Kenban

There is a discussion about this going on at Coaster Buzz at the moment a post towards the bottom has links to pictures (I also copied the links and they appear at the end of the post). It appears the last car of a train did derail. From what I have read about it so far it sounds like all the injuries were very minor and I assume thats why it has not made it onto the news yet. I am hoping someone can get some more information at some point I would be very interested in reading the cause of the problem. http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i306/bil...t/carderail.jpg http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i306/bil...t/investcar.jpg http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i306/bil...ent/discuss.jpg http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i306/bil...investtrack.jpg

I ran across another site with the story which has a picture you can check it out on CBS news. Looking at the photo the ride stopped at just the worst possible moment. While the ride design looks interesting I think the ride should go up the other side of the tower then instead of you going over the top upside down just have it be a little more traditional. In my view this is a design flaw. It should not be possible for a power outage to leave a coasters train upside down. No matter how unlikely a situation like this is if your going to design a ride like this there has to be some kind of backup system in place.

I just saw this story and figured I would post it. I almost always comment on how coasters are designed so that a power outage will not leave you upside down but from reading the story and looking at the coaster on RCDB it appears I am wrong. Source: My Way News (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070610/D8PM54SG0.html) You can check out the coaster on RCDB. From looking at the pictures it appears that the chain goes to a point where both cars are upside down. The article makes it sound like it stopped right at the top. Anyone ever been to Magic Springs & Crystal Falls or been on a similar ride?

If you purchase them on Kings Islands website you can get standard admission tickets for $34.95 (have to purchase a minimum of 3 days before your visit). I would recommend the $49.95 two day ticket in which you can visit any two standard operating days this season.

Six Flags spent a huge amount of money buying the two parks and building new rides. Then a few years later sold the parks for less then what they paid to purchase the two parks not even counting the money spent on new attractions. If the park was making money or close to it I doubt it would have been sold at a large loss. Six Flags gave up and the only reason that I can think of is that they felt there was no way they could make money any time soon. If Cedar Fair had not purchased the park who knows who would have. Most of the rumors claim the only other groups were developers who planned to destroy the park and build housing. Its not like Cedar Fair went to Six Flags first. Six Flags decided to sell and Cedar Fair was the top bidder. If Cedar Fair wanted the park to fail I doubt they would have gone to the same advertising company Disney uses to produce the advertisements for this season. There are a lot cheaper ways to make a park fail.

Its not its called "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" The offical pictures and information are available at Universals site and the media section I think its going to be great for the park seeing as how Islands of Adventure has needed to be expanded for a while now. I have heard there will be three attractions and I hope that means three new rides and that part of that number is not just changing the theme on an existing ride. Its two years away assuming everything stays on schedule so we have a long time to wait. It will be interesting to see how attendance changes at the Orlando parks in the coming years. I think this might be good for Disney's attendance in that it will bring in more out of town guests who will visit both Disney and Universal.. Who knows Disney might respond with a 5th park or major expansion to an existing park.

I would take Disney food and prices any day over what is being charged and served at Kings Island. If you really want to take a look at prices check out this page at all ears net. When I am at Epcot I often eat at the Electric Umbrella which is about in the middle of future world. At the electric umbrella a cheeseburger with fries is $5.89 and the chicken strips with fries is $6.69. A regular drink is $2.09 and a large is $2.39. The food prices at Disney are high but then I almost always get a good meal as well. Plus if you stay on site at Disney in the fall during the slow season there have been discount codes to get free dining for the last few years. The dining plan includes one counter service meal, one snack, and one table service meal a day. Kings Island might have a monopoly but at its prices I will just take a snack in my pocket (dried fruit and nuts work well) and then eat as soon as I leave.

We're not sure. There has been speculation over the past week or so as to whether or not both trains would run today, which it didn't. When I rode this ride as X-flight from up north I never saw 2 trains run.........also it was a little painful with the sun in your face laying on your back out of the station........it was suppose to be upright till you climb the left hill.......nerver happen.........its an decent little ride.......but not worth more than a 20 min. wait.....IMHO.......wish they would have dug a pond out with water jets you could fly over now that would have been cool........you spend most of the time staring at the ground in flight position during the ride ........again not a bad ride.......just not nearly as good as KI's other rides there. Hope you all get to ride and enjoy. I am not sure if Firehawk (X-Flight) even has the hardware to tilt the cars back anywhere other then the station. The prototype (now at Carowinds but was built at Great America) did tilt the cars back on the lift hill for the first year. It caused so many problems that it also tilts the cars back before they leave the station. When Stealth moved there were major electronics upgrades which improved the reliability of the ride and it has been running better then X-Flight did and I am hoping that similar upgrades occurred on Firehawk. The problems might be from the very short move schedule and that there was just not enough time to work out any problems. We should know in the next few weeks how its going to run this summer it might not be off to a good start but there is a lot of time for improvements.

