Leaderboard

TT2 will be ready for Cedar Points opening day on May 3rd according to their social media.

To add to April Fools, KI got in on the action

Wait until Passholder preview day to announce the paint isn't dry LOL https://www.kingsdominion.com/blog/2025/welcoming-pantherian-to-the-jungle

BREAKING NEWS: Kings Island Announces Major Changes for 2025 Season! In a thrilling update, Kings Island has just confirmed two of their most iconic roller coasters will undergo significant changes for the upcoming season: Racer Will Now Run Backwards : Starting this spring, the iconic Racer coaster will be running in reverse! Get ready for an all-new experience as riders will travel backward through the legendary airtime hills, providing a whole new level of thrill and confusion. Hold on tight, because the nostalgia will be flipped on its head! The Beast Goes Trimless : In a move that has shocked coaster fans everywhere, Kings Island has announced that The Beast will run without trims for the first time in history! Experience the full, wild, and untamed forces of the woods as The Beast’s intense drops, high-speed turns, and massive airtime moments will now go uninterrupted! No slowing down—just pure, unadulterated speed and airtime! But before you start packing your bags, it’s time for a little reality check… APRIL FOOLS! As much as we’d love to see The Beast at full throttle or Racer running backward, we’re keeping the classics just the way you love them. Thanks for playing along, and we’ll see you at Kings Island for a season full of thrilling rides! Someone had to LOL

"For the first time in park history, we're also going to provide blue ice cream here in Soak City waterpark" There's a snack stand next to the Soak City entrance called "Calypso Coolers" and they have blue ice cream. I've only been to Soak City once in the last decade and even I know more about it than the park's PR team.

yeah the "BIG" bathroom surprise and the main street redo....

Sure—happy to give my perspective How long did you wait for the rides you did experience? Not counting Monsters Unchained (which we invested about 90 minutes) I think the second longest was Werewolf at around 50-60 minutes. It was interesting because that queue time had big peaks and valleys all day—sometimes it would be 75 minutes, then later 15 minutes, then later up to 60 again—it seemed to fluctuate a lot. We waited around 20 minutes for Wing Gliders and probably less than 10 for Star Dust Racers (and most of that was just walking thru the queue, putting stuff in the locker and going thru the metal detector). Of what you did see of Monsters Unchained (very unfortunate you couldn't ride it) was the queue cool? YES! We made it up to just outside the first pre-show (someone in line who had ridden before said there are two pre-shows) so we got pretty far into the manor. It was *very* cool and well done—almost an attraction in itself. How large were the queue lines? They’re built for quite a bit of overflow—if we would have actually gotten to ride Monsters I’m guessing our total wait would have been about an hour. There were large areas of overflow queuing that we completely bypassed. I’m guessing that ride alone probably has a 3+ hour queue capacity before its even close to expanding beyond the attraction’s footprint. How long would you wait for each ride? That answer was different at 10:30a than it was at 5:30p . I would willingly wait 2 hours to ride Monsters. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty wiped—it was a hot day in Orlando yesterday. (But nothing compared to what its going to be like in July!) Were there any blow-away moments for you? How did it feel entering the worlds? I don’t think there were really any blow-away moments—but that probably has a lot to do with reading so much about it over the past several years, the fly over videos, and just the general hype probably made it hard to top. I have a feeling that the GP who go into the park not really knowing much detail about it definitely will be blown away. Entering the worlds thru the portals were pretty much what I anticipated—although, I think the Nintendo one was the most immersive & with the coolest effects. Were you able to go into the Battle at the Ministry queue? Was the Floo Network effect working? (if so, how was it?) Unfortunately, the queue was “down” (not sure how ) and they were not letting people in. The show there wasn’t running until a few hours after we were there and the only thing really open in that world were the restaurants and retail. That area actually felt the most empty of people, so you could really enjoy the detail. That will probably never happen again Do you think you would need 2 days to do all of Epic? (wands, food, rides, shows, etc.) Yeah, I think definitely this first year or so, 2 days would be warranted. There’s a lot of detail, and I imagine there will be things you’ll want to do twice, so two days would be helpful. How's the parking situation? Was it easily accessible? (unlike Magic Kingdom) There’s a giant, open parking lot with a wide (and landscaped) pedestrian walkway down the center of the parking lot which leads to the entry plaza. Signage and roads in were very easy to follow. I came in off of Destination Parkway, but there will also be entrances off Universal and Kirkman. Unlike the original campus, Epic doesn’t seem nearly as walkable. I asked my friend how guests would walk from Stella Nova and Terra Luna to the park and her answer was “they won’t”. Of course, Helios will be easy walking since its actually sitting in the park

