Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare Reviews

[MaestroJr]

Got two rides in today and absolutely exceeded my expectations, I want to thank Six Flags, Sally, and Kings Island for making this all happen, briefly wanted to share my pros and cons of the new ride and Share a few photos from the ride, I plan on many many more rides this summer.  Also got a super smooth ride on The Beast so shoutout to the retracking crew for doing a superb job. 
 

Phantom Theater Pros:

Soundtrack and Toccata is back

Facade and Queue is outstanding with the spooky theme

All the animatronics are amazing simply put

New life has been breathed into the building especially when entering the loading area with the lighting windows 

Cons: The wait time was ridiculous for a ride that has a tried and true loading process 

Some effects are cheap and carried over from Boo Blasters like Larry on the turntable and the Bosco door
 

Not sold on the interactive aspect 100 percent, I like it but think it could be better, maybe it’ll grow on me 

Some of the animatronics have a goofy look that fights with their scary original 

Overall a phenomenal addition to Kings Island for families and friends to ride for years to come and a worthy successor and tribute to original Phantom Theater and so, so much better than Boo Blasters, could not be happier to have Phantom Theater back at the park. 
 

[johnjniehaus]

Just a random question, why are so many people maxing out the score with like 999999? Targets worth too many points? Ride breaking down/stopping for loading resulting in these crazy maxed out scores? Been seeing a lot of them posted on Facebook 

[robintodd]

1 hour ago, johnjniehaus said:

Just a random question, why are so many people maxing out the score with like 999999? Targets worth too many points? Ride breaking down/stopping for loading resulting in these crazy maxed out scores? Been seeing a lot of them posted on Facebook 

The boxes are two at a time (two boxes, two blanks) this creates much more space between sets of boxes.  My first ride the first box had no one in it and I was alone in the 2nd box.  I had 999,999 by the 1/2 way point of the ride (Hilda).  The second time I rode it i was in the first box with a fellow rider and not sure how many but there were people in the 2nd box. My score was around 390,000.  So the more people competing to hit notes the lower the score (from what I could gather 1 person has to hit the note for points, if more than 1 hit it at the same time the note survives.  ie. no ties).

Hope that helps.

[robintodd]

Rode it Friday twice and then on Saturday with 2 of my grandkids.  This ride is absolutely fantastic for what is is meant to be.  In my opinion this is NOT for the original Phantom Theatre fans.  It is "inspired" by the original ride NOT meant to be a reproduction of it.  Keep in mind FAMILY RIDE.  The original was much darker and scared small children.  This one still does a little (especially the lightning/thunder effects in the queue).   The biggest surprise and what made me smile was where the "peppers ghost" effect used to be.  ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT in my opinion.  I'm sure I'm in a minority but I think the peppers ghost effect in today's day and age may be more trouble than it would be worth.  Face it people today are a little more "brave" to deface things (spitting on mirrors, gum, etc.) I'm sure that would require daily cleaning.  I truely fear for Larry in the queue.  They have signs about cameras but by then it may be to late.  Plexi glass around the section would help (but spitting may still be there).  Doing this would have to have left the exit doors still accessible and would may have affected the popcorn scent (loveley touch).  Another observation was the neither the Maestro nor Larry do the narration for the information videos on how to use the flashlights.  This may be a signal that in case Maestro or Larry stop working the instructions would still be viable.

I used Fast Lane my first ride (20 min) the second i waited in line (almost 3 hours).  The line seemed to go in spurts.  I can understand this because with the new cars, new tech and I'm assuming some work on the track system since it was exposed I think it will take some time to fine tune it.  After all with 28 or so boxes and 400-500 in each box that's alot of weight compared to cycling with half of the boxes empty.  

Saturday when i took the grandkids it was about 2 hours and even though we were there around 3-4 we did get the keychains they were given out.   

Finally, I noticed a LARGE amount of people entering through the exit.  The line was all the way outdoors every time I passes the ride all day.  I'm sure the long waits were becuase of stopping for loading special needs which is fine but it does bring up how many people were taking advantage of the situation to avoid the line.  Honestly I've never seen that before with Boo or Scooby.  It will be interesting to see how long that line is next weekend or in the middle of the season.  I understand the need for those who need it but I have heard that KI is rather lax on the reasons they accept for these exceptions.

All in all a FANTASTIC addition which I will be riding over and over.  Great job to Sally and the KI team (and Rick)!!

[Hawaiian Coasters 325]

I don't know if the popcorn scent wasn't working yesterday when I was there, but I did not smell any sort of popcorn scent in that section of the queue. 

I agree with your point about the animatronics and the risk of unruly kids potentially destroying them. When I first saw photos of Larry in there while the ride was under construction, my first thought was I was afraid that unruly kids may throw objects at him and/or go behind the barrier and try and touch him. I really hope they enforce zero tolerance of any sort of interfering with the animatronics in the queue and I really hope in 5-10 years they're still on top of the animatronics and it doesn't become one of those rides where some stuff is working and some isn't like Boo Blasters was. 

[SonofBaconator]

I rode it yesterday and I was thoroughly surprised at how immersive the queue was as well as the ride itself. I do feel like the ghost note element was not distracting and you can honestly somewhat ignore them and just take in the ride itself if you wanted.

A few critiques and some that I hope they fix as a season progresses:

Spoiler

The capacity wasn’t the best- there were a ton of gaps between the opera boxes- I’m not sure if that was intentional, if it was the same number as before but spaced out differently, or if not all the boxes had been reinstalled yet.

The audio in the que- A few people have pointed this out already, but you can only really hear Larry when you’re on the right side of the building as opposed to how you can hear Maestro throughout the whole queue. 

The portraits-The portraits could be a little louder too- I like the idea of them interacting with one another, but I’m not entirely a fan of the AI. That might sound hypocritical as I’ve shared AI renderings on here before, but I’m not trying to make money off of it whereas the park/company is using it for one of their attractions.

My two cents in the new ride vs the old ride:

Spoiler

The original ride was meant to heavily take inspiration from the haunted mansion, so it had elements that were slightly scarier, and since the ride was story base and not a glorified arcade game, they packed in as much story in detail as possible.

When it was converted to Scooby-Doo in the haunted mansion you at least had the advantage of the Scooby Doo IP that you’ve got to interact with while the shooting element was introduced.

Then when the park lost that IP and went with a generic one, you pretty much solely focused on it as a laser tag ride.

Now that it returns to its original IP the park decided to keep the interactive element intact so they had to do it in a way to where little kids can still interact with via the flashlights while the older generations can focus on the detail of the theming itself.

I knew the story was gonna be different- you essentially went from touring an old abandoned theater, where the actors literally died, returned as phantoms, you’re disturbing their slumber, etc- to a more family friendly setting where the characters are already phantoms and the theater is open for business. I think this story follows more along what Phantom Theater Encore was doing where you have a bunch of live people attending a ghost performance.

I think that honestly, the ride itself is just fan service for people who remember the original and something entirely new for the young generations so in that element I think it works well.

I would honestly give it a B+. There are a lot of technical things I still think they need to work out, but overall the ride isn’t bad – I think there are a few things that I mentioned in the spoilers that kept it from being an A+ ride. I went in knowing that it wasn’t going to be a carbon copy of the original, and I have to give credit to the park and Sally for reintegrating the original  IP into a layout/concept that had been altered well over 20 years ago.