Voicetek

I'm not sure where this whole "abandoning the middle class argument" came from anyway. Even though Disney is raising their prices, it is not that far out of reach for most families if done right. Yes, you can go down to Disney and blow through $10,000 or more if you want a top of the line dream vacation. However, this is no where near necessary. Being able to experience Disney does not mean you have to take out a second mortgage on your house. We are not rich by any sense of the word. We live within our means and we plan out our finances and make smart choices. However, we are able to do Disney every so often if we want to. Do we go every year? Heck no, and no one really has to. When we do go, though, we go smart. We stay off property, pack our own food, and even look for savings on tickets. Last time we went, my wife and I got free tickets. You know how? We went and listened to a 2-hour pitch for a time share. Did we want a time share? Heck no! But we walked out of there with free breakfast, coffee, and two free tickets to a park of our choosing. Yeah, it might be a little bit of a hassle, but we invested 2-hours of our time and saved $200 on Disney park admission. The entire week-long trip to Florida, hotel, food, gas, and everything, I think we spent right around $1,000, maybe a little more. It is possible! Raising the prices slightly won't keep me from visiting because there are ways to go and save money. Disney has never been a yearly trip for us anyway, so paying a little extra when we do go, especially if it lessens the crowds a bit, really isn't too big of a deal.

Awesome thread! I love seeing old pictures of the park. It brings back memories of when I visited as a child. I love scrolling through this thread and checking out all the pictures. Amazing job!

I was born in 1980 and spent most of my childhood riding rides in Hanna-Barbara Land at KI. Looking back, those were some of my best times and I have fantastic memories of the park during that time period. I absolutely loved the puppet tree and looked forward to the new shows and songs every season. I loved playing on the McScrappy's Farm playground and watching the elephant fountain blow water out of it's trunk. I loved Winterfest as a child and just being immersed in the whole atmosphere of the park at Christmas time. Moving into the 90s, I was growing up and entering my teen years. The mid to late 90s in the park was a completely different experience for me. I was now a teen, and was visiting the park with my friends instead of with family. These memories, even though completely different, were just as good. I remember just walking around the park with my friends, hanging out and goofing around. I remember hanging around the park with my guy friends and checking out the cute girls visiting the park that day. Plus, taking a ride on the Phantom Theater to cool down in the summer was a great option to have. I've managed to visit the park every season since I started going as a child. Even the seasons I didn't have a pass, I found a way to visit at least once or twice. I've seen the park transition through most of their phases. I've seen owners come and go, and I've watched attractions get built and demolished. I've been happy to see some rides come, but completely distraught to see other rides get ripped out. Knowing that you'll never create new memories on that particular ride again is sort of heartbreaking. However, as hard as it is, there are always new memories to be made and that's what I try to do from season to season. Now I'm in my mid-30s and have been visiting the park now every season for over 30 years. I'm married now and every season my wife and I venture back to the park to take a ride on the new attraction, or just walk around the park and reminisce about old times and past attractions. Even though you might not think you are, you're constantly creating new memories. Now I can look back to the mid 2000s and on and I have fond memories of visiting the park for the first times with a girl who is now my wife. I can remember some of the first rides we rode together and the experiences we had at the park the summer we started dating. These memories are just as special to me as the memories I have from the 80s visiting with my family, or the memories I have from the 90s visiting with friends. I don't think it's quite about who owns the park or what rides and attractions are there currently (even though this does play somewhat of a part), but it's mainly about who you're visiting with and the fun times you share there together, and the memories that are being created. Although I am slightly partial to the Hanna-Barbera days of the park, I can definitely look back through the decades and recall fond memories from just about every season. It's better to not worry so much about who owns the park or what attractions might come and go, but more importantly about who you're with and enjoying every moment of the time you get to spend with those people. Because at some point, memories will be all you'll have so make a bunch of them!

Holy crap. I remember riding Adventure Express one of the first weekends it opened that season. I was so addicted to that ride that one Saturday, when I went back with a friend, it had hardly any wait so we marathoned it. Can't believe that's been 25 years ago. How old am I again? Gosh!

