Joncars05

Just saw a billboard for Indiana Beach in Speedway, IN. I'm really glad to see they are advertising in the Indianapolis area. Apex seems to be taking all of the right steps to bring the park back to it's former glory.

Haha were you thinking they were talking about the size of coasters instead of the riders? If so that's what I thought it was about before I clicked the article. Either way I was glad to see that the information was really good. Most articles like this butcher names of coasters, manufacturers, and how the rides operate.

An interesting article about how size (both tall and/or heavy riders) can possibly effect the way you can ride roller coasters safely. http://www.latimes.com/travel/themeparks/la-tr-theme-parks-big-riders-20160511-story.html

For many years CF have ignored this problem. I have seen people light up on the midways and even in line while waiting for rides and have yet to see any security officer tell someone to stop smoking. I am with you that it is completely inconsiderate for people to smoke in non designated smoking areas but since security doesn't enforce the rules people will continue to break them.

Random thought... what if Beast Gal's husband was 'Young Stud' from a while back? Joncars05, who "saw" some green Intamin track heading to the park today!

This is also the front desk park employees that said multiple times that Coasterstock's registration did not include parking for all three days... I honestly take what the front office says to anything other than general questions (what hours KI is open, how much are tickets/parking, etc) with a grain of salt.

I am almost certain this wont happen but I really think it would be awesome if this new ride is a giga coaster and interacts with DB on some level. Even if they just have flybys that would be really cool.

I would hope some of the citizens of Batavia and surrounding area know that HW exists as they just created Thunderbird for them about 20 months ago! Joncars05, who likes to kid around from time to time. I know what you are saying about central and northern Ohio not making the trip to KK or HW. But HW and KK are drawing major numbers from KI territory west and south of Ohio. People may know of KI but they will visit less or not at all due to visits to HW and KK. Cedar Fair has taken notice and will try to stay ahead of the curve. They have already shown that ability by having a very successful opening weekend. The competition will be interesting to see as it seems KK has exceeded the total of it's 3 year plan of investing in park, HW seems to be invested in park and ride improvements, and KI seems to be the 2nd or 3rd park on Cedar Fair's priority list. The next couple of years should be interesting to watch and see how each park adjusts in the growing battle of attracting patrons to their respective parks.

Based off of the number I have gathered both KK and HW have a combined attendance right around 2 million people last year. That is around the total attendance of Carowinds last year. You can say people have forgotten about HW or KK but the numbers say otherwise. I will agree and say that KI is on a completely different level than KK and HW. That is mainly due to KI belonging to a international theme park chain. Both HW and KK are independent parks. Both KK and HW will likely never truly challenge KI for top dog in the tri-state area, but 2 million visitors a year is a very sizeable chunk of the theme park market. To say that people have forgotten about HW and KK is a stretch at best.

I'll politely disagree with you. KK is agressively marketing to the general public in the Indianapolis area. Even If they add 50,000 in attendance this year that is 50,000 people that may not make an extra trip to KI. Add in the fact that HW has been averaging well on 1,000,000 people in attendance. This is an amazing fact due to HW's location. From Indianapolis it takes 3 hours to get to HW and only two hours to get to KI and KK. This doesn't even take into effect that HW probably saw a considerable bump in attendance from the addition of Thunderbird. you can see that KI needs to stay sharp. The one positive is that KI are a part of a chain that includes one of the most popular parks in the world so KI has a clear capital advantage over KK and HW. But HW is not the small park is was even just 10 years ago. They have plenty of revenue to spend and are constantly improving the park with additions of rides, changing menu items, or even the addition of Halloween events. KK is, as mentioned before, aggressively reaching into HW and KI territory trying to boost attendance. They have added two brand new coasters and revamped two others in less than 3 years. They have improved their water park as well. I feel like most moves they have made have been very positive and have been enough to pick off visitors from both KI and HW. Trust me Cedar Fair has definitely noticed what both KK and HW have been doing and will respond accordingly. I mentioned this a few posts back but with KK adding a well received RMC and HW adding a $22+ million B&M coaster, competition is heating up in the tri-state area. The winners of this competition will be us, the consumer. Competing parks keep everyone on their toes and make all parks involved step their game up.

This looks like a great start for actual punishment for breaking park rules. I really wish parks would start banning people for cell phone use on rides. It opens them up for liability if someone gets hit in the face by a falling cell phone. To me it should be a two phase penalty. First offense you get escorted out of the park and are banned from the park that year. If you get caught a second time you are banned from the park permanently and if you are caught in the park again you will face trespassing charges. The amount of money you lose due to a patron being banned is nothing compared to the money lost to a lawsuit from someone suffering permanent damage from a flying cell phone.

