Magenta Lizard

^I think we had an in-person discussion of that early in the season. How is a semi-famous chef going to feel being the face of the quality of the food across the park, but where he will have very little day-to-day control of a historically poorly managed* department? Well, last time I saw him in the park (recently, which was also the first time I have seen him in quite some time) he didn't look happy. *I know I've gone into more depth about this before, but a big part of the problem is that in food service in particular, if you are /good/ at managing people you can pretty much find a job anywhere. What is the incentive for such a person to take on a seasonal job? As opposed to a full year full time job, with benefits and a constant paycheck? There are a few unicorns out there for whom it might be a perfect fit to only work part of the year, but they're going to be hard to find and keep. I think it is likely that turnover in management is worse than the turnover of employees, as people either find it is more than they can handle, burn out, or discover they can find more consistent work elsewhere.

That traffic may have had more to do with Kings High School homecoming than Kings Island.

We entered Urgent Scare immediately behind a group where one woman was carrying a literal infant. They were no longer ahead of us as we exited the maze, so I am assuming at some point someone (probably the infant) finally figured out that something designed to be frightening might actually be too scary for a baby and they emergency exited...

I think it is one of the cooler parts of Haunt. The contrast between flames and water is very beautiful. So, another vote for exciting.

After entering the front gates, turn to your left and walk until you see lockers on the left. There are three machines in an alcove next to it. There are also some elsewhere but those are the ones I can say for sure where they're located. I am nearly certain there's one still in the shop in Action Zone, and at the shop in Planet Snoopy as well.

Just wanted to point out that adults are allowed to wear costumes to the park on Sundays this year: https://www.visitkingsisland.com/blog/2018/september/daytime-halloween-fun-for-the-kids-begins-this-weekend-at-kings-island

People like to complain that Vortex is rough and should be removed nearly as much as they like to campaign to bring back Son of Beast. It's weird, but that's how it is...

^I'd say the chances are pretty good. I never saw anything official mentioning they were going to be there before last weekend so I think it's more of a "normal" thing during Haunt rather than a special event last weekend.

From previous discussions, I think it matters what zoom level you are looking at, whether SoB or Banshee appears.

So, anyway, lost in more exciting news and speculation, there are some new tables at Kings Island...

And the other four coasters are protesting the funeral?

I mostly enjoyed Haunted Homecoming. It is mostly fun and goofy. And I think I probably will end up doing the Time Warp with friends in the aisle at some point this season... I was never a big fan of Hot Blooded beyond appreciation for the water curtain. There were some good performances in the show but mostly I was left uncomfortable. It was a show that was trying desperately to be sexy and edgy, but just never came through with any chemistry. HHC manages to sidestep that by having the interactions between the performers be purposefully a bit corny, and gives the backstory of it being a high school show-choir (albeit back from the dead). All in all, it's goofy, corny, and fun, rather than spooky, dark, or edgy. I enjoyed most of the song selections, and they were by-and-large well performed. I will miss hearing the explosions reverberating throughout the park at the end of Hot Blooded shows, though.

^yeah, hadn't thought about that. I wonder what they did there?

The most recent post I'm seeing on their Facebook was 8:30 yesterday morning (a video about taking kids to the park). None of their instagrams on their official account say it either... Is it in comments somewhere?

The SOB references have been part of Haunt decorations for the past handful of years. It seems weird to me that there are news sources saying "the park has announced" yet a curious lack of that actual announcement on any of their official channels thus far. Unless you count Chad Showalter retweeting the news station saying it, but on his personal account not the @KingsIslandPR

If you mean the Four Drummers Drumming show, his name is Josh. I knew he looked familiar when I watched the show yesterday, but for some reason I didn't make the connection. It seems so obvious now, since I knew Bryce was in both shows. I haven't closely followed Blood Drums in the past, so I am not very familiar with the previous fire dancer. For the couple shows I caught Sunday, the new one was really good. I was very impressed with his skills spinning the long pole with four flames on each end in particular. I assume a big difficulty in having him on a stage (in addition to the risk of a flaming apparatus possibly making it farther into the crowd) is making something both temporary and fireproof. The stone pavers in the area he works are already showing signs of scorching from only three days of shows. It would interfere with the dance party aspect of the show, but a section of bleachers placed in the courtyard, maybe a bit farther back toward the tower, could allow more people to be able to see the dance without being too much in the line of fire. Another option would be some sort of smallish concrete stairs/platform that he could step up onto for at least part of the time to make him more visible.

