Kenban

The current trains that they have are from a third party company called KumbaK and not Vekoma. Vekoma has official trains with vests now, I remember reading about a park in Europe getting them for their SLC in 2021, not sure when they became available so not sure if any SLC is running them, but from what I have seen they look comfortable. I would not be surprised to see the park get the official trains from Vekoma, and could easily see them rename the coaster at the same time to go from T3 to T4.

It does say "giving guests and All Season Dining members a fresh and exciting new menu option" so there is at least a chance.

All of the companies which normally have park buyouts cancelled, so there is no reason to not be open to the public.

Kings Island can always add extra hours later, it is easier to lengthen days then shorten them. I am not certain if they are more concerned about attendance without Haunt, or a concern about having enough employees to properly staff the park. If the park is packed with hour plus lines all day in October I could see them adding on an extra hour or two on Saturdays. We might also see the parks empty out in the afternoon and have no good reason to stay open later.

No because your acting like the policy is it’s 20 years old tear it down. But thats not it at all. It’s that they want to get 20 years of use, then sit down and say is it still popular, is it a draw to the park, how much is maintenance costing, what condition is it in, etc. Rides do not always last 20 years but it’s typically something major when they do not. At the same time it is why you often see rides which are not popular, or known to cost too much to maintain, or just always down, get removed right around the 20 year mark. Firehawk was I believe 19 years old when it was scrapped. If someone were to graph the length of time between when the ride was initially installed, to when it was removed you should find a spike around 20 years, and a long tail.

Cedar Fair’s policy is they want rides to last 20 years. It’s not that will not remove them early if they are garbage or will not keep them longer, just 20 years is basically the baseline. Universal has a similar policy to an extent but they lean a lot harder toward replacement or renovations after 20 years. For instance Possessed was originally built at Geauga Lake in 2000 making it 20 years old this year, assuming it does end up being removed. Volcano 1998 to 2018. Does that mean Wicked Twister will be removed in 2022? Not really, Possessed is the oldest surviving impulse coaster and it’s common for later versions of ride models to be more reliable and less costly to maintain then the earlier versions.

I am not certain anyone ever really defined year round operations. There are two different ways to look at year round operations, 365 days a year, or they are open weekends year round and weekdays when it makes sense. The park might not ever reach true 365 operations but weekends year round is not only doable, Carowinds is closer then you might realize. Winterfest ended I believe December 31, and the opening was scheduled for March 21st this year. They should have only been closed for basically 11 weekends, so they only need to add 22 operating days and they will have reached year round operations. I believe the weather is good enough, it can get very cold, but it is still better than some other year round parks, just most of those are overseas. If the goal is year round operations I would focus on ways to draw in guests during January and February. For example another indoor theatre for shows, a dark ride, and make up some festival. Not sure how well it would work but it might be possible to have one or more traveling shows, which start the season at Carowinds then move to other parks as they start their seasons. Total attendance does not matter, as long as these days do not hurt the regular season they just need to worry about making them be enough of a draw during those handful of days to justify being open. I think you will see small moves like leaving winterfest open an extra weekend or two in January. Move the opening forward a week or two, and see what happens. As the gap shrinks at some point just announce the park is going to year round operations and run the park even if it loses money those handful of days in January and February. I could see it happening in a few years, but not until after it recovers from the current mess.

Knott’s already owns several properties across the various streets around the park. Mostly used for overflow parking for Haunt, and holidays. But I am unsure if this is speculation, rumors, or what but I know websites have discussed basically doing the same thing Disneyland, and Cedar Point have done, move maintenance and other facilities across the street, down the street, etc, basically just build new facilities and expand the park onto their current location. There is easily enough room between the current public areas of the park and the hotel for an entire new section of the park. But Knott’s Scary Farm is incredibly important, and those overflow lots might be more valuable then expanding the park. The rumor I have heard is a significant portion of the parks profits are from Scary Farm. Back to the original topic, Cedar Point did receive several good rides, and nice upgrades but frankly, nothing really that unexpected, except for maybe the sports facilities, or the hotel and property purchases, none of which directly effects the park. I would say Carowinds easily had the best decade, because even the locals were surprised by the frequency, size, and expense of the changes. Corporate looks at Carowinds as their next big park trying to turn the chain from the top four parks, to the top five, and as such money is just being dumped into the park. Carowinds is the only park outside the top four I can even argue being the best off in the chain. The issue in my mind is the top four just seem to get what they need or deserve, not much of what they received felt like it was something special, like the chain really went above and beyond normal expectations. But I can easily say they did for Carowinds.

