From Amusement Today: Kings Island’s Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare scored with fans and snagged the prize for the first time in the category of BEST NEW FAMILY ATTRACTION.

Kings Island Central wants to congratulate Kings Island on its well-deserved latest Golden Ticket Award. Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare has revived a beloved dark ride, which includes new technology and a storyline that features a fresh way to interact with the characters

The original Phantom Theater opened in April 1992 as the third incarnation of Kings Island's dark ride in that building, which included Enchanted Voyage and Smurf’s Enchanted Voyage.

Learn more about the original Phantom Theater on our past attractions page here: https://kicentral.com/parkhistory/past-attractions/phantom-theater/

Well deserved.

Congratulations to Kings Island, Sally Dark Rides, and Plague Productions for their parts in bringing this dark ride back to life so wonderfully! It's very well deserving of the Best New Family Attraction award in my eyes, and I hope we can see Kings Island bring some more Golden Tickets home in the near future.

Congrats Kings Island and everyone who helped bring this back to life! The park almost took home another Golden Ticket Award with this ride, under the 'Best New Attraction Instillation of 2026' but was beat by Falcon's Flight, so neat!

Hoping the reception matches the ROI with this one. I’d love for this to result in a focus on more thematically dense, immersive type of attractions. Feel like KI deserve that kinda thing. As weird as things are now, I like to think this era is going to result in the park being a “crown jewel” of whatever the chain does or doesn’t look like. The early era of Cedar Fair was weird, but it worked out pretty well.

39 minutes ago, beastfan11 said:

Hoping the reception matches the ROI with this one. I’d love for this to result in a focus on more thematically dense, immersive type of attractions. Feel like KI deserve that kinda thing. As weird as things are now, I like to think this era is going to result in the park being a “crown jewel” of whatever the chain does or doesn’t look like. The early era of Cedar Fair was weird, but it worked out pretty well.

I agree, but want to point out: the Paramount Parks were the objects of massive investments for the most part. The legacy parks saw their investments slow down. So, at this time, they are heavily investing in MM, NJ, Chicago, OT, OG.

Maybe in a way, ki is similar to Knott's. Huge attendance ( but ki was pass holders) and does really well without frequent large investment. So in a sense, ki could go down a similar trajectory and still be a cash cow, but they'd have to spend money on infrastructure and making the park cohesive and very well themed.

My mom recently got a survey from Kings Island where some of the questions were about our thoughts on Phantom Theater and the future of attractions at the park. After writing about how much we love PT:ON and otherwise want to see a big thrill coaster come to KI in the next few years, we wrote about how we'd love to see a second dark ride installed. I have my personal wishes for the location and potential theme(s) for another new KI dark ride, but in general I think it would do really well and give families more to do overall.

If we see a slowing down of major investments for the park then I'd really like to see more area refreshes in addition to general infrastructure upgrades around the park. Guests might not mind the lack of a new ride every year if they see more trees/shade, benches, and better staffing strategies. That said, I would still like to see a second dark ride, Rivertown expansion/upgrades, an Action Zone retheme, and a Soak City retheme in the near future. I bet at least some of those upgrades could help Kings Island climb the rankings in each year's Golden Ticket Awards.

So well deserved, honorable mention to the cast and crew and everyone involved with Phantom Theatre Encore!