PKI June 4

[PKIDelirium]

Trip Report June 6 2003

After arriving at PKI about 1:20 PM, I somehow avoided a keyhole photo ambush, and headed straight to the return visit booth and nabbed Walk-On-Wednesday passes for me and my mom. (She doesn't ride anything but SDATHC, but I'll just use her pass to ride more. Came in handy later, too) After eating Larosa's cardboard, errr, pizza, we walk right on Scooby. I got 1380 and she got 670 (so much for a new record! I couldn't have hit a building with that blaster, and several of the targets were off!)

Next, Action Zone. After talking to an ACE member for a few minutes near DOT, I walk to the boonies (they need to rent go-karts there or something) and ride Top Gun in 1:1, and get a great (but illegal) picture of the near-miss with SoB. After getting off, I hike all the way out of Top Gun and down SoB's queue. I get in 3:3, and wow, those new bars are great! Even over the wheels there's no leg banging. The ride is much improved. Here's the bad part of my ride: Entering the the first helix, the bar shoves itself down at LEAST one click and staples me in, and I wasn't even holding the bar! OW! Stapling may be bad on Racer, but its even worse on SoB. But aside from that, it was a GREAT ride.

Next, I pull out one of the WOW passes and head for my first-ever ride on Drop Zone. When I get there, the attendant's hole puncher was broken, so she just gave me the pass back and told me to go ride Delirium! Cool! Man, DZ is dangerous to stand under, I'm standing there at the walk-on gate waiting for the next cycle, and when it dropped, someone's water bottle lid popped off, and I had to dodge water raining down! (It nailed the attendant lol) They direct me to seat 3, so I get in and the op pushes down my harness. Is that seat belt magnetic or something? It's hard to do! Nearing the top, it seems kinda shaky, and it seems to go much slower up there than last year. Seat 3 faces straight at SoB, and there's a stack of King Cobra track and some old trams back there in the field. Getting off, my mom said that on the cycle before me (The same one that the water bottle spilled on), she almost got beaned by a pair of sandals!

Next stop: Delirium. The attendant punched my pass and gave me a ticket. I went up the walk-on queue, got behind 3 other people there, and happened to look down at my ticket. @$#&@!!! It's not for until 3:45! That's an hour away! I would've shaken my club, but my mom would'nt let me have the water bottle.

Oh well, better than waiting in line. I go ride Viking Fury, then AE. All of the AE Effects that I know of were on, including the "creaking chain" soundtrack on the first lift.

Next, I ride Racer 2 times, the line is so short it's a walk-on both times. But each time I rode, the driver pushed the button to dispatch, and the brakes hissed but didn't release. He had to bang it several times for it to work. Next I ride Zephyr quickly, and its about time for my Delirium walk-on.

I get there at about 3:40, and go on up to the gate. I have to wait one cycle, then I get on. I haven't seen this before, but today they're assigning seat numbers to everyone as they go to board. I got seat 49, facing the control booth, and I think I saw AZ Kinda Guy. I got an INTENSE ride, and I saw that the land right behind the ride is level and fenced, you can see it pretty good staring at it from straight above:p.

Its almost 4, and my mom says she wants to leave in an hour. So I leave her behind and beat feet to The Beast.

I get there, get my ticket, and head to the station. I get in the third row of the next-to-last car, the driver gets the thumbs up, he hits the button, and it hisses, clunks, and sits there. Like The Racer op earlier, he tried again, but it did the same thing again. They do an up bar then a down bar (Can I say that here?),get the thumbs up, and it hisses and sits there, just like before, so they open gates and get everyone off. By now, the other 2 trains are stacked up in the brake run VERY close to each other. Maintenance shows up and start doing something in the control booth, and they send ops back to talk to the people in the two trains stuck in the brakes. After about 20 minutes, they send the train out on a test run, empty the other two, and start doing continuous test runs. And each time a train came back, all kinds of alarms would go off in the control booth. Finally, I have the attendant hand me my hat from the shelf, and head to Vortex. By now, its about 4:30. I get in line for Vortex, second car, second row, behind a girl about my age. A second later, another girl about the same age cuts RIGHT in front of me. She said she was with the other girl a minute ago before I was there, and was just going back to her place. Well, that's LINE JUMPING! As soon as she gets in, I flag down the attendant and tell him what happened, and he has a brief chat with her before unlocking her harness and making her leave! PKI does really good enforcing their line jumping rules. So I get in the next train, and get a good ride with only a little headbanging.

Of course, just after I left, Beast reopened! So I take the other walk-on pass and get the very back seat. GREAT ride! The Beast always rocks, but the back seat is the best.

OK, its after 5 now and time to head out. We go down Coney Mall through Action Zone, and I go to On Location while she goes to Stunt crew grill. They have a great new t-shirt this year, it says "Paramount's Kings Island Coaster Freak" on top, and made up dictionary meanings of "Coaster Freak" underneath. Dang it! I forgot to bring money! Oh well, always next time. Time to head out now, overall a GREAT day, Walk-On-Wednesday rocks!

[coasterbilly]

wow! what a day you had! Hopefully i get a day like that when i go out there. Can you explain to me the whole thing with Walk-on-Wednesdays, i wanna do it, but can you explain what i need to do to get it and use it? I really appreciate it.

Edited January 1, 1970 by coasterbilly

[bignathan4403]

wow! what a day you had! Hopefully i get a day like that when i go out there. Can you explain to me the whole thing with Walk-on-Wednesdays, i wanna do it, but can you explain what i need to do to get it and use it? I really appreciate it.

I think you have to have Gold Season Passes for that.

when are you going?

[PKIDelirium]

OK, here's the Walk-On-Wednesdays details:

If you are one of the first 1,000 Gold Passholders into the park on a wednesday, you show your gold pass at the Return Visit Booth(where they sell the TimberWolf tickets) near Keyhole Photo 1. They mark your hand and give you a WOW Boarding Pass, a laminated piece of paper with holes for each ride it can be used on. You can ride Beast, Wild Thornberries, and SDATHC, and choose either Drop Zone or Delirium. (I got lucky and used it for both) At each ride, they punch a hole in the circle for each ride, and give you the pass back, and a paper ticket with a boarding time(usually it's for the current time, but like my Delirium ticket, it can be for later) You know that new fencing by The Beast's entrance, and the new queue bridge they built? That's the WOW entrance. Only the right side of the queue(normally for the rear of the train) is open to the general public. Delirium's queue was built with a WOW entrance, and Drop Zone had it's queue modified, too. You go up this entrance, and give your ticket to the attendant at the gate to the ride area, then, you just get on!

Edited January 1, 1970 by pkidelirium

[coasterbilly]

sweet, that sounds cool. I may do that! Thanks for all of the information on what to do, it's been a big help!