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Landscaping Team has done another fine job this year #KI51 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It took me a few minutes to realize you were naming barrels on Cargo Loco and not making a joke about eating cacao beans and fish oil and getting diarrhea.

My wife and I made a nice, quick trip to the park tonight. Adventure Port (and the whole park) looked lovely tonight. Got another ride in on AE. Can’t say for sure if a whole lot has changed from this weekend. Nothing major to report. Hopefully they can get the rest of the thematic elements up to snuff soon. Really cool experience so far!

I think they need to make them about $50 apiece, so the people who dropped a G to get season long FL are still receiving the perceived value of said season long Fast Lane program. Some may agree, some may disagree, but thats my viewpoint and it will remain that way regardless of dissenting opinions. Stop diluting a high priced premium experience for a money grab (this, gold passes, summer passes, you get my point.)

He looks like a Craig to me.

if it's there it needs to be amped up - lots of audio issues - the creaking wood is now dialougue that you can't make out. The whole ride feels like it needs to close for 2-3 days for a final "punch list" of lighting in tunnel 1 to highlight the snakes they made a deal about (will be vey annoyed if this doesn't come back), audio adjustment, crates of jewels in tunnel 2 or 3 (again that we made a deal about), lighting fixed in final lift and the repainted masks form the lift hill that they highlighted in a post a while back aren't there. They clearly got it open for capacity over the holiday, but they need to just take it offline and get it great (and really, how hard is it to get the dang bell working again?? LOL

I agree with @IBEW_Sparkythat I hope this is a high ticket item. The choice of FOF I think is a bad one. You are going to use one of your slowest riders per hour coaster to upsell a FL? I guess it increases the value of the FL, but not for everyone else in line for FOF. It should only be between the 3 B&M's.

I agree that these Single-Use Fast Lane passes need to be high priced and limited in supply or else Fast Lane lines are going to get way longer, which will also make the standby lines move slower. Also, if you look closely at the top of the cart in the picture, it used to be an Oreo Churro stand. LOL!

Consult your Dr. before anyone else.

I got some mega spins in Cacao Beans and Fish Oil yesterday.

Rode Cargo Loco and Adventure Express today: Cargo Loco is a fine addition to Kings Island and a very fun ride for pretty much anyone. Adventure Express is running better than before. The theming is very good and the operation is smooth. Overall, big thumbs up!

What is the most popular ride at Kings Island? Does anyone know?

Thanks for the update, @brenthodge. I hope they get these things nailed out and have faith they will. I have really come to love this ride since 2019. So much so that I rode it more than The Beast in 2022!

Yeah the shade structure for cargo is likely for an attendant some days? not sure. Was hoping for shade over the ride itself; Especially with the ride having you have to grab a metal ring. Looks fun though! Adventure Express review.

I will say in the 86° Heat of the afternoon, the fans and breeze and shade kept me cool in the VIP area. Im becoming a fan of the area and any new additions such as outlets for charging, VIP Wi-Fi only or locker rentals added would be a nice touch. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Currently a $10 cost for that spin the wheel game, which allows 2 people single FL ride use. Could be based on attendance and raise the price like slingshot or skyflyer does based on attendance. They would keep it low end of price point.

I fail to see how a 1x use ride pass diluted a season-long, all ride fast pass. It will most likely be targeted at single day visitors who don’t see a value in getting a Fast Lane for all rides, but have 1-2 must do that they want to ride. You still got what you paid for!

The company I work for is still getting quotes of 2+ years on what used to be off the shelf electronic components. When you’re dealing with long lead times it’s really common for the supplier to get the estimate wrong. A couple of extra weeks or months is really common. My gut says the supplier is giving delivery dates and just not delivering. I have been in the middle of this before. You place an order and are told it will be delivered by X day. Which you use to tell your customers when they should expect their orders. The problems occur when you don’t get your parts on time, suddenly your production is backed up and cannot deliver to your customers by the dates you already promised, which just snow balls down the chain. I do blame Worlds of Fun for not cancelling the opening earlier. I cannot imagine GCI was not communicating to the park about this issue. Likely they were planning to use overnight shipping to get the items as quickly as is possible, and relying on bad information, but they held out hope for way too long. The impression I have is the parts have always been missing, and that nothing broke, it’s not important to test the ride, and I read where the park was even able to train ride ops. My understanding is that GCI employees have been riding it as well. All of my guesses deal with locking/unlocking restraints, restraint position sensors, or communication between the train and the station when parked in the station. Something that you can work around or disable without too much hassle but you need working for operating with park guests.