If FoF ever goes back to OTSR's I will not ride it again. The head banging was terrible and for me it turned into almost a totally different ride when they switched the restraints. Trains cost around a million dollars each and I doubt Cedar Fair is willing to spend that much money to give people more leg room so a larger percentage of the population can fit. SOB is getting new trains (well retrofitting old trains from another park) so I believe you might not have any problems on that when it reopens later this year.

No because it never actually coasts. The ride is powered during the entire duration of its cycle and is not dependent on gravity so it is not considered a coaster. EDIT: You know when I wrote this the whole gravity thing made sense at the time. But I realized it was a mistake just a few minutes later. With todays launched coasters its not really a requirement. But the ride has to coast at some point which Avatar never does.

Most likely not. If Disney builds another park that is not in CA or FL my guess would TX since it's about the mid-point and could be opened year round. The company that owns the Disney parks in Japan has just announced they are going to build a 3rd park which will be indoors. I believe this might be a model for future growth in the United States. There has been talk for some time now that Disney was going to build hotels in several major markets. I think what we might see are hotels which include a indoor theme park built outside of a major city such as New York or Chicago. There might even be a section of the park built outdoors for use during the summer and maybe weekends during the spring/fall similar to the hours of a traditional seasonal park. I think its something Disney is already looking at and it could be huge.

I remember eating one at the Rivertown location the year that Paramount had the special annual pass holder drink cups. Might have been the same summer.

Imagine this if Kings Island added Speed Lanes to almost every ride at the park. To access the speed lane would cost $15 - $40 depending on how busy the park is expected to be. Annual pass holders could only use the lines if they upgrade their pass to a premium pass which allows access to the extra line in the evenings for an extra $50. If you only wanted to ride a small number of attractions you could purchase a $5 pass to one ride or a $10 pass to 3 rides. You could also stay at the Great Wolf Lodge and get access to the speed lanes as often as you want all day long. 50% of the rides capacity would be shifted to the speed lane. For a ride like Firehawk it would be one station for stand by and one station for speed lane guests. For rides like The Beast the back half of the station would be speed lane while the front half is stand by. It would be like this for every single ride at the park. This is how Universals Express pass is setup. 50% of the rides capacity goes to the express pass guests. Its not some system where there are only a few people doing it there are 3 large hotels on-site plus the huge number of express passes which are sold every day. Just the 3 hotels alone can have several thousand people. The VIP tours at Cedar Point are going to just be a small number of guests and overall I don't expect it will make a huge difference. What if it is just the beginning though? What if they make an option thats available to several thousand people a day which costs $30 or $40? I normally only make one trip to the point a year and I could see myself paying $40 extra so I did not wait in a single line all day. The problem is like I outlined above this is all a zero sum game for people to get this shorter wait there must be another group who has to wait that much longer. The people who either cannot or will not pay the extra fees are waiting in longer lines. I doubt it will double the waits for rides because this is taking people out of the regular line as well but the average guest will wait longer. Six Flags has added the Flash Pass, Dollywood the Q-Bot, and I believe this is just the start of a new trend at amusement parks. fanofbigmedia just want to point out that at Disney you can get a new fast pass in 2 hours no matter what the return time on your last fast pass is. So if you do get one of those 7PM ones in the morning you are not stuck all day without the ability to get another fast pass. Assuming there are still any left 2 hours later at other attractions.

