Kenban

This is just going to continue to happen until New Years. It happens every year since the parks can only handle around 100,000 people at a time. Plus there is limited readmission if you leave there is a good chance you will not be able to get back in until a large number of people leave the park. The week starting Christmas day until New Years day is the busiest time of the year for the Orlando Parks. Its also the most expensive time of the year to go for just about every hotel in the area charges holiday rates. I really have no idea why anyone would go now its just not worth it if there is a way to go any other time of year. Although it sounds worse then normal considering Disney is turning people away at 3 parks.

X-Flight was on a very flat piece of land. I am pretty sure back when the park was owned by Six Flags it was a parking lot coaster. Its hard to see from the photos just how flat the ground is now but it looks more even now then the last set of photos.

The wishes are available to anyone on property which means you can win if your in Downtown Disney as well. For being the year of a million dreams its going to run for 18 months (you know a Disney year) and its well over a million prizes total. How its being done is that every park (world wide) has a certain number of prizes to hand out each day. For example the Magic Kingdom will have one family selected each day to win a nights stay in the Castle. All of the parks are giving out golden fastpasses (which are actually blue plastic) but this is being done by a cast member gathering the next 30+ people getting off of a ride starting at a certain time in the morning (normally right after opening). The times and locations of the giveaways are being selected by a computer so that it is random. How someone in Downtown Disney can win is that there are other prizes then just the in park ones including pin lanyards, round the world vacations, etc. I was at Disney World about 2 weeks ago for 4 days. Still planning on writing a trip report at some point but have not gotten around to it yet. I saw people getting prizes, saw the magic fastpasses around people necks but never won anything myself. Although all of the lines were short enough that using fastpasses the longest line I waited in was around 20 minutes.

I would think since its on the ground and to my knowledge has never been painted before it might get a new paint job. X-Flight was designed for 3 trains which it was unable to run well with 3 trains at GL so the third train was used for parts. Its possible at KI the third train will return or be replaced by a new train (no clue how much was removed at some point its cheaper to replace the entire train). I have heard that when Stealth was moved a lot of systems on the ride were replaced and upgraded. Which is from what I have read why the ride worked at Carowinds. I am not sure if these upgrades have already been done to X-Flight or not but if they have not been done I expect it will happen now. I am not sure just how much its going to cost to move X-Flight but it would not surprise me if its going to be VERY expensive.

Why does it says they will announce what Knotts is getting later? They already announced it about a month ago its a coaster called Sierra Sidewinder. Which does leave Kings Island as the only park that has not announced its ride yet.

There is one interesting thing I noticed on the 12th page. "The original design of the supporting structure for the track was inadequate." Then it goes on to say "The modifications up to now undertaken by Kings Island appear to address a portion of these problems and have greatly improved the performance of the structure." I also think this is a very good sign for the future. "The SOB is not a structure that is running on the "ragged edge," but rather is an amusement ride that is most of the way to overcoming some original design shortcomings." The report leaves me wondering just how bad was the original design and what would have happened if Paramount had not done the large number of modifications.

I still find this article to be interesting. It talks a little about how the state feels it should be fixed. Although in my view one line jumps out at me. Now mind you I think this assumes the ride stays mostly the same keeping the loop and trains. I wonder if we will be seeing some steel supports or if the new trains will be enough.

Just want to point out that only 5 years ago in 2001 Geauga Lake had an annual attendance of 2.7 million. Considering the park now draws 700k and neither Cedar Point or Kings Island picked up those extra 2 million visits I don't think removing rides from GL will impact CP or KI unless the rides end up at one of them.

I don't believe that X-Flight is the most marketable attraction. I am pretty sure that the water park Wildwater Kingdom is what most guests visit the park for and it is what part of the park that is advertised the most. Really I don't think the removal of this one attraction would have that much of an impact on the attendance. The park drew in more guests 20 years ago when it was a family park with maybe one or two coasters then it is right now. While the attendance is up at Geauga Lake its not up that much. Last time I saw numbers for the park it was only drawing a little over 700,000. I know the attendance is up so lets assume its 800,000 now. Average per guest spending for Cedar Fair is around $40. Considering that GL has the lowest admission price of the chain I doubt that it is that high but thats what I am going to use anyways. So the park total might bring in around 32 million a year. Considering the size of the park I would be surprised if it could run on that little let alone all of the money that has been spent in the last few years. In 2005 the water park was built which cost 24 million. Then this year Tidal Wave Bay was added which cost 5 million. Even if nothing is added for 2007 Steel Venom still ripped itself apart and is going to be very expensive to fix. I wish I knew how much it cost to run Geauga Lake I am pretty sure the park is losing money but I have to wonder just how much.

Just wanted to point out that this company is putting on a show in Dayton in late February called Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy at the Victoria Theatre. This group also used to put on the Imaginique show at Busch Gardens. Having never seen the show I can't say how good it was but I have heard Imaginique was very well done. Although it was removed this year since it was too expensive.