It closed after 9:00 PM last season, which I thought was already too early.

Observations -boat has already been changed -my thought on day one “they are going to have to push that further out in the pond and anchor that to get it away from the rail or people will get on it” now, they d pushed it out in the pond and anchored it. they really should’ve built an “office” around the desk props to just look through a window at the stuff. It’s literally inches from the queue line and the desk lamp is already broken. tunnel one may not be complete, but we made this big deal about snakes and… no snakes-no lights. tunnel 3- gem mine? Something? Again we made a big deal about hitting the “mother lode” and pikes of lit up fake gems would sell that story. flags have started appearing in front of Enrique’s. They seem like a hard material zip tied onto the lighting wires. I’m hoping -but not expecting additional poles and wires. I’m afraid this detail has been “minimized’. Would look good if they aged the poles on the back patio as the shiny black looks too new. They are doing LOTS of aging and detail paint, so hopefully! the ride op building for SolSpin looks really nice. I had doubts about how this building would age down and blend in, but looks good. odd design choice to put a shade structure over the entrance to Cargo-where you just pass through and no shade structure over the queue where you wait.

My friends and I got some massive spins on the Kerosene barrel yesterday.

If the component is Infinity Flyer related, I'm guessing something was damaged during testing, maybe a minor bump? Hard to really say. Seems like an unforeseen circumstance. As for the difference between this past year and this year for having things ready, could it be manpower related? Did they scale back working hours in the off-season? Did they get a late start after Winterfest? I know in manufacturing, basically everyone is hiring, and everyone is running overtime to try and keep up with demand. Probably a combination of a few different things to be truthful.

The lengthening of the operating season certainly doesn't help. The park used to start the seasonal refurbishments in November, not January. I would say the supply chain issues for consumers have been mostly fixed, but I work in manufacturing and getting material for custom parts/ low volume parts is still difficult.

Jeez…What is going on with Cedar Fair and the delayed openings? It’s not like the supply chain, and labor shortage issues just showed up being that this is year 3 since the Covid Lockdowns. From what I’ve read beyond the Zambezi Zinger, Worlds Of Fun like Kings Island, too was off to a rough start with a lot of rides not being opened and the park in general not appearing to be ready for opening day. Canada’s Wonderland new rides were not ready for opening day as well. Maybe CF should increase the lead times on new additions by starting these projects sooner the season prior.

Most ridden ride? The Racer, followed by the train.

Over time, Id say The Beast.

Sorry for double post but it appears a vote happens next month https://local12.com/sports/content/deal-move-western-southern-open-tournament-mason-ohio-lindner-tennis-center-face-first-vote-charlotte-cincinnati-beemok#

When you stand back and look at Cargo Loco as a whole, I think they are where they are to balance the ride as they are in the same spots on both side, but agree that a "shipping warehouse" roof over the entire ride would've been nice - both on sunny AND rainy days.

LOL - You just hit on so many of the things I just typed. Im not complaining, but I'm overall disappointed that while they had the ride off line they didn't address existing effects, or create new. This is now the "marque" attraction of an entirely new area arguably that only exists BECAUSE of this ride and its theme. This was a change to really "next level" it, and maybe they still will... maybe they just need to bite the bullet and take it off line for a week to get these things done while we are between holidays - heck other rides are closed from time to time.

I'm kind of getting over the nickel and dime approach for premium experiences at parks. They basically removed paid attractions and just rebranded them under the guise of paid 'premium' Experiences. It's not necessarily the new Fast Lane single us, but a combination of things I'm noticing around park chains. We all say it about Disney World, or Having your internet throttled by streaming services. I don't want a Company like CF to have that same approach. Now they dangle this 'premium' in front of guests for $10. If you want to have fun you have to pay extra. this opens up a much larger conversation outside the scope of the original post so I'll leave it here. Otherwise, I'm still surprised wristbands are still a thing and hasn't been rolled out digitally to the app. Great way to increase traffic to KIs official app, more money for KI

That is a trick question. Popular may not be the most ridden as @BoddaH1994 has mentioned. Can you clarify what you mean by most popular?

It still doesn’t app up. How do they go from, “We open tomorrow!” to “We need a critical part that’s in Europe.” Maybe @teenageninja can shed a little more light on the supply chain side of things (I don’t know what I don’t know) but it just doesn’t make sense. Normally I’d agree, but they’ve done WF for like five or six seasons now and it hasn’t been a problem. Cedar Point’s opening weekend seems to be typically tougher than KI’s but KI almost always has everything going (outside of extraneous situations) - and that’s with that extra shoulder season. That shows that something was different this year. Supply chain? Probably. But why didn’t it hit that hard last year or in 2021? Could have just been a series of bad luck.

