Starting out as a Freewebs site to host photos from the park in August 2003, PKI-Central was born. As increased traffic pursued, Dane Thomas, a freelance web developer and programmer out of Dayton, Ohio decided to take the site to the next level. He changed everything by moving the site to its own domain and hosting. He added ride bios and forums for other members to interact.
On April 8, 2004 version two of PKI Central was launched. That summer would prove to be the biggest summer for PKIC thus far as its forums took off and PKICentral started to gain notoriety and media attention. PKICentral staff expands to include Ryan Suhr, a college student in Northern Kentucky majoring in Marketing.
In the month of November 2004, PKI Central.com acquired PKI Unlimited.com, another Paramount’s Kings Island website rich in content. Shortly after, PKICentral unveiled its third version of itself. Taking the best of both sites and putting it all in one convenient place PKI Central.com became: The Complete Guide to Paramount’s Kings Island!
In 2009 the name was changed to KICentral in response to Cedar Fair purchasing the park and dropping the Paramount name. KICentral also started a partnership with Cox Ohio Publishing. This vastly expanded our reach and provided data rich content to Cox Newspaper subscribers including the Dayton Daily News.
Kings Island Central today has been referenced and discussed in dozens of newspapers, TV, and radio stations. Including the front page of The Enquirer, Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentuckys most popular newspaper. It attracts thousands of people a day to check out the latest news in Kings Island amusement park. It continues to push itself to the best it can be with its huge forums, exclusive content, and up to the minute coverage of the parks happenings as well as expanding to other area attractions. We thank you for your continued support of KICentral.
-Dane Thomas
KIC social media