My wife and I used to go to Krazy City quite a bit during the summer of 2008. Back then, I worked with elementary school kids and we'd take them there on field trips during the summer. My boss used to give me the left over Play and Ride cards, so my wife and I used to go back and use them. I actually enjoyed this place. It gave you something to do when it wasn't great weather outside. Or, if you were looking for someplace to go to kill a couple of hours, this was a great choice. It's weird, I didn't even know this place was going out of business. One day we showed up at the mall and noticed that everything was closed up. Totally took me by surprise. I've been to The Web and that's a pretty cool place, but I kind of wish it had some of the rides that Krazy City had.

This question is a no brainer. Scooby Doo was definitely better than that sorry excuse for a dark ride we have now. At least the theming was better and I loved how they played an altered version of the Scooby Doo theme with some minor chords thrown in. With that being said, nothing since the Phantom Theater has ever been as good or better than the previous themes. From Enchanted Voyage to Phantom Theater, those were by far the best attractions in that building. Far superior in every way! Hopefully KI will wake up and revert that building back to it's former glory.

Crap! My wife and I had been wanting to go check it out sometime. I noticed I had a buy one, get one coupon in my Entertainment Book this year. We were planning on going in the next couple weeks or so. I guess I won't be using my coupon after all.

Wow, amazing pics! It's good to know that he found a home after his removal from the park. It would've been nice if he was still existing somewhere though!

Speaking of sound, what's up with the music in Boo Blasters? It's that same 30 second piece of music on repeat the entire time. And it's not even an original piece! Ugh. I just get so frustrated every time I ride that ride anymore.

It amazes me how many things in Boo Blasters rarely work. I can't remember the last time I had a gun that worked properly. And what about the tourist being chased? How many times have you actually seen him working? Not to mention the Boocifer projection on the fog screen that worked for all of a few months. There are even targets on that ride that I've NEVER been able to activate. What's up with that? The ride is a mess. It was a cheap re-theme from the very beginning and has remained a half-working, generic attraction ever since. If this ride follows the same 10 year rule as the other rides in that building, we've still got to deal with that thing for a few more years, which is unfortunate. Hopefully they'll put Boo Blasters out of it's misery sooner than that. We can only pray.

Wow, I never knew Cedar Point had a ride like this! I've been there several times over the years and some how missed it every time. This ride is very similar to Jungle Cruise and I was surprised to see how unique it was for a regional park. Why in the world would they get rid of something like that? I guess the same reason KI gutted all the theming on the train ride. It would be nice to see something like this put back in the parks. I hate to see that we're losing original attractions for the sake of cookie-cutter ones. It's a shame really.

Not really too sure what the original post was about, except that a sign was wrong or something?

My last ride of the season was Diamondback. My wife and I were planning on going this past Sunday to do the last rides of the season thing, but ended up having to meet up with her dad and stepmom. Diamondback is a great ride and definitely a fine way to end the season though!

It seemed like KI managed to perform upkeep on figures early on with Enchanted Voyage and Smurf's Enchanted Voyage. Then came Phantom Theater and everything went to crap. Not sure what the different was here. Perhaps the animatronics were a little more involved or something or maybe they just stopped caring and knew they were going to rip it out in the near future. Whatever the case, it would be nice for them to invest in a nice dark ride and also set some money aside for maintenance of that ride. I, too, am getting tired of the cardboard cutouts and I really don't want a dark ride that consists of nothing but screens. To me that kind of thing is not unique and falls flat and lifeless.

I camped here with my family way back in the 80s. I don't have too many memories, but I do remember one in particular. My parents had bought me some kind of little toy flute in HB Land that weekend. I want to say it had Yogi Bear or some HB character on it too. Anyway, one morning as we were getting packed up to go, I was sitting at one of the picnic tables singing some kind of song and using my flute as a drum stick on the picnic table. My mom told me to stop, but I was young and I didn't listen. As I hit the table on one of the beats, my poor plastic flute cracked in half. Oh well, that's what I get for not listening! Good times though, we always had fun camping as a family. It's kind of sad it's not there anymore.

