Kenban

Scary Farm is a separately ticketed event, the park closes at 5 PM, and kicks the guests out of the park, and reopens at 7 for Scary Farm. No annual pass gets you into the event, and some add one like meal plans do not work. The event runs 5 nights a week. Kings Island has to justify any Haunt expense based on a handful of nights and one in which pass holders get in for free. While Knott’s has to be good enough to justify an expensive ticket.

I went to haunt on Saturday. Frankly, not impressed by most of the event. It feels inappropriate to have the really young kids even in the park, let alone the parents who were taking children in strollers through the houses. The roaming scare actors feel more like photo opportunities than something to scare the guests. The lack of fog, the park has gone over board in the past, but it was almost nonexistent this year. While in line for Cornered guests found several extremely rusty nailed and screws sticking out of the fence. They proceeded to try to break them off and successfully did so to at least 2 or 3, but someone should have checked before the event. I understand the desire to pulse the line, sending guests through the house in groups, which lets the actors reset. This works to a point, and frankly several lines reached the point where they should have moved to bigger groups or at some point just conga line the guests. It’s not uncommon for groups to bunch up already anyways. Repeatedly while I was walking around close to a house, person after person was leaving a house and trying to warn other guests near the entrance it’s not worth it. Proper line management, would have done a lot to help guest satisfaction. They might be even more disappointed by the house itself, but with a reasonable wait they are more likely to enjoy the night overall. The best part of the event was the live entertainment. I watched both Nyte Walkers, and Monster Rock, plus about half of Dr. Nightmare. Not really a fan of Dr. Nightmare, I like the host but it feels like it was not a good use of his talents or of the stage. The other two shows were fantastic and both are a much better use of your time than the houses. The event just does not feel big enough, 6 houses are not enough, there are not enough scare actors. Personally I would prefer the park improves the event and makes it into something that would be worthy of a separate hard ticket, where even most or all pass holders need to buy a ticket. But it would take a lot of changes to get to this point. Frankly I recommend checking out the shows, and getting night rides on the coasters, at Kings Island. Then just head to some of the many better haunt events and houses in the area. If you’re up for traveling, Knott’s Scary Farm, Halloween Horror Nights on either coast, and either Howl-o-scream event in Florida are all much better events.

Maybe, it should be obvious in the sunlight today. Because the letters cause the paint to fade unevenly and leave a shadow. If that is not visible they likely just turned it around. My guess is they turned it to face the other direction, and the letters are still there. I saw multiple groups walking through the grass last night but I was not willing to do so myself.

Even better at that point do not renew, just get a new pass. When purchased through Canada the add-ons activate immediately. So combined with your current pass you have two drink plans, and two meal plans, for the rest of the year. The renewal savings is I believe $5 it’s just not enough to care about.

According to Dollywood they have not changed the launch speed, it is the same today as it was on opening day, it was never turned down. The launch only covering 3/4 of the hill is where a lot of impression comes from. You can feel the train stop accelerating and start slowing once your past the LSM’s as you coast up the hill.

This is more of a protest against the Covid shutdowns and charging rent when they were forced to be closed, then an inability to pay. They have the money and have paid rent for the time since they reopened. My guess is they will have a hard time arguing this in court, but it appears they want to try.

Blazing Fury like the original Fire in the Hole ride were built in house by the parks staff. They did a good job, but the ride is getting old. It opened in 1978, six years after the original. While they learned a lot and it appears to be better built, I suspect the ride is likely also approaching the end of its life. There were already rumors this new fire in the hole ride would be cloned to Dollywood before the ride was announced. I expect it might be a few years, HFE likely would want to make sure it’s reliable before building a second copy. So far the ride looks fantastic and I look forward to making my way back to SDC and riding the new version.

Just like every year, season passes work differently depending on what park you purchased your pass from. Many of the parks outside of Ohio already have their add-ons valid for use in 2023, including meal and drink plans. But if you purchase a pass from Kings Island or Cedar Point neither the meal plan or drink plan is valid until 2024. This includes a new premium drink tier that includes ICEE’s. No one bothered to tell the employees at Kings Island. Looking at the register screen while they checked me out over the weekend I confirmed the ICEE option does appear on the register. Good luck actually getting one though. Even when it shows up on the register they deny it is valid.