It's probably nothing, or only has internal meaning, but... I noticed from the brake run of Diamondback that there are bright red symbols on the back of a couple of the tombstones out there in the field. They look a bit like a letter "H" only with the horizontal line extra long, beyond the vertical ones. They appeared to be possibly made with three strips of reflective tape. The symbols are on the side of the tombstones opposite the mock funeral, so they apparently aren't meant to be seen, and are only visible there from the brake run. I can't think of anything offhand that the letter "H" would mean, tho. Doubt it's Hanks

I know! The fear I was missing out on some cool prize was the reason I got into that conversation, and found out how terribly rare it was for anyone to even win. Even something like a small certificate of completion would have made somebody like me happy and cost them next to nothing, but as rarely as it happened they could have had a fairly pricey prize and barely notice the cost. It was both disappointing and relieving (because we had already lost) to find out there was no prize. I seem to remember another Skeleton Key room a couple years ago had one person root around in the (false) hollow abdomen of a scareactor, looking for a key to get out of the room. It almost had to have been Kill Mart. I'm going to dig out my maps from the last couple years to see if I missed any others. (Edit: nope, that's all of them)

There are no Skeleton Key rooms this year. In prior years, the general idea was that one scareactor in the room would talk for a bit, then something would happen and the participants would go from that room into the main maze: Slaughterhouse had Sam the butcher with a large animal carcass. One year I went through another scareactor burst out of the carcass with a chainsaw at the end, last year one of the participants was chosen to dig through rubber organs inside the carcass to unlock the door instead. Madame Fatale's featured a room with shelves of aquariums containing snakes. At the end of the story, the lights went out and rubber snakes dropped down from the ceiling around everyone. Sorority House had participants eat or drink something mildly strange as a "hazing ritual." Urgent Scare chose one participant to climb into a casket and be sent into the "crematory furnace." Backwoods Bayou required participants to feel around the dark room until someone found the key to be let out. The Viewing was different than the other rooms in that it wasn't connected to a maze. It was laid out as a funeral viewing in the front hallway of the KI theater, and there were several objects around the room that could help fill in several "blanks" in the story of the recently deceased. There was a whiteboard with his story, and the goal was to fill in a dozen or so little pieces of trivia about him, and it had to be done in a ridiculously short amount of time (about twice as much of the time was used explaining the game than was given to solve). I spoke to the woman running the room last year and even though they took groups in about every five minutes every Haunt night, she had only had a couple groups actually win by completing the story, ever. There was no prize if a group did, either.

So far it's worse than I expected. Line for security is about 20 deep BEYOND the flagpole

Last night I had a night ride on Beast, with bright flashes of lightning from a still-distant storm. I asked the friend I was riding with if lightning struck the coaster, it becomes a time-machine, right?

That sounds like the NYE celebration is going to be a paid event and I am totally ok with that. I already CAN NOT WAIT!!!!

Unfortunately, no, they still aren't selling them. I wish they were.

In at least a couple places around the park (former Dinos Alive/ current smoking section, beside Coney Freestyle) there are pumpkin plants. I thought that they looked like pumpkin leaves from a failed attempt to grow my own pumpkins when I was a young teen. So I had been watching them to see what developed, and indeed there are little pumpkins growing! So darn cute! I don't know why it is so exciting for me to see crop plants as part of the KI landscape, maybe growing up in Ohio made me a farm girl at heart (if not in reality). A couple years ago, there were green peppers, tomatoes, and more suspected pumpkins back by the WindSeeker restrooms. The plants were removed and replaced before pumpkins actually grew that year, unfortunately.

Personally, I'm rather happy about this change this year because it puts a certain Haunt performer who I am fond of back into the main maze so I can see him every time I walk through rather than the two or three times in a season where I've either purchased Skeleton Key or been invited into the room. It's especially important to me since this will be his last year performing for a few. I did enjoy the somewhat extended scenes in the key rooms, but they were never enough for me personally to shell out $ for it more than once a season. Assuming they have tended to group their best performers in their other mazes into the other Key rooms as well, removing Skeleton Key should have a positive influence on the experience for the average attendee in all of the mazes.