My wife and I finally made it out to the park yesterday to take advantage of the lovely fall weather and the Halloween decorations. Since we renewed our passes already, we wanted to make use of our free Fastlane Plus vouchers. We arrived at the park at around 3 and headed through the gates and to the Fastlane booth to get our wristbands. After being redirected to another location to pick up our bands, we finally had them strapped to our wrist and ready to go! After making a quick pitstop at the restrooms, we decided to do a loop around the park and basically hit most attractions that we could. First ride up was Boo Blasters. This was the first time we've ever had anything like a Fastlane, so it felt a little weird bypassing the main line. It almost felt a little like cheating and I had to keep reminding myself that we were allowed to do this lol. So we basically walked right in and were on the ride within a minute or two. The ride, like always, was just ok. The first gun I used didn't work, so I had to grab one of the other guns. It felt like was picking and choosing when it wanted to work. And a big surprise, the tourist being chased was not working again. I think I've seen him working maybe once this season. The piece of music that they're using in the background is redundant. It just replays over and over. It's not even an original piece, so that's even more annoying. I lost track of how many times I heard it during the ride. Next up, Diamondback! This is one of our favorite coasters in the park. I'm all about the drops and Diamondback doesn't disappoint there! As we walked into the queue, we noticed that the actual line was only about twice as long as the Fastlane line. Even though the Fastlane line got us on a little quicker, it wasn't much of a difference here. The crowds were very light and there were really no long waits on anything. The ride was amazing as usual and we caught some great airtime. Also, I'm really liking the seat belts. It makes me feel more secure when I'm riding. After Diamondback we made our way over the to The Beast. Now this was probably one of the longest lines I saw that day. This was one ride were having Fastlane really paid off. We pretty much walked right up to the loading station and it was about a 2 cycle wait for us. Not bad at all! I love this ride in the fall time. Speeding through the woods, seeing the trees with the leaves changing colors, and the cool, crisp air hitting your face - this is such a great experience! This is just one coaster that can't easily be topped! Next, we made our way over to Stunt Track. Now this isn't one of our favorite rides, but this is one we usually tend to skip on a normal visit because we just don't care to wait for it and the line is usually long. Since we had Fastlane though, we decided to take a ride. This ride is ok. I especially like the launch in the beginning and the effects are pretty cool when they're working. I don't think they had all the effects running during this ride, but it was still fun. We decided next to head over to Coney Mall and take our ride on Adventure Express. This was a rather interesting thing, the line for Fastlane was actual longer than the normal line. Not significantly longer, but it had a few more people than the regular line did. I think we could've walked through the regular line and gotten on just as fast. Oh well, since our Fastlane bands were free, we weren't really losing anything! A great ride on Adventure Express as always, except there was absolutely no sound in the final tunnel. The figures were moving, but there was no sound. Not sure why. This ride really needs some love. Hopefully someday soon! Since we were now pretty close to Action Zone, we decided it would be a great time to head over to Banshee. This has also become a must do coaster for us when we visit. This ride didn't have any wait at all in either of the lines. Both the regular line and Fastlane line were both walk ons. We walked right up to the loading station and picked our row. It was only a 1 cycle wait. Banshee is amazing, just sayin'. By this time it was about 4:30 and we were pretty tired. Fastlane really wears you out since you're pretty much jumping from ride to ride with little to no wait. You don't really have time to just stand still and rest; something we hadn't thought about before. We were also a little hungry, so we decided that we'd look for a quick snack. Since we were planning on leaving the park around 6 and going to grab dinner elsewhere, we really didn't want a meal. Now we were on a mission to find a snack at a reasonable price. Since we were in Action Zone, I suggested that maybe we split a chicken fingers meal. We checked the price, almost $16 for 3 chicken fingers, fries, and a drink. No thanks. We checked some other places and again were pretty frustrated with the prices. Unless you have a meal plan, you're going to have to shell out quite a bit on a meal or even just a snack. We finally ended up at the Sweet Spot and thought maybe we'd just grab a candy bar or something. $4 for a king size candy bar. We have trouble spending so much money on something when we know it's that over-priced. So we kept looking around. $8 for this, $10 for that...it was a little harder than we thought, but we were pretty hungry. Finally, we caved and shelled out over $4 for small bag of bite sized Snickers bars. This was easy to split and would hold us over for the next hour or so. Once we finished our snack, we decided to hop on Diamondback one more time. As we walked over to get on, we noticed that the train was stuck on the lift hill. Not really sure what was going on or how long it had been up there, but there were a couple of employees climbing the stairs to talk to the people in the train. We didn't really want to hang around and wait, so we ended up taking a ride on the train. I don't think we'd actually ridden the train yet this season, but we always enjoy the ride when we do get to ride it. As we were riding the train, we noticed that Diamondback was running again, but with empty trains. I figured they were just testing it to make sure everything was good. After the train ride, we went back over to Diamondback to see if it was running again and it was. We got back in the Fastlane line and this time it was pretty much a walk on. Another great ride with great air time! It was a great ride to end the day with too! When we got off it was around 6 and we decided to head on out. So this was our first experience with Fastlane and it was definitely a good one! We rode pretty much everything we wanted to with little to no wait. Since crowds were so light, that meant the walkways were pretty clear too. The weather was fantastic and we could just walk around the park at our leisure. We were there for a total of around 3 hours and we accomplished quite a bit. Not sure if we'll be back one last time this season or not, but if we don't make it back, this made for a great last trip of the season!