Thought this was interesting, I was parked in the preferred parking and was leaving just after park close tonight. They had security at the exit of preferred parking directing traffic to the right, then another person directing people to drive down the road between the parking lot and the park itself, so we drove past the dorms, greenhouses, and behind the Great Wolf Lodge. I suspect they have gotten complaints about how hard it can be to get out of the lot at the end of the night. This is an interesting and unexpected fix. Only I think the fourth time I stayed until close this year so not sure if it has been done other nights or not.

The park filed a plan with the local government in either early 2020 or late 2019 for what appeared to be a wooden coaster for this plot of land. The park withdrew the application after the pandemic hit. My guess was it would have been set to open in 2021. Based on the layout of the footers the speculation was it would be a Gravity Group coaster. The reason people were pretty confident it was GG was the footer layout and it appeared to feature a spike like Switchback at ZDT. The layout appeared to have a traditional lift hill and a track switch. You climbed the hill and went through the course forward, went up the spike, then went backwards until close to the drop from the lift hill which is where the track switch was located and it would have switched to allow you back to the station. The track switch would have allowed it to run two trains. The plans also showed Possessed being removed, and even showed concrete work around where the sign was located so people were pretty confident it being removed in the plans was not a mistake. Removing Wicked Twister might have saved Possessed. As I remember the two never actually interfered with each other so I thought it should have been possible to keep Possessed and still build the wooden coaster.

After Good Gravy!, we could have had Good Grief!. If they do repaint and retheme Aerial Chase, I really hope they get the new Vekoma trains as well. The newer lapbar only trains like on Dragonflier at Dollywood are so much more comfortable. Not sure if they can just replace the seats and restraints or they have to replace the whole thing. Overall at least from the concept art it looks fantastic. I wonder what else is happening that we are not seeing. This really does feel like a great way to use existing infrastructure, and to add a new coaster. I always have preferred the Camp Snoopy theme to Planet Snoopy and it’s great finally seeing it at KI.

The all-park add-one are the same price chain wide. The idea is to make it cost the same no matter which park you choose so people actually use their home park to buy their passes. That’s why the weird $19 up charge exists to go from KI only to chain wide. It’s also why the all park add on is cheaper at Kings Island than Cedar Point, our Gold pass is more expensive. Which works until you realize that Canada’s Wonderland exists and the exchange rate is not 1 to 1 like the pricing. For anyone wondering according to the FAQ’s the Prestige bring a friend tickets are chain wide. So at this point except for maybe the renewal freebies, if your shopping for a chain wide pass you can buy from any park. Pass perks might also be home park only? But then even with “enhanced” pass perks they don’t seem to actually exist anyways so I do not see how that should influence any decisions.

I have multiple dents in my 3 year old car from people opening their car doors into the side of mine which occurred in the regular parking lot. I got prestige this year ONLY for the premium parking and have yet to have a single new dent occur at Kings Island this year. I will be paying for Prestige again, because I do place that high of a value on the preferred parking alone. The rest does not matter to me much. But that’s just me and different people value the additions differently. The target audience for Prestige and Season Long Fast Lane has a HUGE overlap. So some get both and give away the single use because the only use they have for it is to give it away.

I have a prestige plus pass and also have not received a single pass perk.

I use CW for Canada’s Wonderland and just spell out Carowinds. Assuming you’re using CW for Carowinds, we can say that for certain that Kings Island has a higher attendance. Cedar Fair has broken down the attendance into large ranges and said which parks fall in each range. While we cannot say for certain where in those ranges a park falls, they put 4 parks in the top range, which they also did not put a top to the range, so while we know they are all above 3 million guests a year we do not know how much higher they are, or which order they are in. The top 4 are Knott’s, Cedar Point, Kings Island, and Canadas Wonderland, so we know for certain Carowinds is both less than 3 million a year it is also lower than those 4 parks. The last time the chain broke down revenue and earnings per a park was either 2016 or 2017. Carowinds at the time was a distant 5th behind Canadas Wonderland which was in 4th, the reason they are in 4th is the exchange rate between Canadian Dollars and USD. Kings Island was 3rd, and Knott’s and Cedar Point are roughly tied for 1st and 2nd. Unfortunately this is pretty out of date, but Carowinds was in a very distant 5th, they would need to have doubled the parks revenue to be close to Kings Island and that assumes zero growth at KI in that same period. Assuming similar per cap revenue it suggests Carowinds likely had at the time around half the attendance of Kings Island.

