medford

The only problems I've had w/ food this year (other than it not being anything special) is the diet Coke in the festhaus has twice tasted very flat to me, even after taking it back once and waiting on them to change it out. The other problem is that it seems few bother to monitor how quickly they're going thru pretzels. I've had a few from places (like by The Beastie and dodge'em cars) that were hard as a rock. Thankfully the stand up by the great pumpkin coaster goes thru theirs on a regular basis and we able to replace the rock hard pretzels with fairly new soft pretzels.

for anyone trying to figure out what it takes to move up levels. I woke up friday morning, 87.5% away from level 3. Had some family going to the park for most of the day, so I was going to meet them in the evening. Got to the park around 4:30, used my free drink wrist band (been holding off all year as we typically only go in the evenings, so it doesn't serve much purpose) then meet up. I didn't realize how bad the weather was about to get (actually I don't think it was bad at KI, but rides were shut down b/c of the lightening, most of the bad stuff was south-east of the park) so they decided to had home. My wife wanted a drink for the ride home, so I dodged rain drops over the skyline chili and thought, I might as well buy something to see where I move to. So I bought a rice crispy treat to share w/ whomoever wanted it for $3.82 and saw that I was at 3 star level. Got home and logged in to see that I was indeed a 3 star, now 50% away from level 4 status. I can't imagine the $3.82 in spending pushed me that far, nor the visit itself, so that redeeming an award had to count for something, well that or, they move you from to middle of star status really quick to encourage you to spend more money next time.

I wouldn't anticipate the Fast Lane helping all the much on a tuesday. Heck, on a monday night, you'll be able to get in all the major rides. Unless your goal is to ride as much as possible, the lines shouldn't be too long for anything. I'd recommend hitting up both The Beast and Diamonback once the sun goes down. As long as your in line by 10:00, you're get a ride. Beware however, The Beast shuts down around 9:45 until the fireworks end (I believe their launched from somewhere behind the ride, which is why they close it). Take care of those monday night, that way if you decide you want to leave early on tuesday you won't have to worry about missing out on the best experience in the park (IMHO), a night ride on The Beast. If Invertigo is running Monday evening, I'd hope on that as well, seems like operation has been spotty at times this season so it could run monday night and be down a significant portion of tuesday. the wait can be a little longer as the load time is slow, so don't use that as your gauge for a fast pass or not. Its also worth a walk back to Firehawk to see what the lines look like back there. If there's not much of a wait, it also has a slow load time and would be worth jumping on monday evening. tuesday morning, get back to Firehawk early before it loads up, then you should be good to go the rest of the day.

What kind of camp is this? Is it an architectural camp, a civil design type camp? The supports of a rollercoaster may not exactly hit their intent (you talk about buildings a lot) if its an architectural camp. However a civil design type camp and discussion about using the terrian and the roller coaster supports would be interesting. building wise, Kings Island is kind of a boring place, but there are a few exceptions that would actually make for a good paper as it would force you to limit the conversation and not drag things out. KI Theater, IIRC, has columns out front. What kind of columns are they? What are they supporting (roof only I believe), are there other visible supports? The oktoberfest restaurant has internal beams that are visible. Are they wooden or steel (I can't recall, never thought about it much until today)? What about the front entrance? Are there archways that you pass thru? Take a look at all of the stations, The Beast station uses a lot of wood, perhaps exclusively wood, while Vortex uses a combination of steel and wood. There's a "walk-over" bridge to get to Vortex's station. Dinosaur's alive has a tent setup for their gift shop, I haven't paid close attention, but I'm guessing the support system is a bit unique to anything else in the park. Then of course there is the Eiffel Tower which definently has unique supports to anything else in KI, there's probably even a lof of disscusion around the web about the one in Paris that you could learn from. etc, etc, etc.... The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced KI was a great choice as their's a lot of variety tucked into a small space. When is the paper/website due? Wouldn't hurt to call KI and see if there is someone willing to take you "behind the scenes" into some of the buildings to get a look a better look at how they're supported. I'm not sure how receptive KI is to something like that, but they might have someone willing to give you an hour of their time, can't hurt to ask. Since this is a technical discussion, I don't think you need to worry too much about being a wordsmith. Technical papers are fairly dry to begin with. It won't hurt to describe things in interesting ways, but I wouldn't get bogged down attempting to make it too flowery. Get to the park and take a lot of pictures, pictures can often describe things to the human eye much clearer than words, they'll help you craft a description. Go beyond just looking for the structural design, but see if you can't get pictures of how the structure ties together. Bolts, welding, nails, screws, etc.... Different things are tied together in different ways. When you look at something, try to get a sense for what you think the design accomplishes. For instance, The Beast station really gives you the feel that your out in the middle of the woods. You can talk a little about the history of The Beast, and how it originally had a pond around it that gave it that Saw Mill kind of feel, talk about how the surrounding woods tie into the theme of the station, etc... Go back to flight deck, talk about the platform giving you the impression of stepping onto an aircraft carrier. what does Boo Blaster on Boo Hill do on the exterior of their building to give it a haunted Castle type feel? I guess I should take back my early comment about KI being a "booring" place in terms of buildings. Its actually quite interesting, just not what you typically think of when it comes to a "building". There is a ton of variety, take as much of that variety into thought and start describing it. I'll be at the park tomorrow afternoon, evening. I'll pay closer attention and see what other areas of the park are a bit unique. Good luck

