Kings Island General Discussion 2026

[DJSkyFoxx]

35 minutes ago, Browntggrr said:

Let's not kid (pun intended) ourselves, it's far from just youth that cause incidents.

Never said it was just the youth, but more often than not the issues I have witnessed and dealt with personally have been with those under the age of 18. I realize this behavior is brought on by lack of parenting or poor parenting. But the song remains the same however you wanna slice it. Bad behavior could become a valid reason to cut fireworks/drones and later nights-thus giving more parks justification to close earlier.

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

6 hours ago, Timchat2 said:

https://www.sixflags.com/kingsisland/shows

The live entertainment page is listing more shows including the Kings Island Nighttime Spectacular. Trailblazers X-treme (which might not be the new All Wheel Sports show's name) is listed with the 2025 dates though, so the information might not be completely accurate yet.

It's been updated since your post with the new name, which is Beach Blast X-treme. Not my first choice of wording but I'm interested to see how it turns out.

The real relief came from the Nighttime Spectacular description listing fireworks as being part of it. Hopefully they don't do something similar to what happened with the Star Spangled Night event where it was quietly changed to be smaller after its initial upload to the website.

 

 

[Hawaiian Coasters 325]

A beach themed stunt show I think can be a very good show!

[brenthodge]

On 4/28/2026 at 9:40 PM, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

The current Living Liberty Bell planter does look like it was installed as a Winterfest tree spot, but looking through historical imagery I don't think it lasted very long. Either way it looks much better now with all of the new plantings. Google Earth shows a tree there in 2017, but a real tree seems to have been planted there a few years later.

It's hard to believe that next year will be 10 years since Winterfest 3.0 began. If the event makes it to 2030 then it will be the longest running KI Winter event.

aIt was a winterfest tree (the one in Coney) only for the first return year. It moved to coney the following year. They need to put a large red/white tripe tree there for Winterfest now since the base is there and it should be able to go over the topiary base

[brenthodge]

On 4/27/2026 at 6:18 PM, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

Rozzi Fireworks is looking for a local drone pilot to help with the nightly drone show at Kings Island beginning May 22nd. The post didn't mention anything about fireworks, but it's entirely possible for that to be a result of the job not requiring interactions with any fireworks rather than it being a sign that the fireworks have been cut for 2026. The starting date lines up with the beginning of 10PM closures. 

I'm a little worried that this will be the year we lose the fireworks, especially since there's not much official information available from the park on entertainment offerings. Most of the stuff we know about is either from Brad Ross' posts and signage around the park that only says show names and start dates.

Source: Jonas Jakeway on Facebook.

I have a friend who actually loads and shoots the shows at the park sometimes, and no, they are not going away. They are posting the hiring for one specific aspect of the show (which incidentally is the more expensive aspect to run) drones. This does not affect the fireworks component. 

[brenthodge]

Have we just given up on the fountain? It looks like a jumbled mess. Jets going crooked all over. Everything at full blast - even with the wind- except the ones that don’t even hit the same height. No changing, just all on- all the time-all over the place. 

[Hawaiian Coasters 325]

Since Mike Koontz (the guy who's idea it was to mess with the fountain in the first place) is gone, maybe we could all try and convince Tony (the new president) to bring the old style fountains back with the pedestals. I know the old pedestals are being used in the Orion area, but I'm sure a company can manufacter new ones. 

[brenthodge]

43 minutes ago, Hawaiian Coasters 325 said:

Since Mike Koontz (the guy who's idea it was to mess with the fountain in the first place) is gone, maybe we could all try and convince Tony (the new president) to bring the old style fountains back with the pedestals. I know the old pedestals are being used in the Orion area, but I'm sure a company can manufacter new ones. 

I think that ship has sailed, but they could at least take the time to “refocus”, inspect and program a few “classic” patterns to rotate through through the day. 

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

The park was testing some really nice fountain patterns in the weeks leading up to Opening Day, but maybe those have gone out the window? This feels like something that might be in limbo until the nighttime spectacular starts back up on May 22nd. It makes sense in my mind, especially if they're using the start of daily operations as the time to actually have everything ready by. I could see that being the case with a chain that seems to have adopted the "It doesn't matter if they have rides/shows/etc. ready until Memorial Day weekend since that's when more paying guests start arriving" attitude.

[brenthodge]

Three operating weekends. That’s how long it took for the animated Larry on the merchandise cart to stop working in case anyone is wondering. The cat still works for now, but Larry-who was squeaky this morning has now stopped as of this afternoon. I believe he ties “spinning snoopy” for the “simplest animation with a short life span” award.