Justin's Opening Day

[Justin_M17]

Foreword:

After months of longing, weeks of anxiety, and days of excitement, Kings Island has thrown open it's gates for the 2009 season! And as you all know, Justin was right there waiting, ready, willing, and able to join in on the fun. I went to the park with my "Sister"/best friend Mackenzie (Kenzie for short). We were supposed to meet up with our friend Dylan in another group later on in the day, but he wouldn't respond to any of my texts so we went about the day by ourselves

Pre-arrival:

At midnight, after setting my alarm for 4:00 AM I tried to go to bed. After rolling around in bed for three hours waiting for the sandman to pay a visit, I gave up on getting any sleep (A decision that I would come to regret later on in the day). I got out of bed and sat at the computer in my PJs while looking around on the KIC forums and playing a MMORPG that i've grown quite fond of over the years. Upon hearing my alarm go off at 4 I closed out everything on the computer and called Kenzie to make sure she was awake. Six rings, no answer. 23 minutes and seven calls later, she picked up the phone sounding as though she wanted nothing more than to reach her arms through her phone and strangle me.

I told her to get out of bed and get ready, and that she had a half hour to do it in. After hanging up the phone I went into the bathroom to shower and re-shave my head (Another decision that I would come to regret). Coming out of the shower and into my closet I selected an Iron Maiden: Best of The Beast T-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo pants. After checking, double checking, and triple checking to make sure that I had everything I needed for the day, I grabbed a cereal bar and left the house.

I pulled into Kenzie's driveway at 4:57AM (Three minutes to spare, YES!). She was waiting on the front porch, which I was thankful for because I did not relish the thought of knocking at the door and risking waking her mother and stepfather up. She got in the passenger seat of the car, punched me in the chest for waking her up so early (Not entirely sure I deserved that one) and reclined the chair to take a small nap. I pulled out and we were on our way!

6:00AM - 8:45AM:

We rolled through the gate slightly later than 6:00 AM as intended. Since I was too stupid to process my pass ahead of time, I had to pay for parking, no big deal. At that point in time it wasn't hard to find a place to park. After a small (but epic) battle to rouse the sleeping best friend, we walked up to buy and process our gold passes. Thankfully we arrived just in time. There was no line at all to buy or process our passes. We were both in and out in under five minutes. And so began the wait...

We ended up standing in line behind a person who looked uncannily like Unrealsk8er, I knew it wasn't him, but the two looked very much alike. It's a pity I couldn't have gotten a picture. But the wait wasn't nearly as boring as I had anticipated. I had thought ahead and put Scarface onto my iPod so we stood together and watched that (We ALMOST finished it!). We watched the movie all the way up until they started letting us through the "Security checkpoint" outside of the Scooby Doo ride to check our gold passes.

8:45AM - 3:00PM (Pre-Diamondback) :

At this point the battery on my iPod was just about dead (For those of you who don't have iPods, watching movies/playing games drains the battery at like 4x the rate that listening to music does) so I put that back in my pocket for the day. It had carried out it's purpose. We got into the line for Diamondback right in front of the stall in Nick U that sells the blueberry/vanilla ice cream. Now let's pause the story right here for a second. Kenzie doesn't spend a lot of time at amusement parks, and has a slight problem with heights. Something I aimed to cure her of during our time together today. I had talked with her beforehand about how there was no way she was going to Kings Island with me and not ride all the fun stuff. Back to the story.

As we got into the section of queue lines right before you go up the stairs to the station someone in the crowd whom I had never seen before asked me if I was on KICentral. I smiled and said yes, despite having no clue who I was talking to (If you read this, I am sorry) and went back about my business. This was the time when Kenzie really started freaking out. The tallest coaster she had been on prior to Diamondback was Runaway Reptar, so a little anxiety is to be expected. Despite having known her for nearly eight years, I really had no idea how to comfort her on this subject, so I just told her it'd be fine and walked on.

As we got to the top of the stairs I told the ride op that was assigning seats that we were a group of two, and I also asked him if we could be in the front seat. I didn't expect him to let me decide, but he was so cool about it. He asked if I was sure it was worth the wait and when I said it was he told us to go ahead and go. This made Kenzie slightly mad at me, and I got another punch in the chest (Okay, I probably deserved this one, but it was SO worth it). When it was finally our turn to ride (Four trains later) you would've thought that Kenzie had gone insane. I barely got her to sit still long enough for the ride op to check her lap bar. All the ops gave the thumbs up, and we were off

8:45AM - 3:00PM (Diamondback) :

Our single ride on Diamondback was so amazing I feel that it at least merits it's own individual section. Going up the chain lift there were so many things passing through my mind. The two most prevailant (Spelling?) of which were the little voice in the back of my head that was saying "You've been waiting for this since October!" and the little voice from beside me saying "Ohmy____inggodIcan'tbelieveIletyougetmeonthisthingi'mgoingtokillyouifisurvivethis!" (<-- Good luck reading that) in a very squeaky, high-pitched voice. As we crested the lift hill she was holding on to the handles on her restraint for dear life. Once our car had topped the crest and we were staring down the initial drop her voice gained an octave or two, to the point where dogs across the nation were doing everything in their power to cover their ears. And then the back car was released from the lift and the ride began!

