homestar92

So, I meant to point this out last time the Steelers stars were implemented in a logo, and it's a bit off topic, but the Steelers stars aren't really the Steelers' thing. At least not originally. The logo is called the Steelmark logo (pictured below) and is owned by the American Iron and Steel institute and is still used today despite probably being known more as a symbol of the football team than the steel industry. It was originally used on the Steelers helmets exactly as pictured below (with the text "Steel" instead of "Steelers"). The owners of the logo actually approached the Steelers about putting it on their helmet as a sort of product placement, which is why there's no trademark or copyright issues in their using it. Another fun fact that I learned when I visited Wikipedia to find this logo is that apparently a mirror image of it is also used by a professional soccer team in Chile. The more you know! (image from Wikipedia)

People are missing what may be the biggest advantage to 4-across seating: shorter trains, which means less walking for the ride ops, which translates to slightly faster loading. Also, the 4-across trains can accommodate at least 9 rows (see Raging Bull) for a 12.5% increase in capacity over the more typical 8-row design. However, the blueprints reveal that there are only 8 rows in the station, which means that we almost certainly will only have 8 rows. Unlike the track layout, which is definitely 100% and without a doubt going to be exactly what is in the blueprints (sorry everyone, there will NOT be an inversion on this ride and the sooner you accept that, the less disappointed you'll be on opening day), I suppose the queue arrangement in the station COULD change as this would be a fairly minor tweak that could be filed for at quite literally the 11th hour. But realistically, that won't be changing either. There is a 99.999999999999999999999% chance that we will see 8 rows rather than 9 and a 100% chance that the layout will otherwise be exactly what we've already seen in the blueprints.

I would advise that you "don't waste your money" betting on that possibility.

OK so with the realization that the sequence numbers are just the year that the ride opened, that leaves us with a few pieces of useful info: 1. As Rotor opened with the park, Sequence 1 must be a ride that at very least, also opened with the park, or better yet, operated at Coney before coming to KI. Haley's Comet seems like the best choice, but Flying Eagles could perhaps be a good option too. Bonus points for the Flying Eagles actually being older than our Rotor was. Flying Carpet and Skyride could be options too, I suppose, as they kinda fit the theme. 2. We know there is definitely something between 1975 and 1987. Obvious choices here are Skylab and Zephyr. I think Skylab seems most likely as Zephyr would be kind of a stretch, just like Bayern Kurve. 3. There is a bit of extra room on the fence, so it's possible that we could have something newer than Firehawk in the mix too. Most obvious choice is WindSeeker, with Banshee as a possible stretch candidate. Snoopy's Space Buggies get honorable mention, but I just don't see them using one of the kiddiest of the kiddie rides for this teaser campaign. That would definitely throw us for a loop with the letters though, unless it went at the beginning and was just a hashtag. It's also possible there is some other connection between these rides that we are missing and it's not just a space or flight theme. As we've discussed, Bayern Kurve is a real stretch with that theme, and if the park wanted a ride from the same year that wouldn't have been a stretch, Flying Dutchman would have fit the bill just fine. Vortex and Invertigo are also something of a stretch too, though not as much as Bayern Kurve. So that leads me to believe we could be missing some connection between these rides still. It would be extremely anticlimactic, but it's also possible that Sequence X will be the name of our ride (as it is Project X). Or perhaps we'll get a tattered poster for our new ride with some key details (like the name) not being legible. We were thinking of X in "Project X" as a placeholder, but perhaps it's a Roman Numeral.

So I was trying to figure out the blanks if sequence number is correct and what we have is _ E W T _ T O K I. All I got is that the two blanks in that case must belong to different words because the only 5-letter words in the English language with EWT in the middle are Newts and Rewth. And neither of those make any sense.

If we go by sequence numbers, we now have _ E W T _ T O K I NEW TOTO KI Timberwolf is coming out of semi-retirement for a Toto concert so we can all bless some rains. You heard it here first.