Are you positive? I mean there are no signs of construction in/around KI, so its highly doubtful a new coaster is going in for next season. Do you know where this track is going?

Beyond doesn't mean forever, it just means until they decide to use the area for something else. Of course they may never decide to use the area for anything other than the haunt, which would turn out to be forever, but in this case they are leaving themselves open to change their mind at any time down the road when its appropriate.

Thanks, much later than I would have guessed.

Thats when we went last year as well, it was a nice combo of the dinos and a very solid trick or treat path for little kids. It was done nicely, we would have gone anyways in the fall just to see it once, however they made the decision easy by combining the two. We'll probably do the same this fall as well.

Bing has a fairly new map (it was sometime this winter prior to Invertigo being painted, but after the new wave pool was being dug up if you want a nice comparision of changes from today to however old the overhead on google is (5-6 years?)

I mentioned this on another thread, not sure that it was ever responded to, but here we go again, as like you, I'm interested in how long the shelf life is for something like DA. We typically go once a week, usually on a tuesday or wednesday night, which doesn't exactly strike me as primetime for a DA alive type exhibit, but who knows. We have a son who just turned 4. Last year he was kind of into Dinos, but we held off taking him back to DA until the haunt. Didn't want to have the "but I want to see the dino's (at $5 a pop) battle" each time. He enjoyed the walk thru back there last year, loved the dig area, etc... Overall, I thought it was pretty nice, but kind of a "see it once, not much need to go back" type exhibit. We've been prepared to go a few times this year, thinking we'd have the dino battle a few times, but also taking him back there to enjoy it a few times. Thankfully (for the pocket book anyways) he's been pretty well satisified just seeing the dino out in front of international street, and after doing shake, rattle & roll or heading towards the scrambler or monster, he wants to go over and see the T-Rex and Velociraptor (?) that sit out in front of the entrance to the exhibit. As I said, Tuesdays, Wednesday or thursday evenings are likely not the best time to gauge a crowd for that type of event, but I don't believe I've ever noticed anyone coming out of the gift shop (except us once when we took him in to get him a dino T-shirt), nor coming out of or trying to get into the exhibit. We're typically in that area for 5 minutes or so before we move along, so its certainly a small sample size in any given day, but extend it over 4-6 times in that area this year and a pattern is showing up. Last year, we had the same typical pattern as this year, middle of the week after work once a week. We usually started off either on Viking Express or kiddie land and eventually worked out way back to Shake, Rattle & Roll (when he hit 42"), the scrambler and monster. I can't say I remember the crowds in the area looking back to last year, my memory tells me the area was more active, but I can't say for sure. I read somewhere on here that they have a contract for DA thru 2018. As with any contract, I'm sure there are out clauses, but in any rate, if the intrest in DA has fallen off either now or in the future, I'd love to know what happens with the Dinosaurs. I'd love to see some sort of indoor water ride, using the dinos as part of the theme using a similar setup to Pirates of the Carribean at Disney. Not quote high action ride, but definently a step up from the old smurf ride.

I also see a "head of household" link on there. Of course I haven't gotten around to adding our other gold passes yet, so I'm not sure what that page does, but I'll assume it takes linked cards on fun perks and allows all perks to be added up together.

When I rode it earlier this season, I found myself pondering a question regarding the que. What is the average age of a Flight of Fear rider? The reason I ask is because on one of the computer's close to the entrance of the space ship contains a 5-1/4" floppy drive. A quick Wiki search tells me the 3.5" floppy was developed in the late 80s, which means the 5-1/4" floppy was pretty much gone as a regular feature on new computers by the time ride opened up (which is probably why that computer was available as a prop). I asked my 12 year old niece if she even knew what a floppy disk was; it was no surprise that she had no idea, let alone what a 5-1/4" floppy was. If the average age of a FoF rider is around 20-25 (I have no idea what the average age rider is), that means the average rider has likely never seen a 5-1/4" floppy disk. Minutia I know, but made me ponder if the que would be better served to have a little bit of a more modern feel to it, or if the outdated look works well.

