garyh9900

My only experience as an employee was during the best days of KI, the paramount years.

Different company name, same people (for the most part).

I've visted KI extensively under its orginal owners\operators, paramount, and Cedar Fair. I also worked for KI for 3 season under paramount. Overall I liked paramount the best, closely followed by the KECO(original owner, later operator). I think the theming of Paramount was great, but I like a lot of the classic stuff that Paramount got rid of that I grew up with.

I think that may be a little extreme, especially if you are listening to the information through a scanner. It is perfectly legal to own, operate, and listen to a scanner. If the park doesn't want people listening to their radio transmissions, they can always encrypt them.

These figures are not given out to the general public but if you ask, it will be something like heavy crowds, large, small, ect. If you are a regular park goer, you can gage how large the crowds are by past experiences, number of cars in the parking lot, weekday, or weekend crowds. This is the answer you will receive if you call and not the actual numbers. I was just saying if you can find out what extension they are using for the alpha mailbox, then you can call yourself, they have a digital switchboard, you just call the #, it will say if you know your party's extension dial it now, it seems like it was something similar to 3497, and listen to the information yourself, or if your within radio range of the park, and know how to operate a scanner they broadcast it hourly on the ride operations, resale and public safety frequencies. I'll have to check, but there may even be a online scanner that streams KI radio traffic. If there is just check it around the top of the hour and you'll hear the official numbers.

I miss Surge. It was my favorite part of working there. I'd drink all shift long.

I can't remember the extension anymore, but if you can get someone to tell you what it is, you can call the switchboard and ring the extension to the "alpha" mailbox. They update the "Alpha"(attendance) figures hourly. They track the alpha gross, which is the total number of people entering the park, and the alpha net, which is the amount of people currently in the park. Also if you live near Kings Island they broadcast it over their radio system shortly after the top of the hour. It's in the same format, they send out several paging tones follow by "Stand by for the alpha"

I really miss the KI and PKI of the 80's and 90's. It was such a different atmosphere than it is today.

In 1997-99 the sauce was bagged, but the cheese was indeed provolone, that's about all I did in 98 and 99 was make pizza. I remember it was 1 ladle of sauce, a cup(it wasn't the unit of measurement, but a cup they had picked out for their right amount of cheese, in their opinion, and enough peperoni, not touching evening spaced across the sauce.I remember we would make calzones at night before shutting the oven down for us closers. I had some good times there, made some good friends, that I still talk to 15 years later.

I liked it for the most part. The first season i worked there, I spent 5 days a week working and most of the other 2 their as a guest, you could also eat there as a guest. So I'd eat on a few dollars unless I wanted something like a funnel cake or something like that. Now the 2nd and 3rd seasons, I didn't spend nearly as much time there when not working. I remember resale or sometimes just food would have an after hours event in some sections of the park, it was normally coney mall. Free food, walk on to The Vortex, Flight of Fear, racers, and the days of thunder(for some reason, I really liked that one).

I worked for PKI in 1997, 1998, and 1999. I worked at the Festhaus all 3 seasons. Oscars served the same menu as most of the other food stands in the park. Hamburgers, pizza, chicken tenders, fries, salads, and a rotating specialty dish. They also served ice cream(and occasionally they would bring in the smurfy blue ice cream). I think it was a food service associate benefit only, but we got at least 1 meal ticket 8 hour shift, it was worth 5 dollars of food at Oscars. It was enough for me to get 2 pieces of pepperoni pizza, a order of fries and a regular drink. It was exactly the same stuff as we served at the festhaus. Interesting note, I always volunteered for pool whenever it was available. On-duty Waterworks employees got the Oscar's price while eating at Sharkey's.

Yep. That's it. Thanks.

LOL. Okay. What is the name of the employee cafeteria? It's driving me nuts, I can't remember.

Hey guys and gals. I'm was having a converstation with a few of my friends the other day. We were employees at KI back in the mid-to-late 90's. We couldn't remember the name of the employee cafeteria. Does anyone know it?