Some of us absolutely pinned down Banshee. I pretty much assumed that was the name as soon as I saw the sign referencing "Bone-chilling screams"

The Goody Shop in Colerain Township on the corner of Hamilton Ave and Springdale Rd has blueberry soft serve that's dead on. The Dip in Fairfield has blueberry as their flavor of the month for June (so hurry, there's only a couple days left) and the flavor is dead on but the color is completely wrong as it's the actual purpleish color of blueberry juice. You won't easily find something similar in a store because it's soft serve and not ice cream, so you can't exactly go buy a pint of it.

The vast majority of people who visit Kings Island have never been to (or likely even heard of) Holiday World so that's not even going to be a factor in deciding what to build. Only enthusiasts care about whether a particular ride model exists at a nearby park, and enthusiasts are such a tiny minority of Kings Island visitors that we don't even register as a blip on the radar. The general public only cares if it's good. That's why the 285-296 foot height of Project 2020 won't matter. They will market the ride with its 301 foot drop and as long as the ride is fun, the general public will love it. There are a great many rides at Kings Island that wouldn't have been built if nearby parks' ride lineups were a deciding factor in what to install at the park.

Yeah, from what the ride ops told us when they climbed the lift to check on everyone, the ride e-stopped. So either some sensor malfunctioned and didn't think the next block was clear or else someone shook the gates and e-stopped the ride. That definitely can happen and that's why the ride ops are so persnickety about not shaking the gates. If they get jostled enough that the sensor detects them as open, it will e-stop the ride.

I realize this is very pedantic, but it's Congo Falls, not the flume. Those signs can only be seen from inside of Timberwolf.

Weird issues last night. Obviously, Diamondback being down sucked. Especially since SpiritSong Saturday is probably the single day with the highest number of non-passholders who don't get to come more than once a year. Worst possible day to have a flagship ride down the entire day. Aside from that, I was on The Vortex train that got e-Stopped at the top of the lift for about 10 minutes. Didn't get an evac, so that was a bummer. After that, I rode Woodstock Express and halfway up the lift, the lift hill light went out. When we got back to the station, all the lights were out and the crew was loading the next train by flashlights. Oddly, the ride controls, lift, and on-ride photo camera all worked fine. The only thing that quit working was the lights. Weird.

The Bat is sitting on a really undesirable plot of land. It's not remotely flat, and its location way off the beaten path is no doubt a huge contributing factor to Bat's apparent lack of popularity. See Vortex at Canada's Wonderland, which is an essentially identical ride but is located right off a main midway and is still very popular. If The Bat goes, it will probably be due to the ride becoming difficult or expensive to maintain rather than because that land is needed for something else. Granted, Vortex at Canada's Wonderland may also be more popular than Bat because the other coasters at CW that hang below the track are hot garbage. That's not true at KI. Even Invertigo is better than those two hunks of junk, and I hate Invertigo.

Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby. Now as for the premise about there not being much left in B&M's catalog we could get, I think two things need to be said: 1) Just because Cedar Point has a certain type of ride doesn't mean we aren't ever getting one. GateKeeper is absolutely not preventing us from getting a Wing coaster. It's a great ride and has quickly become a Cedar Point staple, but I seriously doubt that anyone considers it a flagship ride at that park. I'm not even sure it was in 2013. 2) B&M's existing catalog is almost certainly going to be expanded to new models at some point in the future. It's silly to think that B&M will never design a new type of ride ever again. IIRC, they recently trademarked a name that very well could be a new coaster model they have in the works.

Well neat. Now the only thing to sort out is connecting my watch to the park Wi-Fi so I can leave my phone in the car and still have limited messaging capability. I don't really want to pay for a data plan for a watch when the only place I'd need it is KI (I'm less likely to visit other parks on a whim after work and therefore not have zipper shorts, so at other parks, I can bring in my phone). Since the park's Wi-Fi has that captive portal login page, connecting a smartwatch to it is an issue. It really shouldn't be, since WearOS and Samsung Gear both have web browsers available that could get past that, but stupidly, all of the major smartwatch OSes will disconnect from Wi-Fi immediately if there is a captive portal. So I'm not sure how to best go about getting it connected. Am I correct in my recollection that you only see the login screen once per season? If so, I think there are probably ways to get that done. I'm assuming that if I brought a laptop and spoofed my MAC address to match my watch for long enough to get connected that I could then use my watch all year. (Paging @malem. Maybe there's a better way that I'm not thinking of. This seems like the sort of thing in your wheelhouse.)

