gabelogan99

I'm going to be staying at the Kings Island Resort across the street from Kings Island on Friday the 8th, Saturday the 9th, and Sunday the 10th. I have about an hour's drive every morning if I don't do that, and since it's going to be starting early and ending late, I think it would be best if I just stayed right there. Anyways, I'm looking for someone to split the cost of the room with. There will be two beds so I'm basically renting one of the beds out for each night. Total cost will be $300 and some change, and half of that is $150-- so $50 for any of those nights, or all of them, will get you one bed--and it can just be you or you and someone you don't mind sleeping with...LOL. Does not have to be the same person/people every night, so if you just want to do it Saturday night that's fine and I'll find someone else for the other nights. However, the first person who says they want to do it all three nights will have priority over anyone else. You must be an upstading member of KIC--the term upstanding will be determined on my own discretion. PM me if interested. See you all Ride Warrior's Weekend!

Seems like I had one of the strangest rides ever on SDatHC, then. There was no music/sound effects in the queue and there was no music/sound effects during the ride itself. The only sound there was came from the frightlight (gun).

Chef: You did not comment on the state of SDatHC. When I rode it today, there was no sound during the ride. Was it that way when you rode it too? If that's the way it's going to be the whole season, this will surely beyond any reasonable doubt be the sign that ushers in a new ride. Or, and I know Chef hopes so too, an old one.

So I drove an hour to the park today and got there at around 11 am to get my pass processed. The SPP center is CLOSED today until 4 pm. (I called GR and confirmed this.) So, if you're planning on going early today, don't waste the trip.

People also thought that man would never walk on the moon. I know he said it in January, but does anyone think Boddah was trying to tell us something? This coupled with the thread about something else old becoming something new for 2009 has kind of got my wheels turning. I mean, I'm not one much for conspiracy theories, but I have my own conspiracy theories against SDatHC. I mean, the licensing will run out on Scooby and his pals eventually, maybe even this year. (Nobody knows for sure and I wouldn't trust anyone who said they "knew" when this was going to happen for sure.) So, PT's old building is still there, they still have all the characters, we learned last year at HH that they still have the soundtrack, not to mention the fact that the biggest display yet of characters was at last year's HH. And they still have the old cars and the exact same track. I'm sure the old sign is somewhere too. So I'm really thinking there's a reason that they're holding on to all of that stuff...perhaps it's just wishful thinking and perhaps it's nothing more than a crazy conspiracy theory from a crazy mind. By the way, there's an amazing video here of a girl playing PT's music on the piano.

Well, with any luck I can get on Diamondback with my Gold Pass early and before 10 o'clock I'll hopefully be able to hop on The Beast right after Diamondback. I originally wasn't planning on a Diamondback ride because of fear over long lines. The ERT that has been announced has changed my mind. I plan on riding every single major ride except for The Crypt, Runaway Reptar (fun fact: I've never been on Runaway Reptar), and Fairly OddCoaster. I also hope to catch a ride on Viking Fury, SDatHC, and probably Dodems too since there's going to be five of us. I plan on being there from open to close, so I really think I can get on everything that I want to at least one time, provided that there are no breakdowns. (Wishful thinking, right?) As I've said before, this will be my very first opening day experience. I'm really excited for it. If you trust weather forecasts five days in advance, it's going to almost reach 70 degress opening day and clouds will be rolling in for some early showers on Sunday. So it looks like the weather just might hold up, but that's maybe a little wishful thinking as well. But like I've said before, if there's just a little shower sometime in the afternoon hours it's no big deal. If it rains all day, that is a big deal. At this point, it certainly doesn't <b>appear</b> that it's going to be a washout if it even rains at all.

