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"It's too crowded here!"
Saturday I awoke to a glorious day, and what could be better than to spend
a holiday weekend visiting a good amusement park? Oh, sure, it will be crowded,
but I figured I would grab my video camera and shoot some footage of Drop
Zone and Face/Off in action.
Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. I parked adjacent to Tram Stop #2, grabbed my camera and loaded it with a fresh tape and battery, and headed for the front gate. Above the front gate there is now a large banner touting the Beast and its ranking in some USA Today article. The Season Pass line was posting a 30-minute wait, the ticket line was overrunning the tram circle, and a huge mob of people was streaming through the gate. Kings Island did a couple of things here which help a lot. First of all, they can take season passes at any gate. Second, there are stroller gates between the turnstiles, so park employees opened the gates and stationed themselves at the opening to collect tickets. Hey! One place where PKI takes steps to move lots of people very rapidly!
I headed immediately into Adventure Village...er...Paramount Action Zone...via the "short cut" path between the Paramount Theatre and the restaurant. I mention this because when I visited with Dave Bowers, he was careful to point out that the path was closed off. Well, it was open this time, and being used as the overflow queue for Face/Off. Not even 10:30 yet, and already Face/Off has a 2:30 wait. I maneuvered around the crowd and approached Drop Zone. That was starting with an advertised 1:30 wait. I pulled out the camera and stood on a bench across from the Drop Zone loading area, pointed the camera at the ride, and pulled the trigger.It whirred. It buzzed. It clicked into reverse. It stopped. The message, "T.END" flashed in the viewfinder. I cussed. I watched Drop Zone cycle a couple of times.
Drop Zone is an interesting ride, but Kings Island needs to re-think a couple of details and get the cycle time down. It takes a full minute to get to the top of the tower, with the seat ring rotating all the way up. I had expected that the ring might make a full rotation while at the top, but that did not appear to be the case. Instead it paused, then plummeted straight to the ground, making a noise almost identical to the Giant Drop rides. The drop is a little under 20 seconds from the time the gondola stops at the top of the tower until the shoulder bars release. But the total cycle time is about four and a half minutes, for an hourly capacity of about 533 pph. For now I shall assume this is partly because it is a new ride and that the capacity will improve. Unwilling to wait this time (a benefit to the season pass is that I can come back on a less-busy day), I decided that if my camera wasn't going to cooperate I would just return it to the car.
At the car I dumped my camera and grabbed swim gear. I figured I wanted to make the most of this day, crowds or no crowds. Back in the park, I headed for Rivertown, and a few minutes later I was securing myself in a 6-passenger raft on White Water Canyon. This is only the second time I have ever ridden one of these rapids rides (the other one was at Dorney Park). I thought the ride action was pretty good, and I noticed that Kings Island's ride lacks the waterfalls often used on these rides to provide a gratuitous drenching. That doesn't change the fact that there was plenty of rapids action (yes, wetter than Americana's flume!) and I was pretty well soaked by the end of the ride. Interesting, the ride is situated far from the midway, and the walk from the ride to the midway is long enough that by the time you re-emerge in Rivertown you're partially dried off. That should lead the unsuspecting marks on the midway to believe the ride is less wet than it really is. 8-)
I was feeling weak and hungry by this time as I practically melted in the afternoon sun. Conveniently, the Skyline Chili Footlong Express is located right next to the rapids ride. Yum! It's worth noting that the footlong Skyline cheese coneys are not available at your local Skyline restaurant, so if you want one, you'd best head for Kings Island. 8-)
This was the second day of operation for PKI's waterpark, and it was getting hot. Since I was already garbed for it, I hopped a train back to the waterpark. There I did not notice any significant changes from last season, except that the surfers at Wipeout Beach (PKI's FlowRider attraction) were considerably more skilled than the ones I watched last year. Personally, I find PKI's waterpark a little lacking, mostly because I've spent so much time at Wyandot Lake where the wave pool is much deeper and tubes are not required in the lazy river. It was time to get dressed and head back to the main park.
I was standing in Hanna-Barbera Land when I realized I hadn't ridden a coaster yet. So I started with the Beastie. The ride is a lot of fun, and I clocked it at 1,080 pph, so the line moved quickly. I really don't like the brake on the front-end turnaround, though, and having just ridden the freshly-retracked Sea Dragon the night before, I have to give Sea Dragon the edge over the Beastie.
