birthday party) when I was about 10-11 years old, and I remember feeling "too old" even then. I do remember that they issued wristbands for kids & adults in each party, refusing to let kids leave without the adult(s) who brought them. I remember playing a Whack-A-Mole game and eating really awful pizza. It's curious that they would serve a group without kids. Having a loud group of adults would seem to make families with small children (who are running around the facility by themselves) uncomfortable.

FUN's aggressive reinvestment strategy of late is refreshing. The Good Time Theatre needed a lot of work. A large portion of it - the outdoor amphitheater - has been vacant in recent seasons. From the outside, it isn't obvious that an indoor theater exists at all. The fact that Cedar Point needs a large entertainment venue isn't necessarily a good reason to keep this venue, just as needing an indoor ride wasn't a good enough reason to keep Disaster Transport. I'm sure that the major hole this leaves in the park's lineup will get filled in the years to come.

BOGO season passes. BOGO GAD admission. More. Details: http://www.aroundosceola.com/?p=13016 SWO signup: https://www.pages02.net/seaworld/2014SWFBlueFriday BGT signup: https://www.pages02.net/seaworld/2014BGTBlueFriday/ BGW signup: https://www.pages02.net/seaworld/2014BGWBlueFriday/

According to Cedar Point's OnPoint blog, the Good Time Theatre (which hosted a Snoopy ice skating show during the summer and Midnight Syndicate Live during HalloWeekends) is being removed for future park expansion. https://www.cedarpoint.com/blog-article/online-fun/The-Curtain-Closes?mobile=0 For the time being at least, this will leave CP without a large, indoor show venue.

Banshee, by far.

You could always try to find one of these (old) machines in a shopping mall: I last saw one in Indiana around 2012. I have no idea if any are still operating.

^ Lighting it now might be a good way to promote season pass & early ticket sales.

^ The record number of riders in a season for each ride is listed on the ride records page on visitskingsisland.com. A direct link is in the first post of this thread. Click each ride to expand its statistics. Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad has two stations in the main park. The ride features numerous special effects on the eastern half of the loop. The layout of Cedar Point requires more walking between far attractions than Kings Island's.

Suggestions: *If MaxRequestsPerChild is 0 in the Apache2 configuration (in the prefork section), change it. *In the same section, make sure MaxSpareServers and MaxClients are set to sane values *Check the access logs. If some bot is overwhelming the server at times, kill it (via robots.txt) or rate-limit it (depends on the bot). *Make sure that the server itself isn't regularly OOM *Consider using a front-end cache (eg. nginx) if you're not already *If you are using such a cache, check its memory usage and configuration. Specifically, make sure that dead clients are being timed out after a reasonable limit. *If nothing else works, consider disabling keep-alive.

I think I have Terpy syndrome. Requests keep either timing out or taking minutes to get a response. It doesn't matter what I request, if I send any cookies, or which network I connect from. I still say OOM.