Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page.
"Well, I don't see changes that I hate..."
My introduction to Kings Island this year is actually coming in small doses. On Sunday the 20th, the park's Opening Day, I knew I couldn't stay too terribly late because I had tickets to a concert in Columbus at 8:00 pm. On the 27th, I simply didn't get up before lunchtime. On the 20th, April came with me; on the 27th I hung out wih Dave Bowers. With any luck, this report will end up making some sort of sense.
When April and I arrived, our primary goal was to get our season passes processed. My certificate, purchased at Cedar Point, did not scan at the parking tollbooth so I was required to pay $10 for parking, though I was told that once I got my pass processed I could get my parking money refunded. A line extended from the pass processing building all the way across the entrance plaza to the fence line at the edge of the parking lot. If you're familiar with Kings Island's parking lot, this is right at the top of the hill at the edge of the picnic area in the choke point next to the (now apparently disused) tram road. Our experience was that as long as the line was, we were inside the building within about 20 minutes. The pass processing process is supposed to be very quick. You hand the certificate with its completed information form to the photographer, he scans the form, snaps your photo, scans a pre-printed card, and hands you the card. You sign the card, and you're done. At least that's what is supposed to happen.
In our case, our pass certificates failed to scan. A supervisor had us fill out new data forms, then we proceeded as above. Then our original certificates were handed back to us. Uh, whoops? I think I will investigate this one further once Cedar Point opens. We had our photos taken, and walked out with our new passes and our old pass certificates. We immediately tested the new passes by entering the park. I stopped briefly at the new Guest Relations booth to get my parking refund. The Guest Relations window doesn't exist anymore, and the two windows (one inside the park gates, one outside) have been replaced with two doors. Inside, a long counter runs along the back of the room, with standing room between the counter and the outside wall. There is no 'secret panel' door in the middle of the room for allowing people to pass from "outside" to "inside", just a Tensabarrier device. This was the first obvious remodel in the park, and while it isn't quite as accessible as the open counter they had at Wonderland, it really is an improvement over the old theater window. Now if we could get Knott's and Worlds of Fun on board with this...!
We proceeded into the park and down to Adventure Express which has not changed a bit. Okay, it's changed just a little bit...on Opening Weekend, all three trains were on the track, although only two were operating. The next week, all three were running. I think this is the first time in years that all three trains were even on the ride before Memorial Day. It also looks like a couple of the animated pieces on the ride have received some attention. I also noticed that the ride has gained a greeter halfway up the entrance ramp. He's still using a PVC height stick with a cane tip on one end and a tape mark part way up to indicate the rider minimum height; still no Cedar Point-style "candy canes" here.
The fish and shrimp place outside Adventure Express has been renamed "Outer Hank's," and otherwise looks about the same, but it wasn't actually open. The ladder climb next door was open, and it is sporting a new bally. It's a painting that shows Kings Island. In it you can clearly see the Skycoaster, the drop tower, the Slingshot, Son of Beast, the Racer, the Eiffel tower, the Carousel building, and an orange and yellow roller coaster that looks kind of like a B&M looper. Now this is interesting! Somehow, in two visits I managed not to get a photo of it, but it looks kind of like Mantis:TCFKAB at Cedar Point, but it's colored like Behemoth at Canada's Wonderland.
Racer was next, and in deference to this year's big change, I rode on the South track, the one that has been running backwards for years. For some reason, this side has received a lot of attention over the past few years, and it shows. The ride is fast and smooth, although not as fast as the North track. They seem to be making an effort to race the trains now, and while our train started down the first drop before the North train did, the North train was quicker to reach the top of the second tall hill. Dave Bowers pointed out that while Cedar Fair has switched the trains around so that it's blue trains on one track and red trains on the other, the queue entrance configuration is reversed from the colors on the ride's logo. At the end of the ride we got a bit of a surprise. We stopped in the shed at the extreme uptrack end of the brake run and waited for the other train to clear the station. There was some kind of a delay, and eventually the train on the other side was dispatched by itself. When that happened, the second train on the North track was, of course, rolled into the station. At the same time, our train also rolled forward, and came to a stop on the brakes immediately uptrack of the station. I have no idea why that happened (as the train in the station on our track had not moved), or why the train doesn't always stop on those brakes that are closer to the station, which would serve to reduce the headway between trains in the station.
On my second visit, the ride on the South Racer was followed immediately by a ride on the North Racer. There are things at Kings Island that you need not do, and the North Racer is clearly one of them. To say that the ride is running poorly is a bit of an understatement. As much attention as the South track has received, the North track has received an equal measure of neglect for a ride that is so rough as to be downright painful. I sincerely hope that all four trains will go back to Philadelphia Toboggan next winter for a complete overhaul (and in particular, new seats and seat dividers!) as that would help a little. But this track is crying out for repair and replacement. My advice: Lose the race. Ride the South track.