Geauga Lake has enough space to expand for years. Even if they somehow use it all then they have a large lake in the middle of the park that could have rides built out over. If you go to maps.google.com and just type in Geauga Lake it will pop up as the first option just click it and just zoom in. Then click satellite in the upper right. X-flight is the coaster out on the west side of the park next to the parking lot. The photos are a few years out of date its while Wildwater Kingdom was being built on what used to be Seaworld. It is hard to tell from the photos just how much land is left because large sections of the Seaworld side are unused and the Geauga Lake side was in the process of having the old water park removed. But there is land available. Also from the photos you can see just how close X-flight is to a major road which is way we would all know the day something were to happen.

A women fell to her death from the ride. After that most of the rides only lasted a few more years. Very few of them are still opperating today. If you want to try to track down a park still running one they were built by Intamin and were called Flight Trainers. EDIT: Just wanted to point out that the ride was removed in 1995 and I am pretty sure it did not go anywhere it was just destroyed

I looked around and found some old attendance figures for GL from the 70's and 80's. In 1970 the park had 470,000 guests it went up to 900,000 in 1980 and it went into the 90's with around 1 million guests a year. This was while Sea World was still running and well before most of the costers were built. Out of the 10 coasters 7 were built between 1996 and 2001. The park did really well as a family park and its failing as a thrill park. I believe it needs to get back to its roots and put in more family friendly attractions. I don't know if moving or removing a coaster is the right thing to do but something has to be done. I am not sure how Cedar Fair is run but its common for many companies to run divisions (or parks in this case) as seperate parties and they have to purchase things from each other. In this case if the ride were to move to another park I would expect the park that gets the ride would "pay" the other out of its budgets. This could give Geauga Lake some extra cash for next season plus the removal of an attraction would free up money in other budgets around the park.

The reason I wanted to double check is that comment makes me think something is being moved, removed, or closed. I don't know if its going to be x-flight but I expect some changes to make the park cheaper to run. I would think that Cedar Fair would scrap Steel Venom, Close Dino Island, or remove Happy Harbor before they move X-Flight. But for a park its size and for the number of guests it gets it has an insane number of coasters. I had to check on rcdb but Geauga Lake has 10 and King's Island has 13. GL's attendance is around 700,000 while KI's is around 3.3 million. If it does get moved or steel venom does not get repaired I could understand why. Cedar Fair is spending a lot of money on the park and I would be surprised if it is even close to breaking even right now. My understanding is that Cedar Fair is going to reveal what its plans are for the parks by the end of the month so I would think if we just wait a few weeks we will know for sure and we can stop all the crazy guesses.

Did anyone listen to the Conference call from last week? I saw a comment on Geauga Guide which said "Footprint too large for their attendance figures" which based on the other comments it sounded like it came from the Conference call and I wanted to make sure its a real comment from Dick Kinzel.

When I was there I did not see a single line for any coaster. Right now there is good capacity on the dry side of the park if they just run the trains. The wet side though seemed badly layed out but very busy.

I am thinking the parking pass might not require that you own a season pass from that park. I think its going to be possible to purchase both a Kings Island and a Cedar Point parking pass and just have a single maxx pass. Thats not a very good option and there should be a parking pass for more then one park but for those people who do visit the parks often enough I believe it will be possible.

Because the park is not open to the public until the 24th they have almost 3 weeks to worry about how they are going to handle the parking passes. I have not seen anything about season passes for Geauga Lake or Cedar Point yet. It is still possible there will be an Ohio parking pass its too early to tell. My guess is we will find out about Cedar Points pricing on thursday so I suspect we will know then if there will be two differant parking passes or not.

Dude, Kings Island already has a Delerium you idiot What the park has is a Huss Giant Frisbee it just happens to be called Delirium.

I think its odd that there is no parking pass listed thats good for only Kings Island even. I assume its available at the park but you would think it would be listed on the website.

Just for everyone info both Geauga Lake and Cedar Point have admissions taxes already.

I did not even think of that as possible. But I hope your right and it would not surprise me at all.

Cedar Fair does not own Bonfante gardens it has a deal where they manage the park. Also they only own a portion of the Star Trek experience. At the time it was built the deal was Paramount owned all the hardware and the space itself was still the hotels. I believe it was considered a 50/50 deal. I am not sure if anything has changed since then.

Considering how early construction started I think a dueling coaster is very possible. Although its not unheard of to use two differant colors of track in a single coaster. Any pictures of the green track yet?

I just took a look and noticed that the PKI website has been updated. It now says "2007 Season Passes are currently unavailable for sale via web, phone or at the park. Please check this web site periodically for updates as they become available. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience." The prices have been removed as well. I am really starting to wonder whats going on.