Kings Island 2025 Food Reviews and Discussion

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

13 hours ago, Orion-XL200 said:

-Order number system would be great, especially with some kind of monitor. I am hard hearing, so unless I'm directly at the pick-up location/window, trying to hear my name is quite difficult. It gets especially harder if there is a ride semi close to the location.

-I would love to have the ability to view past "orders" in the app to see the value of the use of the dining pass.

-Even with small orders, I'd rather have a tray. It's much easier to carry everything (a drink with the meal) and open the doors without spilling or fighting to open the door with full hands. It's unfortunate though that guests ruin the whole tray thing by leaving them in the most random places. Having dedicated places to return them near any seating area would be good at KI (not limited to, but I'm thinking by the Funnel Cake Stand on I-Street, by the train station in Rivertown, etc). 

-Coke Refresh Stations - yes....or if they'd just have enough employees in the locations as is, I think it'd be okay. The whole ice thing baffles me. I think the biggest issue is people just over fill their ice and then just dump it. It'd be great if Coke as a company could program the machines to only dispense enough ice per cup size (thinking of how they do it in fast food restaurants for drinks and ice in their drive thrus). The machines are already smart enough to use QR Codes, know when flavor types are out, drinks are out, etc. so why not program the ability to dispense ice.

-Food lockers. I have only done mobile ordering at Cedar Point (a couple of years ago) at Coasters. Ordering on the app was easy. Going to the mobile order pickup area was a breeze and I don't know why they don't utilize this anymore or just more. I know Grand Pavilion at CP has the lockers, they just never got set up to actually be used for mobile ordering.  

I think the Refresh Stations would all need new machines for them to have the auto-dispensers, but it might make more sense to do that if the park(s) switched to associates pouring the drinks. That way you could also have a steady flow since those drink machines sometimes work on a conveyer-type system.

As for the mobile ordering, I believe Cedar Fair abandoned the effort soon after implementing it (rather poorly if you ask me). The new Carowinds app allegedly has a mobile ordering feature currently in it or coming soon, so I think that might be a priority for the large parks. The only issue I can see with the food lockers is that they might need a QR code to unlock them and I don't know if I trust a sizeable amount of guests to not lose their receipt to scan it. Also the fact that Carowinds got an update to their single-park app has me hoping we will continue to see separate park apps when the rest are updated/released.

With trays, the park would only need to install separate tray returns in places where a trash can is not directly there. I believe the Festhaus trash cans all have tray return slots on top, so those would only need to have a label added and someone sent to collect them every so often.

[Orion-XL200]

On 11/14/2025 at 9:40 PM, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

I think the Refresh Stations would all need new machines for them to have the auto-dispensers, but it might make more sense to do that if the park(s) switched to associates pouring the drinks. That way you could also have a steady flow since those drink machines sometimes work on a conveyer-type system.

As for the mobile ordering, I believe Cedar Fair abandoned the effort soon after implementing it (rather poorly if you ask me). The new Carowinds app allegedly has a mobile ordering feature currently in it or coming soon, so I think that might be a priority for the large parks. The only issue I can see with the food lockers is that they might need a QR code to unlock them and I don't know if I trust a sizeable amount of guests to not lose their receipt to scan it. Also the fact that Carowinds got an update to their single-park app has me hoping we will continue to see separate park apps when the rest are updated/released.

With trays, the park would only need to install separate tray returns in places where a trash can is not directly there. I believe the Festhaus trash cans all have tray return slots on top, so those would only need to have a label added and someone sent to collect them every so often.

Opening Food Lockers IIRC at CP was through the app. You had to hit a button that said you arrived and then it would tell you to go to a certain locker and hit a certain code/item on the locker for it to open. They definitely implemented the failed launch rather poorly. Hopefully the larger parks (KI, CP, Caro, etc.) would be the ones to roll it out (properly). 

Festhaus would be one of the few places that it is done right in regards to trays. If I go to Tom & Chee or Potato Works, there isn't a good place to leave a tray (nor is there to get one). Coney BBQ yeah a bit, but if the patio is full, there really isn't a good return place for them. At Cedar Point, Grand Pavilion, Farmhouse, Back Beat, Happy Friar, Hugos, could really use trays (Farmhouse and Back Beat sometimes have them, but not near enough). Farmhouse is really the only place that I know at the park that has return places for the trays. Either way, I don't find getting food convenient at either park without some sort of tray or an easier way to get into the dining areas.