That's dramatically changed from twelve hours before, when it was calling for a 10% chance of rain. I'd call it a 50/50 chance that it will be raining on opening day, but I will believe that it is going to be in the 60's for temperature. Of course there is a 50/50 chance of rain... I mean, it's either going to rain or it's not going to rain. I don't think I'm even going to call it a reliable forecast, one way or the other, until about Thursday of next week. If there's a little rain shower during the day, no big deal. If it's a washout, I don't see a point in going. I think, if anything, it probably will be just a little shower sometime during the day or a couple times during the day--not the steady kind of rain that hangs around all day. That's what I hope, at least. As far as the crowds, it's incredibly difficult to predict. The weather will play a pretty big factor I think. But, I mean, when you factor in everything else that's going on right now, it could forecast less people for opening day. Then again, there is a brand new Cedar Fair ride opening that day, which could forecast more. I think it's going to be a pretty average attendance when you factor in all of that. I do not think it will be the most crowded day of the operating season.

They should have signs. They did last year at Cedar Point. You go through the normal gate and then follow the signs to wherever they're letting people through. I'm guessing it will be the formerly blocked path behind the Eiffel Tower. I really wish that they would open all of International Street when the park opens...like it used to be. Maybe they will now and just block off the section that used to be blocked off before rides open over there near Eiffel Tower, AKA the section that was entirely closed last year. Man, you're not kidding. It appears that this is going to push the first ride a full hour prior to when it was "originally" scheduled.

Well, here it is. It's as good as official now: "Every public operating day this year, starting April 18th, the park opens early for Gold Passholders to enjoy some of their favorite rides and attractions! Saturday - 1 hr early entrance for Diamondback and Beast."

I'm guessing that "early rides" mean that, in theory, you can ride Diamondback earlier if you process your pass before the 18th because you won't have to wait in line to process your pass that morning you can just go straight into the park. Although, according to the language in the first post, this is going to be an official ERT. If that's the case--then that's EXCELLENT news and it's going to cause quite a buzz. It's important to say that, if you buy your pass online, the paper that you print out actually states that you can get in with that paper ONE time. After that one time, you need to have your picture taken. So, if you live far away and can't get your pass processed on opening day, and you bought your pass online, you shouldn't face a problem entering the park opening day with nothing but your print out. Or if you haven't bought your pass yet, just buy a regular admission ticket for opening day, enter the park, and then buy a pass later on that day. The amount you spent for your admission ticket will be deducted from the total amount for the season pass.

I had a strange experience on Delerium once. I sat in what can only be described as a "weird seat" and I couldn't see the ground when we were up in the air. Can anyone explain this phenomenon?

I agree. It's not like this is going to generate more hype than there already is. Pretty cool to see KI do something like that.

There's more than one way to Diamondback. Unless they block off the alternate route... or if they have one group going one way and one going another. And another thing about that picture...is there a topic about that tall security guard? I think I've seen him every time I've went to the park in the past couple of years. (He's pretty hard to forget.) Everyone knows that Eiffel Tower at Kings Island is 1/3 the size of the one in Paris. This dude's like 1/3 of the size of the Eiffel Tower at Kings Island! I've been thinking, and saying, that I would at least like to be there for Diamondback's very first run, even though I might not end up riding it that day. Is the first run going to be right before the park opens to the public or right after? The question then remains where would be a good place to see it. I've actually been thinking that it'd be cool to see it from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Should have a great view of it from there I would think. Here's something else to consider: If your opening day plans don't include a ride on Diamondback, this is a golden opprotunity for those of you who want the first ride of the season on one of your favorite other rides. This is provided, of course, that you get there right when the gates open. Now, this probably won't work if you want to watch Diamondback's first run, like I do, but it's just a fun suggestion. I think it'd be pretty cool if I could sneak in a ride on The Beast before Diamondback makes its first run. That area's going to be awfully crowded, though. And I don't think I have enough time to walk to The Beast, get on Eiffel Tower, and see Diamondback's first run. One of those two pre-Diamondback viewing things might have to be cut from the itenerary.

I'm not quite sure I'd call it that either, even though I did..LOL. All I meant was that people are getting antsy but I'm actually not one of them. I actually commend(ed) them for taking as much time as needed to prepare for such a huge event. I never saw a timetable of when exactly it would all be announced and the only thing, besides for what you just said, that I saw said late March. So, regardless of when it's all going to be announced, I think we can both agree that it will be, in a word, soon.

