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Wild Animal Preserve Re-Creation


Gordon Bombay
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I had grand plans of making great progress on the monorail today, but my wife had other plans. I'm going to work on cleaning again tonight, and there is no point to taking pictures of that.

Suffice to say that I wish you all a Happy New Year, and perhaps - if it's alright - I'd like to share this link with you, ‘cause I thought it was a riot. Being a musician with two degrees in music - I had to laugh.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/files/twelve...scommercial.mp3

I didn't realize that we were celebrating 100 years of atonality!

Train Driver

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Sorry you haven't seen me in a while - Actually I am working -- trying to get the basement ready for this really large project. My wife is also pregnant - she's at 33 weeks and the baby wanted out this weekend - so we spent some time in the hospital. She's home now and baby is still incubating. Thanks for your patience...

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How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Here's my first bite. I have been able to collect enough pictures on the web to reconstruct the enterance to the monorail platform and the monorail storage area. I am totally amazed at the lack of pictures that are out there of the actual preserve, either from the train, or aerial views - which I could really use. I mean, I think I have a pretty good memory of it, but it's been 24 years, and when I look at current arial views of KI there is absolutely no trace of where the track used to be. If anybody can help me with this, I would greatly appreciate it. From what I can tell, the Son of Beast obliterated the American and South American sections of the monorail - it probably hit a bit of India too. From construction photos it's clear that they took the whole hill out, and the edge of the coaster is located where the monorail came up a ravine to return to the platform.

I was able to locate a picture that was taken within 1-2 years of when I worked there, and has a pretty good view of the new walk-through display that had been created for the patrons.

I remember that if we were lucky, a ranger would let us feed shrimp to the flamingos that hung around the platform.

At any rate - if anybody - anybody at all, has a picture taken from the Eiffel Tower of the preserve, I would appreciate it greatly.

Thanks!!!

PS - Baby update: Less than 4 weeks left!

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I had grand plans of making great progress on the monorail today, but my wife had other plans. I'm going to work on cleaning again tonight, and there is no point to taking pictures of that.

Suffice to say that I wish you all a Happy New Year, and perhaps - if it's alright - I'd like to share this link with you, ‘cause I thought it was a riot. Being a musician with two degrees in music - I had to laugh.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/files/twelve...scommercial.mp3

I didn't realize that we were celebrating 100 years of atonality!

Train Driver

O.K. so let me get this straight, you and your wife are having a baby, you work, and you are building a model of the Lion Country Safari. And you have enough time to dig this up off the internet. I need to take some time management classes from you. This was very good, I enjoyed it very much. Make sure you take care of that wife and baby, and we are all looking forward to the day you finish the monorail. (But take care of that baby first).

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  • 4 weeks later...
5. The all-too-important air conditioners have to be fabricated and placed on each car.

One of those things was still being used in 2006 to cool The Vortex driver box. Don't know if it is still there though. But those things pump out some serious cold.

Its still there

This doesn't surprise me - of all the mechanical problems we DID have, we NEVER had air-conditioning issues.

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Well folks, some other things have shaken loose.

I've been looking like a madman for a copy of the Monorail layout, and as many pictures of the layout from the air as possible - this is so that I can recreate this layout as realistically as possible. I want to thank everyone who has contributed photos and items for this project - please keep doing it! There is so little out there about the monorail anymore that it is truly up to you to help us keep it alive.

Until this past week, I've been frantically searching the net for anything that would resemble the actual layout - and I finally found it right here on KICenteral!

http://www.KICentral.com/history/photos/di...t=0&pos=185

I was able to rotate and resize it against a current satalite view of KI and now have the complete layout from above, and it fits perfectly!

kiarialwithlayoutcomppu1.jpg

By traindriver

So now I have the layout in two dimensions, but I still need more pictures: from the train, from the Eiffel Tower, any Arial views that you might come across so that I can get the topography correct.

Thanks for your help!

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and adorable monorail layout!

Traindriver, I'm going home to Cincinnati this weekend for a photo assignment, I'll stop by Jungle Jims and see if they've done anything on the monorail and if I get time; dig through my old model railroad stuff to see if I have anything I can send you to help with the layout.

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kiarialwithlayoutcomppu1.jpg

This is totally off topic but did anyone else notice how according to this photo from google.earth, The Racer is Kings Mill Rd. Just a funny tidbit. I'm sure it's meaning the maintainence road beside it but still, last time I drove it it wasn't Kings Mill Rd.

Anyway congratulations on everything! Good luck with all of you projects right now!

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kiarialwithlayoutcomppu1.jpg

This is totally off topic but did anyone else notice how according to this photo from google.earth, The Racer is Kings Mill Rd. Just a funny tidbit. I'm sure it's meaning the maintainence road beside it but still, last time I drove it it wasn't Kings Mill Rd.

Anyway congratulations on everything! Good luck with all of you projects right now!

All I can see in the photo is the old campground!!!!!

ARRRGGGHHHHH

I hate the fact that it's gone.

Lots of great family trips there.

The tram that took to the park and back, went by the concert area. I remember listing to someone my daughter loved at the time, and she was bummed that we didn't know it going on, so we missed the chance to go.

confirmed by the tram driver:

He said that the trams used for the campgrounds, and parking lots, came from Coney Island.

He also told us that the name of The Beast came from their roller coaster named the Teddy Bear. hence the fuzzy paws and chains!!!

Did he know what he was talking about? Who knows.

He also told us that King Cobra was coming down, he was right on that one. Can't remember if he told me that Vortex was sinking though.

Oh well, enough ranting....what topic am I in?

Oh yeah,

Congrats Train Driver. The BEST part of your life is just beginning!!!!

Don't let the stressful times make you lose sight of the great times!!!!

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lol stremmefan, must you post everything in all caps? :P

Seriously. ;)

Thanks!

I noticed that I am only seeing some of the posts - when I go to reply, I see posts that are not on the main page - can anybody tell me what's happening there?

Oh, wait... I think I see what's going on...

And thanks so much for all of your kind words.

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These are awesome pictures - I believe they were taken around '74 to 76.

At that time the animals were located in different parts of the preserve than in '84

At that time each zone represented types of animals, rather than what country they were from.

Back then the trees were in better shape than when I worked there. The rangers started putting chain-link

fence around the trees because some of the animals were scraping their horns/antlers against the bark.

I think the ride had three names through its life:

Lion Country Safari,

Wild Animal Safari, and

Wild Animal Habitat. It was WAH by 84, and I believe that was the last name change.

Was anybody working or riding after 84, and did they have that channel 5 weatherman

doing the spiel on a recording until they tore it out?

Also, Robert Reece was the director of the preserve - does anybody know him or know of his whereabouts?

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