On my first visit, we began moving towards the suspended coaster, but suddenly changed course and crossed the park to Nick Universe instead. There we rode Avatar, the oddball combination of a Zamperla Disk'O and Rockin' Tug with an extra hump in the middle of the track. It's a unique ride, but honestly it would have been a better ride with the Disk'O seating. I've been lucky for most of my rides on Avatar and managed to sit in the end rows, but this time I got stuck in a middle seat in the centermost row. The ride is very different in eack of the three pairs of rows, ranging from really good in the outer rows, to really dull in the center rows. Add to that the horrible seats and the boneheaded lap bar arrangement, and you've got a decent ride that really could have been better thought-out than it was.
From Avatar we went back into Rivertown and looked carefully at the new flower pots. The lake between Wings Diner and the midway across from the entrance to The Beast has been drained, and a large number of footings have appeared in the resulting mudhole. A couple of the buildings in Rivertown look to be closed up, and following the line of the footings across the mudhole leads to the space next to the enclosed Giant Top Spin. There, a very large concrete footing sits on one side of the midway, snugged in between and in front of a couple of buildings. Across the midway, two more, smaller footings sit conveniently on either side of the queue entrance for the Giant Top Spin In A Box. Each footing sports a ring of bolts, so large flower pots have been placed within the bolt ring to call enough attention to the footings to keep them from becoming trip hazards. Naturally, the new flower pots and the old mudhole have become congregation points for ride enthusiasts, and for a while we stood around and speculated about the possible implications of all the new foundation work. The park, of course, denies flatly that anything is going on, even though a decorative lake is now a mudhole full of equipment, new footings are flanking a midway, trees are down in the woods along the railroad track, and a midway path between the floral clock behind the Eiffel Tower and the rest rooms across from The Beast is blocked off. Funny thing about that path; in front of the rest room there is a small billboard with a park map. On the map, the blocked path is not shown, but a directional indicator notes that the best route to get to a couple of the park's zones is...right down that path. Whoops!
Time was getting short, so we took a ride on the Italian Job Backlot Stunt Coaster. The ride hasn't changed much, except that the on-ride photo camera is gone, and on this particular day we didn't get squirted with water. April and I had to get back to Columbus, so this was our last ride of the day. She was hungry, so we stopped at the Skyline Chili franchise on International Street. What I noticed was that the cheese coneys were priced about the same in the park as in the restaurant. In fact, we noticed a few days later that the Columbus area restaurant charges MORE for extra cheese than the in-park location. The exception, of course, is drinks, which run $3.50 for a 20-ounce bottle at Kings Island, even more for a fountain drink.
On my second visit, I was hanging out with Dave Bowers, and we went the opposite direction from the Racer. That meant a ride on Vortex where the last KECO safety sign in the park has finally been taken down, and the trains now sport nifty little Kings Island logos on the noses. On down the midway, The Beast was sporting some of the longest lines I have seen recently for the ride. The ride is starting to show some of the Cedar Fair influence. The entrance to the ride has been cut down. Several fences have been removed, and the plaza between the entrance and exit is now a sort of gathering place that funnels down to the ride entrance. Previously, the entrance was behind a low fence shunted off to one side, and the plaza served only to take up space. Now, it's the focal point of the ride when you approach from the midway, about the best you can expect for a ride that is completely hidden from view. Up in the station, the station queues were actually in use for perhaps the first time in years, and by the time we got off of the ride, the middle queue house was actually full. The ride itself has, unfortunately, not changed much. It is still a rough, overbraked, overhyped, and somewhat underwhelming ride. As with the Racer, the ride needs some serious train rehab, and a lot of care out on the track.
