Snowman

So are you linking to a cheesy conspiracy theory site to attempt to discredit all the amazing work NAMI does? Why? I think it's a terrible misstatement that everything I need to know about NAMI is there.

While I do generally agree with you, this is a slippery slope with me. My wife has been working in the mental health and developmental disabilities field for many years. While conservatives and liberals easily get "offended" with what the other says, they mostly have the capacity to defend themselves against attacks, abuses, and insulting behavior. Many people with mental health issues and disabilities don't have the capacity or ability to verbally defend themselves against insults and often this can lead to ignored abuses and awful behavior. If people don't stand up and defend the defenseless, and express offense at things that are truly offensive where will it stop?

"The park also said it's changing the names of some HalloWeekends offerings to allay concerns from mental health professionals who were offended by last year's attractions." What were the attractions, and why were mental health professionals offended?

Dang!!! Don't you hate it when you think you have a good point to make, only to have it wiped out by not rereading more carefully! Run, mildly jog, gallop, trot, whatever. I still stand by my point that it seems security feels it's best for grown men to not move really swiftly through crowds of people.

This is the first mention of a "mild jog". Did YOU not read the OP? So lets analyze this again.... You heard from the 1st Officer "ready, set, go", (which from your OP can only mean run [sorry, mild jog], not things like: the park is now open, start eating, begin your tests, shoot the target with a water pistol, whack the moles, and so on) so you mildly jogged (not ran for goodness sakes) towards DB. The second Officer yelled at you to stop running because he clearly has no clue what a mild jog looks like. I gotta say if I was a parent with small children in the park and I saw a guy in his 30's mildly jogging toward them, I'd be concerned for their safety, and I'd be glad to see an officer put a stop to these rampant mild jogs through the park.

One of the security guards at the Gold pass entrance once told us to "Swim!". We chose not to, but others did, and after they were fished out of the fountain they were escorted from the park while that security guard and the rest of us watched and cracked up. (not a true story) On your mark, get set, GO! doesn't mean "run like a psycho racehorse". As mentioned before, KI is private property, if a security guard tells you to do something (if you value your pass/ticket) it's best to just do it, or don't be surprised by the consequences. That thing on their hip is a radio, and if you ignore one of them, I'll bet five others know about you in a few minutes.

What are you talking about? There's a really cool enclosed drop at the end.....Haven't you looked at a park map?

The denial of a front seat from what me and others have observed seems to be an isolated incident. Of course it "could" happen again, but doesn't look likely. I'm sure changing the single rider line has meant more revenue for the park and will hopefully fund future park improvements we all can enjoy, even single riders. As kingsrattler pointed out, wasn't the single rider line a form of line cutting? and they didn't even pay extra for it. Good for KI to find a way to charge for this privilege. I guess we "Could" go back and forth about this til next season. Your preaching to the choir! That sounds like a great idea and I hope KI looks into it. My point was that many posters seem to have set up extreme "could" scenarios that haven't come close to actually happening. If we're going to have a legitimate debate about this, shouldn't we focus on what we know and have seen instead of setting up scenarios that haven't and probably won't happen. Except for the aliens riding FoF!

Many peoples' concerns here about these fast passes seems to revolve around the word, "could". 300 people "COULD" by passes and back up DB que for hours. Fast passers "COULD" prevent anyone from ever riding in the front seats again. 20 busloads of gamblers "COULD" take a left turn at Albuquerque and end up at KI instead of Hollywood Casino, buy out the flash passes, ride Firehawk all day. Aliens "COULD" land, pay extra for premium parking, load up on flash passes (that would have to be put around their necks, 'cause their alien wrists are just so darn small) and back up FoF til the probed cows come home. "Could" can be an extreme word. Speaking strictly from personal experience, we've been many times since the pass system started and have seen no "COULD" scenarios even come close to playing out. Has anyone actually seen any major problems with this system?