As I exited, I saw something I thought I would never see on this visit: Ghoster Coaster with a queue that wasn't full. I jumped in line. 45 minutes later...my longest wait of the day, as it turns out...I was crammed into the tiny Batflyer car, skimming the treetops at dizzying heights and breathtaking speed. Well, not quite, but.......well, you get the idea. Ghoster Coaster is an interesting ride, unusual, and I think it counts as a coaster even if it does only carry 128 pph. It would be better if it actually had a drop instead of the continuous descent, but it's still an interesting ride.
Okay, okay, enough of this horsing around [Footnote 1]. It was time to go ride some real coasters. By this time there was about 50,000 people in the park. A good percentage of them were in the waterpark, while another contingent was filling the 2.5-hour queues for The Beast, Vortex, Outer LIMits, Face/Off, and Drop Zone. So I went the long way 'round to ride Top Gun. Only about a ten minute wait for one of the most fun coasters in the park...and with a view of SOB construction as well. You know, it occurred to me that they missed a good bet with the SOB design. That loop is going to be 118' in diameter, and after the second hill it looks like the train is going to zip past it on ground level. With Herr Stengel's involvement with this project, I am surprised that the track goes past the loop instead of threading through it. Hmmmmm...
It should also be possible to get a good look at SOB construction from aboard Adventure Express, but it turns out that this is not the case. At least not for me. Adventure Express is a pretty wild ride in its own right, not well suited to sight-seeing. And on this particular day the crew was actually running three trains without stacking. Maybe they are finally getting the hang of it.
My next ride was on the Racer. I jumped into the third seat, and off we went. I don't know what PKI has done to this one, but it is running fast and smooth, with loads of airtime on the first drop, second hill, and fourth hill. Then, with a "CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK!" disaster struck just before the rise into the turnaround. A sharp pain went shooting through my legs. My right leg impacted on the top of the seat divider when I landed and jammed in place. I felt my feet starting to go numb. The brake on the turnaround grabbed the train and slammed my stomach into the lap bar. "I want to get off of Racer!" I thought. The train crept over the remaining hills, and for once I was relieved that because of the slow speed, there was no airtime. We hit the brakes in the tunnel hard, and it hurt like crazy. We rolled into the station and the lap bar solenoid made a horrible racket, a vibration which was transmitted directly into my thighs. I pushed. Nothing happened. "HELP!!" I called.
The PTC ratcheting lap bar is designed so that the locking pawl will not disengage from the ratchet simply because the release is tripped. Instead, the ratchet must be lowered slightly while the release is tripped to enable the pawl to release. The practical upshot of all this is that in order to open the lap bar, it is necessary to push down against the bias of the return spring in order to release the pawl. It's a perfectly reasonable design, as it reduces the likelihood of unintentional release. Unfortunately, Kings Island has the ratchet assembly so far out of adjustment that the bar will lock well below the surface of my thighs. Suddenly, instead of pushing against a return spring, I have to push against my thighs, which were already fully compressed. A platform attendant arrived and verified this situation by attempting to push the lap bar down far enough to release it. She was joined by another attendant who also tried to help push. A third person arrived with the "nails" to pop the latch manually. It ultimately required the combined efforts of FOUR platform attendants to get the lap bar open...one working the latch and three pushing really hard. I don't know about anybody else, but I think this is more than a little bit unreasonable. There is no reason for the lap bar to lock in that low in the first place; second, a stiffer return spring might keep the bar from falling down during the ride; third, failing that perhaps a safety cable should be added to the lap bars to prevent them from coming down during the ride like that. I figured I'd stop by the service window and voice a complaint.
Well, I got to the service window, but so had about 4,000 other people. I'm guessing they were there to complain that the park was too darned crowded. So I failed to register a complaint about the Racer. While I never made it to the window myself, it is worth noting that there has been a big change at the Customer Service window adjacent to the entrance gate: The glass is gone. Until late last year, the service window was just that...a window with a tiny hole in the middle, much like a theatre box office. Okay, perhaps, for buying movie tickets, but completely unsuitable for handling customer service issues...conversations were something like this--
CSR (yelling through the glass): "Mmmm mwaaah hmmm
ymmmm?"
Customer (also shouting): "Uhhh, yeah, ...(asks reasonable
question)"
CSR: "Mmmmmmm?"
Customer: (repeats question)
CSR: "Mmmmm mmmwhaaa mwaaa mwahhh"
Customer: "What?"
CSR: "Mmmmmm?"
Customer: "What did you say?"
CSR: "Mmmmm mwaaah mwahh??"
