May 31st 2025 is Mike Koontz Day at Kings Island

[IndyGuy4KI]

Today, Saturday, May 31st Kings Island announced it is Mike Koontz Day.

Mike was always supportive of KIC and answered any questions when asked. I am personally very sad to see him go. KIC admin wish Mike all the best in his next adventure in his life. 

Let's use this thread to post your congratulations , appreciation, and wish Mike all the best! 

Here you see KIC interviewing Mike at the opening of Adventure Port.

[brenthodge]

Wish I was there today (at Dollywood) really like Mike. Looked for him the other day (Tuesday) when I was at the park. 

[MitchInOhio]

I have a story that seems appropriate to share with today being Mike Kuntz days. I worked at KI for a couple of seasons back during college, and Mike was new to the GM role at the time. It was the season where there were about 3-5 power outages a week for the span of a couple weeks, causing massive headaches park wide with rides being shut down for extended periods, and people being stuck since a power outage trips all the safety mechanisms and causes the rides to hold at break runs/safe spots. 

I worked in guest services at the time, and each power outage was awful, because we knew that meant that the rest of our day was going to be lines out the doors and non stop guest's who were rightly upset and asking questions about the situation and resolutions that we didn't really have good answers for. The day the last power outage happened, the lights flickered and that sense of dread and doom hit like a punch to the teeth. 

Before any guest's could even get to the office to make complaints, Mike had made his way in to the office to tell us that he had just spoken with Duke Energy and got to the root cause of the issue. Duke was putting in new power lines to while the employee entrance road was being done, and a slightly leaning pole was the culprit, and he had worked with Duke to ask that any work involving that pole be put on hold until outside of park hours, and Duke agree. Mike's very first stop after hanging up the phone was to the guest service's office to thank us for our work, and to say he appreciated what we do because he knows that we were the one's taking the brunt of the guest's anger. He personally thanked each one of us and gave us reassurance that it would not happen again. I cannot tell you how much easier that made the situation, and how much harder that made me want to work for him and the park. It would have been so easy to not face us and to just let things resolve, but to have a leader come and face you and take accountability told me everything I needed to know about him as a leader, as a boss, and as a man. Sad to see him leave.

[VioletCoronet50]

I rode Invertigo during coasterstock ERT and looked over on the Eiffel Tower and saw that it was Mike Koontz Day. Some Ride Ops wore buttons with this design and the drones spelled out “Thank You Mike” at the end of the show.


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[IndyGuy4KI]

1 hour ago, VioletCoronet50 said:

I rode Invertigo during coasterstock ERT and looked over on the Eiffel Tower and saw that it was Mike Koontz Day. Some Ride Ops wore buttons with this design and the drones spelled out “Thank You Mike” at the end of the show.


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Thanks for sharing.

[Amy F]