Theme Park Discussion / King's Island trip reprt

Went to KI at 4:30 on a Wednesday in August after school has started back up in most nearby districts. Result: No waits. For anything. Not even a single train cycle; literally walked onto everything in the entire park.

A buddy and I got tied up in traffic; we were aiming for 3:30, or we probably would have gone for the after-5 discount tickets. We went left from the entrance and rode everything we cared to, working clockwise until we hit Diamondback and then doing the same thing in reverse.

Invertigo: Straight into this with no warmup was actually a little rough. Some headbanging on the backwards section, oddly enough at the top of the loop; like anything with inversions that size, it carries some solid Gs.

Flight Deck: Still good. Definitely prefer back of the train; you get whipped over the first drop pretty nicely, and get to see just how crazy the swing is through the lower portion of the layout. My torso is juuuust too long for me to fit in the restraint comfortably; the OTSRs dig in even when I'm sitting in a relaxed slouch. I'm only 5'8", but my torso is longer than average; I don't see anyone 6'+ doing well in those.

Given past experience with SoB, we did not mourn its absence. Banshee transfer was going up, no sign of track.

Delirium (Giant Frisbee): Quality ride all-around; reliably gives you the oh-fuck sensation more than any rollercoaster.

Adventure Express : I don't know why, but this is so good.
It is just the goofiest nonsense of a ride and you expect it to be meh, and then it just keeps winning you over. The ending lift will always be hilarious.

Racer - only red was running; airtime isn't quite there; it peaks in the next-to-last car, and then the back seems to catch the float too late and you just end up getting slammed into the restraint before the negative Gs really hit. Fun younger-kids ride regardless; looks to be in declining repair.

Walked over to FoF and Firehawk, realized we'd have to rent a locker just to ride those two rides - no in-station bag storage- decided that was bullshit and moved on. We didn't bother to check the prices, which is disappointing because we had thought they were 7+ dollars; I think the ones back there are actually <$1.

Windseeker wasn't anywhere near as cool as I was expecting, somehow. It's high enough that it would be thrilling if:
- it rotated slowly enough for you to actually realize how small stuff around you was
- the seats weren't as enveloping

Really it was kind of a ho-hum thing for me, but my buddy - in the outside seat, which may have mattered somewhat - found it rattling and didn't want to do it again. I had actually thought Windseeker replaced the former XMEN moving theatre thing, so I was a little surprised to realize halfway up the mast that we weren't where I thought we were. (Buddy's discomfort may have also been due to his spotting the yellow recovery lift vehicle behind the ride and asking what it was for at about the same time. I explained that the Windseekers have been breaking down pretty frequently.)

Skipped Vortex

Stunt Coaster beat me up pretty bad last time I rode it; the looong upward helix off the launch doesn't give you much room to recover if you aren't in a good position, since the forces just kind of pin you to one side. No such trouble this time; we found the helicopter effects hilarious, and the ride would be pretty decent if the cars were more accomodating. The mini-cooper sculpt makes them narrow, tall, and boxy, and restrictive- not much of anywhere to put your hands or lean into corners. (Not that you really could- the turn radii are so tiny that you don't really see them coming.)

Beast - Still good, but it just doesn't feel as impressively fast as it used to. I can see this being seriously, seriously scary without the trims on the long downslope into the tunnel. Things still get very, very hairy after the second lift.

Diamondback - Super-floaty. Not really very forceful, but enjoyable. I'd ride it all day, but it doesn't leave a very distinctive impression. The trains are excellent, but I can't help thinking that they're so long they take away from the overall impression of height and speed. Excellent trains, unbelievably fast ops. The whole park was running at least two trains even with obviously empty queues; if nobody showed up to get in your seat at the platform, just stay there and go around again. Great staff from what we saw, and absolutely no complaints about ops efficiency.





After 4 rounds of DB we hit the beast and stunt coaster again, did racer on more time, then rode Adventure Express 12 times in the back seat.

Have I mentioned that Adventure Express is dumbfoundingly, really strangely good? I don't think I can even explain it, but AE has built up this kind of mythos amongst the group I go to KI with fairly regularly. We always go into it with this idea that maybe we were sugar-coating it last time and we're going to ride it and prove it's a so-so kiddie coaster once and for all, and then it just ends up being super fun. We regularly compete to see who can retrieve the most leaves, return to the station still imitating the animatronic statues, and generally find it the most bizarre case of unexpected brilliance imaginable. For the uninitiated-
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=KMZSLuw2oz0

The drop out of the station gets you up to 15 or so, and then you dip down the gully and take a few corners before entering a themed tunnel and finally hitting the first lift. It really approaches the kind of speed you'd expect from the main portion of a mine train just as a prelift. So then you take the big curving drop - this is where leaves are most frequently grabbed - and swing over the tunnel structure. The next right-hand bend seriously pulls the back few cars around; in the last row you get a nice jolt back into the direction of travel at the tail end. Then you take a sweeping left and enter a downhill tunnel with a sharp right at the bottom. The design is actually reminiscent of the beast across the park; instead of more modern fluid transitions, you have a straight drop and then all of the sudden you get shoved to one side of the car. Every time I re-ride this after not visiting for a while I think the second lift starts here, but it always surprises me by popping back out for another few turns, still gaining speed as it moves down into the gully.
Then you pull up into the second lift's tunnel; crumbling rockwork lines the walls, arm-smashing tiki-like statues glare at you. It actually feels very similar to Big Thunder's lift sequence, and you're thinking "oh man, now what?"
A tense soundtrack crashes, and an ominous voice announces "NOW... YOU... WILL... PAY"

.... and then you glide smoothly into the brakes. The best theming of the ride - of the entire park now that Tomb Raider is gutted - and it all leads straight into a hilarious anticlimax.

After some 8-year-olds finally showed up in the entry row for the backseat, we moved back towards Delirium again. Here we experienced the distinct oh-shit moment that comes not from realizing you've gone past horizontal and are floating, but from realizing your cell phone is also floating, and it is floating away from you.

Buddy unwisely kept his phone in his pocket, and on one of the big swings it just decided to leave; we were just coming up to the apex of the swing, so we got to watch it hang for a second or so before coming down on top of one of the support legs. Next twenty minutes were spent collecting pieces with the staff and their extendable grabby-arm - the two main bits were in surprisingly decent shape, but the battery bent in half around the grating under the support and then fell through. No word on if it is even retrievable.

Friend a little mopey, we walked over to Flight Deck and spent the remaining half-hour of park hours riding that continuously in the back seat while discussing his phone options.

Then we went for tacos. />/>/>

me = jealous

Yeah, AE is soo crazy good, it's funny with how much Disney spent on their mine trains, and yet this one is still more fun (possibly because this one acts more like a coaster, although I've yet to be on Big Grizzly Mountin Runaway Mine Cars, so I can't speak for it) but an awesome mine train, except for the damn ending.


Loved the beast, even if it was a bit slow at parts, though I can see why they do this, to keep the wear on the tracks down a bit (wonder how it would be with RMC?!?!?!? although that would technically be blasphemy, oh friggin well)

Aww, you should've ridden Firehawk! I love that coaster