Yesterday, my dad’s friend invited us over for a ride around
the Tri-State on his club’s plane. It was a really nice day, pretty odd
considering there’s going to be snow today. But that’s Ohio weather.

Setting up and checking to make sure the plane was ready
seemed complicated. I really didn’t understand much of it. The takeoff was a
lot of fun, kind of like a long Flight of Fear launch. First, we passed over my
house, my school, and some of the baseball fields I play on. There were a lot
of baseball fields.

Next we flied towards Kings Island. First thing I noticed is
how much space Son of Beast took up.

(These are all screenshots from a video)

Thunder Alley is just a dirt oval now. The water tower is
also clearly gone, but the paint that was under it still remains.

After that, we took a quick fly to downtown Cincinnati.

Then we headed back to the airport. I admit I got a bit
motion sick towards the end, but I felt better after we landed. Hope you
enjoyed, and thanks for reading!

Awesome! Downtown Cincinnati looks so small from up there.

Wow, amazing photos! Thanks a lot for sharing!

I saw one of your other pictures today and knew you would post more here. Thanks, looks really cool! I was just at the us bank arena a couple days ago, nice pics.

I love flying, but I'll be honest I prefer the big jets Neat shots! Sonny was really massive.

Your Cincinnati shots remind me of classic "Sim City!" Great pictures!

Incredible! Thanks for sharing!

The Action Zone looks unreal. Great photo's ohiocolts!

Looks like A LOT of land clearing in Action Zone! Thanks for sharing ohiocolts!

EDIT: maybe you could send these pics to bing so they can update their birds eye view!

EDIT2: Can you upload the video to YouTube?

Very good. Thank you.

Great shots! I never realized just how far back Diamondback goes. And SOB took up a lot more space than I thought. Thanks!

Thanks for sharing these great photos! I wish I would've taken advantage of the helicopter rides they offered several years ago. but I couldn't afford it.

How much was it CoasterBob?^^^^

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

Great Photos. Going to feel really weird riding Flight Deck next to that giant clearing of dirt. AE too.

Man, it reminds me of my day on the "tin can" (AKA Tin Goose), great photos!

The helicopter tour they had through the end of 2003 was something like $35 for a basic park tour. The helipad was next to FOF where Firehawk's queue entrance and such is now.

Thanks for the pics, ohiocolts. I also didn't realize how massive SoB was. The Cincy pictures were cool too; I especially like the 5th one.

Wow, awesome pictures...seeing a big empty field of dirt where SOB and Thunder Alley were is going to be weird...

I'm going to have to do this one day!!

Nice shots bro

I love the pics,I can almost smell the smells from GABP! It wont be much longer.

Wow awesome pictures! Not many of us will get the chance to experience these places from that viewpoint. Thanks for sharing!

Great pics! I can't get over all that prime real estate where SOB sat. Can't wait to see the plans for that area.

Your Cincinnati shots remind me of classic "Sim City!" Great pictures!

Now it looks like modern SimCity!

Thanks everyone!

And here's the video.

For those of us on phones, tablets, etc, can you post an http (no s) link? We'd love to see it!

I hope our fellow KIC member "CoasterBob62" does his annual video this year for Opening Day 2013 at Kings Island.

Great footage - thanks again, ohiocolts!

^^ IPB automatically converts YouTube links and URLs into embedded videos, which happen to break when this site is used in a mobile browser. (This is a limitation of the IPB YouTube plugin, not of YouTube's embedding code. IPB assumes falsely that all devices have Flash.) Here's a non-linkified URL: youtube.com/watch?v=_X9WW4YAHao

I hear you, yet there have recently been several embedded YouTube videos that DID appear here on nonFlash devices.

I hope our fellow KIC member "CoasterBob62" does his annual video this year for Opening Day 2013 at Kings Island.

I'll be there opening day. I never used to like going on opening day because of the large crowds, but it's been fun doing these videos, so I'll be there for sure! It was cool to see these photos and get an idea of what we can expect to see next month.