Soak City/Kings Island 5/27

[Magm&MForce24/7]

My Mom and I arrived at the park at around 9:30 awaiting a VERY lengthy line just to the parking booths. We were backed up all the way to the Intersection of Kings Island Drive and Western Row Rd. The line seemed to take forever but finally we made it through. We parked at around 10 and found our way to the new entrance where they had already started to let people through. I really enjoy the looks of it and enjoy going through it rather than a hole in a fence... Now here is a mistake on KI part. Like in the regular park everyone is allowed through the gate, but only Gold Pass are allowed through a second gate. We were all herded in a very small area to the right of the entrance. I cannot describe how many people were in this tiny area! Now instead of how in the park the entrance for gold is a small opening in a temporary fence in Soak City they just dropped a rope for everyone to herd through. Everyone just raised their pass when passing by the guard. Now imagine hundreds of people going through at one time. Anyone could have made through, and I was consistently being pushed and being hit by other people and strollers. I believe to fix this problem they should look at what Cedar Point does. Just like Soak City(KI), Cedar Point has flat screens at the entrance. At Cedar Point some turnstiles are used for Platinum and the others for everyone else. I think at Soak City(KI) they should 1. Not allow people in before 10:30 as it caused too much crowding and 2. Use the screens like Cedar Point and divide the ticket scanning stations for gold and then for regular, or just not allow regular to be scanned. If they would divide the ticket scanning stations, allow more room for people as I do not enjoy being sprayed by a million peoples sun screen. Anyways we headed to the Breakers Bay (Great Barrier Reef) as we suspected most would head to the new wave pool(which they did). We found 2 seats one under the shade, and the other not. My mom had received a free drinks wristband perk so we went and got her wristband at a snack stand. Afterwards we got in line for Mondo Monsoon(Tazmanian Typhoon). We knew it would have long lines all day and wanted to have the shortest wait possible. At 11 we were allowed to enter the queue and ended up waiting about 1/2 hour. We decided to ride the Zoom Flume(Snowy River Rampage) and headed down the new path back to the slide. That new path is great! Instead of walking around the whole water park we arrived very shortly to the slide. Sadly the line extended all the way to the entrance and later outside and need to use the switchback. We decided to ride anyways and waited FOREVER. That slide has to have the worst capacity in the whole park. The line moved dead slow. But the ride was great! I love the wooden location of the ride compared to the open pavement found in most of the water park. We headed to Soak City Grill to redeem our 5.99 Memorial Day FunPerk coupons. I have to say that burger was really good, one of the best I've had in a long time, very impressed. After we finished eating I decided to go by myself and ride Pineapple Pipeline(Bondi Pipeline), Thunder Falls(Didgeridoo Falls), and Tropical Twister. All of those lines went by fast and were very enjoyable. I had never been on Thunder Falls before but was very thrilled. It was probably one of the best single tube slides I've ridden. I was constantly changing from forwards to backwards on the turns, what a thrill! I checked in with my mom and headed to our locker. I decided I would look at the Diamondback webcam to see how lines were inside the park and was presently surprised, Diamondback wasn't using any switchbacks! I told my mom so we packed everything into the locker and walked to Diamondback. As years go on I've come to really enjoying the ride. When it opened I thought the ride was extremely boring and force-less, but recently I've been getting AMAZING air time on all the hills, almost ejector. Sadly we had a group of girls behind us who thought it would be funny to scream at the highest pitch possible on purpose(it was the most fake scream I had ever heard..) That made the ride less enjoyable having to cover my ears the whole time. Sadly the last 2 years that has became more and more common. Last year two tween girls did the same thing causing my hearing in my right ear ring, have pain, and hear faintly for the rest of the day. It's sad that some people don't have respect for others on rides anymore... We headed to WindSeeker for the last ride of our visit since it had been closed every other time and had a great ride as usual. Some people don't really enjoy it but I think it's one of the top 3 flats in the park, the views are amazing! Disappointingly the crew was VERY slow at getting the ride loaded and took over 5 minutes each time loading the ride. We left at around 3pm and had a great time despite some negatives!

Overall I think the Soak City transformation was great with keeping the Australian theme, building a second wave pool for crowds, a new entrance, and just small things like paint and adding a pathway.

Thanks for reading this lengthy TR! - MagmMForce247

[The Interpreter]

Thank you for posting it! For those of us not apt to be in Soak City any time soon, you have given us some valuable perspectives.