Could be plans to replace the fences, or new lighting, other parking lot improvements. Maybe a new walking path? Really sounds like its nothing more then infrastructure improvements.

On average the rate of coaster installs has been the same since Cedar Fair purchased the Paramount Parks, 3 years. Starting at the last install before the purchase the park received coasters in 05, 07, 09, 14, 17, 20. The only bigger gap was immediately after 2, two year gaps, which averages out to 3 years. Before the pandemic I was expecting either 2023, or 24, and was mostly listing 2023. We might actually still see one then, the thing is the chain needs attendance to return to normal as quickly as possible at the 4 big parks, because they will be the most important to get the financials in order. In the past we have seen parks successfully install large new attractions during recoveries to see attendance pop back up. Personally this looks like an infrastructure project. Possibly drainage, or road upgrades. It might lead to a coaster, but I do not expect to see anything obvious in any of the work being performed. While I think a ride could be shoved into the space of Invertigo, modern ride design does not really support doing so. I would also expect Congo Falls to also be removed. I have some ideas on how it could be done with just Invertigo but I would expect to see any big new ride to have a plaza, and for part of its structure to be closer to the main pathways. Also boat rides like that have just fallen out of favor with the public, people do not want to get soaking wet and walk around, or to get their electronics wet. Water Water Canyon is still popular but I just rarely see many people riding Congo Falls, and other parks have been removing similar rides. I could also see how the park would have enough space by just removing Congo Falls and leaving Invertigo. Before anyone asks, I do not see Congo falls being moved, such a significant percentage of the attractions cost is the construction that it would make more sense to just purchase a new ride instead of moving this one.

I for one do not believe it because it is a common mistake, but Wodan was not even the tallest GCI when it was built. There is a GCI at a park in China called Knight Valley which opened the year before Wodan and was already taller. But Mystic Timbers is actually the 4th tallest GCI, because Python in Bamboo Forest is also taller, and it’s not even close Python is 160 ft tall.

Disney did a better job explaining, but the parks are likely profitable in the sense that they are covering all variable operating costs, and it sounds like they are even covering the current fixed costs, but even if they are as soon as the parks close for the year the revenue stops and they have to cover ongoing costs with debt which would normally be paid from previous profits. The parks have done a good job at keeping the expenses low enough they are better off then if the parks were closed, but this is not sustainable long term, because taxes, electricity, maintenance, and full time employees still need paid. Also Kings Island and Cedar Point are very profitable in good times, they are two of the most profitable seasonal amusement parks in the country and likely the planet. Looking at just Cedar Fair the big 4 parks, Cedar Point, Knott's, Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland account for 80% of the chains revenue, and most of the profits as well. That 80% came from the article linked earlier, I remember it being slightly lower based on previous charts which the chain has released, but its been a few years since I saw one.

It is starting to sound like the current design of Epic Universe will never be built. Construction was supposed to start soon with a planned opening in 3 years. But everyone working on the project has been laid off, and Comcast has officially announced an indefinite delay. Rumors point at its likely to be a very long delay. Needing an actual recovery before any work will start again, and if it’s anything like after 9/11 it could be a decade. I have been hearing rumors that Universal is between a rock and a hard place here with contractual obligations to build Nintendo World in Orlando. If Epic Universe is delayed it’s going to have to be built somewhere, which likely means it’s original location replacing the kid zone in USF.

