KI Double Day Trip Report

[Justin_M17]

Edit: I apologize for the paragraph spacing (Or lack thereof). I've typed this TR on my Blackberry and can't seem to get the post to keep it's spacing once I hit the post button.

After not having been to KI for just over a month I decided that when I got my check cashed on Friday morning, I was taking my new roommate Jamie to Kings Island and buying her a pass. Little did I know that I would be spending two extraordinary days with her at the park!

Friday June 11th:

Jamie and I both work 6PM - 6AM at a packaging plant just off of the Monroe exit to I75. After getting off work Friday morning, we decided to go to KI. After running and picking her daughter up from the babysitter we drove to Trenton so we could drop her off at a different babysitter and so I could cash my check. While I was in the bank I got a call from my brother Mason asking what I was up to that day. I told him I was going to KI and he asked if him and his friend Tyler could join us, despite them having been at the park the day beforehand. So after I got my money we drove across Trenton to my dad's house to pick them up. After everyone and everything was in the car, we headed off towards Kings Island!

Since we had taken so long to do all the stuff we had to do before coming, we didn't get to the park until roughly 11:30. And after I had bought Jamie's pass and everything, we unanimously agreed that Boomerang Bay was our first stop. Out of everyone in the group I'm the only one who knew my way around the park so I lead everyone back to the KI&MVRR where I was hoping I would find TrainedBeast working so she could treat my friends to one of her epic spiels, but no such luck So we rode the train back to Boomerang Bay.

Upon arriving in Boomerang Bay the first thing I noticed was the music. As I hadn't bothered coming yet this season I was afraid the dreadful "Beach Boys + Bryan Adams Soundtrack" would still be on a loop (Not that I don't love both The Beach Boys and Bryan Adams, but if you spend more than 30 minutes in BB they get a bit old...) But I was pleasantly surprised when I heard music from Queen, The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix instead! Kudos to CF on their music choice for BB this year. Anyway, back to the trip report. After a quick stop in the smoking section for Jamie and Mason, we stuck our bags under a chair by the wave pool and went off to some slides.

I'm terrible about remembering the names of the slides in BB, so I can't offer a very detailed report of this part of our day. But our first slide was the Awesome Aussie Twister (I think...) Which was followed by the family raft slide, and a lap or two around the river. Then it was decided that we should head back to the park for some rides

After we had gotten off the train and back into the main park, we agreed on making Beast our first ride of the day. When we got there the sign outside of the entrance was showing a 60 minute wait, but as we walked through the queue we noticed that there was only a station wait for the front and rear seats and that the majority of the other rows were walk-ons. We went ahead and opted for rides in the center of the train so we wouldn't have to wait. This ride was the test run for my new bluetooth headset for my phone. I was curious as to whether or not it would stay in my ear throughout the ride (In hindsight I probably could have chosen a less turbulent test run ride, but it's whatever) and I quickly found out that it would NOT stay in my ear. Right as we came out of the first tunnel it flew out of my ear. Throughout the ride I had figured it was gone, but as we hit the final brakes before the station Tyler (who was riding directly behind me) reached up and threw it into my lap. I was amazed that he had managed to catch it, but very thankful nonetheless!

After exiting the ride, we decided to just walk around the park and that we would ride whatever caught our attention first, which turned out to be Zephyr. We showed up just as the a cycle was ending. After our ride had started up, the ride op who was operating the ride proved to be very entertaining! After telling us that we were on Firehawk, and playing a game of Marco Polo with us for the majority of the ride he definitely made my day when the ride began to slow. He told us, and I quote "Okay, so maybe you're not on Firehawk. You MIGHT be on Zephyr. But that's cool, cause this is better than Firehawk anyway." Several riders screamed at him asking why. "Do you wanna know? Do you REALLY wanna know? I'll tell you. Zephyr never goes down. Never. I've tried. It just doesn't happen. Tell that to your friendly Firehawk operators." Several guests, myself included, thought that he actually made a pretty good point. In all my time of coming to the park I have never seen Zephyr down for any reason. Firehawk on the other hand... Enough said.

After this ride we spent a good part of our day just walking around, taking pictures, and having fun in general. We didn't ride much of anything for a good three or four hours. Around 6PM mine and Jamie's lack of sleep finally caught up with us. We had been up for just over 24 hours at that point, and 12 of them had been spent at work, so needless to say we were wiped out. But the kids wanted to ride one more ride so Tyler and I went to ride X-treme Skyflyer since the other two are scared to ride it, and Jamie and Mason went to go ride Delirium. After our rides we got the kids to agree to go home on the promise that we'd be back the next day.

On our way out of the park we stopped and poked around in a few of the shops along I-street, and I had Tyler distract Jamie so I could run into one and buy her a "#1 Mom" keychain since I remembered her looking for one last time we were at the park. After I got that, we were on our way.

Saturday June 12th:

I wake up at 7AM Saturday morning and look out my window only to see a thunderstorm raging outside. I go into the computer room to check the forecast for Mason to see if the rain is supposed to stop at any point during the day, and the hourly forecast showed an 80% chance of rain all the way up until 11PM. I figured that since we have season passes anyway it couldn't hurt much to go ahead and go on the off chance that the forecasts might be wrong, but since Jamie is the only one of the four of us with a valid driver's license I thought it might be best to wake her up and get her opinion, which proved to be nearly impossible. So I went ahead and went back to sleep as well.

