Voicetek

^Yes...this times 1,000! Everything you said is right on the money. I completely agree with you, especially when it comes to the music thing in the different parts of the park AND the horrible Haunt building ordeal. You have and empty building...great! Use it for something or tear it down. Don't let it sit empty all year. Also, quit building tacky looking sheds in plain site of guests. It is very tacky and it's starting to get on my nerves.

I was happy to see some updated effects on the last lift hill of Adventure Express. I also noticed that the first tunnel no longer smelled horrible. The second tunnel, however does need some work. I really wish they'd repair the spear effects in that tunnel. I remember that the spears used to move in and out of the holes. It would be nice to see those working again.

I've got a question, what will you be using to create this app?

I actually passed up the new entrance when we were there Friday evening. I had to drive down to passenger pick up and turn back around and try again. For whatever reason, the drive wasn't as noticeable as I was expecting. Kinda through me for a loop. Hopefully I'll be able to enter much easier on my next visit!

Oh boy, here we go. Dare I even get involved in another "Decoding" thread? Hmm...I will just say a couple of things. First, I have no idea and no guess of what might be coming in this area. Second, KI please leave the log flume alone. There, that is my contribution to this thread. Carry on.

So my wife and I just got back from preview night a little bit ago, so I thought I'd mention some of the things we noticed while we were walking around the park. 1. What the crap is the deal with all the "Funpix" watermarks all over the picture preview screens? There are so many of them that you can hardly see the picture! For those of us who don't have Funpix, it's not worth stopping and looking at the screen since you can no longer see the picture. We'll keep on walking by from now on. 2. We noticed all the game card kiosks and all the card swipers installed on all the games. Not sure I like this aspect yet. My wife and I are the occasional impulse game players. If we've got some change in our pockets we might play a claw machine. Sometimes if we've got a few singles we might play another random game or two. We won't be going through all the trouble to buy and load a game card. We had some quarters in our pockets tonight and thought we might play a claw machine. We couldn't, so we didn't. We didn't buy a game card either. They've lost our business unfortunately. 3. Went to ride Banshee at one point and it was down. Upon further inspection of the ride station, we saw several employees wiping down the seats. Must have been a protein spill. Glad I wasn't riding when that happened. Can you imagine riding Banshee when someone in front of you pukes? Yeah, me either. Let's not think about that... 4. Boo Blasters was a rather hot ride tonight. Not hot as in popular, hot as in hot. I guess the air conditioner broke, so the whole ride was like an oven. Oh, and about half the targets were flashing and unresponsive. And the guy being chased still wasn't working, and the screen that shows Boocifer's face on a headstone or whatever wasn't working either. I also noticed a lot of the sounds weren't on. Not sure what was up with that. The whole ride was a total fail tonight. You'd think they'd be able to get that stuff working between seasons, but what can we expect from such a lazy re-theme? Probably lazy maintenance of the lazy re-theme. Other than that we had a great night. The weather was nice and we had great rides on The Beast, Adventure Express, and an awesome night ride on Diamondback. It was good to be back for the 2016 season!

This article doesn't say anything about the early entry upcharge only applying to people staying off property. It kind of sounds like it would apply to everyone that wanted it. The early entry includes breakfast and access to 3 rides. Even though this article doesn't mention it only applying to off-property visitors, I wouldn't put it past them. It's getting to the point where people staying off-property are treated as outsiders even though they're buying the same ticket to get into the parks. I'm waiting for the day where you won't even be allowed to enter the park unless you've spent the night at one of their overpriced "budget" hotels.

For those of you who frequent this forum, you are well aware of my opinions on the Boo Blasters ride. I would re-type all my thoughts here, but I don't have the energy to do so. I will say t his though, I'm counting down the says until Boo Blasters is gone. It's been a horrible retheme, and a cheap, lazy one at that. Get rid of the cardboard cutouts and put some REAL figures/animatronics in there. And a big one...Get A Story! There is absolutely no story and no theme to the whole thing. Who's Boocifer, why is he haunting the castle, why are we trying to defeat him, who are the boos? Are they good, or bad like Boocifer? What/where is Boo Hill? So many questions, no answers. We just wander into a random castle, grab some random blasters, and start shooting things for no good reason. At least Scooby and Shaggy appeared in the queue and explained sort of what was going on when it was Scooby's Haunted Castle. And lastly, GET RID OF THE TVS IN THE QUEUE! When I enter a themed dark ride (the word "themed used loosely here for Boo Blasters), I want to be immersed in that world and feel like I'm actually there for the moment. I don't want to watch FUN TV and hear "Let it Go" from Frozen while I'm hanging out in a Haunted Castle. Get a clue KI! Sorry bout the rant, but I'm done now. Ask me if I will be sorry to see Boo Blasters go. You can probably guess my answer.

