jcgoble3

The good reason is that the maintenance is primarily to the waterpark, i.e. what Kings Island does every offseason, just on a smaller scale. I assume that water slides can be inspected and have maintenance performed much faster than coasters and flat rides can, due to the relatively small number of moving parts. However, since the waterpark is the single biggest draw for GWL, they shut the whole place down during that time, presumably because they can't justify the cost of staffing the whole place for the extremely small number of people that would actually book a room while the waterpark is closed. At least that's my guess.

But who owns the Big Dipper?

Of course. The B&Ms are all running fine, while the rest are having problems. And some people wonder why Cedar Fair is in love with B&M.

I know that they have a big tow truck event in the fall every year. But does that no rooms available thing mean that they are booked, or they are doing for annual maintenance? Not sure why they would close down when they are busy at the park. It's indeed annual maintenance. There's no way they would be fully booked for those dates this far in advance, especially the weekdays. And the shutdown period always shows up as unavailable on the rate calendar as soon as the dates in question are visible on it.

To eat, yes, but rooms may not be available. Currently, the website indicates on the rate calendar that no rooms are available for the 8-night period from Thursday, September 24, to Friday, October 2, this year.

On the flip side, some passholders (including me ) will buy, or have bought, dining plans and will eat in the park, purchasing drinks along the way, instead of spending zero in the park and eating at nearby restaurants for less. This is a plus for Cedar Fair. The question then becomes, is the money gained from people that do this greater than the money lost from people who would have eaten in the park regardless?

Be aware that GWL shuts down completely for a short time in late September and/or early October for annual maintenance. This shutdown generally coincides with the early part of Halloween Haunt.

Welcome to KIC! (again ) Keep in mind that if you're used to CP's consistently long lines on their major rides, you generally won't find that at KI. Most rides get no more than a 30 minute wait on weekdays, if you can do weekdays. Banshee, in particular, moves people through extremely fast (even when they're not doing power hours) and often will not have more than a 15 to 20 minute wait on weekdays. The only major exceptions are Firehawk, Flight of Fear (both due to low capacity; hit these right after the park opens for walk-ons) and Diamondback (due to inexplicably slow crews last year and this year; do this one during morning ERT if you have a Platinum Pass). Unless you're going on a Saturday, I advise not pre-purchasing Fast Lane. Wait until you get to the park, then see the lines for yourself and decide if it's worth the extra money. On weekdays, it often isn't.

The only dumb question is the one that's not asked.

While I haven't used it a whole lot, the only times I've ever been denied the 10% discount is on already-discounted items (including items like souvenir cups that have a special Gold Pass price), and at Panda Express and Chick-Fil-A (which are operated by their respective companies, not by KI). Even Starbucks offered me the discount last year.

Both before and after, actually. The room can be accessed from both sides of the gate.

OK, I give up on this. I've been having an unusual problem over the past couple of months. I normally leave my browser logged in to KIC continuously. However, I've recently noticed that the system keeps automatically changing my login status from public to anonymous (meaning that users can no longer see what thread I'm reading, etc.). The only solution I have found thus far is to explicitly log out and log back in, which briefly fixes the issue, but it recurs again within just a few minutes. I just logged out and back in about five minutes ago, and got changed back to anonymous while I was typing this post. I have tried clearing cookies for KICentral.com, and that does not solve the problem. I've also noticed that the number of users logged in as anonymous at any given time seems to be higher than it used to be, so perhaps others are unknowingly experiencing this also? At any rate, I do not want to appear anonymous, so is there any other solution I could try, or is this something that needs fixed on the server end? If it helps, I'm on Firefox on Windows 8.1.

"Local" referring to what market? Louisville or somewhere else?

Here's the link: http://www.thebeachwaterpark.com/public/rides_and_attractions/real_thrill/index.cfm The "HOT" label is applied to any thread that contains more than a certain fixed number of posts (30, I think). It is not based on the frequency of posts or how long of a period of time those posts are spread out over, only on the total number of posts.

Now I'm in the mood for scrambled eggs.

Fair points. I guess my brain is a little scrambled from the computer problems tonight.

Huh. Universal Orlando just sent out an email to their marketing list a few hours ago. Top feature in the email is trivia about Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter land. Below that is an ad for the perks of staying in an on-site hotel. Only below that, at the bottom, is the King Kong announcement, with a five-word headline, a single sentence with the name of the attraction and "Summer 2016", and a link to a page with more details and to a YouTube video. And the only mention of King Kong in the subject line is a reference to a "special announcement". You'd think the announcement of a major new ride would get top billing in that day's email. Apparently not.

The Xenia library's Wi-Fi is among the fastest public connections I've seen. I have Verizon, which places no special restrictions on tethering on a More Everything plan. I just have to stay under my regular monthly cap for all data usage, currently 2 GB. That's easy for me since I limit myself to low-data usage when tethering (e.g. I avoid photo-heavy pages, don't watch videos, restrict automatic downloads of Windows and other updates, etc.), plus the majority of my time is usually spent in Open Office writing a story, only occasionally researching things online. A typical three-hour session for me costs me about 50 to 100 MB of data.

Panera is the worst for public Wi-Fi. If I need to connect my laptop to the internet at Panera, I just tether to my phone.

My choices: Banshee: 8-4 anytime, or front row at night. But there's really no bad seat, so if they're assigning, I'll usually just take what they give me. The Bat: Front row or go home. Invertigo: Either end. Adventure Express: Prefer toward the back, but will ride anywhere. The Racer: Any *-2 seat. On rare occasions, I may wait for the front row. Flight of Fear: Front row. Firehawk: Couldn't care less; it's the same experience no matter where you sit. And they usually assign seats anyway. Backlot Stunt Coaster: Front or back row. The Beast: Extreme front row or extreme back row. I find that wheel seats on The Beast are several times smoother than *-2 seats on The Racer. Diamondback: Back row. Woodstock Express: Back row. Flying Ace Aerial Chase: Back row. Surf Dog: Not a coaster, but I prefer the left corner of either back row. Vortex: Nearest park bench. (Seriously, that thing shakes my head around so much, even in 5-1, that it gives me a headache for the next couple of hours.) Ah, but that is precisely why I love the front row on Flight of Fear! I second that last part. If only the park was open today; I'm in the mood to hang out on the water rides. And why do you care about that?

Dr. Seuss did insecticide commercials before he did kid's books? I learn something new every day.

I have no idea what you're referencing, but I laughed anyway.

That's pretty good. Public Wi-Fi is usually about 1 Mbps down and about 0.5 Mbps up. Cedar Point is still the leader in public Wi-Fi speeds. When I stayed at Hotel Breakers for CoasterMania! in 2013, they officially didn't have Wi-Fi in the rooms, but I was able to pick up a strong signal on a public hotel network, presumably in one of the lobbies or meeting rooms. That connection was 37 Mbps down and 33 Mbps up. Fastest internet connection I have ever used in my life.

And while there has been talk about possibly tearing down the entire current front gate building, or removing the International Restaurant, to allow for a "front gate coaster", I don't see that happening now since they took the effort over the offseason to install an elevator at the International Restaurant entrance. If anything, at this point I think they're more likely to reopen the International Restaurant as a public restaurant than to remove it.

About the outage today, I'm going to take the liberty of reposting the following from the KIC Facebook page, originally posted at 3:18 PM: So that's why the site was down all afternoon and evening.