Next door to The Beast, we arrived at Tomb raider: The Ride Crypt shortly after it opened. That should have been a warning. They didn't nickname the ride, "2-9 Raider" for nothing [Footnote 1]. A sign outside the ride indicates that the ride has been reprogrammed to offer a "more intense" experience, and Dave had been reading positive early reviews of the new ride. So, against our better judgement, we got in line. I noticed that the one sign in the queue that has not been replaced yet is the one that promises a "turbulant ride". In the 'cave', almost all of the artifacts that used to be stacked under the catwalk (queue) are gone, but there is now a nice collection of skeletons, skulls, and very large spiders. By 'spiders' I am talking about eight-legged arachnids, not six-armed steel structures. We moved along and into the old 'monkey room' where riders used to be divided into three groups for the preshow and for the ride. The three parallel rows have been converted into a back-and-forth queue section, and the monkey statues are gone, though skeletons have been posted in their places. We waited there, then we were directed into two rows in what used to be the pre-show room. The Tomb Raider stuff is gone, but now there is an animated demonic critter of some sort up where the video screen used to be. At intervals, he spreads his wings and exposes himself, then closes back up with a shudder. Suddenly, Something Bad™ happened. We were directed to move backward through the queue, presumably to make room for the people who were about to be moved off of the ride. This is where things got to be a little bit chaotic, albeit entirely needlessly so. With a lot of hollering and shouting, the ride attendants pushed us back through the queue, into the cave just before the 'monkey room'. That seems an awfully long way to send us back, first of all, and I suspect the idea was to get us out of view of the ride chamber. The problem is that it is not easy to try and get a whole queue of people to move backwards. You have people coming back from the ride trying to go backwards, while meanwhile people coming in from the entrance are trying to move forward, and the result is a kind of a chaotic mess. What I don't understand is why the park doesn't simply close off the queue at the cave exit, then open the chicken chute next to the ride entry, and have all the people waiting in the last two rooms simply exit the building via the chicken chute and line up around the outside of the building. There is a long, fenced pathway there, and I believe it is 'upstream' of a ride exit gate, meaning it is a somewhat controlled space. From there, would-be riders can easily either hang out and wait for the ride to come back up, or proceed down the path and exit the ride. Then, anyone in the cave would stay in the cave, and people from the other two rooms would be lined up behind the ride outside. Then once the ride comes back up, the riders outside can be brought back in through the chicken-chute to refill the last two rooms of the queue backwards, then proceed onto the ride in the original order. It is so obvious to me that I can't understand why it isn't standard procedure. Instead, we were trying to fight our way upstream through the queue. I thought of another way to clear the space, but I never found the fire alarm pull I was looking for. Which is probably a good thing, anyway. We were told that maintenance was on the way, and the downtime should be limited. Somehow, Dave divined that it was the eighth incident of the day.
Well, I guess time flies when you're having fun. It was about 45 minutes later when we were led back through the queue and into the preshow room to line up more or less where we had lined up before. This time, the big garage door in front of us was open and we proceeded directly up the ramps to the ride gondola. The Crypt is, you may recall, the Huss Giant Top Spin. Since the last time I rode it (which I admit was some years ago) there have been some major changes. Foremost among these is that the gondola now has only two rows of seats rather than three, although I don't see any evidence that large hunks of the gondola have been removed. Well, apart from the far end of the gondola, where it seems the two remaining rows have been made a bit shorter. I didn't count the seats, but the ride can hold significantly fewer people than it could carry when it was new. We marched all the way down to the end and took our seats. The shoulder bars were lowered, we fastened the safety belts, and I took a look around. Most of the scenery on the front of the building has been stripped, leaving only a black box and a visible garage door. The large idol-like figure is still there, but all the emblems and treasure items have been stripped away. The drumbeat has been replaced with something more like disco music, and...<hissssssssst>...suddenly I felt the shoulder bar release. It is my habit on any ride when the safety bar releases before the ride starts to open it fully so as to make sure everything gets properly reset before my ride. That just put me ahead of the program. Next, an announcement was made: "Riders, please unfasten your safety belts, lift up on the shoulder bars, stand up and walk off to your left towards the entrance.". Great. Dave and I decided we had experienced enough. Since we were at the extreme right end of the ride, we turned to our right and walked across the exit bridge and down to the ride exit. That would be 2-9'er number nine. Sounds like a rock and roll song.
I am taking liberties with our schedule, but we did take a ride on the train. Right now, the waterpark is closed, so the train goes nowhere. It does give a view of the downed trees in the woods that just happen to line up with the new flower pots on the midway. Thanks to the ill-fated Winterfest revival, the train has a really good audio system now. It isn't set up quite the way I would do it, as it does hard cuts between the five or six audio loops that play, but it sounds good, and if this is the model for the system Cedar Point is allegedly installing on their train, it will be a good addition to the ride.
We made our way back to the front of the park, pausing briefly to make note of which useless structures we would demolish to revitalize Coney Mall. A trip up the Eiffel Tower gave us a pretty good vantage point from which to look over the mudhole and the clearings in the woods. Whatever the park is doing, it's certainly a big project!