For the first time ever, I plan on spending opening day at Kings Island...at Kings Island! My sister-in-law has really expressed some interest in it and I told her if she makes the sandwiches then I'll take her and my brother and we'll all go. My brother and I have passes and we're going to try to make it there sometime before opening day to avoid further delay of getting into the park/long lines for processing that day. I've never even been to the park in April and have only been once in May, so this is going to be a different experience. I'm not really big on rushing straight to Diamondback, though. (Call me a non-conformist.) Now, I will say that I might go over there and watch the inagural running of the ride, just to say that I saw it, but as far as actually riding it I think I will hold off. (Especially since I'm planning on attending Ride Warriors Weekend where I'll be able to ride it without having to wait in a big huge line.) To me, I think it would be just as cool to see the first running of it and not ride it than to ride it the very first day it's open and not see the first running of it. So, Diamondback is certainly on my radar. But opening day I'm going to try to relax and walk around and see all the changes and visit some of the shops and get on some of my favorite rides early while everyone else flocks to Diamondback.

Wow, what a great observation! I personally didn't ever try to "re-create" KI per se--but I did name A LOT of rides after rides at KI. I also had fountains lining both sides of the entrance in one particular park--that idea partially stolen from KI. At KI it's more like fountain(s) in the middle, foot paths to the sides. My creation I guess would have been the exact opposite. One time (and when I say one time I mean three or four) one of my coasters crashed and some people were killed. I thought to myself how a real park (not necessarily KI) would handle this. So, I planted a square of flowers for each life lost near the ride. Did anyone else take it to that extreme? LOL

Hello, all. 777 here once again. I've read every post for this topic and this sounds like it's really going to be fun. I figure it's maybe not necessarily be a "once in a lifetime" opprotunity, but it's something that's pretty darn close to it. And it's not like it's going to cost me anything to go especially since I've been a member here for over five years and since I have a gold pass. My brother's registered here too and has a gold pass for the first time this season. We're planning on going opening day so we'll be getting our passes processed hopefully sometime before that. That's something that people are really going to have to remember if they have a gold pass, even though it's been mentioned--you HAVE to have your pass processed before May 9 in order to participate. Now, I'm guessing that you could still get by with processing your pass on May 9 but you'd miss out on some of the early events. So the best bet is to get it done before opening day if at all possible. The "problem" I forsee here (with a little bit of experience in this type of thing) is people showing up without having their pass processed yet, perhaps they're wanting to make this their first trip of the season. Get it all together before May 9--that's the bottom line! I'm really excited for the full schedule to be released. I'm not sure what the hold up is and I don't care--I'm sure it's all being done to make the event the best it could possibly be. One of the things that I'll be most interested to see is how the food situation is going to be handled which I know has been discussed a little bit already. At first I was thinking that it would be nice if the Backyard BBQ was included at least one of the days but then when I started looking at some of the numbers that some are projecting, that would probably be a little much. I'm loving at least the idea of the discounted drink wristbands, though. That would certainly be worth it. I'm also definitely excited about an ERT on Diamondback. If I go opening day, I don't think I'll want to stand in line to ride it if I can walk on to it a few weeks later. This will be my very first event of this type so I have a little added excitement about it. I've met very few of you here face to face and when I did I either didn't know who you were or you didn't know who I was. So it will certainly be pretty cool to put some faces to names. I like the idea, as mentioned, of having a KICentral only gathering within this larger RW gathering so if that pans out it would certainly be an added bonus. And Ryan you deserve a lot of credit for all the questions and your patience through all of the questions about this. It reminded me of when I worked in the Admissions dept at the former PKI. I'll see you guys in May! (And some of you opening day.)

Well I have one to contribute and I'm not going through all the pages to see if it's been said yet... But.. You may be a KI addict if you buy clothes to wear specifically at KI. Last year I went on a tiresome search to find shorts with zipper pockets and nobody seemed to have made them anymore. This year, I have started the search early and there are a couple of brands out there that have brought the zipper pockets back. I can't find them many places though, at least not in my size. To me, shorts with zipper pockets are a must. If something happened to my "special" shorts, I wouldn't be able to go.

