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Sick Children Get Break From Daily Troubles At Kings Island


The Interpreter
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Heartwarming. It's nice to read a positive article in the modern news. It's great that children with illnesses can enjoy time at the park without having to worry about stares and large crowds to get lost in.

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The entire park industry quietly funds organizations like Make A Wish and Give Kids The World. Not just Cedar Fair and Six Flags, but Disney, Universal and Busch all give thousands and thousands of free admissions each year, lodging and travel. It's their way of giving back....and it is both heart warming and heart breaking at the same time. If you could only see the parents and the kids...Many of these kids will never recover, and this will be their last trip. Others will. It's the right thing to do, and the park industry seldom toots its own horn about what it does in this arena.

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Several years ago, there was a PBS documentary called "A Lion in the House." It was a documentary filmed at Cincinnati Children`s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati that followed five families over six years as they had kids battling various types of cancer. One of the patients made a trek to Kings Island, and was able to have fun and a wonderful time, even though he had to have a nurse with him during his visit. Sadly, if I remember correctly, that kid did not survive his cancer. But for those hours that he was at the park, he was able to be a kid again, and forget about all the pain that the cancer and cancer treatments were causing him.

Programs like this are wonderful programs. Anytime a place can add a smile to a kids face that has been through more suffering then most adults can imagine, it is a wonderful gesture.

During my first year at Coney on a particularly hot and busy day, I was working the Scrambler with a coworker. Our manager asked us how we were doing. We responded with tired due to the crowds and ready to go home. My manager responded with "Look at all the smiles you are putting on the kids faces who are riding your ride, that`s what makes this job worth it."

A few years later, I was working the Spin-A-Ree and helicopter ride (we were short staffed) and it had stormed early in the afternoon. No one was at the park, but we stayed open, because the Boys and Girls Club of Cincinnati was coming in for a brief two hour visit at the end of the night to ride the rides. I had a small boy, probably around five or six years old who ended up riding my ride. When he entered he said "I remember you from last year. You`re that nice guy that was running the helicopters last year and let me ride three times in a row." It is those things that have made my job at Coney so enjoyable. Being able to put a smile on the face of a kid more then makes up for the low pay, long hours and hot temperatures.

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The entire park industry quietly funds organizations like Make A Wish and Give Kids The World. Not just Cedar Fair and Six Flags, but Disney, Universal and Busch all give thousands and thousands of free admissions each year, lodging and travel. It's their way of giving back....and it is both heart warming and heart breaking at the same time. If you could only see the parents and the kids...Many of these kids will never recover, and this will be their last trip. Others will. It's the right thing to do, and the park industry seldom toots its own horn about what it does in this arena.

And always remember that we never know what's going to happen, and any of our trips to the park may be our last..... Based on my experiences, I always try to treat every trip that way!!!

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My daughter is one of the Adventures for wish kids. KI not only provides addmission to the park, and lunch, they also give each child $10 in scooby bucks! In the past Paramount even had a winter party for these kids at the park, giving each child a stuffed animal.

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