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Kings Island Inn & Conference Center closing soon?


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Based on the terrible reviews, the nasty pictures, and now the bed bug issue, who would want to stay there? Maybe the owners decided it was not worth rehabbing but more economical to either raze it and build a new hotel, or sell the hotel to new ownership that would want to make an investment in a new hotel or use the land for other uses. I used to work for the hotel manager when she was the Innkeeper at the Holiday Inn Northeast when she was hired to managed the Inn in the late 70's and back then, the Kings Island Inn was a nice place to stay, had a first class restaurant and a decent convention center.

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Here's a couple pictures of the inn from August 1972. They were originally posted here by KIfan73, although I'm unable to find the original topic or posts.

EDIT - Here's the original topic for the below photos: http://www.KICentral.com/forums/index.php/topic/20506-ki-history-photos-merry-christmas/

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The 120 room inn was also heavily featured in both The Brady Bunch and The Patridge Family episodes shot at the park. I'll try and post some stills from these episodes later today.

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^I was gonna post my pics on this thread. What a shame. Another thing that will disappear from the "original vision" of Kings Island. The pic with the two girls in it are my mom and aunt. Both pics are from 1972. It looks like it would have been quite the experience to visit the whole Kings Island "resort" back then!

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^I apologize if I stole your thunder or anything similar by posting them - I can remove them if you'd prefer to post them yourself.

Something I find interesting in the second photo is the lack of any type of fence around the swimming pool. That'd be a serious safety violation for a hotel today, but was probably the norm back then.

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Fun Fact: The inn used a couple double-decker buses to transport hotel visitors to and from the park.

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1975. Double-decker buses used to transport hotel guests to the park.

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1973. A clearer picture of the bus, taken from the Cincinnati Kids episode of The Brady Bunch.

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2011. Here's a look at one of the buses a few years back, posted by KIC user 4runneradam in this thread. He said his boss had bought the buses from Taft and that one on of them was still parked on SR 32 in Mt. Carmel and the other was on his property.

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August 2012. Another look, courtesy Google Street View.

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^I apologize if I stole your thunder or anything similar by posting them - I can remove them if you'd prefer to post them yourself.

No, no problem at all!! I hope lots of people posts pics they have of the KI Inn/Resort in this thread. I have some more from over the years I'm going to post.

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When I was a kid my family would occasionally stay there for a night or two, typically in the winter because they had an indoor pool for us to play in. It was close to our house and gave us something to do when going outside wasn't the greatest idea.

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A piece of Kings Island history, about to be lost to time. I am really sad about this.

Things come and go and that's the problem we have always. Humans don't like change, it is in our DNA. Some of us liked Boomerang Bay, and it left. Some of us liked Hanna Barberra Land, and it left. It's a continuing process and KII&C is next, let's say that it was in better condition, yeah I could see how people could keep it alive, but now it is just too desecrated. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it is a Dippin' Dots Guy shack and it becomes the literal Rumor Mill. :lol:

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Kings Island Inn check out its last guests on November 2nd, at 10:00am. According to sources close to the situation, an auction company has been hired to sell any salvageable assets in the buildings. There will be an auction in the future at a date that has yet to be set. A company has been hired to raze the building.

You will hear more info about this tomorrow.

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I remember the unedited version of this "Pop-Up Video" episode mentioned that the cast/crew of the Brady Bunch TV show encountered rooms that 'smelled like fish, and spiders in the bathtubs (or sinks)'... yes, the publicity has been going a little south since about 1998 it seems... nationally! :blink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_eeDOUl6rY

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Just a quick curve ball here..

I was reading comments, and saw the Western Row construction thing about Kings Island drive being updated.

Now, It will be lovely to have this section of road worked on but why... WHY, would you start construction just as the Season is starting for Kings Island? Could you have picked a worse time? How about opening day, haunt? Just something that seems annoying.

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I had forgotten/hadn't really paid attention to the fact that the park had double decker buses in its early days. I realize there are reasons the park probably wouldn't be able to use them these days (gasoline prices and handicap accessibility come to mind), but that is such a neat, unique touch. It really accentuates the international feel the park had in those days. If I had the money, I'd be tempted to buy one of them and restore it for fun. It would be even more neat to see the park buy/restore one and find some use for it within the park (or even just park it inside Tower Gardens for people to see and reminisce about.)

Between the buses and Queen City Discovery's piece about the Kings Island Inn, the more I'm convinced that I would have really, really liked Kings Island in the 1970's. It truly was a unique place. What I've seen of it in pictures almost reminds me of a more majestic take on Busch Gardens Williamsburg, except Kings Island came first and seemed to more draw from the history of the area than strictly from various areas in Europe.

I'm very glad I finally got the chance to stay at the Inn the night before Banshee's media day. The QCD article makes me wish I'd looked around the property a bit more. It's one of only a few parts of Kings Island that looks similar to the way it did when the park opened.

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A sign that one has listened to the soundtrack and/or watched Frozen too many times: When you see auction items 121-134 and sing "Who knew we owned 8,000 salad plates?" in your head.

Yes, I did that.

I'm personally a fan of the shelf you can buy that contains "assorted soft drink syrups." Yum.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This is nothing but greatness for Kings Island (more visitors, money and publicity ("within walking distance from Kings Island!")), but at the same time, will be a nightmare for getting to and from the park and there will be longer lines (which could mean more sales for Fast Lane, so yeah...). On the flip side, who wouldn't want to live across the street from Kings Island? *raises hand and yells "oooh, pick me!"* :D I'm thinking these homes (or whatever they turn out to be) will sell like hotcakes!

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