I have noticed what seems to be a trend towards theme parks having more then one line for guests. One the stand by line which is what most guests wait in and is normally the longest wait. The other a shorter line which sometimes requires purchasing a separate ticket. At the former Paramount parks it was for gold pass members and was called a speed lane, Disney's is free to all park guests and is the Fast Pass system, and for Universal its Express Pass and there are a number of ways to purchase access to the line. The addition of this second line only changes how people wait for the attraction not how many guests can experience it. The rides capacity is a zero sum game where the total number of riders does not change just how the seats are allocated. For people to have a shorter wait in this second line the people in the stand by line MUST have a longer wait as less capacity is allocated to them. What I am wondering is first what people think of these services everything from the free (Disney) to the pay (Universal). Has a parks use of these pay (or even free) lines changed how you decide to visit a park? Have these lines changed what you do once your at the park? I don't want to just leave everyone with a bunch of questions so I figured I would give my thoughts. The parks that always come to my mind when I think about this and what was on my mind when I wrote this post are the two parks that make up Universal Orlando. The system they use is called Express Pass and a ticket to gain access to the line once for every ride in the park is between $15 and $50 per a day depending on the time of year and if you want a pass for one or both parks. If you stay on site there is unlimited front of the line access which just unlimited access to the express pass lines. There is a premium annual pass which is $280 (the "standard" pass is $180 but renews at $99 a year there is no renewal discount on the premium pass) which allows express pass access after 4PM. Now there is a new option for busy times of the year where guests can purchase a ticket for a single express pass use for $5 and one is also available for 3 uses which costs $10. The advertising claims that Universal attempts to keep the express pass lines at 15 minutes or less. But to me it seems like the park just keeps selling more and more ways to get access to the express pass lines. This is where the whole zero sum game comes in. If there are more express pass guests then to make sure the express pass guests spend the same amount of time in line more of a rides capacity must be allocated to them. This makes the lines that much longer for the average guest. Also in Universal Studios Florida one of the parks major attractions just closed. The closing of any attraction lowers the overall parks capacity which means if attendance does not fall then all of the lines will that much longer at the park. I doubt the park is going to offer fewer express passes because of this closure. I keep reading where attendance at the Universal parks is down or just flat. Its been rare for there to be any attendance gains for some time now. According to the parks last fiscal statement attendance is down but revenue and profits are up. I can't help but wonder if the reason for both is the current Express Pass system. While I am sure the passes are making the parks a lot of money I am really starting to think its driving away guests who don't feel its worth spending the extra money and feel the stand by lines do not get enough attention anymore. I am aware of just how few and far between the new attractions have been at Universal and yes its possible thats why there is the drop in attendance but with the huge gains at Disney and just how well other Orlando attractions are doing even without new rides I feel the problem is not the lack of new attractions. Now its your turn what do you think?

Big Thunder Mountain, Test Track and Dinosaur all at Disney parks in Orlando have dual loading stations as well. Although Test Track and Dinosaur don't need track switches the cars are actually driving themselves based on signals from the main computer.

I do want to point out that while it looks good on paper the number of guests a park draws is not really the important figure here. Cedar Point makes a LOT more money then Kings Island. This is from a number of factors. First guests spend more money on average at Cedar Point then Kings Island. Also Cedar Fair owns a lot of other attractions in the area. This includes the marina, several hotels, and the separate water park. If Kings Island brought in as much money as Cedar Point (and I doubt it could without hotels owned by Cedar Fair) then you might see as big of installs. According to Cedar Fair the amount of money a park gets spent on improvements is based on the profits made at the park not attendance.

Paramount signed a 7 year deal with Coke last year. I doubt its worth it to Cedar Fair to pay whatever the penalty is for ending it early so don't expect Pepsi until 2013.

If anyone needs to be "saved" its the Universal parks. The Orlando resort has a hard time just breaking even. The attendance is going down even with amazing deals, cheap annual passes, and free tickets. There is no real expansion going on at any of the US parks and has not been for years. All the land around the park in Hollywood has already been set aside for other uses. None of the long term plans Universal has been talking about includes the possibility of ever expanding the Hollywood park again (there are plans to replace current attractions but thats not expansion). The land purchased for a third park in Florida was sold a few years ago. All three of the attractions that have been added to Islands of Adventure since the park first opened in 1999 were started before the park opened. Except for the 360 fireworks show (which only runs around 3 months of the year total (spread out over the busiest times of the year)) the last new attraction at Universal Orlando which did not replace an older attraction was Men in Black in 2000. Its not that they don't have the land there are plenty of options left including the sites set aside for the 4th and 5th on site hotels (next to IoA). Also the large number of surface parking lots next to USF.

There was a 7 year contract signed between Paramount Parks and Coke last year so I expect to see Coke at Kings Island until 2012.

