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"Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly-worded questions are par for the course."
Am I nuts? Why in the world would anybody in his right mind go to Paramount's Kings Island on a Saturday? NOBODY goes to Kings Island on a Saturday; it's waaaaay too crowded! Nevertheless, that's exactly what I did. I was planning to get down there in time for the morning walk-backs, but as frequently happens, I didn't get going soon enough to do that. In fact, I was running late enough that I got to hear an all-too-familiar voice introduce Car Talk on WYSO on the trip down. But this is not the time or place for me to express those opinions.
Of course, I am not really nuts. I had a very specific reason for coming to Kings Island on Saturday, and he was standing behind the Group Sales window: I was at the park for "BeastBuzz", the special event cooked up for The Beast's 25th birthday party, sponsored by CoasterBuzz. Mr. and Mrs. CoasterBuzz, Jeff Putz and his wife Stephanie were pulling my registration materials even as I walked up to the deeply tinted window. I had missed the morning walk-back, but if I hurried, I might just make the Tomb Raider tour.
Hurrying proved to be a bit of a problem. Kings Island is running a special promotion this year where nobody pays full price to get in: if you pay full price for a single-day admission, you are given a free ticket for a second day. The catch is that the second day admission is non-transferrable, and to enforce that they are taking finger-scans at the gate (I wonder if they will start doing that for season passes next season...). I don't know what the problem was, but for some reason it was taking nearly a minute per person to get people through the particular gate I was using. Perhaps some refinement of the system is needed. Between the huge number of cars in the parking lot, the long delay to get through the me_al detectors, and the long delay to get through the main gate, I was almost certain I didn't have a prayer of making the 10:30 meeting at the Tomb Raider entrance.
As it turned out, I was wrong. When I got to Tomb Raider, there were nearly 200 coaster nuts milling about the entrance plaza. Just moments after I arrived, the group started moving towards the gate in the fence between Tomb Raider and The Beast. I guess they were waiting for me to arrive. 8-) We proceeded into the somewhat more private plaza behind the Tomb Raider show building, a large asphalt expanse. Jeff Siebert, the Jeff who wasn't wearing a T-shirt insulting his clients in Geek [Footnote 1], Kings Island's master mouthpiece, our host for the day, climbed up the stairs to the landing behind the Tomb Raider operator booth and used the platform as a makeshift podium. There he explained some of the ground rules (which included, for some strange reason, no photography inside the building), and described what we were about to see. He described the ride system, and was interrupted for a moment by a squeal from what appears to be a bank of resistors behind the building. I know that the Top Spin (and presumably the Giant Top Spin, which is what Tomb Raider is, as well) uses multiple electric motors which make use of dynamic braking, but I always thought the braking current was typically dumped through a line reactor and sent back out to the power grid. Apparently Tomb Raider just dumps that energy as noise and heat.
We toured the various rooms in the ride building in shifts, even as the ride was operating. My first stop was the main control room, which contains the ride control PLCs and the ride system control equipment. As you might expect, it is a room surrounded by equipment cabinets full of wiring. The main PLC cabinet was half-open (though the PLCs themselves were behind the second, still-closed door), and Jeff informed us that the motor controllers are in the other cabinets. He made a big deal about the need for the two arms to operate in sync with one another, but failed to mention that each arm is a multi-motor electric drive, so not only do the two arms need to be in sync with each other, they also need to be in sync with themselves. As the next ride cycle started, he opened a small door, which gave us a view of the main show building with the enormous ride whirling around inside. Tomb Raider's ride system is truly colossal. I also noted that on the floor of the PLC room, probably put there specifically so we could have a look at it, was a disc brake caliper assembly, similar to one you might find on an automobile only much larger, and designed to operate on compressed air rather than hydraulics. It was one of the many brake assemblies off of the ride's gondola pivot.
The second room is the show control room, where my kind of equipment lurks. A pair of video binloop systems provides pre-show audio and video (I presume it is a redundant setup so that in case of a drive failure the show can continue; I only recall one video channel in the whole attraction), a massive collection of stereo amplifiers provides audio for all the various areas of the attraction, a theatrical lighting controller steps through the lighting programs throughout the building and sends trigger codes to mechanical effects, and a master show controller tied into the ride system PLC integrates the whole system.
The third room is the one that surprised me. In it is a wall full of Meefog equipment, and a small boiler. Yes, a boiler. I wasn't previously aware of it, but the Tomb Raider attraction actually uses live steam! I had no idea that anybody would want the hassle of dealing with live steam on an attraction; Kings Island has two attractions that use live steam, and one of them is a railroad. It was all quite interesting, even though it isn't a coaster.