The videos remind me of Baron 1898. If they are willing to go that hardcore on the theming it will be amazing.

Building big roller coasters, and adding tons of flat rides is an expense you can try to get back over a long period of time, you are building for the future. But live entertainment happens immediately. The attendance at Carowinds has to justify the expense right now, it can’t. Carowinds annually already has a much lower attendance than Kings Island. But they also have a longer season, which means average daily attendance is even worse as well. Ten, Twenty, maybe more years from now Carowinds will be able to justify an anniversary event that will be as big as Kings Island. But it’s not there yet, and with the nature of live entertainment, it’s unlikely to change in the next few years. Back to Kings Island, I hope to see a Cirque show replace the Phantom Theatre next year. I was at Canadas Wonderland roughly two weeks ago and they are running the return of an older Cirque show which if I remember correctly last ran at CW directly before coming to KI. I believe at KI it was called Cirque Imagine, while at CW it’s called Cirque Ambiente.

The company has had opportunities to pay down their debt. Between share buybacks and the dividend they paid $220 million to investors last year. Cedar Fair is known for the dividend, so I understand wanting to keep it, and they likely should. But the share buyback should not have happened with this much debt. If you look at the history of the dividend there was a huge increase for a period of time. For a few years it was paying close to a dollar per a share every quarter. That increase should have been used to reduce debt. Cedar Fair paid $148 million in interest last year, and $184 million in 2021. Having this much debt is not cheap. Reducing debt will long term give them a huge amount of addition cash flow that could be used to provide a large dividend, buy more parks, or build hotels. The experiences the company provides is how they make money. I understand wanting to reduce their expenses but I do not believe the parks have as much waste as some executives seem to think. They need to make sure the experience does not suffer.

This is not only a problem with Kings Island or Cedar Fair. This is an industry wide problem. Almost all parks and chains in the US are seeing attendance and revenue declines. Universal, Disney, and Sea World have all reported difficulties. The cuts in personal, hours, and experiences we have seen are directly caused by the problems the chain is experiencing. Trying to tie this to a single person or park is a mistake.

The more I think about this coaster the more I love it. It just fits the park. While I am sure Top Thrill 2 will be the better coaster. I think Holiday World had the better announcement. It also definitely has the better name. Good Gravy is going to produce some some good merch.

All of these numbers are theoretical assuming zero friction. 74 MPH should get the train around 180 feet off the ground. You should be vertical but that leaves a lot of tower left. 101 MPH is roughly 340 feet. There needs to be extra track beyond where the train is expected to reach, likely the tower would need at a minimum to be like 370+ feet tall anyways. So while the tower is likely a little taller than necessary, I don’t think it’s as much as some people think. It’s been reported that the trains used to launch only around 112 MPH most of the time. But do the math and It shows the train should only reach 419 feet and that is assuming zero friction. So how was it possible to make it over the top hat? Because the speed measurement was taken at the end of the launch and your already a decent distance off the ground. The whole launch is angled upward.

Yup, the land was already cleared earlier this year except for the station.

I was pretty confident that the specifications which had been listed on Zamperla’s website were correct, and they are. But had a hard time believing the name would be this terrible. Really the biggest surprise to me is it looks like they are not even moving the queue. The concept arts shows it in the in field and they just put a cover over it.

From what I have heard is there is no formal announcement. Not sure if its when the parking lot opens or when they will be allowed into the park but I heard the media will be given the information starting at 5:00 AM. Interviews with the park representatives and manufacturer happen at 8:30 AM. My understanding is there is no embargo and media can go live with the information as soon as they want.

It was live on their website for a while. Long enough the internet web archive captured a copy of the page. https://web.archive.org/web/20230730151056/https://www.zamperla.com/top-thrill-2/ EDIT: The name is likely a placeholder or the project name, I really don't think that will be the actual coaster name.