I wish the KI&MV Railroad one was longer. I like how on most of the rides they were able to get just the sounds of the rides, and guests. The handful of scenes where they picked up either music from the park or another ride like WindSeeker really stand out like they do not belong. They also need a trailer at the end of some kind, if they are going to embed a link to another YouTube video or if they display the snoopy logo so that they are not on top of the video your trying to watch. Overall though pretty good. They look good on my 4K computer monitor.

Both Cedar Fair and Six Flags took out enough debt several months ago that they did not need to operate any of their parks this year and they would still have enough left over to open next year. Both have a lot more debt now, but neither are in as bad of shape as your trying to make them out to be. Six Flags was a licensing partner for those parks in China, it was not their choice it was due to the failure of the company in China who was going to own, operate, build, and most importantly pay for the parks. There never was a huge global expansion, they were trying to get other companies to pay them for branding rights.

Its complicated but they can, the height restrictions are due to the proximity to the airport. The restrictions are extremely complicated because they are between the runways, it causes the height restrictions to look like a dome and are lowest where Storm Chaser is located at around 100 ft., but much higher around the entrance, Lightning Run, and where the picnic grounds are located. To my knowledge the highest the park has ever built was 177ft tall and it was the old Tower of Power, and currently the highest is 150 ft tall. 177 ft tall is close enough that to the riders it will feel like a hyper coaster. But according to Ed Hart they actually can go 200 ft tall in a large enough area they can build a hyper. He has discussed it multiple time during Q&A sessions at the park with enthusiasts, so there is likely more information out there then I can remember.

I remember a conversation I had a few years ago about the B&M rattle and the other person pointed out something I had not considered. Wheels wear down over time, which is pretty obvious. But what I did not know is that B&M does not include adjustment methods on the wheel assembly to tighten up the gap which opens up. Instead they assume their customers will replace the wheels. Some other manufacturers do have a bolt, slide, rubber damper, etc, which can be adjusted to close the gap so that all of the wheels are directly on the track. I have assumed possibly wrongly the B&M rattle is the train basically rocking a little bit, and if you watch the upstop on Banshee you can see it appears to bounce up and down and you can definitely see a gap open between it and the track. I have definitely noticed differences in the rattle on B&M coasters between different trains on the same day which suggests at least to an extent the issue is on the train. My assumption is also the rattle would largely go away temperately if the park replaced the wheels more frequently, but this is very costly so I understand why they do not. In fairness I am also not certain if replacing the wheels would actually fix the issue.

Not a chance, Cedar Fair and Intamin show no signs of making up. It was only last year that Cedar Fair was basically publicly airing issues they had with Intamin and supply issues of parts to fix older rides. When you have Cedar Fair stating they have had parts orders take 9 months to arrive there is a problem. Its going to take a lot more then a few good rides at other parks for them to totally change their opinions. Cedar Fair places too much value on reliability, downtime, and maintenance costs. With Kings Dominion removing Volcano, and all the rumors and leaks point at Possessed at Dorney getting removed later this year, and Carowinds removing their Intamin raft ride, if anything it feels like Cedar Fair is trying to move farther away from Intamin.

Except the problem is that photo was not from today, and those are not the general public. It was taken during previews while Disney was testing procedures. This is not representative at all of how the Disney parks are doing. Also this does not look much different then the entrance to Orion frequently did when I was at the park on the 4th. People kept showing up early for their time slot and they were being held outside the entrance and it formed into a queue which looked a lot like what that photo does.

There are two types of wheels, but its more that one is harder for use in colder weather, and one is softer for use in warmer weather. The softer wheels cause more drag so the train losses more speed through the ride but also give a more comfortable ride. On Diamondback you can tell when they swap them since they are different colors.

I find the ride op spiels detract from the experience and prefer parks which just use prerecorded messages. Half of the ops have no idea how to speak into a microphone and its just a garbled mess which no one can understand anyways, if its recorded at least there is a chance someone will understand. Then you have the ones trying to make terrible jokes. My opinion is the only time they should be on the mic is when one of the prerecorded messages is not good enough. Let people enjoy the experience and listen to the screams of riders, and the rides, instead of inane chatter. I actually do not ride Zephyr because I do not want to put up with the annoying ride ops, its bad enough walking past the ride.

