violakat03

Yes, but if he'd brought up this 2 year old thread, wouldn't every body be jumping on him for bringing up a dead thread?

I'd like to see them concentrate on maintaining more than just the landscape. Cedar Point has absolutely beautiful landscaping, and you can see it beginning to return to Kings Island as well. But there's more to a well maintained park than just landscaping and extra trash cans. How about keeping the water areas clean? The pond by Viking Fury was absolutely disgusting for most of last season (though not as bad as Mantis's pond!!). I don't even remember seeing water in BLSC's splashdown area, let alone the splashdown feature actually working. How about bringing back the fog effects on Flight Deck, BLSC, and IIRC Adventure Express had some too? They could sure pour out the fog during Haunt (enough that I literally couldn't breathe and had to be taken to first aid) and at CP's Iron Dragon, but no other time or place it seems. You can see the type of neglect that's so prevalent at Cedar Point continuing on at Kings Island, and that's just really sad.

"Where was this bolt supposed to go...?"

Yeah I was thinking that too. It's going to be awesome. Can't wait to see the first run with the splashdown effect.

Never on a ride, but in the promotional literature that KI representatives took to like .. area high school and such, for the 2003 season, I was in one of the pictures.

Very cool. Thanks for the info. Any word on if you can get the ERT at CP that platinum pass holders get? When I worked at PKI, I could get into any Paramount park for free, and since you had to enter through the employee gate and could exit the park at any area, I could do ERTs and stuff like that. Only thing I couldn't do was the gold pass double rides.

Oh, I've got plenty of work history. I've been working since I was 14 (including 2 seasons at PKI) and I'm now 23. I've been a manager at a jewelry store, sold cars for 2 years, and delivered pizza on and off whenever I'm not making enough money elsewhere. I'm hoping my age and past history will help open up options. I really want to work a coaster if I go with rides (I actually listed department trainer or merch auditor as my first choices), and if I can't ... well, I'll try Cedar Point! The first season I worked there, we got an ERT on The Beast and Tomb Raider. Since it was the year TR:TR opened, everyone went flocking to it .. I walked on The Beast and rode it 3 or 4 times in a row with a bunch of crazy, excited, screaming employees. It was pretty awesome.

I guess I'll find out, won't I? I'd also love to work on The Beast, so I might end up working during the ERT's anyway. No big loss in that case.

I'm crossing my fingers to be able to actually work at Diamondback.. I'm going to make sure I'm one of the first people at the job fair because if I work in rides, that's where I want to work! I'm also considering working at Cedar Point, so who knows what I'll be doing.

As an employee at KI do you get priviledges at other CF parks, or do you only get into KI? Since I am probably going to work there this summer, I'm wondering if I should buy a platinum pass anyway because I intend to make several visits to other CF parks.

Don't worry, I can't either.

Absolutely yes, but I recommend not following in the footsteps of many other forums and making it just a reiteration of things that have already been posted. One of my favorite forums does this - once a month, sends out a "what's been happening on the forum" newsletter. Considering I'm on that forum daily, I pretty much just delete it, since it's links to news articles that have been posted and interesting member posts in the main forum. I read all those anyway! Member articles, trip reports (especially to parks that not many of us have been to, like ones in California and such), get to know a KIC member ... all those are excellent ideas!

Yeah, the pay vs gas money was the biggest reason I didn't try and go back last year. When gas was running at $4/gal and I lived 40 miles away, it wouldn't work. The two years I worked there, gas was hovering around $1/gal and I had a slightly more fuel efficient car at the time. Though, the 50 minute drive with no cruise control and only AM/FM radio really stank! If the job I interviewed for last week doesn't go through, KI or possibly CP this summer will be a big possibility. My husband's starting a good paying job on the 2nd, so any pay I get will just be extra and can go into savings, so minimum wage won't be an issue.

Glad I'm not the only who noticed Flight of Fear suddenly lining up like crazy. Used to be walk-on in the evenings, now it's a 1 hour wait all day long. Grrrr!