Several years ago, a friend of mine lost his phone on Diamondback. It was safely secured inside his cargo shorts. However, it somehow managed to slip out and fall from the ride. This is another reason why my phone stays in the car while I'm inside the park.

^ Ha, pleasure. Even though I did get to "experience" the ride, the experience was never a pleasurable one. At least not for me. If a younger generation wants to experience all the pain SOB inflicted on the human body, I'm sure there are easier ways than to rebuild a massive wooden coaster.

True...I guess what I meant was the majority. I'm assuming that the attraction mentioned was the one that got the majority vote. I knew better than to write "everyone" because everyone would include me, and I sure didn't vote for it.

Wow, I was a little surprised about the attraction everyone wanted to bring back. Maybe it was just me, but I was never a huge fan. Maybe it was because the handful of times I rode it, I got off feeling like I had just had the living crap beat out of me. Oh well. Great presentation though!

^I don't have to restate my feelings on buildings used exclusively for Haunt because I've expressed them enough times on other boards. All I'll say is buildings that are centrally located and in direct view of park visitors, should not be left unused for the majority of the season just so it can house a Haunt attraction. Now if they wanted to use the old Action Theater building to house a Haunt attraction, I wouldn't care as much because it's sort of back out of view and you don't realize it's there. However, a huge, themed building that sits right on a main walkway should not be shut down the majority of the season. It's a terrible waste of space. Imagine how this looks to new visitors who might be visiting KI for the first time from out of town. This is a huge pet peeve of mine and I wish they'd do something about it.

The last time I was in Action Theater was a few years ago when they offered the Dinosaurs Alive! 3D movie for free. If I'm not mistaken, they had removed all the motion seats by then. Am I remembering correctly? I'm assuming if they decided to put in another motion simulator type ride, that we'd have to have all new seating. I'm not sure if they'd be up for that or not after sort of dismantling part of Action Theater already. I'm not huge on simulator type rides. I'd rather have an actual ride than something that was just screens and moving seats. However, I'm also a fan of working with space you have and not leaving tons of buildings sitting empty and unused (*cough* Crypt building *cough*). If you've got space, use it. I'd rather have something in there than nothing. I guess anything that unique and entertaining, I'd be game for.

Several attractions to close for at least a year at Disneyland while Star Wars Land is being contructed: http://www.mouseplanet.com/11175/Star_Wars_Land_expansion_means_hiatus_for_Disneyland_Railroad_Fantasmic_and_Rivers_of_America

Just saw on Inside The Magic Facebook page that the name will officially change to Disney Springs on September 29.Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk I wonder how long it will take people to stop referring to it as Downtown Disney?

What's the best coaster in the park? Gosh, that's a tough question and one that I'm not sure can be answered. I think the best coaster, or one coaster that someone might suggest, is based on opinion and will vary from person to person. If you're going to KI for the day, then you'll have plenty of time to ride quite a few coasters. I'm basically just going to suggest a list of coasters that should definitely be ridden during a visit to KI. Banshee Adventure Express The Racer The Beast Diamondback These are coasters that, in my opinion, should not be missed on a first visit to the park. Now, of course, there are other coasters too, but my advice would be to definitely check these five out if at all possible. I know a lot of people suggest Flight of Fear and Firehawk, however, I can take those or leave them. If you had to pick one of the two, I'd go with Flight of Fear just because of the uniqueness of being an indoor coaster with a launch right out of the station. It's definitely quite the experience. Hopefully you'll get to visit KI soon and get to check out these great coasters. Hope this info helped. Have fun!