If Taft could’ve done anything differently when planning KI

[SonofBaconator]

I’ll start. Aside from International Restaurant, the second floors of the buildings along International Street can’t accommodate people in a hospitality capacity. If there was one thing I wish they had some foresight on, it would be the potential revenue they could’ve earned by making the second stories of I-Street fully accessible for parties or special events like they do for International Restaurant.

[BeeastFarmer]

I might be conflating this, but I thought in Evans book, he related how they were over budget with the construction and had to scale back on the original concept. Something about they didn't have the money to build The Italian Building beyond a shell until the pizza idea come into play.

They probably took all that money from Big Pizza and saved it in a CD so the could finish the international theme and that finally came to fruition with.....wait for it...The Italian Job: Stunt Coaster!

 

(I'll show myself out, folks...)

[PKIDelirium]

There's not really a lot of room up there, considering the upper levels are built subscale to make them look larger, just like the Disney castles.

[3dgyrat]

1 hour ago, SonofBaconator said:

I’ll start. Aside from International Restaurant, the second floors of the buildings along International Street can’t accommodate people in a hospitality capacity. If there was one thing I wish they had some foresight on, it would be the potential revenue they could’ve earned by making the second stories of I-Street fully accessible for parties or special events like they do for International Restaurant.

i know their budget is different, but i know in pigeon forge tenneesse theres a place called the Island, and it has all these stores and shops and above them they use the space as hotel rooms for the margaritaville restaraunt and resort. i think it would be cool for them to do something similar if it was possible, using the second stories of the shops on international street as hotel rooms.

 

or they could honestly even just use them as 'dorm rooms' for all the student staff that chooses to work there over the summer or something like that. 

[YuYuYuuki]

They needed to make those Space Ghost and Galaxy Trio rides (and give Birdman a ride.)

Then in the 90s/00s they could've just desecrated all over them just like Adult Swim did.

[BoddaH1994]

We had Dennis Spiegel on the Attractions Group podcast last week. He said that one mistake they made with Kings Dominion is that they did not have the "air flow" style of foot traffic that Kings Island has, and it would make I-Street a ghost town, thus making the assets there worthless except at the beginning and end of the day. He's coming back on to talk about KI stuff on Tower Topics, so I'll be sure we ask him if there were things that they noticed should have been done differently once the park opened in 1972.

[silver2005]

^On my visit last July, I found it weird that most people just made an immediate left turn at the gate at KD and the end by the Eiffel Tower was barren (didn't help that ET was closed).   I think it also has to do with the asymmetric design of the park compared to KI along with a lack of pathing and attractions directly south of their ET.  Seeing construction pics of KD, it feels to me like they really wanted to make the lake under Anaconda a main focal point of the pathing.  Like, if they made their I-Street go in a more southwestern direction, it would have complimented the lake and pathing perfectly.  

[super7]

When they built KD, international Street basically stuck out of the park on its own, and the park began at the Eiffel Tower.   There were no pathways leading directly to themed areas halfway up the street like they did at Kings Island and Canada’s Wonderland

The east side of international Street now leads to Dominator but not directly to a themed area.   It was odd how they used all that space on the west side of international Street for the administration buildings  That’s another  reason the park is lopsided.