I can't even describe the feeling I experienced as we flew down the track. My heart was racing at a speed to rival that of our train. Up and down, down and up, and all points in between, the experience was one of a kind. Judging by the screaming, my partner obviously didn't share my feelings. Once the train hit the block brakes at the end of the ride, my mind was still struggling to grasp the series of events that had transpired since the train pulled out of the station. My head was still pounding, my heart was still racing, the ride was not. And Kenzie wasn't making a noise of any kind. I had no idea what to think about that.

8:45AM - 3:00PM (Post-Diamondback) :

We got out of the car and proceeded out of the station. I honestly didn't know if I was surprised or not when Kenzie let out a whoop and started talking about how amazing that had been. I didn't even pretend to be listening, I just walked along with her with the biggest grin on my face, doing my absolute best to not say "I told ya so!!!". We got our free T-shirts (I'm actually surprised at the variety of sizes that they had. I expected a single size to be offered: Massive Until Washed) and walked off to Potato Works so we could eat and she could settle down for a bit.

I bought a thing of chicken bites but she's vegitarian so I got her some fries. As we ate, we sat and talked about whatever. After riding Diamondback she was excited to ride pretty much everything and anything I asked her to. It was around this time that not sleeping the previous night had caught up with me. It didn't set in gradually like it usually does, as we got up to properly dispose of our trash (Something that an amazingly large number of people don't know how to do) exhaustion hit me full force.

After this, the rest of the day seemed to just drag on. We went over to The Crypt (Where I was allegedly spotted by LongLivetheSmurfRide) and tried to ride, but just before it was our turn to ride we were informed that the ride was having technical difficulties. That was no big surprise to either of us, so we left the line and continued on our way. We rode The Beast, Vortex, The Scrambler, Zephyr, Shake, Rattle & Roll, The Grand Carousel, and Delirium. I tried to talk her into riding Slingshot and/or The X-stream Skyflier with me but she would hear of no such thing.

So we went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower (Is that supposed to be capitalized?) and looked around. It was her first time up there but she seemed surprisingly comfortable with it. My first time up there I was suffering from a severe case of Eiffelstep (Credit for that word goes to Thrill Biscuit). But she commented on how pretty all the cars in the parking lot looked with the sun glaring off of them. Then we had to turn around and see the splashdown on Diamondback from the tower (Which looks AMAZING). But after that both of us were too pooped to pop, so to speak.

We left the park at about 2:30PM and I drove straight home. Niether of us really felt like driving all the way to her house so we just got to my place and went upstairs and crashed on my bed (A comfy memory foam mattress felt almost orgasmic at that point).

In conclusion:

All in all, it was a pretty amazing day. I didn't meet up with the group from KIC like I had planned, nor did I meet up with my friend's group. But we had a good time nonetheless. We're both looking forward to going back next week where the lines hopefully won't be quite as long as they were this week

Until next week,

Justin

[Justin_M17]

I really don't know what caused the random change in line spacing in the middle of my post, but right now i'm too tired to deal with it. Lol.

[joecartoon]

I think I saw you. Or it might not have been you. I was with my older brother. We were waiting in line for The Crypt for a while before we realized that it was broken down and so we hopped the fence and left.

[tigellinus]

This was the time when Kenzie really started freaking out. The tallest coaster she had been on prior to Diamondback was Runaway Reptar, so a little anxiety is to be expected.

LMAO!! At least she rode, and I'm glad that she dug it!

As an auction rider I was wondering what the poor souls were doing from 6:00 am on, and now I have a better idea, but I'm really starting to think waiting for a long time in the morning for D-back is a waste of time, maybe...

Btw, why was shaving your head a regret? You never explained that part?! sunburn maybe?

[Justin_M17]

This was the time when Kenzie really started freaking out. The tallest coaster she had been on prior to Diamondback was Runaway Reptar, so a little anxiety is to be expected.

LMAO!! At least she rode, and I'm glad that she dug it!

As an auction rider I was wondering what the poor souls were doing from 6:00 am on, and now I have a better idea, but I'm really starting to think waiting for a long time in the morning for D-back is a waste of time, maybe...

Btw, why was shaving your head a regret? You never explained that part?! sunburn maybe?

Oh yeah, I guess I did forget to mention that. But yes, a very bad sunburn, lol. And the hair has started to grow back which makes it very difficult to put aloe on it.