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WinterFest Coming back?


WildCat
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OK, say they did bring back Winterfest.... With the recent reconstruction of the fountain I highly doubt they would do Ice Skating in there again... unless they use some other type of structure (other than the fountain base itself) to hold the ice.

The park re-did the fountain because it was leaking thousands of gallon of water a day. My only guess as to how... years of freezing water inside of it. Freezing water expands thus would most likely slowly push left/right/up/down/side to side. While most of it would go up the ice under that can only go down and out pressing on the walls of the fountain, creating cracks. Which, like driveways and roads, allows running water into the cracks where, once cold again, will freeze and repeat the expansion and cracking process.

Now I've never been to Winterfest so I don't know if they already did this with a temporary structure in the fountain to maintain it or not... but if they didn't... this would be something they need to think about.

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I doubt it was leaking thousands of gallons of water per day. That would flood I-Street in no time. It would at least make the ground under it unstable and cause it to get pot holes everywhere. Now, a thousand gallons a month, that would make more sense...

I'm sure freezing it had partial responsiblity for it cracking, but I would guess the main reason would be simply that it was a 30 year old slab of concrete. At that, it was covered by a foot of water for half of the year. Since we live in an extremely diverse climate, that causes a lot of cracking as well. But yeah, freezing it didn't help one bit.

Edited by beastfreak
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Actually, since the fountain is lower than International Street it wouldn't flood it. Only way it could flood international street is if they pumped more water into it than it could hold.

Remember, the found covers a large space, with lot of pipes and pumps running underneath. Everything could be leaking and it not create such an unstable ground. Plus... its not like it was washing the ground under it away just making it moist. So it is still able to with hold the weight of the fountain, since the pressure isn't too high in each one place.

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Yeah, but the moist ground will begin to errode away. I'm assuming that this isn't a problem that just happened in the past few years, but started slowly and got out of hand.

When I said it would flood International Street, I didn't mean that we'd be walking through 6 feet of water (although that would be fun), but I mean more like all of the grass and stuff around it would be extremely moist and marshy. Remember that all water has to do is hit clay or bedrock and it'll start traveling up again under most conditions. Judging by the foundations that they've laid for the more recent rides, it's not that far down to the bedrock.

Anyway, it seems like we're more or less batting around the same points. It seems like we argue science on here more than we talk about PKI. biggrin.gif

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Okay this forum.....if i remember right is about Winterfest, not the errosion of the fountains. I think they could aasily find another lplace to put in an temporary ice rink relatively close to the enterance of the park, there has to be a away! But thin rding ridesin the winter would be fun , but it would be cold. lol dress warmly. And hopefully if they went though with thw WinterFest they could keep the Eiffel Tower open so everyone could see the park and landscape with snow on it.

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Okay this forum.....if i remember right is about Winterfest, not the errosion of the fountains. I think they could aasily find another lplace to put in an temporary ice rink relatively close to the enterance of the park, there has to be a away! But thin rding ridesin the winter would be fun , but it would be cold. lol dress warmly. And hopefully if they went though with thw WinterFest they could keep the Eiffel Tower open so everyone could see the park and landscape with snow on it.

I totally agree. They could do it Fountain Square style and just put water in a spot and wait for it to freeze.

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i think they need to keep the fountain running until its comp. frozen solid..... that way you could see the water shooting up comp. still

this is going to happen for two reasons. Running a pump when water begins to turn to ice is a big no-no. When water no longer lubricates the pump, the first problem you have is burning the pump up. Without water to cool the impeller, the impeller and casing will heat up, expand the pump packing, cause the pump to leak a lot, like a stream of water, and then burns up the pump motor. the other problem is, water pumps are designed to pump water and thats it. Introduciung air into a pump can keep the pump from doing its job, but at very high RPMs, air can actually act as rocks and dent the impeller because of how hard it hits the impeller. (Impeller is the turbine style thing that moves the water, in a pump.) I am sure the pumps that power the fountain, were replaced when they re did the fountain, and I am sure they are very costly considering how much water they have to move for that fountain. It wouldn't surprise me if they were fire pumps with electric motors.

