BeeastFarmer

If The Interpreter was still around, I wonder what his thoughts would be about KK outperforming most Six Flags parks in key metrics? (From my perspective, I only have anecdotal evidence to back this up). But excuses have been around KI for a long time: we don't have ice because of the heat, we don't have the food you like because demand isn't there for Pigpen's Mess Hall, we banned you from following us and commenting because we only want praise, Vortex was at the end of service life ( we don't want to fix it and pay for staffing), and The Royal fountain looks stained because geese poop in it. Most of those would be followed by fans saying " we are just lucky we have King's island" lol

Along with Canadian wildfire smoke, increased gasoline (but they will also highlight that as a driver too), etc. I don't think they'll mention the X2/Goliath situations, so I have it's brought up in the conference call.

I was getting ready to post a similar screenshot. November earnings report should be interesting as they discuss headwinds....

Thank you for sharing! Your work is much appreciated. On a side note: the ambient noise from the pneumatics sounds very much like a shi shi odoshi.

No, but whenever I get out to SDC I'm looking forward to it.

Let's postulate so I can try and follow the logic Six Flags may be using: We will open the rides at noon. So 8 or 10 more hours of ride staffing across the park. We will reduce entertainment and roaming characters by XX amount. Does it cost more to staff the rides for the extra 8 (or 10) hours each or does it cost more to maintain characters and entertainment? Ideally, they would have rides open during the day, maybe add in a couple of more, and then cut out the thrill rides at night and double down on entertainment and atmosphere. That could keep people in the park longer which would, ideally, increase per cap spending. We are fast becoming a worlds of fun or a Dorney parking the trajectory they followed post Paramount acquisition.

Highly recommend. I had not been for years. Next time, I want to go more in depth with The Historic Tour. When you go, I hope you get the same ranger. Best storyteller ever....made you feel the story of the cave.

Made it down to Mammoth Cave this past Wednesday for a quick escape. It was a warm, muggy day for about a two-hour drive, but totally worth it. The park was way more crowded than I expected as every cave tour was completely sold out when we got there. That honestly didn't bother me too much since we just wanted to do the basic tour that heads back to the Methodist Church room anyway. The visitor center just went through a massive renovation and looks great, with nice food spots, good gift shops, and friendly staff. Plus, the surrounding forest is just pristine. It felt so good to get back out into a National Park, and I'm definitely planning to squeeze in more trips using my pass this coming spring and summer. (I've also been hitting up some KY state parks lately for day trips, and the fall foliage right now is just unreal.) As for the cave itself, the ambient temp down there is wonderful, you definitely need a light jacket. This particular route is super accessible for kids and older folks. You start with about 60 easy, mostly dry steps down the historic entrance, followed by a pretty steep slope leading into the Methodist Church room. Our ranger was a young guy named Nick, and I have to say, he was easily one of the best park storytellers I've ever listened to. He spoke with total authenticity, his tone and texture of his voice and his facial expressions just showed how into the history he was. He walked us through the whole history of early cave ownership, including how it operated as a saltpeter mine during the War of 1812 and helped the U.S. win the war. One thing that completely blew my mind down there was seeing all the concrete lining the pathways and stairs. I finally asked Nick how on earth they managed to haul equipment and materials deep underground to pour all that. He told me they literally lowered everything down in five-gallon buckets—water and all—and mixed, poured, and stamped the whole thing foot by foot. Unreal engineering. He also pointed out some ancient cave drawings along the walls that most casual tourists would completely walk right past. Of course, I had to investigate his stories to see if they were tall takes, but they were all verified on reputable sites. Great day overall. Really scratched that national park itch. I'm thinking Smokey Mountain National Park will be on the agenda sooner than later.

I don't think that is possible for legacy CF executives to buy the parks. With debt, those parks would likely command billions. They don't have the resources and debt capacity in my opinion. My opinion is that either the entire thing ( besides some continued non core assets) will be sold off to PE, or they will file bankruptcy and keep the money makers and cast the rest into a different operator as a fire sale or close parks. If meta, Google, anthropomorphic etc would offer SF an insane amount of money for kings Dominion for a data center, with it being tucked away and having plenty of electrical capacity it could be a possibility. If offered enough, carowinds could be sold for industrial and retail.