I was able to visit Epic Universe on Monday as a guest of my friend who works for UO resorts. There’s still no photos allowed and they’re trying to keep things under wraps as much as possible, so I’ll give some impressions, but no real spoilers. (That’s also why I’m just adding this to this thread, instead of posting something new under Trip Reports…) Design & Theming: The park is just absolutely gorgeous, and I’m guessing at least 95% complete. They were still doing some random painting and work around, but it felt very “done”—including landscaping, water features, theming elements, etc. The park definitely has a familiar Universal aesthetic—from a visual standpoint it reminds me a lot of IOA (especially in its early years)—just “plussed”. I think if you were dropped in the middle of that park without being told where you were, you’d realize you were in a Universal park. I was surprised at how big and expansive Celestial Park feels when you enter the park—normally a park’s “Main Street” acts more like a funnel to pull you into the center of the park, but this feels so wide open and free-form in where you can go. The Helios Grand is beautiful—and definitely very grand looking. The lands all feel very independent and immersive. There are a few places where you have sight lines outside the land (i.e., you can see the top of Helios from Dark Universe and can see the skyline of Harry Potter from Isle of Berk) but otherwise the immersion is pretty complete feeling. Attractions: My biggest disappointment was I didn’t get to experience Monsters Unleashed (despite giving it my best attempt). The ride was down in the morning and we got in line as soon as it was back up—about 45 min into the wait it went down again. We continued to wait (for probably another 45 minutes) until they finally dumped the queue because it wasn’t coming up anytime soon. It came back up later the in the afternoon and we made a beeline there again—just to get there and find out it was down again because of a fire alarm in the building. We left the park around 6p (it closed at 7p) and it was not operational again before we left. Oh well, that’s why it’s a technical rehearsal—hopefully I’ll get to ride it when I return in late June. A few rides which surprised me a bit as being much more fun than I anticipated—Curse of the Werewolf and Hiccup’s Wing Gliders. Both were really fun. I had thought Werewolf might be a good time because of the spinning, but Wing Gliders really surprised me. It was a zippy “story coaster” with good visuals and fun elements—sort of reminded me of Hagrid’s at IOA. Stardust Racers was definitely the coaster star of the show. From a speed and intensity perspective it reminds me a lot of Velocicoaster, but with the visuals of the close fly-bys (which are AMAZING) from the other train. It’s an awesome coaster—and a fast loader. I did not ride Dragon Racer’s Rally, Bowser’s Challenge, or Mine-Cart Madness. Mine-Cart was up & down all day (and, to be honest—my line patience was getting limited by the end of the day), and I had ridden Bowsers at USH last year, so didn’t feel the need to yesterday. Operations: Well, as you should expect in a rehearsal like this there were some rough edges—particularly with food service (which is still not all fully open yet, so there’s a lot of stress on the open locations) and guest entry. In fact, the thing that surprised me the most about the whole park was that entry security was still using the old fashioned metal detectors instead of the new Evolv scanners that WDW, SeaWorld and many stadiums are now using. Epic is really the first major destination park to be designed and open in the US since all the new security started after 9/11 and I thought they’d really use that opportunity to do something state-of-the-art efficient for security, but nope—still the same old metal detectors and item x-ray machines that requires them to hand wand probably 25% of the people going in. The one operational area where they are really advanced are with the ride lockers (required for all items on Star Dust Racers and available on Wing Glider)—they’re facial recognition controlled and work great! You just walk up, touch the button to start—it scans your face and opens a locker. Then, after the ride you’re on the back side of the lockers, scan your face again and your locker opens to retrieve your items. It’s amazingly fast & smooth. (CP could learn a LOT about how to do lockers at Steel Vengeance from them!) I think that’s a pretty succinct summary. All-in-all it’s a world class park and a wonderful addition to the UO Resort and the Orlando market.

Maybe this and Siren's Curse will do something to help everyone not be shoulder to shoulder on some of the midways this year. I don't think it's a good idea to limit guest attendance, but some of those crowd pictures (especially from Haunt) looked straight up dangerous.

That's nice. Now let's just hope it STAYS open for longer than a week.