I've never really felt the need to scream on coasters anyway. Screaming on a coaster has never increased the fun of it for me. I have, however, sat in front of many people who insisted on screaming at the top of their lungs for the entire length of a coaster ride. Sure, getting excited or scared and letting out a little bit of a shriek, whatever, but there are some people who are just determined to overdo it. It can be quite an annoyance if you're the unlucky person who gets the pleasure of sitting in front of them.

I don't think anyone expects KI to be on the same level as a Disney park. However, I think we can all agree that KI has the potential to be better. Heck, most of us have witnessed this! We understand that Kings Island will never get a $100,000,000 heavily themed attraction, but I think what most of us want is for them to at least try a little bit. Pumping pop music throughout the entire park is just lazy. Adding themed music to the different areas would be a big improvement. Changing up the queues a little bit to mesh with the theme of that particular area would add even more appeal. And for goodness sake, someone please do maintenance on the rides that have broken theming (I'm looking at you Adventure Express and Boo Blasters!). There are some small changes that could be made that would greatly improve the look and feel of our home park. These changes are easy and not very expensive. KI doesn't have to be a multi-billion dollar park covered in theming to make this happen. It could become a well maintained, nicely themed, local thrill park with very few modifications. I think this is the direction I'd like to see KI go in the near future.

Completely agree with this. When my wife and I are at the park, we hardly ever play games. However, there are those occasional visits where we decide to play a few games on a whim because one of them looks fun, or maybe we have a couple extra dollars in our pocket. There are a few occasions where we might have my niece with us and give her a buck or two to go play something. If playing games is limited to having to load a play card similar to Dave and Busters, then no thank you. I don't ever see us doing something like this. We're not the type of people that really spend a ton of money on any kind of games throughout the year. I could see where this new system might lose people like us when it comes to games, but if they're locking people into a play card, then it's possible that they might be able to get more money from the game players. In the end it might just equal out for them. If all the games are going to be converted to this system then it will be a little disappointing. I have fond memories as a kid looking around in the arcades and finding that surprise token on the floor or the one left in the coin return on a game. This allowed me to play a game or two when I had no money. Future kids won't have this experience. Maybe that's a good thing, who knows. I can see how this would be a little more convenient for the park though. They would no longer have to mess with cash, tokens, or change machines. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Here's the link to the article mentioned: https://www.visitkingsisland.com/article/media-center/A-peek-inside-the-2016-season-at-Kings-Island/?mobile=0

^ I always thought it was ridiculous how they showed the screens behind the moving seats also. Like come on, there's not screens in the front AND in the back. Quit trying to trick us!

This is creepy. I was just watching some old home movie footage of this show from my trip to Animal Kingdom back in 2000. When I was finished, I jumped online and saw the news reports about this. Crazy! I'm glad it wasn't anything major and that everyone is ok!

This got me thinking...with the success of Zootopia, do you suppose Disney would re-theme Splash Mountain to a Zootopia theme? Talk about angering some folks. It's always interested me that one of the Magic Kingdom's most popular rides is based on a movie that will never be released by the Walt Disney Company. I bet you most kids of a certain age and younger don't even know that it's actually based on a movie. I'm totally against re-theming popular rides, just sayin. I was livid when I found out that Maelstrom was becoming 'Frozen Ever After' and IF (that's a big 'IF') Disney decides to add a Guardians of the Galaxy overlay to The Tower of Terror, I will be even more disappointed. I'm a very nostalgic type person, and I like it when older rides/attractions are left in place to preserve the history of theme parks. I'm the type of person who keeps their fingers crossed hoping the Carousel of Progress remains intact. I understand that popularity of rides fade and sometimes you have to make the hard decision to either re-theme, or pull the plug on it altogether. However, if rides are still popular, just leave them alone. If you think you'd also like a ride based on a more current property, then just build something new. That's easy enough, right? We'll just have to wait and see how things pan out for Tower of Terror. Oh and by the way, the first sentence of this post is based on nothing. Please don't accuse me of starting a rumor. I merely wondered if any others could see this as a possibility based on the way things are going down there. Just a thought.

I've been waiting to hear about the Season Pass preview night as well. My wife and I remembered to renew our passes in time to receive that offer this year, so we're looking forward to going that night.

