Do you like the title for this report? It required a lot of soul-searching. :}
My amazing military buddy Tim and my super-cool English-teacher girlfriend Tatiana decided to embark on an adventure to Kings Island to celebrate our Fall Break from Middle Tennessee State University!
Tim and Tatiana have never been to Kings Island and haven't been on a roller coaster in years; we're in for a great day! :}
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Who's ready for some coasters?! :D
Thrillography: meet Tim and Tatiana! :} |
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| It's Haunt Season! That means spooky theme overlays and cool nights, sweaty palms and stiff nipples! |
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| KINGS ISLAND YAYYY! |
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| "Welcome to Kings Island, the Midwest's largest regional amusement theme park. On behalf of all the monsters, we hope you enjoy your stay." |
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| Kings Island's Eyeball Oaks are slumping with juicy eyeballs! |
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| Plump and ripe for the picking, these eyeballs will soon be harvested, washed, covered in chocolate, and sold on sticks to park guests. |
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| Banshee is desperately beckoning us, but the ropes don't drop inside the park until 11AM. |
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| After getting a late start to its season, Drop Tower is also ready for guests! |
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| Woohoo! It's the running of the bulls! But first, picture time! :} |
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| The ghost of Son of Beast is now said to drift about the park aimlessly, fruitlessly seeking a host from which to make victims of unsuspecting park-goers. |
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| Who's ready to get Banshee'd?!!? |
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| Banshee received rave reviews from Tim and Tatiana! No surprises there :} |
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| Now to ride Kings Island's other best ride: The Bat! |
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| The Bat's fresh orange paint job really lends itself to the colors of fall. :} |
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| As you might've guessed, there's no better time for Banshee and Bat to shine than Haunting Season. ^_^ |
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| The Banshee crew was on fire all day! Crazy-fast 3-train dispatches! |
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| A theme for the day was making sure Tim and Tatiana got front-seat rides on as many rides as possible. It's especially important for rides like Banshee and Bat. :} |
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| As expected, The Bat had Tim and Tatiana in raptures. |
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| I don't think Kings Island will ever build a coaster that I love more than Bat. <3 |
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| Xtreme Skyflyer is offering $5 rides this morning! We'll be back for this later. :} |
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| Delirium, on the other hand, would be getting no rides from us. No one felt like throwing up. |
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| A handful of brave souls challenged The Congo, but we opted for a dryer challenge... |
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...Drop Tower!
This was the only ride of the day that made Tatiana nervous; as we sat at the top of the tower, she shouted expletives in my general direction. We survived, though. :} |
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| Drop Tower was testing during Banshee Media Day, but for opening day the ride was dormant. Not much had changed by Spring Con, but the ride did eventually make its 2014 debut in June. |
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| After tackling Drop Tower, Tatiana and Tim are ready for anything! |
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| Including the Xtreme Skyflyer! |
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| #lemmetakeanxtremeskyflyerselfie |
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| Following a twelve-year gap between my first and second sky coaster rides, 2014 yielded a total of 3 sky coaster rides! One on the Xtreme Skyflyer at Great America, and two here at Kings Island. |
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| The three of us had a blast, but I think at least two of us pee'd a little. |
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| Bye bye Banshee! It's time for us to visit your older brother in Rivertown! |
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| We'll be back for a trip up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, too! No trip to Kings Island or Kings Dominion would be complete without one! |
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Tim has befriended a dinosaur! Hopefully nothing strange or paranormal will happen to us now that the Dinosaur has earned our trust…
#badforeshadowing |
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| Diamondback had a pretty short-looking line, but we soon got more than we bargained for! |
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| After a few minutes in the station, Diamondback broke down for some undisclosed reason. I assumed that, as all 3 trains were sent through empty with no issue, the problem with the ride was just a tripped sensor. |
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Sure enough, after a mechanic fiddled around with one of the lap bar assemblies for a few minutes, the ride was ready for guests once more…….for a few minutes, anyways.
As soon as our train left the station, we stalled out on the lift hill. Fortunately, after only about five minutes of ignorant general-public chatter and selfie-taking, we continued on our journey and finally got our ride! |
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Meanwhile Vortex is over here like
"Hey. Come ride me. I don't have problems like Diamondback. He's a diva."
(Vortex later broke down, forcing him to retract this statement.) |
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| As one would expect, our front seat ride on Diamondback was excellent. On my next visit I'll ride in the back seat and assess the "B&M rattle" situation. |
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Diamondback is ranked the 4th-best steel coaster in the world by Amusement Today.
Frankly I don't think it's the 4th best steel coaster in Ohio. |
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| But Diamondback certainly plays a big role here at Kings Island. |
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| As does Vortex, which we'll be riding soon. |
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And Beast! Which we're riding right now!