If you want to talk old. I remember Gopher, Mosaic, and the release of Netscape 1.0. There was no pop ups, no spam, no javascript, really no ads at all. Everything was slow and the goal was for websites to be as simple, easy, and small as possible. When I first started "surfing the web" I was using a 2400 baud modem. The internet really has come a long way. Before 1992 you pretty much had Gopher. The first web browser was I believe NCSA Mosaic in 1993. The internet did not even start to become popular until after Netscape Navigator. Beta's of Netscape were available in late 1994 but the first commercial release was in 1995. I believe in 1992 AOL was mostly a private network still and users were not browsing the internet. Anyways the first version of AOL for windows was not until 1993 until then it was more of a BBS type system under DOS.

Depends on how much of a hurry you are in and how many times you can do attractions. I have an annual pass to Universal and normally only spend two days. If you get to IoA when it opens you can do everything in the park once by 1PM (sometimes noon) if its slow but many of the attractions are worth doing multiple times. Because of the long preshows and attraction lengths in general Universal Studios takes a lot longer to get through but I only do most of the attractions once. I would recommend a day at Sea World and 2 or 3 days at US/IoA. IoA is an amazing park and I recommend taking your time to just look around for me three areas stand out Jurassic Park, Lost Continent, and the port of entry. There is a new $85 week ticket for Seaworld and Busch Gardens which is a good deal if you plan on visiting both.

All Paramount ever did was manage the park it does not own any part of the park. The same is true of Cedar Fair. Paramount owned the hardware at the Star Trek Experience and the space was still owned by the hotel. I expect the agreement is the same now as it once was (not sure though) and Cedar Fair runs and owns the rides themselves. I am not sure how popular the rides are now but I hope that if its ever shut down they are moved to a Cedar Fair park and not just scraped. Both attractions are Disney quality and would be great additions anywhere.

I don't think Six Flags is trying to fix the capacity problems. I think they would just be happy if the ride was running more often and to hopefully spend less money on maintenance in the long run.

As I said when I used those figures they are from 2005. Second thats revenue not profits. We can only guess at how much the park is spending but its a big park and has a lot of expenses. Michigan's Adventure is a lot smaller park with fewer coasters, cheaper to operate coasters, a smaller water park, and fewer attractions in general. Something I assume almost everyone is forgetting about is the interest on the $145 million in debt from purchasing the park, and then you have the cost of the water park, the interest from the debt of building the new water park etc. I guess I could always look at the chains fiscal statements and try to figure out what the interest rate is and then calculate just how much the interest for just GL is but what it all comes down to is that I don't see any possible way the park is making a profit. Its amazing to think about how much Six Flags spent there and how little return of it they got back when they sold the park to Cedar Fair. Sea World was $110 million, the season they added the 4 coasters was $44 million, X-Flight was $15 million, Thunderhawk was $10 million, Head Spin would have been very cheap at $4-5 million. Thats not even counting the purchase of the park by what was then Premier parks. My best guess is that Premier/Six Flags spent around $250 million in 8 years on the park just to sell it for $145 million.

I don't think this is the end of the rides side. I think this is just an attempt at lowering the cost of the park to something in line with its attendance. I can't think of any parks with an attendance of only 750,000 that has 10 coasters. Even with the loss of X-Flight and Steel Venom it still has 8 coasters. Back in 1999 before Six Flags built 5 coasters in 2 years (4 in a single season) the park only had 5 coasters total. Kings Island has an attendance of 3.2 million and only has 13 coasters only 3 more then what Geauga Lake had which has less then a quarter of the attendance. Back when Cedar Fair purchased the Paramount parks they released figures on the annual revenue of their parks. Geauga Lake was the second lowest at $26 million (not profits total it brings in) only Michigan's Adventure brings in less. Heres the number of coasters and the revenue of all the Cedar Fair parks as of 2005 (since the revenue data was from 2005 this should be the number of coasters from 2005 a few have gained a coaster since then or are building one right now). NOTE: Please don't question the revenue its the total of all attractions in the parks area which includes hotels and separate admission water parks which is why Cedar Points and Knotts are so high (Knotts has 3 water parks) Cedar Point - $210 million (16) Knotts - $186 million (7) Dorney - $56 million (8) Valley Fair - $36 million (7) Worlds of Fun - $35 million (5) Geauga Lake - $26 million (10) Michigan's Adventure - $19 million (6) Looking at that list how does it make any sense at all that Geauga Lake has 10 coasters? They have more coasters then parks which make twice as much money or more. Plus the coasters which are being removed are VERY expensive to operate. I really think the park should only have 6 or 7 coasters total its attendance and revenue really are too low to support any more than that.