Trip Report (Jul 18th)

[Justin_M17]

Okay, trip report #3 from Justin! This time I went along with my girlfriend and her two brothers. I'll skip the pre-arrival antics and pick up from the time we passed the front gate onto I-street. It's also worth mentioning that this is their first time to Kings Island (I tend to take alot of first-timers...)

We walked through the front gate as the National Anthem was playing over the loudspeaker. We ran as fast as we could to the entrance to FoF. I always love taking people for their first ride on this, especially if we're the first ride of the day and they didn't see the test runs. We fill up the back car and the ops send us without waiting for anybody else, which was a real surprise to me. The ride shot forward, my girlfriend screamed and one of her brothers screamed "HOLY S***!!" which naturally put a huge smile on my face. The other brother seemed slightly queasy so I'm guessing he thought it would be best for him to keep his mouth shut.

After FoF they decided to revoke my ride-choosing privleges (Spelling?) and went for a ride that would calm them down. With them checking the park map numerous times, we arrived at the Zephyr. We sat and spun around on that a couple times and they decided that they would ride the park's "Landmark Rides" which means, The Beast, Vortex, and SoB.

After our ride on The Beast it was time to break out the aspirin. I love that coaster but I hate how it beats you up so bad riding in the back car. They wanted to ride in the front seat on Vortex but I convinced them that it was a much better experience in the back of the train, and most people who've ridden both the front and back will agree with me. After buying our photo and some T-shirts from Vortex we hurried to SoB. Surprisingly the wait wasn't as bad as it usually is. That's the benefit of going during the work week, I guess. After seeing the lift hill one of the brothers (The eldest of the two) started having second thoughts. He asked me

"Da** Justin, how can you ride all of these things? They're scaring the living hell outta me"

I lift up my left sleeve and reply with a simple answer: "Jeff, I don't have Carpe Diem tattooed here for nothing"

He didn't know what Carpe Diem meant, so I explained it to him and after hearing the reasoning behind it he agreed to get on the coaster. We got into the front seat this time, for his sake. We all had a good time discussing the view from the midpoint of the lift hill up to the peak of it, and then it was time for the screaming to begin. I really don't like when people scream on rides but it's something I've bad to get used to.

After SoB I decided that I would show them the rest of Action Zone since we were already up there. We all went onto Top Gu...Erm...Flight Deck and had a good time. After getting off of that one me and Jenn (Girlfriend) were still ready for more, but her brothers looked like they were ready to call it quits for awhile. So we all walked to the Drop Tower. Her brothers saw it fall and decided that it was best that they skipped this one, but me and Jenn ran into the line. This was both of our first rides on Drop Tower (Up until yesterday this was the only ride at KI that I hadn't been on except a couple of the rides in Nick-U because I'm too tall for them. I hate the feeling you get when falling straight down) So needless to say we were both slightly nervous. We took off our sandals and got in the seats we were told to get into, and as the ride started to spin and rise Jenn got slightly scared.

"Justin, I'm spinning. The ride is spinning. Are we supposed to be spinning?" (Said inside of about 7 seconds)

I told her to calm down and that we were supposed to spin during the ascent. Once we got to the top she looked out at the GWL and said something along the lines of:"Wow, the view is really nice from up HEEEEEEERRRRRREEEE!" and then we got off the ride.

She needed a bit of time to calm herself after that one. But after she felt okay again we went over to Invertigo. We sat in one of the middle sections so we could face eachother as we rode the ride. Me and Jenn were going backwards first. It was my first time going backwards first so it was a pretty fun ride. Next up on the list: Delirium

Joe and Jeff chickened out when we were standing in line and they saw just how high it swings. So they went out onto one of the benches to listen as their big sister screamed herself hoarse Going on this ride is a ton of fun, but it always scares me. As we swing over the overhang thing with the ride name over it, I'm always scared I'm going to hit my legs on the blue rods that go up from the name. I tuck my legs up every time >.<

After all this excitement it was time for lunch. We all agreed on a stop at the festhaus so we could eat in air conditioning (It was extremely hot yesterday). So we got a pepperoni pizza and some Cokes (Which is hardly enough to feed four people, but we got some food in our bellies) and that seemed to be just what the two brothers needed. They were ready to go back to AZ and ride the rides they had missed out on, and I was ready to go with them, but the early-onset maternal instincts in my girlfriend kicked in and we were told that we were only allowed to ride calm rides for the next half hour.

So we went out of festhaus and did Viking Fury, then walked into Coney Mall and did The Monster and The Scrambler, and then finished up our calm ride streak with Shake, Rattle & Roll. Then we decided that it was time for a visit to Boomerang Bay. We walked to the train and rode that into the waterpark. We stopped outside of the restrooms and I opened up the backpack and handed everyone their swimsuits and we went to get changed. When everyone was done I got all of our clothes and put them into the backpack, it was a tight fit but it worked out. We tried to go to the wave pool to get some chairs but they were all taken, so we walked back up near the kiddie pool and (After much trouble on my part extracting our towels from the backpack) laid them out in the grass and set the pack down.

None of us felt like standing in line for the slides right yet, since it was such a hot day. But we got into the lazy river and floated around that twice. When we got out we felt that we had finally beaten the hot weather and decided it was time for some slides. We got on the two that were just left of the river entrance. (I don't know the names of any of the rides at BB, sorry) and we had a blast riding them Even though I couldn't breathe going down one of them. After about an hour swimming in the wave pool it was time to head back to the main park. We were all pretty badly sunburnt, Jenn more than anyone else (I guess that's the price women pay for wearing those skimpy little bikinis...MWAHAHA! )

The rest of the day was pretty boring. We did The Cypt a couple of times, I finally got them onto Firehawk which they loved and wanted to go on again, but by the time we were done it was an hour and a half wait. So after another ride on FoF we went home and played Monopoly XD

It was a really fun day. I look forward to taking them back in a couple weeks. Sorry for not having pictures, none of us have a camera so there's not much we can do about it.