jcgoble3

Yep! He posted a separate thread with the photos:

The waterpark entrance is between Legend and Voyage, but much closer to Legend than Voyage, so you'll want to hit the lockers before Voyage. Waiting until after Voyage means quite a bit of backtracking, and in a park with that many hills, you want to avoid backtracking.

^ All DA shirts on sale? I smell a distinct possibility that Dinosaurs Alive! is going away in the near future.

The main draw for the general public is the waterpark, so they will start migrating from the dry park to the waterpark in the early afternoon. I recommend hitting the waterpark first thing when it opens, before it fills up with the masses, and going directly from rope drop to Wildebeest and Mammoth, as they will have the longest lines later on. After that, hit the other big slides while lines are short. Around early to mid-afternoon, as the general public migrates to the waterpark, dry off, change clothes, and head back into the dry park to take advantage of relatively short lines on the coasters (caused by the masses being in the waterpark). Before waterpark rope drop, you have about an hour or so (not sure precisely how long). Use that time to make a beeline from main park rope drop to Thanksgiving and ride Voyage and Thunderbird, as most of the GP will start in Halloween* with Raven and Legend, since that section is closest to the front gate. Raven and Legend will have shorter lines in the afternoon when all those GP peeps are in the waterpark. After Voyage and Thunderbird, head for the waterpark, change clothes, and get your stuff in a locker (lockers and changing rooms are outside the waterpark gate and accessible as soon as the main park opens) to prepare for waterpark rope drop. *Note that I haven't actually visited Holiday World on a public operating day since 2014, so I don't know what effect, if any, Thunderbird has had on that behavior. I suspect very little, but I welcome correction from those who have been there more recently.

Whether any particular lap produces a good experience or not, I still say that a ride is inherently flawed when one must ride only in a certain manner to have an enjoyable ride. On that basis alone, Vortex is a poor ride and should be replaced. I wonder how many people have actually suffered concussions on Vortex from the headbanging without realizing it at the time?

If it was after a rain storm, they might have still been in rain mode. Many coasters, if they are able to run in the rain at all (I'm looking at you, Dragster and Gemini), must run reduced trains for safety, due to the risk of a train slipping through a wet block brake and entering the next block when not supposed to, which could potentially cause a collision. Maverick, for example, must go from six trains down to four trains to run in the rain (I know this because I was waiting in the station one day when it suddenly started pouring down rain; they stopped operation temporarily to check with management, and then transferred two trains off and resumed operation). I'm not sure what the rain mode on Millennium Force would be, though.

Well it originally was only if the sign was on the counter, but apparently they have changed things. My guess is that with the pulled pork and wings being limited supply items, they wanted to first do them in smaller batches to get it right, then ensure they were able to make a large enough supply each night to satisfy dining plan demand as well as those paying out of pocket without compromising quality. Sounds like they made them a permanent part of the dining plan once they got that figured out. Well, that sucks. I don't understand why they would do that, unless there were a lot of people getting confused. But in that case, the correct solution would be better signage, not just taking it away completely. Unfortunately, my guess is that it goes back to the root of the food service issues in general: mismanagement, and not wanting to run two registers on one side of the building (one for express drink plans and one for food). Can anyone confirm how many registers they are usually seeing open at the Smokehouse?

Depends on the type of airtime. For me, ejector airtime > inversions > floater airtime.

On the right side of the forum home page, there is a list of recent threads and a list of recent posts. However, I noticed that the list of threads changed a while back from the most recently created threads to the most recently active threads, regardless of the thread's age. This makes the list mostly redundant to the list of most recent posts right below it. Any chance we can get the old behavior of showing the newest threads back? I frequently used that list to determine if there was something new warranting immediate attention, and would like to have it back. Thanks!

Food quality and service has been an ongoing complaint of many here on KIC for a few years now, and the issues are management's fault, not the rank and file employees. Part of the problem is the existence of the dining plan; with the majority of visitors being season pass holders, and many of those having the season dining plan, there's little to no incentive for them to improve the food quality and service because they already have people's money, so they cheap out as much as possible because why bother when the potential gain is so low? On the subject of water rides, I actually prefer KI's collection of water rides over CP's collection, precisely because every water ride at CP is designed to soak you to the bone. Getting wet is a great way to cool off, but I don't want to walk around in soaking wet clothes for the next several hours. I prefer the light mists and splashes that you get from KI's water rides; they're enough to cool you off without leaving you in wet clothes forever. Speaking of which, the one saving grace of CP's water rides is that they are all in a "water zone" where shoes and a shirt are not required, meaning I can ride in my swim trunks and then change back into my dry clothes afterward. (At least that was the case last time I visited CP in 2014.) I sometimes wish KI could do that, but having one of the water rides all the way across the park from the other two makes it impractical. As for the drink wristbands, as @Saerenzea alluded to, they are available at KI, but only through group sales. They are not available as a general ticket option for everyone.