I've never tried this, but I'm curious. Will KI allow you to scan a QR code from something that isn't the official Kings Island app? I had an idea for my days at the park and I was curious, if I saved an image of my QR code from the app and stored it on a smartwatch, would they scan that and let me in? I see no reason why not since my picture will appear on their terminal and there's no way I can cheat the system or anything, I just have never tried it and am curious if anyone else has. My idea is to get a smartwatch that supports Google Pay and then I could basically leave my phone and wallet in the car and still do anything and everything I could ever need to do inside the park! I don't know that I'd want to be without my phone on an all-day trip, but for those spur-of-the-moment after work trips when I don't have my zipper shorts, it could be a great idea for a quick little two hour trip without fear of losing my phone due to lack of zipper pockets.

The thing is though, "height" is very subjective. What are we measuring "height" by? Is it the joint that connects the support to the track? Top of the rail? Floor of the train? Height of the seat? Eye level for an average rider There's lots of ways they can fudge the numbers to pick up that extra five feet without really lying. If KI decided to measure height based on eye level of the typical rider, the height will likely come out to 301 or 302 feet easily. The drop of 301 though, is definite because no matter what the point of reference being used to determine height is, as long as it's applied consistently, it will always be 301. If the heights on the blueprints are the bottom of the track,

For Cedar Fair parks, they usually go vertical in late July or early August (their recent B&Ms have gone vertical shortly after the official announcement) and are finished with the track several months before the season starts - Banshee's track was completed in mid-January. Now, if you're Six Flags or Kennywood, you start in October and finish track construction halfway through the following season, it seems.

You're right about the differences in design, but the argument the guy was making is that it can't possibly be 296 feet because B&M wouldn't call it a Giga then - but they don't call it a giga anyway so his claim is moot. Yes, the design ideology will be vastly different from a ~200 foot hypercoaster, but whether it's 296 or 301 won't affect B&M's branding when Apollo's Chariot and Fury 325 are both considered to be the same model in B&M's catalog.

Lol B&M doesn't even consider it a Giga anyway. Their product catalog on the website mentions hyper coasters, but not giga coasters, and if you look at the photo gallery on their product page for Hyper Coasters, there are pictures of Leviathan in there...

I tried the Impossible Burger yesterday at Brewhouse. I will concede that it does not taste like fake meat, but it's definitely not anything close to what I would describe as GOOD meat. I was pretty jealous of the real burger that they guys at the table next to me got.

Pretty good work, but it's missing that drinking fountain in the drive booth! You might want to add that in! (kidding, in case there was any confusion. I know plain text makes sarcasm hard to catch sometimes. Great job!)

It's such a little thing that I don't understand why every park doesn't do it. Curiously, of all the parks I've been to, only Six Flags seems to get it right. They have those signs all over and they are actually three dimensional and actually point in that direction, which helps them put a lot of rides onto the sign without it being cluttered and hard to decipher. I haven't been to every SIX park, but they've been present at all the ones I have been to, which are Great America, St. Louis, Georgia, Over Texas, and Discovery Kingdom. I've also been to Darien Lake, but not since Six Flags reacquired it. For some reason, every other park I've seen with signs like that only has a couple of them. I know Cedar Point has one in Frontier Town that points the directions to Maverick, Steel Vengeance, and a couple other rides, but has no such signs in the front half of the park at all that I've ever seen. Funny enough, Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom had the same 3-D ride signs while Ed Hart seems to have decided they aren't important. There are a couple signs there pointing to rides, but they aren't always very clear. Especially the one right by the bridge in the front half of the park that points to a bunch of rides on the other side of the bridge. Unfortunately, it gives no specifics as to WHERE they are after you cross the bridge, and that's a park where you need directions to get around. My first times trying to find Skycatcher and Kentucky Flyer were a real adventure.

It wasn't 2010. It was 2012. I know because the pamphlet refers to Soak City and I also remember getting a bunch of free rides on Thunder Alley, which had already closed for the year, so they gave me five Beagle Bucks for each of them instead. It had its hiccups as any new system does, but the implementation was considerably better than what we have with this system.

Considering everything that has become public, it's probably good that Kings Island had long since removed Little Bill from the park.