I always use Firefox. What drives me nuts is that the college I go to has been having issues with their website, so assignment submissions are only allowed through Internet Explorer (ugh). My IE is so stupid. I have ad blocker enabled on it, but I still get them. I'll open IE, then it's only a matter of seconds before I get a popup, then the popup refuses to close and I get a system error message. Yeah, I've had issues with submission forms before on Firefox, but I very, very rarely go outside Firefox. The online math class I'm taking uses a site that's not real friendly with Firefox, and AdBlock for some reason blocks the content in the submission area, so I have to disable all my pop-up blockers and AdBlock to do my homework!

Oh the irony! Just think, it makes you feel more like you're in the park! (or you could do like I shamefully admit to doing ... and use AdBlock for Firefox - I only started using it after my favorite forum began using smart text ads. They drive me bonkers.)

I think I'm just as excited to meet the people from this board as I am for the actual tour.

See, I didn't know Circle City was Indy. That's why I was asking.

Good article. Looks like I was partially right - someone probably said "I wonder if.." and it turned it "OMG did you hear what happened" and the second half was what got repeated because it connected to people's emotion - especially one like fear.

Thank you. The sad part is, now that I have a name to match the ride, and I do remember riding it, I'm suddenly kind of bummed that it's gone. Yeah, when I finally made the connection to which one it actually was (I've never ridden the re-themed Wild Thornberry's flume since the change), I was really depressed! I loved that one cause it wandered around in the trees.

Where do you live in relation to Dayton?

I enjoyed it enough that I'm considering it again, even though it was 6 years ago that I last worked there. Absolutely. It's like you get to know it in a more intimate way. I knew where all the cheap pop machines were, the cut throughs, and little tidbits about the backstage areas that non-employees generally don't know. You also get to know other employees, in all departments, which is fun and it's nice to know the ride ops for your favorite rides! Expect minimum wage, feel priviledge if you get more. They'll ask you your availability straight off The Bat, since most of their employees are students. They're understanding about scheduling, because they'd rather not schedule you than you not show up on a scheduled day. When I worked there, I'd say less than half of the people in my location had unlimited availability. I wasn't able to work mornings because I was taking summer classes before noon, and they put me in the water park because the closing shift was 2-10 pm which was perfect for me. If you need a day off, at least when I worked there, you had to write it in the request book in the scheduling office, and it was first come first serve as to who got the day off, so I always put my name in there as soon as I knew I needed it. Never once got scheduled on a requested day off during my two summers there. Yes! As long as you keep in mind that it's a job, so you have to take it seriously and take the bad with the good, it's a great job. Out of the many jobs I've had since I first started working at 14, I can definitely say Kings Island is one of two jobs that I can say I enjoyed.

Yeah, but that thread's about stupid things they say in general. I'm after ride rumors alone - and not just for KI either, I want to hear all the good ones, like Hangman at Opryland. I'd actually never heard the Magnum is sinking rumor until I started hanging around on PointBuzz. I'm guessing the rumors about people dying on things like The Bat, Hangman, and other rides that are closed and removed with seemingly no warning, is for exactly that reason - to the general public who doesn't understand why The Bat was really taken out, then it 'must' be because someone died on it, because why else would they remove a popular ride after only 2 years?

I thought merch was a lot of fun - enough that I did it for two summers. At the time, I thought there was no way I'd ever want to be a ride op, because it seemed like the most boring and repetitive job ever. But merch can be pretty stressful or boring, and I think I'd enjoy being a ride op now. However, you don't feel as much a part of the park in merch - it's just like working in any other store, but with the added benefit of a free season pass and if you're lucky, time to ride the rides immediately after you get off work. I think that being in another department I might have felt more a part of the action.

What are some ride rumors you've heard? How do you think they got started? What's the real truth about it? Discussions about The Beast's original influence and talking to my mom has led me to wonder and post this question. For example, The Vortex/Magnum is sinking. Or, here's one from my husband that I'd love to know where it got started. My husband was convinced that Opryland was closed due to an accident on the Hangman. He said he remembered hearing on the news (he lived in Memphis at the time) that the coaster had gotten stuck upside down for several hours and that several people died, so Opryland closed up shop, sold all the rides, and used the money from the sale to pay the families' lawsuits. As anyone who's aware of coaster transfer history knows, the Hangman is now at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom as Kong. It has never killed anyone nor gotten stuck upside down. I'd also heard that during one of the first years of operation, The Beast killed a couple people when two trains crashed in the station. That's obviously not true, but I've heard it from multiple people, including my mom, who thought she'd heard it on the news.