Hello all! The selling of Spirit Song tickets in 2009 has not been without its snaffous. Like last year, Ticketmaster has dropped the ball once again, in the exact opposite way that they did it last year. I was online and ready to go right at 10 A.M. just like I was supposed to be if I wanted a great seat. I needed a simple concert-only three day pass to the festival due to the fact that I already have a park admission ticket AKA a season pass. However, Ticketmaster was only selling the combined park and concert admission tickets when they went on sale at 10 o'clock yesterday morning. (This was the exact opposite of what happened last year. You could only buy concert-only tickets which sparked mass confusion.) So, I ended up having to get my ticket through iTickets because they had the right thing for sale. I hated doing that because for some reason iTickets doesn't know where the seats will be until they start to print the tickets. At some point during the day, Ticketmaster did fix the problem. At 6:30 yesterday evening I could get a three day concert-only ticket through Ticketmaster in Section 3 Row C, which is a very very good seat. But I already bought my ticket through iTickets. It looks like the problems have been resolved, but it goes down as yet another year that Ticketmaster doesn't get it right. I obviously hope I'm in a seat as good as or better than Section 3, Row C. All that being said, I'm excited for this year's Spirit Song. Of course they are the three busiest days of the operating season, but it is still always fun. I'm really looking forward to seeing Skillet and hope that they are now a Spirit Song tradition that will come back every year. I also believe they should be headlining. See you all in July.

Nothing too embarrassing has ever happened to me at KI, but then again I don't get embarrassed too easily. When we went to the park this past Friday, my aunt and I were walking towards The Racer but then made a sharp turn as to not go on the ride but to continue walking down the midway, towards Subway. When my aunt made that sharp turning motion, she was near a 20 something year old girl who jumped. This is because she thought my aunt was a spook. Can you say paranoid? I walked away, laughing hysterically. Of course, I'm not too much one to talk about being paranoid. I am always watching my back when I'm at The Haunt.

Yeah, I think it would have been interesting to see that at the beginning of the night. I usually insist on seeing the wall of monsters, but last night we weren't in any hurry because I knew it was going to be one of those nights that we had plenty of time to do stuff.