Our next stop was Top Gun Flight Deck which may have the absolute worst ride name ever conceived. We were careful to note all of the places where theme elements have been stripped from the queue, including the final removal of the stand that hasn't had themed elements attached to it in years. The most obvious change is that the gigantic billboard next to the station has been completely removed, allowing for a clear view from the queue all the way to the new Great Wolf Lodge. Perhaps an even more glaring omission from the ride (if I may use the term) are the tensioned fabric banners that covered the station walls and served as sunshades. I wonder if they are planning to replace those before it gets hot and miserable later this summer, although I imagine that without them the station is more like an actual flight deck. There was almost nobody waiting, so we got in line for Seat #1, meaning there was actually a good chance that we might get the train all to ourselves. That didn't happen, but we did take a front seat ride, and I must say the safety belts added to the shoulder bars are beyond silly on this ride. I mean, even if you were to run a SARC test [Footnote 2] on this coaster and compare it to the design standards in ASTM F 2291:6.4.3 [Footnote 3] I think it may well be a Class 1 ride on the restraint rose...that is, forces exerted in such a way that no active restraints are actually required. So naturally it makes sense to take the already excessive shoulder bar and add a supplemental back-up device to that. Sorry, I am just tired of the paranoia. Anyway, no matter what kind of stupid name you give it, Kings Island's suspended coaster is still a best-in-class ride, perhaps second only to the Big Bad Wolf. Yes, it's even better than the nearly-identical Vortex at Canada's Wonderland.
The day was nearly over, and there was one more ride that Dave wanted to ride. So we popped into the queue for Son of Beast. We sat close to the front of the train, and we got about the best ride that the coaster has to offer. Unfortunately, that's still pretty awful. The trains can at least handle the layout, which is a significant improvement over the original trains. But they still have no padding, and the layout does not take into consideration the way that wood coaster trains don't follow curves, or the energy losses that happen on high-banked curves. A perfect example of the kind of design problems the ride has is at the top of the second hill. The second hill rises nearly 200' to the top of the large helix, a tall, sweeping curve banked at an extreme angle. The extreme banking actually helps the transition into the drop for the first time around the helix, but when the back of the train reaches the apex of the curve, the train is moving so slowly (because it is so high in the air) that the cars can't stay 'stuck' to the outside rail. Gravity readily overcomes the centrifugal force, and the last three cars jerk hard to the right. The only ways to fix the problem are to lower the hill so that the train runs faster through the curve, tighten the curve in hopes of keeping the train stuck to the outside rail (but the curve is already approaching the limits for the train), or reduce the banking. The trouble is, none of those approaches will actually work for the configuration they have for that curve. That curve is just the first problem with that helix. The rest of the helix is a mess, in that the forces are almost too extreme, the cars bounce too much, and the resulting ride is a deadly combination of extremely violent, and terribly boring. When they tried to fix the ride, they really should have left the vertical loop alone and got rid of the first helix. It looks great from the air, but it rides like crap, it's never worked right, and there really is no good way to fix it. So coming off of a bad double helix, it makes sense that it would be followed by a block brake run, an elongated S-curve where the loop used to be, and then...hey, it's another helix, this time in the opposite direction. The second helix is smaller and slower, and runs a lot better than the first one. But it's still boring. John Allen was right when he announced that, "Curves don't do anything for people." It was true for his Mister Twister, and it's true for Son of Beast. The difference is that when they fixed Mister Twister they added straight drops to the thing. When they tried to fix Son of Beast it was more like they fixed it in the veterinary sense. Okay, so Son of Beast is better than it was, and at least it is unlikely to leave you with permanent injuries if you ride it once. But unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, it's really hard to polish a turd.
It was the end of the day oncce again, and what I found really surprising was, after two visits to the park, how many things I simply never had the time to do. Partly it's because both days started late, and the first visit ended early. Partly it is because the park had a really healthy crowd on the day I was there the longest, which probably bodes well for the rest of the season. And partly it's just because while Kings Island is my closest major park, it truly is a major amusement park. It has a whole collection of flat rides that I completely missed, and two whole sections that I haven't visited yet. But it's only the second week of the high season. I'll certainly be back!
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: "2-9" is the Kings Island radio code for "Ride out of service." "2-9 With" indicates a "Ride out of service with customers on board." [Return to text]
Footnote 2: SARC test-- Standardized Amusement Ride Characterization Test, the test defined in ASTM Practice F 2137 which provides a standardized method for measuring the patron-related dynamic forces produced by an amusement ride. One of the uses for the SARC test is to validate the dynamic design parameters designated in ASTM Practice F 2291, the World Standard for the Design of Amusement Rides and Devices. [Return to text]
Footnote 3: ASTM F 2291 is the standard for the Design of Amusement Rides and Devices. Section 6.4.3 describes the restraints required based solely on the predicted dynamic characteristics of the ride, at least until the committee comes to its senses and re-writes the section so that it actually makes sense. Obviously I am no fan of the section, and to my surprise and delight, I learned at the last meeting that I am not the only person on the committee who thinks the section needs fixed. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
Next: Kennywood (#1)
Back to Trip Reports 2008
Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page.