1) Oldschool75 2) Joncars05 +Wife & Child

That's okay I will have plenty to share in upcoming trip reports and I will have a crazy amount for the photo contests at the end of the year haha. Yeah it was really fun. I thought Falcon's Fury's line moved pretty quickly but the park wasn't super packed either. You will have a great time. BGT is such a great park.

Is it really that bad at Kings Island compared to the actual restaurant? Yes. Joncars05 avoiding one word posts.

Well with the absurd amount of double posts we have been seeing so far we will definitely break the 2014 decoding record! Hahaha

Just read through about 28 pages here and I am liking everyone's ideas. Whatever goes in there it should be fun. Take it easy on people's ideas even if they propose something like green intamin track heading to the park! There are very few people that actually know what is going in there and they will not be speaking until the designated announcement date. Just remember it's fun to speculate because it's fun to dream of what could be going in back there. So dream big or small but what ever you do have fun.

Just drove by TWO KK billboards in the Indianapolis area advertising the 2 days for $29.95 deal. Its great to see KK going after the Indianapolis area. In years past I have mentioned maybe seeing only one billboard with it being put up after the park has opened. I'm really excited to see what KK has to offer this year. Competition among the parks (no matter what level the parks are on) in the tri-state area is great to see!

You should be able to roll the pass over for a $30 fee. Three years ago my wife and I found out that we were pregnant in the offseason so we didn't use our platinum passes at all that following year. We contacted the front office and renewed our passes the year after and were able to use them as normal. I'm not sure what the fee would be now but as long as you paid for the pass in full and never used it you should be able to renew it at a discounted rate. I am not sure about the meal plan renewal though.

My wife, daughter, and I ended up buying tickets to Busch Gardens Tampa during our spring break trip this March. We looked all over for ticket deals and we bought tickets through the Tampa CityPass ticket package. This gives you the option of going to 5 different attractions in the Tampa area and one of those attractions includes BGT. The deal does not include parking but it does include a regular admission ticket to the park. At a value of $99 for the entire package the CityPass is a perk that most coaster enthusiasts should take advantage of if you are staying in the Tampa area for multiple days. My wife is pregnant with our second child so she is going to miss out on most of the amusement park season. She still likes to attend parks so she, along with our daughter, will be heading to parks with me this year. We entered the park and I immediately went to the Cheetah Hunt line. After a 5 minute wait I was off. I really do like this triple launch Intamin coaster. The first launch is pretty tame but the second launch to get you up to the figure 8 element is really fun. I really like the water section where the ride weaves along the old Rhino Rally path and the launch that kicks you up a large airtime hill is really great. The final part of the ride weaves together a couple of s curves and small airtime hills before riding back into the station. It’s a really fun ride and no wonder that it is the most popular ride in the park. My next ride was Montu. This Inverted coaster is old school B&M all the way. After the initial drop and the first two inversions it seems the ride stays decently low to the ground. The use of tunnels and tight inversions make it a very forceful yet awesome ride. The ride ranks right up there with Banshee at KI. I ended up riding this twice in a row before making my way to Falcon’s Fury. Falcon’s Fury is a very interesting Drop Tower. Not only is the tower 20 feet higher than Kings Island, the ride pulls riders back near the top of the tower so they dive facing straight down before falling back to the ground face first. The ride returns you back to a seated position about halfway down the tower then you hit the brakes and are finished. Knowing most Drop Towers I thought this ride was going to have capacity issues. When I was in line it moved very quickly. The ride up the tower is much quicker than all of the Drop Towers I have been on. I also thought the facing down portion before you dropped would’ve been uncomfortable but I was wrong there as well. The restraints were very comfortable and the view was amazing. The drop itself was very smooth and exciting. Facing straight down during the initial drop was really cool. As long as this ride stays reliable it would be a great addition to parks that don’t have Drop Towers. I skipped the line for Scorpion because the line filled the queue and stretched over 45 minutes. So Next I went to Kumba. This sitdown B&M is a classic as well. The forces and inversions all flow really well. It makes really good use of the area around it but weaving in and out of trees, going under bridges, and using tunnels to make the ride seem like it’s going faster than it really is. Kumba is a really fun ride. After Kumba I rode Sheikra. It is a dive coaster built by B&M. I really had so much fun last time I rode this. This time it wasn’t as thrilling as before. I still had fun as the first drop and massive Immelmann loop are great but the ride really lost steam before hitting the brakes. The second drop into the volcano and following splashdown are fun but again the ride seem to peter out and struggle to the ending brakes. My wife ended up taking our daughter to the car for a nap so that is when I got to break out my new DSLR camera to start taking photos of the rides. I’ve always shot rides with my phone so I was really excited to start shooting with a "real" camera and see what I could come up with. I think I came out okay with the photos. A sample of them are posted below. After the nap the baby and wife came back into the park we got on a couple kiddie rides with our daughter. It was really fun to see her having fun because she is 18 month old and is now able to have fun with certain rides. After she was done with all of the rides she could ride, I rode Sheikra, Kumba, Falcon’s Fury, and Montu to end the night. Wait times were really minimal with Kumba, Montu, and Sheikra were all walk-ons or 5-10 minute waits at the most. My final ride count was: Montu: 4 Sheikra: 3 Kumba: 4 Cheetah Hunt: 1 Falcon’s Fury: 4 I have an insane amount of coaster photos so I started an Instagram page where I am sharing them. The account is coaster_bean. Thanks for reading. I'll be posting more trip reports soon!