We broke from the tour to enjoy the park for a while. It was obvious that the park was going to be crowded. I joined up with Dave Bowers during the tour, and afterward we got a ride on the Flying Scooter...a ride that was so short I wondered if I had been magically transported to Cedar Point. The ride cycle wouldn't have been so awful if it didn't take so darned long for that thing to stop when the cycle is over. The way it was running, more than half of the ride cycle is spent just in slowing down. If they are going to make the cycle that short, they should really consider adding a brake to the main drive so that the ride can run longer during the same cycle time. I understand why they cut it down, as the park was getting slammed with a huge crowd, but it's a really un-satisfying ride cycle.
Our schedule was rather full for the event day, and it was time to visit the Eiffel Tower stage to see the clogging. Clogging? That's not on our schedule, and quite frankly, I don't care for clogging. You know, amateur group dance that is something like Riverdance meets country hoedown. Recognizing the difficulty of addressing the crowd with the stomping going on in the background, Jeff (yes, him again...) directed us all into the performance shed just South of the tower. I think it might be the first time I have ever been in there.
Jeff introduced his partner in crime, Mr. Steve. Mr. Steve had cooked up a scavenger hunt which might be described as "sadistic." It was a Saturday in late June, and the park was ridiculously crowded. So, Mr. Steve presented us with this challenge (and six hours in which to complete it AND have lunch). It was eight pages of extreme Kings Island trivia, mostly presented in rhyme, forty questions of such incredible minutiae that it leveled the playing field. Extreme familiarity with the park was almost no help at all, and the questions were carefully crafted to send us into every far corner of the park...from the extreme ends of the parking lot, into the back corner of the waterpark, into the extreme ends of Action Zone and Coney Mall. Reading through the questions, I couldn't help but think of the First Disclaimer on the Whad'Ya Know Quiz [Footnote 2]. Sorry, I spent way too many years working in public radio. A few of the questions were VERY misleading, so misleading that one group of notable coaster nuts nearly got themselves arrested, and many of us were taken in by a particularly nasty question relating to Spongebob Squarepants.
Mr. Steve's scavenger hunt was wicked, time consuming and difficult, and I don't think I have ever before done that much walking at Kings Island. I'm in a park somewhere nearly every weekend, and my home park is Cedar Point. The result of all this is that I have better-than-usual stamina and tolerance for all-day walking. I mean, normally, I can spend a whole day at Cedar Point and when I go home my legs aren't even tired. This event at Kings Island pretty much wore me out, and I didn't even manage to get any riding done, unless you count the train. Speaking of which, even though the park was insanely crowded, they were still only running one train...and Dave pointed out that the locomotive that was running is not the one normally associated with the passenger cars that were running. Hmmm...I wonder if this is related to the very strange sound I heard just after closing about a month ago...
Anyway, the scavenger hunt was a good way to get us to see the WHOLE park and keep us busy on a day when the wait for The Beast was posted at 90 minutes or longer. We broke for a late lunch in the picnic grove, where I have never eaten before. Kings Island's picnic grove is exceptionally well appointed, with amenities that are standard at facilities that have nothing but picnic groves, though rare in amusement park picnic pavilions, such as playgrounds and volleyball courts. We 200-some CoasterBuzz event participants gathered for a group photo, had a picnic lunch, and then got an interesting presentation from Tom Rebbie of Philadelphia Toboggan, who happens to be a huge fan of The Beast. He related several stories about working on the unique original trains for The Beast on his first field job as the manufacturer's on-site representative. He's a wonderful story teller, and his keynote was a real treat. He ended with a few comments that boil down to rider responsibility particularly as it relates to enthusiasts. He wasn't heavy-handed about it, and from the reactions around the pavilion it was clear that this was a crowd that really didn't need the reminder. But it was something that had to be said, anyway, and I, for one, am happy he did.
After lunch, we were off for more scavenger hunt, and we finished with almost no time remaining before the result forms were to be returned to Jeff and Mr. Steve. That left us only a short time before we returned to BeastBuzz festivities, this time walking tours of both The Beast and Son of Beast. I had walked all around Son of Beast before, both in operation and during construction, but I had never been back behind The Beast before. We were able to get up close and personal with most of the course, with the exception of the bottom of the second drop, the bottom of the second lift and the helix. Those areas are very rugged and difficult to get to, and with a group of more than 200 people would be almost impossible to visit safely. What was particularly funny was the section where there are two tunnels that pass beneath the access road. The group stopped at each so that photographers could get shots of the train passing through the fully-enclosed tunnels. Coaster nuts are kind of funny that way sometimes.