(and so on)
Anyway, I noted last fall that the glass had disappeared, making intelligible conversations actually possible. But I also had this nagging thought that the office there is air conditioned, and perhaps the glass would reappear this summer. I am pleased to report that on this holiday weekend the temperature was around 90 degrees, and the glass was still gone. Score for PKI customer service! Pity they were being hammered with people whose complaints were probably nothing more than variations on "It's too hot! It's too crowded! How dare you charge me $32 to stand in line all day!". Folks, it's a holiday weekend...what do you expect??
Personally, I compensated for the big crowd by going back to ride Top Gun. It is a long walk back to that ride, which is so far out of the way that the big crowds avoid wandering back there. Which is their loss, as Top Gun is easily one of the best suspended coasters around, and I certainly don't mind the reduced wait. The back end of Top Gun also comes perilously close to the Son Of Beast construction area. Of particular note here is a rectangular concrete trench. An underground tunnel, perhaps? But there are no angle brackets anchored into the floor. Hmmm...Very interesting. I still don't have a very good concept of where the bits of this coaster are going to be. Unfortunately, the view from Top Gun is a rather brief fly-by. There is a better view, of course, from the Top Gun exit path, but the trench is not visible from there.
The park stayed crowded, and the weather stayed hot. I managed to get rides on all of the flat rides except the simulator. Unfortunately the lines for Vortex, Outer LIMits, and The Beast remained long all day. As night drew near, the lines diminished somewhat. Hoping for a short wait I went to Outer LIMits. The outside queue house was empty, but when I found the 'hangar' full of people, I decided I didn't want to stand in there listening to that awful rumble. When Outer LIMits opened, it had a really good pre-show in the queue house. The room looks like an aircraft hangar filled with a flying saucer surrounded by equipment. A scenario plays on video monitors, but there are all kinds of neat little tricks in the pre-show. For instance, at the point in the videotape where two characters are supposedly standing behind the far leg of the saucer, you can hear their voices coming from behind the saucer as well as from the video monitors. Most of the time, the theming is very well done. The trouble is that in the ride's second season, Kings Island decided to augment the theming by adding an incredibly loud rumble which comes from beneath the saucer. I have no idea why they did this, but the effect is to make it very difficult to hear the voices on the pre-show sound track, and to make the queueing area an unpleasant place to be. If they would just reduce the volume of that rumble, it would help a lot. But since PKI has not done this, and since my time is limited, I headed South.
Of course, South of Outer LIMits is The Beast. The day was nearly over, and the ride that has featured a two-hour wait now has about a 30-minute crowd. Now this is actually reasonable! As it turns out, there have been some subtle changes to The Beast since my last visit. Most obviously, the banners are now hanging in the station to show the various statistics on the construction of the coaster...how many board feet of lumber, how long the tunnels are, stuff like that. Funny, there is no mention of the 1,100 feet of brakes that Mr. Lindon [Footnote 2] seems to be so proud of... 8-) Also, the claw prints on the midway have been re-painted all the way back to the Eiffel Tower. Anyway, a less obvious change is that the train is being allowed to come into the station more quickly. The ride still waits until the train ahead gets part way up the first lift before allowing the next train to come into the station, but the train is being allowed to come unbraked down the brake run and into the station. This cuts the delay between trains by almost 40 seconds! I have to give the The Beast crew credit; they move very quickly to try and get the trains out on time...it's just that the control system doesn't offer much help as the crew can't load a train that hasn't made it to the station, so I clocked the ride at about 936 PPH.
Of course all of that capacity stuff is only important when you are standing in line. It's the ride that counts when you board the train. What I noticed this time around was that yes, the brakes were set on the first drop, second hill, and blocking shed. But I also noticed that in spite of the brakes, the coaster seemed to be moving faster than on my last ride, particularly in the high-speed section between the blocking shed and the second lift. But strangely enough, the train didn't go any further than usual up the second lift. Where the ride felt a LOT faster was in the half-tunnelled helix. Down there, the coaster FLEW as it headed for the safety brakes and the station. It's always odd to ride one of the last trains of the night because the train comes back to an eerily empty station.
So the park was really crowded. I still managed multiple rides on six coasters, spent a couple of hours in the waterpark, and finally rode the rapids ride. Hey, if nothing else it was a good warm up for my trip the next day to Fun Spot and Michigan's Adventure, and the surprise that awaited me on that trip.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Yes, at about this time of day I did
ride the Carousel...[Return to text]
Footnote 2: Ollie Lindon is Kings Island's Director of Wood
Coaster Maintenance. And he is justifiably proud of The Beast [Return
to text].
--DCAjr.
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