Terp you know exactly what I meant just like I knew what you meant when you said differenter. You may not agree with my opinion (and that's completely fine by me) but there is no need to be condescending.

Fixing up and prettying a property are both completely different than investing $41+ million on rides and attractions in only 4 years. The attractions added to Holiday World since 2012 include: Mammoth, Legend Reborn, Kitty Tea Party, Mayflower, Crow's Nest Relocation/Rebranding, Thunderbird, Hyena Falls, Hyena Springs, and Holidog Express. That $41 million doesn't include the cost to add Cabanas, new boats added to Mammoth this year, any rollercoaster repairs outside of the specific Legend Reborn project, the removal of attractions, the cost of water park attraction maintenance, and other items. Also if you are looking for a flag being planted in the park grounds for a permanent location for Holiday World look no further than the fact that 2016 is their 70th year of operation. All 70 years have been run under the Koch family name. If you want to sell you add small items and slap some paint on some rides and spruce up some landscaping. You pinch pennies and dimes or as some on this forum mention nickels. Most parks don't spend anything and just let the park sit until a buyer comes along. Parks that are selling usually don't care for the little details such as food and beverage changes or small details that require new purchases. Because if you are selling the ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible then cut out.

What signs have you seen to say that the current management will not continue running the park as a long range investment? You continually question their intentions when they have shown ZERO outward signs of any intentions of selling the park to another firm. They have literally invested $22 million with Thunderbird. The park needed to create it's own power station to even operate Thunderbird without blacking out the entire town of Santa Claus, IN. They did extensive track work on Voyage two years back and are poised to do another treatment for 2017. They have invested in a $2+ million upgrade on The Legend while re-configuring the final 4th of the Ride's layout. They have continually invested in the water park with major installations of Wildebeest and Mammoth. They continually create new items and revamp their menus for food, desserts, and drinks for their patrons. They have added 30+ cabanas a couple of years ago. Will Koch's daughters, his wife, and past co-worker Matt are all currently working in Holiday World's management team. The current management team seems fully invested in what they are doing with the park with what seems to be long term visions and goals. Heck, they have even started a podcast letting listeners in on certain plans and the happenings with the park. You don't simple shell out $30+ million in 3 years without long term goals. If you are trying to sell a park typically you will not put any money into the park. Look at Indiana Beach for your example. They basically let the park sit idle for 3 years before they found a buyer. If HW and the current management team stops investing money in the park then I will worry. But as long as they continue to improve the park I believe it's a non issue. Side note: I understand that you are upset with how Pat was removed from the park but that is the direct result of her own son's actions. She would still be at the park today if Dan didn't illegally try and take the park away from Lori. You can read the court's case review of what happened and it was a slam dunk case. Pat chose to stick by her son Dan and I don't blame her. As a parent myself I will support my kid even when they make a terrible mistake. If you want to place blame with how Pat has been treated please look no further than the owner of that park in Alabama who put himself and others in this situation and not the current management team at Holiday World.

Diamonback and Beast are arguably the two most popular rides at KI and their entrances are a two minute walk from each other.

Not trying to be rude but it cannot be stated enough that a B&M Hyper Coaster and a B&M Giga Coaster are two completely different experiences. IF this is a giga, putting it next to DB would be okay because they would be two different experiences.

I randomly mentioned last year after my first WWC ride that the location behind the train and around WWC would be perfect for a wooden terrain coaster. If RMC could make a twister back there it would be amazing. The only thing is if it is indeed a coaster I highly doubt CF would be able to keep trees around for the ride. They have shown the tendency to basically clear an entire plot of trees with their many recent coaster installations. Its a shame because trees can make a ride even more intense. But for some reason I wouldn't be surprise if this is a log flume ride. You have WWC placed back in the woods plus the theming of RFYLCB makes me feel it is targeted for kids. They can make that whole area basically a "wet section" for the dry side of the park. Idk but this decoding will be fun. Even if after all of the teasing it turns out to be more animatronic dinasours... Haha