After the tours, there was a little bit of time to kill, which gave us a chance to ride a couple of rides, ending with Racer and Adventure Express before we re-grouped in the Paramount Theater.
At the theater, we were greeted by a red carpet and greeters at the end of the velvet ropes checking credentials. Inside, Jeff Putz kicked things off (after all, he was the event sponsor...). Jeff Siebert introduced his crack crew of marketing geniuses and revealed that there was a 3-way tie for second place in the scavenger hunt. Our group was one of the three, and Dave Bowers failed miserably in the tie-breaker, leaving us ultimately stuck in fourth place. Which, quite frankly, is a lot better than I expected, so Dave is forgiven for blowing his question. 8-) I'm a little annoyed that the "official" answers to the questions were never revealed, just because we worked so danged hard on coming up with our answers. We were shown the 30-minute uncut version of the documentary on the construction and history of The Beast, and the video ended right at park closing time. That gave us a chance to wander out to International Street to watch the closing fireworks and still make it back to Delerium in time for nighttime ERT.
The nighttime ERTs were done in the unique CoasterBuzz style, where we were ushered to Delerium for a few rides, then over to Drop Zone for a ride or two, then over to Flight of Fear for a ride, then back to The Beast to end the night with a few rides. It's a neat way to do ERT, and for a "small" group (if you can call a group of 200 people "small") it seems to work pretty well. Sure, you can't spend an hour marathoning on a single coaster, but that really isn't the point of ERT on a Saturday night, is it? We got to ride the park's "best" rides a couple of times ("best"? Then why Drop Zone and not Flying Eagles? 8-) ). I was on the last train of the night on The Beast, and left the park right around 1:30am.
yawn. It was an exhausting day at Kings Island. And Sunday I returned to do it again, sort of.
Sunday was a better day to actually do some riding. I rode many of the rides that I didn't ride on Saturday, then spent some time in the waterpark. I talked a bit about that in my last report. Sunday was a much nicer day for the waterpark than my last visit (certainly warmer!), and I spent more time there. Since I was prepared for water, I spent the late afternoon on the three water rides in the iron park: Congo Falls, Wild Thornberrys River Adventure, and White Water Canyon. Congo Falls is an Intamin shoot-the-chute ride, the old style that has a double-dip and nice airtime, but that has no active restraints at all (but to my knowledge has never thrown a rider). Wild Thornberrys is the old Kings Mill flume, with new boats and new flume built by Hopkins, though they kept the Arrow parts on the two lifts, the station, and the splashdown. Finally, White Water Canyon is of course the rapids ride. I've ridden it before, but I've never gotten quite this wet before, and I swear there was three feet of water in the bottom of the boat when we started up the lift hill at the end of the ride. I didn't think it was possible for this particular canyon ride to be this wet!
In an effort to dry off before the sun set, I rode all the flat spinning rides in the park, and was mostly successful before the sun went down. Finally, it was time to call it a day, have some dinner, take Dave home, and go home myself. It had been a long, exhausting weekend, but it had been a lot of fun.
The really important things to take away from this weekend are that of all the parks I have visited, Kings Island is the one that, more than any other, really knows how to throw a party. They know all the tricks, all the special little touches for an event to make it special, to really cater to the enthusiast crowd. To top it all off, it is all orchestrated by Jeff Siebert, whom I have known since he was working for the Coney Island group back in 1997. I can't keep track of his official title, but he is officially a marketing and PR guy, park spokesman, and enthusiast group host. That's official, but it doesn't really explain the man. What Jeff really is, is a showman in the classic tradition of amusement industry showmen. He is at once a showman, a promoter, and a talker. He's a perfect fit for Paramount's Kings Island, a park that is all about putting on a great show. He's very much the modern-day George Tilyou, and as such I think he deserves some special recognition from his friends and fans. And not once during the entire day on Saturday did he ever let on that he was only hours away from a new starring role, that of "Dad" to a son who would be born the very next morning. And here I thought I'd had a busy weekend!
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Jeff Putz, event organizer and webmaster of an extremely high traffic enthusiast website, was wearing a shirt with this SQL statement and result on it:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue>0;
0 rows returned
Footnote 2: "All questions used on Whad'Ya Know have been painstakingly researched, although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly worded questions are par for the course. Listeners who are sticklers for the truth should get their own shows." [Return to text]
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