I believe its been there from day 1 when they used to actually que people up inside of the building.

Sadly, yes we have quite a few lately of both.

Sure those things add up, but to quadrouple the price? The reason I ask, is perhaps no matter what they put back there, anything of significant size was going to require a $x mil investment in site work. I've read somewhere that the site work back there enabling SOB was significant. It could lead to a cheaper construction cost for whatever takes its place if the significant site work required (if that is the case) has already been done. they may never recapture the cost of SOB, but they might be able to recapture the site work construction costs down the road, if that makes sense. If the site work wasn't a significan cost, just imagine rather than having SOB, they could have put in something similar to El Toro, Voyage and Thunderhead with some money to spare.

The crane was back in place this morning (it was raining too hard to know if it was up last night on the way home, heck for all I know the crane could be parked outside Delirium all of this week with only the lift boom up in the mornings) Which seems strange, I assume KI doesn't own that crane, so they're renting it by the day or hour. You think you'd have it one morning to get whatever heavy parts you need down, then another day to get any heavy replacement parts back up. A third day seems wasteful, which tells me there has likely been unexpected delays/problems with the maintenance.

These accomplishments made with a DRASTICALLY reduced initial (before modifications) investment as well. (costs are reported, not confirmed) Voyage= $6.5 million Thunderhead= $7 million El Toro= $5 million Beast= $4 million SoB= $20.5 million any idea how much of that cost was site work? I've heard that they had to do a substantial amount of site work back there. If its a good chunk, at least a large portion of that site work will be applicable for whatever replaces SOB down the line. Otherwise, I have no idea why their initial investment would have been so much larger than the 3 modern woodies.

They didn't declare a 2nd, 3rd or 4th place. Basically it was The Beast, commercial, thunderhead, commercial the Voyage, commercial El Toro (commercial? can't remember) winner declared with 1 final "run" thru The Voyage's ride. At each step they talked about the positive's of each coaster and how it compared to the others in those catagories, so in other words, The Beast was mentioned as the longest multiple times, they showed the unique design elements of each, etc.. Really if you had missed the last 2 minutes of the show where they declare The Voyage to be the winner, you would have walked away thinking it was a nicely done "commercial" for 4 different, great wooden roller coasters. Really, no matter which coaster was/is your favorite, you walked away pleased with the presentation of the ride. On top of that, you got a great view of up the other wooden coasters that they featured. As far as what ride is the best. Personally, I think its a testiment to the greatness of The Beast that a coaster designed and built in the late 70s can compete with coasters designed and built 25+ years later. Just think about how much technology has advanced in those 25 years, how many different ride elements have come and gone, and yet here is The Beast still standing strong amongst rides that have taken advantage of the knowledge gained over the last 25+ years. Further, I think it also highlights (at least for me) the failings of Son of Beast when you see what these parks were able to accomplish 5-10 years after the opening of SOB. Perhaps they used SOB as a cautionary tale, and rather than making them taller and faster, they actually incorporated a more diverse set of design features. SOB had 2 double bowls, a loop and a large hill. The other wooden coasters have station pass thrus, tunnels, sharply banked turns, decent heights, lengths and speed, etc..

I call Woodstock Express neither its current name, nor its original name all while wishing it had its non-original tunnel back.

Agreed, a great family flat that doesn't spin. I can't ride anything that spins too much, but I enjoyed Viking Fury a ton last season when my son was 2. In fact we had both my son and his grandmother on Viking Fury last year; not many places in KI you can get 2 people 70 years apart to enjoy the ride as much as the other.

Crane was down last night (as one would suspect) back up this morning as I drove past KI. Perhaps they took something down yesterday, fixed it, and put it back up? Or perhaps its unrelated to the ride and something else is going on over there in the mornings.

So you'd rather observe Son of Beast than log into facebook?

Most people only care about the ride itself (if they care at all) and could give a flying flip how its spelled. No matter if you're talking about Zeypher, Zypher or Zephyr, I know you're talking about the adult sized Charlie Brown's windup and that is about all that matters to me.

95% sure it wasn't the slingshot, but I know what you mean as it does kind of resemble two cranes out in that direction. Its hard to be 100% positive driving southbound on 71, if I was heading north, you get much more time to look.

It appeared (driving south on 71) this morning that there was a crane sitting outside of Delerium, presumably lifting a heavy piece of equipment up to the top.