This is going to be a long post, I plan on giving my thoughts on all of the giga coasters I have ridden, not just Orion. I was pretty confident Kings Island was going to install a giga coaster pretty early last year, and I already had a trip to Japan scheduled, so I made a plan which would take several trips to pull off. My goal was to ride all of the traditional lift giga coasters in one year, including Orion there are six. The idea being the 12 months would culminate in a ride on the newest and would be able to fairly rank all of them. One last comment on this post, I have been to several of these parks before, these are my overall thoughts on the rides not just a single trip. I am ignoring Red Force due to the ride basically being a Top Thrill Dragster/Kingda Ka style ride just with a different launch system which required it being shorter. I am also ignoring Superman Escape from Krypton, I have no idea how people consider it a strata coaster, the difference in height from the top of the track to the station is not 400+ ft. the tower was built over a downward slope to give it an extra 90 feet, on flat ground it would only be 328 ft tall. My plan fell apart just as it started, at Nagashima Spa Land. Steel Dragon 2000 was down the entire day, but I did get to ride the newest RMC, Hakugei. Steel Dragon 2000 looks impressive, it has this massive support structure, and at over 8,000 feet long is also easily the longest coaster on the planet. The length and its location work against it though. Wind has a cumulative effect, the longer the ride the more that it effects the overall speed, combined with being right on the ocean, the park has wind issues, which cause the ride to valley. What I experienced with Steel Dragon 2000 being down all day is actually pretty common. Currently this is my only trip to the park, so nothing about the actual ride experience, I do not think its fair to use a POV, or others reviews. Next I visited Cedar Point and took several trips on Millennium Force. Its the first coaster of this style, and it set expectations for what would follow. Its fast, and graceful. The location is amazing, and its going to be tough for any ride to top the view. If this coaster was in a barren field, I would likely have a radically different viewpoint. But its a classic and I love how re-ridable it is, I am happy to ride it over and over again and have done so at Coaster Mania. I followed this a few weeks later by a trip to both Kings Dominion and Canada's Wonderland. I305 is every bit as intense as others have described it in the past. That is both good and bad, its an incredible experience, but frankly its too powerful for the average rider. No matter how much some coaster enthusiasts might like this coaster, it was a mistake. The ride was a walk on, and yet the other big coasters in the park had hour plus waits, and its not simply due to capacity. Producing powerful G-forces is fine, but the length of time this ride sustains them was a poor design choice. The ride experience is short and it is the shortest of all the giga coasters but the intensity makes up for it, if it had been longer it could have easily been too long. Leviathan was the first of the B&M giga coasters. It feels like B&M was conservative in the rides design, and it is a return to the more graceful experience of Millennium Force. The wider trains with 4 across riders block a lot of the wind from riders in the center of the train, combined with just how smooth the coaster is it can often feel like your going much slower then you really are. The ride is short and it feels like it. The first time I went on Leviathan I remember hitting the brakes and thinking it was a weird choice to put a mid-course brake run on a giga, then I realized the ride was actually over and this was just how the brakes were designed. I was then incredibly disappointed in the ride. The drop is incredible but the rest of the design feels like your not actually doing anything, I have ridden all over the train but even still prefer to just go ride Behemoth. My plan for Fury 325 was not to finish off the year at Carowinds but it start 2020 there. I wanted to ride it several times a week or two before Kings Island opened so it was fresh in my mind before riding Orion. Sadly that was not possible this year. I have been to the park several times and have ridden it a good number of times, but its also been around 3 years since my last visit. When people ask me what my favorite coaster is, my answer has been Fury for several years. The ride is a fantastic mix of intensity, and speed, and is very re-ridable. I have had the pleasure of being at the park at the end of the night and have had employees let me sit in the seat and ride more then once in a row. Finally this leaves the point of this thread, Orion. I think the ride might actually have the best drop of all the giga coasters, its slightly closer to vertical then all of the others and I constantly was out of my seat the whole way down. The helix might also be the best of all the giga coasters. The start and finish of the ride are some of the best from any ride I have been on. The airtime is powerful and it generates strong positive g forces but does not try to hold them for unreasonable lengths of time. I really do think the ride produces more positive and negative g forces then Millennium Force, it cannot touch I305 in that aspect but I am actually happy about that. The ride is short, but most of whats there is fantastic, and at least I do not get the same feeling of where is the other half of the ride I get from Leviathan, but its still not as long as I would like. That is my biggest disappoint with the ride, it has the start and end of one of the greatest coasters in the world, and it just needed more filling. Another 1,000 - 1,500 ft of track with 2 or 3 more elements would have really elevated this. I have no idea how the second element after the drop on what is effectively an out and back design is the turn around. One thing I have been confused by is that the ride has a greater sense of speed in the middle of the train then the other B&M giga coasters. I have been wondering if that is due to having half the seats empty so you have less wind blocks in front of you, so this might change next year. Overall it is a good coaster, I do not think I consider it one of my top 10, but it is good. Night rides, cooler weather, a full train, and maybe some trees, could easily change some of my views. I was at the park on the 4th and I got to see it with the lighting and I will say its easily has the best theming of all the giga coasters. I did have fastlane and could have ridden it as many times as I wanted, and frankly I went on it six times, it could have been the heat, but I never felt a strong desire to hop back in line and ride it again. For anyone wondering why the lift hill is mostly silent without the noise of an anti-rollback, look to the right of where the contentious saw toothed track is located on the lift, you will find a metal fin sticking up. Whats happening is their is something like a magnetic eddy brake attached to the dog on the train. With the speed of the lift it basically lifts up the dog preventing it from impacting every step on the ratchet. Right at the top and the bottom of the lift the train is going slower and you can hear the familiar clacking sound. My personal overall ranking 1. Fury 325 2. Millennium Force 3. Orion 4. I305 5. Leviathan I am pretty sure Steel Dragon 2000 would be number 6 but not having ridden it yet its not fair to try to put it on my list. I rank them based on if the coasters were next to each other and both had zero wait which would I go ride, I do consider re-ridability to an extent, which is mostly why I305 drops so low. I think I might try to pull this off again in a few years, I do want to try out Steel Dragon 2000 sometime, and might as well hit the rest, it would be a fun way to spend a summer.

