jcgoble3

According to Accuweather's hourly forecast: Low to mid 40s and mostly clear skies for the start of the Color Me Pink 5K Around 50° with mostly cloudy skies by the finish Mid 50s at park opening 60° by 11am Mid 60s with first realistic chance of rain (44%) around 2pm Approx. 50% chance of rain at any particular moment persists through park closing and into Sunday High of 67° around 3pm 60s persist through 7pm Temperatures drop to mid 50s by park closing

Season pass processing is open from 4pm to 8pm today. When you get to the entrance plaza, look to the left and find the ticket sales building. On the far left side of that building is a door that will take you into the processing office. Take your paper in there, and they will take your picture and give you the actual pass. EDIT: Basically what ^he said.

When I was at Cedar Point in 2011, all of the sit-down restaurants I ate in had free refills, including the Perkins and TGI Friday's inside Hotel Breakers.

GOCC posted an album of photos from Media Day on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=521727847889855&set=a.521727777889862.1073741834.115430945186216 This one in particular caught my eye (credit to GOCC Vice-President Ken Srail and Treasurer Tom Dedrick): $2.59 for fountain drinks is a lot cheaper than the $3.79/$3.99 that I'm used to at KI. I hope that 1) this includes free refills while in the Reds Grille, and 2) this relatively low price is not isolated to just the Reds Grille and is reflective of lower prices throughout the park. I give #1 higher chances than #2.

No, it doesn't.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Jungle Jim's already take the water tower? Or did that go to someone else?

Where did you get that forecast? Accuweather says a high of 64° for Saturday. There's a big difference between 64° and 70°.

Because I was hoping to get in one ride each on DB and The Beast during ERT. The combination of ERT being cut in half and the addition of the 5K runners has likely killed at least one of those two for me. And there's more than Coney Mall flats. Flight Deck usually doesn't have much of a line. Neither does Adventure Express. At 60 riders per train pair, The Racer can move people as fast as or faster than DB and doesn't get as long of a line to begin with. There's always a show to check out. At some point I'm going to be hungry and will likely check out one of the new food options.

KI officially claims 14 coasters, counted as follows (in no particular order): Diamondback The Beast Backlot Stunt Coaster Vortex Firehawk Flight of Fear The Racer (both sides counted together as a single coaster) Adventure Express Flight Deck Invertigo The Great Pumpkin Coaster Woodstock Express Flying Ace Aerial Chase Surf Dog I know at least as of last year, the list of trivia questions that ride ops pulled out during weather delays and short breakdowns included a question and answer that explicitly stated that the park considers Surf Dog to be a coaster. I don't recall the exact question or answer, though.

Kings Island officially considers it to be one.

Which is why I wondered if I should bother with DB and The Beast on Saturday: because I know I'll be back on less crowded days. Because: I'm walking a 5K that morning to raise money for charity; perhaps you've heard about it? There's going to be a LOT of KICers there Saturday, so I'll be able to see some faces that I haven't seen in six months or longer, and hopefully put some new faces to other usernames. I haven't ridden an amusement ride of any kind in six months and am deep in withdrawal. There will be other, smaller rides, such as possibly Shake, Rattle, and Roll; Viking Fury, etc. that won't be as busy as others, on which I can fix #3. I'm interested in checking out the various minor improvements and changes to the park, which doesn't require waiting in any lines. The afternoon of Opening Day is generally camera workout time for me, particularly since I've volunteered to get a photo of the new evacuation system on WindSeeker for use on the Wikipedia article (assuming it's out where the public can see it, which isn't a given). Need any more reasons?

Hmm, so does this mean that those of us without season passes will get ERT? That's cool. Let's see here: Opening Day always has longer ERT lines than a normal day. In 2011, after getting third train on The Beast, I waited 20 minutes in the single rider line for Diamondback. ERT has been shortened from 1 hour to 30 minutes this year. Already, the odds of being able to get in both a DB and Beast ride and still have time to position yourself for the rope drop and race fast walk to a quick ride on something else are practically nil. Add all the runners that don't have gold/platinum passes and thus ordinarily wouldn't be in ERT, which will make the lines even longer. This is so NOT cool. I'm guessing I'll be able to get shorter lines for DB and The Beast in the afternoon of an average summer weekday than I will on Saturday morning during ERT. Which makes me wonder if I should even bother with DB or The Beast at all on Saturday.

Got an email with details for the event.

If I'm correctly reading the court document that Mr. Wykoff linked, this decision came from a state appeals court, which means the next appeal would be to the Ohio Supreme Court, not the U.S. Supreme Court.

Great PTR! Thanks!

Not quite for me. I'd rather have occasional showers and a threat of thunderstorms to keep more of the general public away and shorten up the lines somewhat. I would prefer it to be a few degrees warmer too.

LOL! Terpy's legal disclaimers strike again!

This exactly. I guess Slingshot is one of those where you either love it or hate it. I know a few people that have said that Slingshot is the scariest ride in the park. Others agree with me and Terpy. It seems there's no in-between.

Slingshot. Less thrilling than watching paint dry.

Double post, but I want to make sure that anyone who read the previous post sees this one. I emailed the race organizers, and was told that you MUST use the admission ticket included with your packet to enter the park for the race, even if you have a season pass. This is so that KI can more easily track the number of runners entering the park. So don't lose the ticket.

Also a pessimist. I prefer to be an optimist. Life's better that way.

Got mine just a few minutes ago. Bib number 2013. Does everyone have the same bib number, or did I just get lucky? EDIT: Oh, and I was surprised to find what appears to be an ordinary park admission ticket and parking ticket in the bag, even though I registered as a season passholder. Are those specifically for admission to the race area or something else, or did they just give them to me by mistake?

If you can't get a Mythos reservation, don't give up hope. When you get into IOA that day, make an early visit to Mythos before they open and talk to whoever is working the reservation/check-in desk. They might have had a cancellation the night before that they can fit you into. I stopped in at 10:45 am and was able to get a reservation for 1:00 pm the same day. It's worth a try.

Something tells me that dino caught a wind gust WAY over 30 mph.

PTC trains to run on the Voyage again, Timberliner testing to resume in late August following end of daily operation: https://www.facebook.com/groups/325861871036/permalink/10151547630886037/ Note that she says "we plan to run PTC trains on Voyage during our daily season this year." Specifically "daily season". So I'm holding out hopes that I'll get to ride the Timberliners when I go out there in October for Halloween Weekends.