In spite of the current situation with Six Flags, the park felt really good during my visit last night , Thursday October 15. Everything was clean, the food was above average, and ride operations were quick and efficient all night. The only real cleanliness issue I noticed all day was a urinal in the front restroom right at park open that had dried urine crust on the rim. Aside from that oversight, the midways and facilities looked great. Crowds were mostly well behaved too. I ran into two different groups of hyper teens who were spewing language in line, but both groups actually apologized and toned it down when I asked them to. It was definitely strange walking around the park without the constant roar of Diamondback in the background. With both the hyper and the giga closed right now, if I were in park management, I would have tried to open both sides of The Racer to help handle some of that crowd spillover. Even with those closures, the ride associates were friendly and energetic across the board. The Beast was running phenomenally, and Adventure Express was running great as well. Food and drink service was mostly solid. I stopped at Enrique's, which was quick and efficient. When I started eating, I realized they had given me pork instead of chicken. I took it back up and the crew happily remade it right away. They did not even ask me to toss the original plate, so I guess I could have scammed the system and given it to a friend, though I did not. As for the drink plan, ice was available every time I went for a refill. The refill stations that were open had very friendly staff, with the exception of the guy working in the Brewhouse who was pretty salty to everyone. The haunted mazes were very well done this year. Jason and Order of the Dragon were both great from start to finish. Metal Massacre ended up being a total sleeper hit for me. The reviews for it have not been so hot, but it was well staffed, had lots of good scary spots, and was very well put together visually. Killmart is pretty much the same maze as before, yet it feels upgraded this season and had noticeably more scaractors, making it a big improvement. Slaughterhouse never disappoints and delivered like usual. Alien Abyss was the only disappointment of the night, though I expected it to be. Even without a long queue outside, they packed everyone in way too tight and there were very few scaractors inside. It is just not a good maze. Out on the midways, the park decor was very scaled back compared to past years, but what they did put out felt elevated and the fog was heavily concentrated. I was glad the Royal Foundation is still functional and that Christmas change over hasn't started. I made it through all of the scare zones except for the pirates. There were plenty of scaractors inside the zones themselves, though there were not really any roaming around the general park paths. I also did not see a single slider all night, which was very disappointing since they are always my favorite part of the event. Overall, this is probably the best Haunt experience I have had. It did not feel overdone, and it also did not feel watered down to a level that seven year olds could handle.

You are joking, correct?

Kings Dominion could retheme it to the jungle theme and rename it Adventure Express. Express ties into the launches. Also another thing to tie the two parks together. Am I imagining that AE was originally set to go to KD and the bobsled coaster to KI? AE would have made more sense in their jungle area, and the bobsled would have made more sense in Oktoberfest. And I thought I heard it somewhere. Lol

Enchanted Parks appear to be thriving. Will be interesting to see what happens with the investigation. My mind automatically goes to budget cuts affecting maintenance. But that is reactionary and, frankly, biased.

Here is the thing... you cannot say with 100% certainty that anything is safe. New York state sued Chemlawn over claims that pesticides were safe. Chemlawn stated things like " you would have to eat 300 cups of treated grass to equal the toxicity of a cup of coffee" and "we keep our customers in a safer place because they don't have transport, mix, store and dispose of concentrated pesticides." Chemlawn had a settlement in which they could not use the word safe but could use the words "negligible risk." The industry places rider safety guides at ride entrances. I'm satisfied that when I get on board a ride, there could be a failure. But the risk of that is negligible. Like anything, you make choices to take risks,even as something as simple as sitting in your chair and drinking your coffee. That does not relieve them of their responsibility to do everything to minimize the risk. The root cause analysis will be done and the problem identified and fixed. My knee jerk reaction is that it will resolve around cost cutting. But that's a knee jerk reaction. A person has died on a day he wanted to spend having fun with his family. Other riders were physically injured. I'm sure there will be PTSD in some form for many. If it's maintenance, an operator error or a rider error the repercussions will be felt for a long time. I bet they are regretting sending out surveys about Six Flags naming convention.