I like Indiana Beach, I was very happy hearing that it had been purchased, and I love seeing it reopen. So far the work being done by the new owner looks great, and I look forward to seeing what happens in the future. But I cannot support the park right now. We are in the middle of a world wide pandemic. I do not feel that potentially spreading a deadly disease is worth visiting an amusement park operating in this way right now. Seeing large numbers of people without masks, crowding together, even outdoors, disturbs me. The park might have a handful of signs, but its obvious the management does not care about the health of their guests or employees. Its not just not requiring masks, there is not even a small amount of effort to introduce any social distancing, they are filling any rows including the entire train on rides, the picnic tables where guests are eating are too close together, the line with people standing right next to each other is right next to the tables, etc. When the park was purchased I had decided I would visit the park, possibly more than once, this year, and in a show of my support purchase an annual pass, even if it did only get one use. At this point in time I cannot do any of these things, and instead will be actively avoiding the park. I wish it the best in the future but until this situation is over, I will spend my time and money at other parks. If I get sick, it happens, but I do not have to go out of my way to try.

They should be able to already, the park installed a park wide lightning control system as part of bringing back Winterfest. They can synchronize these types of lights across the park. This is the same system that controls the lights on international street for the nightly fireworks shows. I believe they will only synchronize for special events like the nightly fireworks shows which I do not believe will occur this year. While there will be fireworks I doubt it will happen on July 4th though, I suspect that will either be last years show, or a special show just for the 4th.

11 - 7 is one shift. This is designed to limit the number of employees needed to operate the park.