So Friday night it was cold--let's not kid ourselves. Was anyone else there besides me on Friday? (Besides the obvious, of course.) I think that the bad weather, or at least the threat of bad weather, kept people away. If it was rainy and cold, it would have been a different story. But it was just cold and they said that the rain would end around 8 and I obsessed over the forecast that day and sure enough we saw absolutely no rain. We got there right about 8. We went to Massacre Manor first. The line was very short and only a couple of groups went before mine did. It was just me and my aunt and we went with a group of four girls. Four young girls. I was the only male in the group, bringing up the rear. Have you ever been the only male in the group and been the last person in the group? It was a lot of fun to see their reactions, I will say that. I wasn't expecting to be picked on a lot and, probably not to anyone's surprise, I wasn't. I remember one pretty good pop, though. This was only my second time going through Massacre Manor and I thought I remembered at least a couple of times where it was completely dark, but that didn't happen this time. There are a couple of times where you can't see very well because of the strobe lights, but it wasn't completely dark in any one area. We certainly took out time going through this one, and I got to see everything, which I liked. Next we headed to Urgent Scare. 5 minute wait at the most. Once again, I was the only male in the group, at the end of the group. This time the girls were a little older, but they got scared very easily. We took out time through this one too, and I noticed some things I hadn't before. I still say this is the best haunt at HH. The size I think impresses me the most. I like the fact that they have a lot of things before you actually get into the maze itself. Then we went on a walk-on ride of Vortex. It was a chilly ride, that's for sure. A fun one, nevertheless. Then we headed to BLSC and it was practically a walk on also. We had a good front seat ride on this one, and it was the first time I had ever rode the front. Then we did something I hadn't done in any of my trips so far this fall--we rode The Beast. The Beast is a tight fit when you're my size and you're wearing more clothes than you normally wear when you ride that ride, but it was a two-click fit (per the rules) nonetheless. So we had a really good ride on The Beast, and it was a walk-on. I didn't hurt the rest of the night, either. I guess that's what I liked the best about it. Next we went for ice cream at the stand in Nick Central near CarnEvil, but it was closed. No big deal, we did CarnEvil and held off on the ice cream for later. I was the leader in CarnEvil like I was the first time I went through it. For some reason, I immediately wanted to walk the wrong way and the lady clown at the front told the group that maybe the better not let me lead but I did fine after that. By the way, I paid attention this time, and all the indoor mazes I did had things on the floor that pointed you in the right direction. When we got to the end of CarnEvil, I declared "We're stuck!" because the door was closed. After CarnEvil we went to get some blueberry ice cream in Action Zone. For some reason, while eating our ice cream outside, we got really really cold and decided to go into Festhaus for a quick warm-up and a quick drink of water. Action Zone was a wasteland--a barren one at that. It was sad, really. I was concerned that we'd really a target for spookage, but it wasn't that bad. Then we went to Delerium. I had a weird experience on Delerium. I sat in an area that I apparently had never sat in before. While were were on the ride, I couldn't really see anything. I was in seat 16. My aunt was in 17. She had the same experience. Very disorienting. What is it with these seats? Someone on here must be able to offer an explaination. Then we went to Club Blood. I was again at the end of the group, but this time it was a real mix of people. I'd say it was a group of about 8 and we broke off into two groups of four once we got passed the guy in the motorcycle room. (Who, by the way, looked very similar to the bouncer from last week ) Anyways, there was a middle-aged couple in front of us and they were going very slow and the younger kids separated from them, and us. However, it was good because I got to see more than usual. I hadn't seen the guy eating poop before and, as disturbing as that was, it was kind of neat and funny. Not a whole lot of things that made me jump, overall, though. I did like the bungee guy, didn't remember him. Urgent Scare had a bungee guy too that I didn't remember. Next we back-tracked a bit, passing up all other things in Action Zone and deciding to walk towards the midway but we rode Adventure Express in the front before we did that. Then we went and lost some money in the arcade playing three games of Deal or No Deal and not winning a whole lot. We won more in one token of that little wheel thing than we did on skee ball and everything else we tried. It was fun though. We went and checked out the line for Firehawk, which wasn't really that long. But we were ready to go and so we did. They were having an end-of-season sale on some of their shirts, but none in my size. There just weren't that many people there Friday. It was certainly the best night for lines, and pretty much the best night of The Haunt yet. I highly doubt I will be going next week on Halloween, but there's a chance that I might decide to. I really got my money's worth from my pass just for Halloween Haunt alone because because this was my fourth time there and I actually only went three times during this summer. It's such a better experience in the fall I think just because the weather is so much nicer and there aren't very many people there. It was really great. But that's just me.

With the miniature version of the ride being put in place at the front of the park, I have a question--now that I've actually seen it run. I will first start by saying I'm not anywhere close to being an expert on ride construction. I've learned all I know from RCT. Translation: I really know absolutely nothing about this topic, so that is why I am searching for answers. Please keep those statements in mind as you read my question/conern! From the looks of the model, it looks like you're in the station and then you are immediately going up the chain lift. Wouldn't the ride need some momentum to make it up the chain lift? Isn't that why all of the other coasters, with the exception of the inverted ones, have a little bit of actual track before the big chain lift? This is just concerning me and I know someone has the answer. By the way, I'm sorry if this has already been brought up.

I'm interested to see how it has come along. I did it the first Friday I was there and I plan on doing it the last Friday that I will be there, which will hopefully be this Friday. I liked it the first time I did it. I thought it was pretty unique and really the size of it alone was impressive. I liked the indoor/outdoor aspect the most probably.

Thanks for the info. However, I now have more questions than answers.