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whoopsie...anyways...

the pump consists of two parts - the motor and the acutal pump assembly. in pool pumps, the motor isn't cooled by the water - its a separate piece that can be replaced incase of rusting, a broken motor, etc. that way, you don't have to replace the whole pump (very expensive.)

however the part about the water freezing and damaging the pump turbine is 100% true. its like trying to drive a car at 80 mi/hr while people are throwing one cubic foot chunks of ice at it. the car will stop fairly quickly.

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Actually they never froze the watter in the fountain. What they did was build a area inside the fountain that held watter and all the freezing lines, like when they have a hocky game at the area. the fountain just got old and needed some fixen.

By the way I ent to winterfest for yearz and loved it all... If you never got the chance top go you will be in for one of the best park experiences there is.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well in all reality they wouldn't even have to worry about the Ice rink at all. With all the advances in that field that have been made they can easily use a Glice rink instead. What exactly is Glice???? well it is a synthetic material that can be used to Ice skate on......ever wonder how Disney has Ice-Skating characters during the holidays at all their parks.....That's how. Glice is not frozen water like the Ice rink was....so it could really be laid down anywhere....including the new fountains and you would not need to worry about damage. Plus if the winter is unseasonably warm....above freezing, then you don't have to worry about closing down the rink biggrin.gif

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  • 1 month later...

I have two things to say:

1) This is Cincinnati. In Cincinnati, in the winter, it gets cold and it snows. And even if it is unseasonably warm, it will still get below freezing.

2) I know for a fact that none of the steel coasters would be open during cold weather. There is a cutoff point, I think its around 40-45 degrees. We have needed to wait to open Top Gun a few times in the post-season because of the cold weather. But I think (and I emphasize think) that the woodies (Racer, Beast and SOB) would still be able to run unless there was ice on the track or something. But I could be wrong about that.

Edited by SOB/Gun Steve-O
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Wouldn`t Flight of Fear be able to run in the cold since the building it is located in is heated? I know the big dome is not heated and air conditioned as well as the queue, station and launch tunnel but it still has HVAC in it. I know on the survey the park asked what rides you would want to see and one of them was The Beast, so obviously it can run in cold wather.

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The cold weather would make it virtually impossible to operate nearly all of PKI's outdoor attractions. However, the indoor attractions could be operated, namely:

1. Flight of Fear

2. Scooby Doo & the Haunted Castle

3. The Paramount FX Theater

4. The Eiffel Tower (okay, it's semi-outdoors, but can operate in the cold)

5. Laser Tag (Pay as you play though)

6. The Paramount Theater (A Christmas show can be held there)

7. Festhaus (A character meal can be held there)

Hence, Winterfest can return. However, with so few attractions, I don't know if PKI would have much financial incentive to revive Winterfest.

Have a groovy day!

Italian Chef

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While gathering for the last ride of The Beast... Jeff gave his spiel and mentioned that it is sad to close the park every year. That he hated doing it, even though he knows it will be back open during the spring. Then of course we went on to give the "that is why we planning something new" (using his fingers as quotation symbols) "OPEN ALL YEAR ROUND". I know they would never be open all year round but they could do just Winterfest for a while. They did do the survey on it.

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it could be a place to warm up again, but all indoor rides would ruin the flavor of winter fest

See if any "real" enthusiasts care about the season/flavor of Winterfest. We go to ride the rides, not to drink hot chocolate and skate on ice. Why do that when I can ride two of the best rides at the park, and with heat. I don't feel like going there and standing on International Street staring at my livelyhood (rides) the whole night. That would be torture. Jeff Siebert will give us enthusiasts hope.

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LOL, that was good sobrider. I also like your new signature. I think that the park is seriously considering bringing back Winterfest. I for one would go, even it required a seperate charga above the season pass. I would pay even if only Flight of Fear, TRTR and Scooby are open. However, as I recall from the seeing a brochure about the last Winterfest, they also had the train running through the woods with lots of lights as well as the dodgems. I hope it returns for 2004.

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Maybe PKI is investing in some high priced NASA technology allowing them to create an invisible shell over the important rides in the park allowing them to operate year round in a heated environment? Sounds pretty sweet, huh? (A guy can dream, can't he?)

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