(Cool weather isn't really a friend of the Beast; our ride was good but sluggish.) |
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| The Racer, on the other hand, appeared to be running great! |
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| And Vortex is…well…running. |
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| But now the time has come for a ride on Backlot Skunk Coaster! |
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STOP
IN THE NAME OF COPYRIGHT LAWSUITS FILED BY THE MINI COOPER COMPANY |
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| Our wait for Backlot Skunk Coaster was close to an hour, but dispatches were swift. |
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| And, for the first time that I can recall, ALL of the effects were working AT THE SAME TIME! *o* |
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| Tatiana became an instant fan of Backlot Skunk Coaster, calling it "Awesome blossom possum!" :D |
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| Now for something completely different! |
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| As you may have heard, King's Island's Huss Troika, Shake Rattle & Roll, has been sent out for refurbishment and will be returning in the spring. In the mean time, Kings Island decided to get creative with the ride's plot! |
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| Like The Racer, the Scrambler, and the Eiffel Tower, Shake Rattle & Roll is a Kings Island original! |
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I call this picture
"Reverse Lightning" |
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| Vortex is looking as sharp as ever! |
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| If I had fresco trompe l'oeil paintings on my walls, I'd want them to all look something like this. |
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| Tatiana and Tim were given a history lesson on the Vortex and the original Bat while we waited in line, as is customary. :} |
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Vortex:
Kid Tested, Captain America Approved! |
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| My last visits to Kings Island consisted of either track rehabs or inconsistent dispatches for the Racer, but today I finally got to take racing pictures of the Racer! |
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| Over the years, my love for Vortex has only grown. Once I reached a certain height, all of my rides on it were adequately smooth. And the layout never ceases to please! |
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| Vortex was running three trains like a boss. Way to go Vortex Crew! |
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| Like I mentioned before, front-seat rides were the name of the game for most of the day. However, in the case of Vortex, I had us sit in the back of the train to ensure the smoothest possible ride. :} |
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| Both Tim and Tatiana enjoyed their whirl on Vortex; Tim says it's his new favorite! |
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I don't even have a caption for this. There are too many.
Caption contest, anyone? lol |
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| I'm not really into haunts, but I must say that the new-for-2014 "Kill Mart" looked amazing. |
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| Did I mention the Racer was racing?! This one's gonna be a photo-finish! |
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| <3 |
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| The only coaster we missed on this trip was Firehawk. I left the decision up to Tatiana and Tim; they didn't want to wait two hours for it, either! |
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| Kings Island's trusty Scrambler is celebrating its 45th birthday this year. ^_^ |
If you know how to math, you might've noticed that Kings Island is not yet 45 years old; the Scrambler actually began it's life in 1969 at Cincinnati's Coney Island, which closed in 1971 due to reoccurring flooding issues. Kings Island, which is essentially the re-incarnation of Coney Island, opened the Scrambler in the "Coney Mall" section of the park, a tribute to Coney Island. :}
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| Fall is a great time of year to ride the Adventure Express! It's positively tree-tastic! :D |
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| It's 7 O'clock! This evening's Halloween Haunt has officially begun, which is indicated by a sudden invasion of chemical fog all over the park. :} |
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| It's also getting quite chilly! At this point, the three of us ducked into the Festhaus for dinner. :} |
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| Inconspicuously absent from our day thus far, Invertigo finally got some love from us after sun-down following a morning of technical difficulties. |
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| Operations for this charming shuttle coaster have become lightning-fast thanks to a set of new, faster lift motors! I'd wager that the train zips up its spikes in less than half the time, now! |
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| Diamondback's continued fussiness throughout the day coupled with the evening's crowds led to some pretty crazy wait times. |
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| Invertigo's line took almost an hour, but with photo vantage points like these, its hard to complain. :} |
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| I sincerely hope that Stinger at Dorney Park gets its ish together. I've been a big fan of the Invertigos since I was 6 years old, and to this day I still find them highly enjoyable. Invertigo got 6 thumbs up from me and the crew! |
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| Haunting Season after dark is quite spooky indeed! |
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| I think now would be a great time for a nighttime trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower! |
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| This is my first Eiffel Tower experience after dark; it certainly didn't disappoint! |
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| Halloween Haunt festivities created lots of extra-colorful nighttime sights to see! |
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| International Street becomes Cemetery Dr at Halloween Haunt. It's crawling with monsters! |
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| Coney Mall, of course, is home to the original Monster. :} |
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| Windseeker was closed when we happened to be over in that area of the park. Definitely dodged a bullet there... |
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| I don't like you. |
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| Do you recognize this ride after dark? It's the Scrambler! |
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| And does everyone recognize these? ;} |
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| Ok! One last ride for the night! |
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| We skipped Flight of Fear when we skipped Firehawk, but since we knew Flight of Fear's indoor queue would be toasty-warm, we decided to come back for it! |
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| Something about this little doodle makes me smile :) |
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| We were all smiles on the spacecraft before our ride on Flight of Fear! |
Yes, all smiles before our ride.
The operative word here is "before."
Going into this, I knew there was cause for some concern. My Spring Conference ride on Flight of Fear was not exactly pleasant, due to an increasing level of train shuffling and transitional roughness.
Waiting in the station, I noticed a new cause for concern: the last car of each train was blocked off, bringing the capacity of each train down to 16 riders per dispatch.
Obviously Kings Island is aware of the problem. And, as if the roughness wasn't enough, back-to-back fires sparked by the ride's linear induction motors have created a great deal of additional technical headaches for the park.
For the most part, our overall ride experience was everything I was expecting, only worse: rag-doll transitions, bruised elbows, and a harder-than-hell midcourse brake that brought us to a halt. Dazed and thrashed, we rolled out of the brake run and into the second half of the ride amid a chorus of moans from the train and its riders.
However, in our rattled physical and emotional stupor, we were none-the-wiser to what was taking place outside our spacecraft. As it turns out, Flight of Fear had been intercepted by outer-space dinosaurs looking to draw up some tourism dollars for their home planet. Tim, Tatiana, and I might've felt inconvenienced by this abduction if we weren't such shameless tourists, and if our day at Kings Island wasn't already pretty much over.
When the ride finally stopped shuffling and the lap bars released, everyone disembarked from the train and stepped outside into the alien landscape.
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