Got 2 from this weekend: Walking back to the park from FD a family was coming in the exit looking at a map. I said the FD entrance is around the corner. The dad looked up from the map and said they were looking for the Snoopy kids area. I said, "It's on the other side of the park." He looked at the map TURNED IT UPSIDE DOWN, thanked me, and started heading the right way. Can't make this stuff up, huh? Delirium ride op counts to 50, 3 people ahead of us. There's 2 guys 10 to 11 years old right behind us, one says to the other the greatest sentence I've heard in years, " Man, we really got close to not getting on that ride." Still working through that one.

But yours and Gator's numbers aren't taking into account that the single rider line is no more. With groups of 3,5,7, your going to have empty seats on every train anyway. Whether the Ride ops are assigning seats or not, the lack of a single rider Que will mean empty seats.

Good point. The wagon she was pulling was definately nicer than anything I had as a youngster. But they didn't recycle aluminum cans when I was a kid!

So do you all think assigning seats on coasters is a growing trend, or something that's becomming more rare?

What coaster does Cedar Point assign seats on?

Also the GP (ones who don't know you can ask for a row) don't get disappointed when they're assigned a seat in the middle when they wanted to ride in the front or back. Question to the knowledge council: Are there any other parks that do this row assignment thing for coasters? Obviously rides like Delirium and DT needs seats assigned, but my wife and I couldn't think of another park we've been to that does this on coasters.

That's still cracking me up!! (I aint gonna be using that new pink emoticonyface.... 'cause I'm happily married)

Dane, Is it posibble tu add a speel chick bottun? The new format really looks great. Thanks for the hard work.

I wonder what ACE's position is on assigning seats on The Beast? Just trying to lighten the mood and swerve this topic back on track. You've got a tough job Jesse. Thank you for deleting posts I wrote that were probably inappropiately snarky for this situation. Moving on. Yesterday afternoon, even though it was really crowded they weren't assigning seats on DB and it was going great. We didn't get over to The Beast. I wonder if they stopped there as well.

I agree and it did. Coming off the rush and mental break DB offers, it was quite an intense dose of reality. Except that she was digging in a bright green bin labeled "Recycle".

Then Ki isn't losing any money from her taking the beer cans. So is there any harm in her doing this? I personally don't see any.

They weren't dressed as though they were homeless, kids looked clean cut, and their wagon was one of those nice big wooden Radio Flyers that looked fairly new. I've gotten to thinking about the revenue of all those aluminum cans. I bet KI gets quite a check from Rumpke. I also wonder if there's an actual KI policy forbidding guests from collecting the aluminum cans.

Yesterday we saw something that I'm not sure how to feel about. We were walking from DB to Beast, and as we passed the Crypt there was a woman with 2 kids (4 to 5 years old) in a wagon by the green drink recycling bin. She had taken the lid off and had a few shopping bags leaning in digging through the bin getting out aluminum beer cans loading up the plastic bags. Hard times are visible everywhere, but this was kind of suprising to see in the park. I was curious to read the perspective of some of the philosophers here about this. I haven't formed an opinion one way or the other, just reporting. (Forum template request: please add a spell check button. I hate being revealed for the nonspelling doof I am.)

Yesterday at DB the ride op was NOT assigning seats to anyone. He'd just let the station lines que up then stop guests for a couple of rides then let it que up again. It was working perfectly! Guests and Flash passers just picked the row they wanted and all was right with the world. Well done KI.

I've seen the asphalt in the preferred parking lot, it ain't in no better shape than the spaces everywhere else. Prefered parking = nickels for future coasters or brick pavers for rivertown. I'm good with that.

And the season pass with it's perks and benefits is not an "elitist" program in itself? When I go through the Gold/Platinum pass gate for ERT and see the looks of confusion and sadness on the people with day passes face as I push through the crowd of commoners and give them the pagent wave after I pass through the gate of excellence, I definately feel I'm a better and more important person than they are. Seriously, whats the difference in paying for a gold/plat pass and paying for this? Neither one seems elitist. A true elitist would want the park only availabe to them, or their own reserved train. Heck, Elvis rented all of Libertyland when he wanted a flash pass, That's how an elitist rolls!