I can count on one hand the number of times I actually rode Son of Beast. Each and every time I rode that thing, I was in pain afterwards. Each time I rode it, I tried to convince myself that it would be better and maybe wouldn't hurt so bad. I was wrong. I was only 19 when it came out and it literally beat the heck out of me every time. After about the 4th or 5th ride I had had enough and never got back on again. To me, all the pain wasn't worth it. There were far better rides in the park that were more enjoyable and didn't leave you feeling like a sack of busted up bones. It is kind of a shame though that it ended up like it did. If the thing wasn't so rough and it didn't have so many problems, it could have been an awesome addition to the park. Too bad they couldn't figure out some way to smooth it out and make it work. Oh well. That's the way things go I guess. All in all, I'm much happier with the coaster that now takes it's place.

It's one thing to design a regular ride, such as a coaster, around theming. It's another thing where the ride itself IS the theming, like a dark ride. Not sure how you'd balance a dark ride and it's theming so that the ride would still be good without it. Imagine Haunted Mansion without any of props, effects, or animatronics. You'd basically just be riding through an empty building. How about Pirates of the Caribbean or Splash Mountain without any of it's animatronics or effects. Basically just boat rides, and probably pretty boring ones at that until you came to Splash Mountain's drop - that might be sort of fun. Let's bring it a little closer to home. How about Phantom Theater without any of the characters, props, or effects? Just a musical journey through an empty building. Not fun at all. When it comes to dark rides, theming is everything! Great theming makes a great dark ride, and crappy theming makes a crappy dark ride. We've seen both possibilities at KI and I think we'd all agree on which one is better. Now to theme a coaster or something, I do think theming can enhance the experience. I loved Adventure Express' theming when it first opened. The ride is a lot of fun, but wow, when all the theming is working, it's quite amazing. And we all know the sad, sad story of Tomb Raider the Ride when it became The Crypt. When all the theming was removed, it was just a hollowed out, empty room with nothing to really grab your attention. A big dark room with a swinging platform that spun you around and around a few times. Not great at all.

My favorite songs heard in the park were the instrumental themes they used to play. Do any of you remember, back in the day of course, how you could walk through the gates and hear an epic instrumental piece as your eyes caught their first sights of the fountains with the Eiffel Tower rising high above them? Yeah. Those were great times. How about walking through the park and hearing themed music for each of the themed areas (yeah there were themed areas, remember them?) I even liked hearing the songs from Top Gun while waiting in line for Top Gun and hearing instrumental themes from various movies when Paramount owned the park. Now it's nothing more than just Q-102 or some other pop station blaring over every speaker in the park. Whether you're in Rivertown, Action Zone, Coney Mall, or even Oktoberfest, it's nothing but Taylor Swift, Lady Gag-me, Katy Perry, or some other random pop star banging against my ear drums. Makes you appreciate the good ol' days in the park, right?

2008 was a great season at the park. That was the summer the Full Throttle truck used to park by the entry gates and pass out free drinks. My wife (girlfriend at the time) visited there quite a bit that summer and we seemed to time it perfectly, to be there the same days the Full Throttle truck was. I'll never forget opening day of 2009 though. We arrived early, before the gates opened, to try to get in line for KI's brand new coaster Diamondback. Another thing I'll never forget is the line that wrapped around the park. Even though we were there before the roped dropped, by the time we managed to get to the end of Diamondback's line, we were all the way down by the LaRosa's near The Beast. That line went all the way up and around by the Eiffel Tower, then wrapped around through Nickelodeon Universe. For those of you who'd like to relive 2009's opening day, here's a video I put together of some pictures and video I took while waiting in line: I enjoy looking at pictures of past seasons. It's fun to relive those memories and it's interesting to look back and compare just how much the park has changed. Thanks for posting!

Yes, yes, and yes again! That is, if they're going to keep up with the maintenance. Look at some of the rides at Disney World and how immersive they are. Could you imagine Pirates of the Caribbean with cardboard cutouts, or the Haunted Mansion with nothing but 3D projection on screens? Absolutely not! Having the actual physical props there are what separates parks like Disney from parks like KI - that and, well, money and the fact that one is seasonal and one is open year round. Anyways...I just think animatronics and physical sets/props add so much more to the experience and that's what keeps me riding those rides again and again.

So if you ask them to swap your old pass for a new one, will they charge you some kind of fee or will they do it for free?

I've had the same pass for years now because I keep renewing it. They'll update the picture on their computer, but let me keep the same plastic pass. It's starting to look old, gross, and faded. I wish there was a way to upgrade to a new pass when renewing instead of just keeping the same pass year after year.

Magenta, I was 6 almost 7 in the first pass (1987).

I recently came across a stash of my old season passes. It's interesting to see how much they've changed over the years. I've pretty much had a season pass every year, but for some reason I seem to be missing a few of the older ones. Anyway, I though I'd scan them and post them here for people to see some of the older styles of season passes that they used to give out years ago. Do you guys still have any of your old season passes? If so, feel free to share them here!