I wake up at nearly 2PM and notice the rain has finally stopped. So I got everyone else up and had them get ready. Today we were taking Jamie's daughter Kimmy with us so it took us a little longer than usual to get ready due to the need to double, triple, and quadruple check to make sure that we had everything she could possibly need in her daiper bag. *Sigh* Mothers =P

Anyway, by 3PM we were heading out the door. It only took us 20 minutes to get from our apartment in Trenton to KI's Gold Pass lot, which is record time. This was mainly due to the fact that Jamie has a foot that's heavier than a cinder block After getting Kimmy all situated in her stroller and gathering everything else we needed, we headed into the park. Jamie made it very clear that our first stop was the antique photo shop in Rivertown because Jamie wanted some pictures of her and the baby. Once we got back there it took us a good 45 minutes to get in and out, but the pictures are absolutely adorable!

After that we went to ride Beast. Tyler and Mason rode first while Jamie and I waited at the exit with Kimmy, intending to do a parent swap. But as the kids got off the ride they didn't tell the ride ops about that, so we just went ahead and waited in line since it was a station wait anyway.

After Beast Jamie decided that she wanted to ride Vortex. The line for this was quite a bit longer so Jamie and I decided to make sure that we'd be able to parent swap it. We told Tyler and Mason they could ride first again as long as they waited for the row with the shortest line, which they happily agreed to. While waiting for them to appear in the station Jamie and I hung around the exit chatting with a ride op and making sure that we would be able to parent swap since the two people who were currently in line weren't technically Kimmy's parents, but we were assured that we would be fine. Once Tyler and Mason exited the ride we were given our choice of any row on the train, so naturally we went for 5-1. Awesome ride.

As we walked away from Vortex there was a debate about what we would ride next. The kids wanted to see Spongebob 3D at the action theater but Jamie and I had seen it so many times that we'd be content with never watching it again. So we walked up the midway through Coney Mall and over to Action Zone where X-treme Skyflyer caught my eye. I tried for about 10 minutes to convince Jamie to fly with me but no such luck. So instead Tyler and I went off to ride Flight Deck while Jamie and Mason sat for a smoke break and watched Kimmy.

The queue for Flight Deck was more or less empty so we went straight to the front seat and got right on the ride. The ride was fairly uneventful, but as we were heading into the tunnel along the exit we saw a group of roughly 12 people running through the queue to Son of Beast being lead by a child who was roughly 10 years old and exclaiming that he "Didn't care what Cedar Point said, he paid to get in Kings Islands today and he was riding Son of Beast one way or another!" Yeah, good luck with that, buddy.

We met back up with the other 3 at the smoking section near the exit for Flight Deck and Tyler and Mason decided they wanted to go ride Monster, but Jamie told them they would have to wait for her and I to ride Racer first, which I was more than okay with, so off we went. On the way over there Tyler and Mason decided they wanted to ride first and sprinted into the queue as soon as it was in sight, so Jamie and I went to the exit with the baby and explained to the ride ops about our parent swap. We had a pretty long wait because of the fact that the blue side was closed for the night by then. When the kids got off we hopped in their seats which prompted one of the men who was about to be seated in the row to literally try to push us back across the train onto the exit side of the station, even after I tried calmly explaining the situation to him. Thankfully a ride op came to address the situation before either of us lost our temper.

It was actually a really fun ride (Is it just me or does Racer seem faster at sunset?) up until the point where we found out that while we were riding, Kimmy had dropped her sippy cup through the fence of the exit and into an out-of-bounds area. Jamie asked if one of the ride ops would be able to go and get it at the end of the night but they simply handed her a slip of paper to fill out and told her to take it up with guest relations, and in a very rude dismissive tone as well. Needless to say we weren't very happy with that, but I digress.

After we left the exit for Racer Tyler got a call from his mother saying she was at the guest drop off waiting to pick up him and Mason, so those two walked off leaving me, Jamie, and Kimmy to ourselves. Needless to say our riding was done for the night. So we poked around a bit in the shops until the sun was completely down, and then we walked up to the front gate and I bought a couple pairs of the flashing devil horn tiaras for us to wear (But apparently those things don't stay on your head so well unless you have hair, which I quickly found out...) to Snoopy's starlight spectacular, which was starting up at that time.

As we neared the Eiffel Tower both Jamie and Kimmy's faces lit up brighter than all of the lights in the park put together. I was a little shocked myself to be perfectly honest. I figured that this would just be a hastily thrown together display of christmas lights like the ones that pop up everywhere during the holiday season, but I was quickly proven wrong. And this was one of the few times that I was happy to eat my own words! I wish I could find the words to describe my feelings about the show, but I really can't. We walked around and enjoyed looking at the displays and visiting with the characters that were walking around up until the PA system announced the start of the fireworks. I tried getting Kimmy to look up at them but she had fallen asleep on my shoulder so Jamie and I started heading towards the front gate feeling very satisfied with our day at the park.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. We won't be able to get back to the park this weekend cause we only get every other weekend off, but we're very much looking forward to our next visit!

[The Interpreter]

Awesome trip report. Y'all had a great time, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it.

Thanks!

[KI FANATIC 37]

Goodness, what is up with all these people!!

Well I am glad you had a good time and sorry for this guy ^ above me...