I definitely agree with the Swan Lake removal . . although I love Diamondback. So I thought the return of Swan Lake in The Vortex spot would be nice. Theming with a flat or two, restaurant, shops like they have done with Adventure Port. Not sure of the theming but something to match Rivertown. Then concentrate the next new coaster to be in front with the replacement of Invertigo, Congo Falls, etc if they are close to retirement. Trust me I'd love to have a new coaster in The Vortex spot. But I think some year soon that Invertigo will not pass inspection and be SBNO. I don't think they can build two coasters in both The Vortex and Invertigo spots quickly. Then we'll be looking at another empty area for a few years again.

I’m going to the park today, any recommendations on which barrel to ride that gives the best spin?

It's probably both a matter of a new spinning ride getting broken in, and there's probably also a mechanism where every car has to be set to the same rotation limit. People keep saying some spin easily but others barely spin even with a lot of power, so they're probably just not all matched yet. It seems a certain person thinks that these rides are supposed to be direct replacements for Keggers and Skylab.

I’m guessing that because of how far behind schedule they were that it was a mad dash to just get it running for Memorial Day Weekend, and not much time was spent tweaking the ride to give an ideal experience.

Not sure where this idea that Zamperla is a discount manufacturer comes from. They are the premier flat ride manufacturer by a mile. I’m wondering if the spinning problem is a break in thing. When I rode, I could get it going a little with all of my force. A group of kids would never be able to begin to get it to spin. I’m sure that’s not their intention. Also, I don’t think they’re governed to prevent spinning to this extreme. There are a lot of these things out there and they can spin a lot, and I’ve never seen a park intentionally tamper them down, which leads to me to believe that the perception is that there is no danger in “extreme” spinning.

But testing and POV doesn’t mean it’s guest-ready. They could have been running the whole thing in manual mode for all we know, which wouldn’t be appropriate for guests. Im not sure if I buy the part thing or not. It’s just that you’d think they’d have that figured out earlier on. I think they found something wrong, or something that they wish to correct before putting guests on it. But hey - would you rather see them wait until it’s 100% ready or just put guests on it and find out what happens?

Rode Cargo Loco today. Fun time. The only negative I have is the lack of shade. That line and ride are going to be absolutely brutal this summer.

It’s funny to look at old threads that have since came true

Adventure Express is open! I rode it twice!

Cargo Loco and AE are open today from what I heard. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Adventure Express looking to be on the #KIRightTrack Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The head.

I think they could do that for a Vortex replacement. I've always said that back area could get an old time car/highway theme. Think Route 76 at Valleyfair, but call it "Route 72" or something. Also retheme the bathrooms by WindSeeker and make them look like the bathrooms in Quaker Steak.

Couldn't agree more. Actually if a ground up floorless roller coaster was built, it would have the newer vest restraints on it. Now I know some people don't like the vest restraints, but for me they're comfortable. That's just me though. Anyway though, if the track was a little wider on Rougarou, they probably could have put the vest restraints on that ride. For me, I love Rougarou the way it is, but I'm crazy. Anyway I'm getting off topic here, but I think a floorless would be great in that spot.

It would be cool if Adventure Express got some love in the way of restoring all the effects. I know that over the years, more parts have been working (arrows in the second tunnel, "creaking" sound effects on the lift, etc.), but it would be cool to have all the old effects working.

Tomb Raider: The Ride. I even liked The Crypt just fine. I want a thrilling dark ride to come back.

Phantom Theater by far was the worst mistake to remove. Sure Phantom was costly, and required heavy care and maintenance. But I think the main reason why it was removed was to keep with the current rides that Paramount wanted. I rode Phantom Theater in 2002, and many things on it needed desperate TLC, (like the furnace guys arm falling off that I saw one time). Instead of repairing, they went with the cheap fix of just replacing it with a ride with far less things that needed constant care. Also all the other Paramount parks were installing similar Scooby-Doo Haunted Castle rides, so I think that Kings Island just wanted to keep up and continue with the status quo. If Paramount never owned Kings Island, who knows Phantom might still be around today. I loved Scooby-Doo 's Haunted Castle as well but Phantom is my favorite and defiantly should have never left as it was far superior and much more creative. Hopefully though in a short while we will see something similar to Phantom be brought back to the severely lacking dark ride department. But I guess a dark ride is better then none at all! MaestroJr

Wait a minute! Did that always say THAT? Beast fan? How Freudian! At least it didn't say something about Sonny!