In many ways, history repeats itself. When the ship is steered without a competent captain, poor decisions are made. It doesn't matter if a placement of a good ride in a horrible location or , well, just about every corporate decision when the current two companies merged.

Down with the junkyard coaster!

Kings Island should check into tapping into the retirement community. If it works for Dollywood to have a 70 year old lady on Thunderhead ops booth, it would work for Kings Island. No, retired folks can't do a lot of restraint checks on the Woodies, and long hours in the food places, but I seem to remember lots of them in 2021 being litter gitters and loving it. Could free up those positions to have others in various roles. Maybe having them as Cedar Fair SUPERVISORs would bring a level of maturity to supervisor role.

Meanwhile, the news about the death roller coaster at six flags has reached even into local news ( via national generic parent company) and I get comments and questions about how I should never ride a roller coaster again. Most, I would guess, don't know that Kings Island is a six flags park. If their name goes on, eventually it will hurt the park. It's like the wackos who do these things actively want the company to fail.

It wouldn't be the first time " redundant" rides are installed. West Coast racers, although not an RMC, has similar style to an RMC. Dont come after me lol

I think the "cool sup" is still a thing today. It's like they get a shirt that says Cedar Fair SUPERVISOR and they are immune from responsibility. I've seen them standing around during WinterFest laughing with each other or try to be Michael Scott with the front line workers, while people are waiting in line for food or drinks. There are hard working folks at the park including some of the Cedar Fair SUPERVISORs, but most I have seen have been more inward focused than customer focused. It's like they don't have leadership guidance and want to be bffs with the front line.

Meanwhile, Enchanted Parks is still cleaning up the mess from SFEC's dining plans. SFEC sold dining plans on their passes until the moment the transaction closed. This is a conjecture, but I would venture a bet they knew EP was not continuing them . I would extrapolate that they used the money to either: 1. Place in an interest earning reserve account and delayed reimbursement or 2. They spent the money on business expenses and did not have a thought out plan for reimbursement. I see now that EP pass holders who had a six flags dining plan are going to get a 50% discount on '27 pass rates. They are making good decisions because that would speak volumes to me.

They are targeting Marilyn Spiegel.

I'm not sure how this extrapolation came about. I said it didn't matter if it was copy/paste because I was able to make ( and see) old friends. Unfortunately coasterstock has died. Maybe at some point it will return, but I think it would be in name only. Or if the right people did it, it be as good or better then before.

Which is why I said it didn't matter and that it allowed me to make new friends every year.

Coaster Club events are by nature, niche. Besides a fun time for the attendees, I would assume the hope from the business would be that loyal guests ( which club members usually are) would begat future guests. I grew up going to ki. It was fun. But when went on a dead rainy cool May in 2014 and could ride The Beast over and over and over I was hooked. I went 15 times that year, each time bringing someone else. At some point,we saw people wearing lanyards, and asked. They were there for a coaster event. I got hooked. The next year, I went to the first coasterstock. I met my first coaster friends and saw my first coaster annoying people. The next year I branched out to other parks, so much so that I went to all Cedar Fair parks except cga, wide and vf. Coasterstock did become very copy/paste, but it didn't matter. Met new people each time that I still keep up with. The ACE spring conference was better than any coaster stock, but it had a different purpose and I suppose was easier to let the club handle logistics vs the park logistics being pared down some. For the last coaster stock, I didn't go, it was not a priority like all the other years. I was actually glad there was not one this year so the decision was made for me lol. All this to say that these events are good and bad. If the positivity the parks expect form the most loyal customers dwindles, they likely won't continue them. Or, maybe coaster stock was not done because Tony had too much on his plate with being a pr person for most of the company. Speaking of him, I've seen online that he and six flags have parted company. Is that true?