I think part of it is frequency of visits/familiarity with the park/how many times you've ridden that ride before. To me, it's not worth going to Kings Island on a day when there are 30- to 45-minute waits for all the major rides, because I know that I live only 45 minutes away, can come back any time I want with my Gold Pass, and I've ridden everything multiple times before. Now if a new ride opens up at KI (i.e. Mystic Timbers), then initially I'll be willing to wait a much longer time for it. As my familiarity with the ride and lap count grow, the length of time I'm willing to wait for the ride decreases, with the rate of decrease determined by the quality of the ride. On Easter Sunday, I happily waited 45 minutes for my second ride on MT. Tuesday had about an hour wait, and I bailed after entering the line once I saw how long it was, because I'd already had several rides and wasn't in the mood to stand in line for an hour. Come ERT that night, I did happily wait an hour, because I had never had a night ride on MT before. A similar story is when I go to another park that I don't frequently get to. I'll use Cedar Point as an example. At CP, I'd be much more willing to wait 45 minutes to an hour or more for most of the major rides, because of both how much I like those rides and how infrequently I get to CP (I haven't been there since 2014), meaning I have to ride them while I have the chance. Ultimately, I think it boils down to the old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt." In this case, contempt for long lines.

So I found out that this is a thing that exists: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/ThemeParkDesigns/what+i+found+in+the+shed-A5939cdf2f6c60d14d817fb32?department=1&productType=1197&color=CBCBCB&appearance=231&view=1

Try close to an hour. @stashua123 and I got in line at 10:15 and didn't board until after 11:00. Pretty sure nobody got more than one ride during the hour of ERT, and that the Gold and Platinum Pass holders were just added to the end of the regular queue that was left over when the park closed.

In line for Mystic Timbers right now with stashua123. Really long wait. I think part of the line might be the regular line still being run out, with the Gold and Platinum Pass holders still waiting behind them.

Sitting at the Smokehouse now. Had the pulled pork and corn pudding. Verdict: Awesome. Probably going to come back over to Soak City to try one of the other entrees for dinner. Interestingly, the employees serving the food 1) all had yellow nametags (15-year-olds) and 2) were all very nice, polite, and efficient. I wonder if that's a coincidence or if there's a correlation between those two facts.

Difference being that Amtrak will get you there in 35 hours, whereas by driving, you have to add time to eat and sleep somewhere, probably twice at minimum unless you have three or more people sharing the driving duties.

There's a solution to that: EPIC ROAD TRIP!!!!!

On Friday, May 5, they could easily have cut all the coasters back to one train and still had mostly walk-ons. But they still ran as many trains as the weather allowed. EDIT: In fact, on that day, they had three rows in the middle of Mystic Timbers chained off (I assume to balance the train or something like that) and it was STILL a walk-on. Even one-train operation would have made it at most a 5-minute wait because of the crappy weather.

She's the reincarnation of Beast Gal.

What do you mean, you've seen both fail? I don't know about Slingshot, but Xtreme Skyflyer is a Skycoaster model, and Skycoasters have a 100% perfect safety record. Show me an instance where a Skycoaster has failed. And don't say this incident, because that is not a Skycoaster, but a completely different ride from a different manufacturer.

Cross-threading... This isn't about a specific employee, but about park operations in general. I love that Kings Island hasn't given in to the trend among many amusement parks of running a reduced number of trains on the coasters to save money on maintenance when the park is not as busy. They still run as many trains as they can (barring maintenance problems and rain) even on days that are totally dead, and I appreciate the positive guest experience it creates.

Many parks run reduced trains on days that are not as busy as a cost-saving measure. Kings Island generally doesn't do this; they run as many trains as are available, unless maintenance issues or rain force some to be removed. And I love that they operate like that.

^ It's possible that the manufacturer changed their recommendations. If that were the case, Ohio law would compel Kings Island to change their policy to match.

According to the old version of Google Earth (the one that you download and install on your computer's hard drive, now called Google Earth Pro), the current satellite imagery was taken on June 11, 2016. It shows Banshee and Tropical Plunge, as well as the Mystic Timbers construction fence and the start of clearing behind that fence. I don't know what the web version or mobile versions show, as I do not have either Google Chrome installed on my computer or the Google Earth app installed on my phone. I do note that on Google Maps, the satellite view shows different imagery depending on whether 3D mode is on or off. If 3D mode is on (which is the default), you get old imagery from what appears to be 2012 (based on the presence of both the second wave pool and Son of Beast). If you turn off 3D mode (click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left and then click "3D on" to turn it off), then you get the updated 2016 imagery that shows on Google Earth Pro.