Early in the morning of July 3, Karen and I left our hotel in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and made the nearly six-hour-long drive toward Cincinnati, Ohio, and our next destination, Kings Island in Mason. For breakfast, we stopped along the way at a McDonalds in Washington, PA, that had a mesmerizing table with embedded color-changing LED lights under its transluscent white surface. They responded to touch, appearing, disappearing and changing color. I don't know what the point was but it was fascinating to watch. Kings Island was the first major amusement park I ever visited back in the 1990s, and the first Western New York Coaster Club event I attended. It was in November and I still remember my first ride on the legendary Beast wooden roller coaster in 32 degree weather when it was sleeting. I could barely move my hands when we returned to the station. Fortunately, our visit this time was the polar opposite, with high heat and high humidity. We arrived at about 11:00 am. The parking lot was pretty crowded, but we managed to find an open space not too far from the park entrance. As with other Cedar Fair parks, the security gates were at the start of the entrance plaza, which sported a huge sign promoting the park's newest addition, Adventure Port. Our Cedar Fair passes gave us free parking and free entry, so we walked through the entrance and emerged onto International Plaza. The first sight we encountered was very familiar to us, since this park was a sister park to Kings Dominion in Virginia that we had visited many times: the giant fountain that ran the entire length of International Plaza, ending at the 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower. This fountain was a bit different from the one at Kings Dominion, though. The pattern of the nozzles formed an elongated S, and they performed a sort of ballet with the music in the park, cycling through various spray patterns. We chose to head left from there, and that path led us past the Kings Island Theater that was featuring a stage show about the park's old Phantom Theater dark ride that had closed in 2002. The stage show debuted in 2022 to capitalize on the ride's anniversary. On either side of the theater entrance were original ride vehicles with cartoonish ghouls placed inside them. The path led us toward the Action Zone area of the park, which had several thrill rides including three steel coasters: Ivertigo and Banshee (which I had no interest in riding) and The Bat, which I had ridden in its earlier incarnation as Top Gun during Paramount's ownership of the park. (Its current name was an homage to the original revolutionary Bat coaster that opened at the park in 1981 and was removed just a couple of years later.) To our right was Festhaus, a huge eatery modeled after the one at Busch Gardens (even including a stained glass window). From there we walked into the new Adventure Port area, a small but colorful section with just one flat ride, a large Mexican eatery and a pond with a colorful boat. Tucked behind the area was the old Arrow mine train ride Adventure Express. It was one of the longer mine trains and it had one of the silliest endings I'd ever seen. The final lift hill went through a long tunnel with animatronic drummer figures on either side. Near the top of the lift, a giant idol head ominously pronounced, "You have disturbed the forbidden temple! NOW YOU WILL PAY!" -- and then the train rolled back into the station. So I guess payment was ... getting off the ride? The midway then segued into one of the original and largely unchanged sections of the park: the Coney Mall. Back in the early 1900s, the go-to leisure location in the Cincinnati area was their very own Coney Island. It was a really popular spot, but was continually prone to flooding. Finally, the owners threw in the towel and joined with the Taft Broadcasting Company in 1972 to open Kings Island in nearby Mason. It was called Kings Island because it relocated Coney Island to Kings Mills. Many of the original rides were brought over. But there also was a big new ride created especially for the park, and it sat right next to Adventure Express: The Racer. This was the legendary wooden coaster that began the modern roller coaster renaissance. The park pulled John Allen out of retirement from the Philadelphia Toboggan Company to design one of the largest amusement rides ever built. With its long sleek photogenic profile and bowtie turnaround, it became an instant hit with the public. And because Taft was one of the country's largest broadcasters, they were able to leverage their network and properties to promote it. One of the famous examples is when the Brady Bunch visited the park and millions of Americans got to see it for the first time. Taft also owned the Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters and populated the park with them. But under Cedar Fair's ownership, the Peanuts characters had replaced Hanna-Barbera. Part of the way through the Coney Mall midway was another section hidden off to the left. It was accessed by a path that ran under the Racer's track and was labeled Area 72. There were just two rides in this area that had a vaguely science fiction theme to it. One of the rides, Flight of Fear, was hidden in a giant building on the left and had debuted under Paramount's ownership as Outer Limits: Flight of Fear. It was one of the first magnetically-launched roller coasters. I rode its twin at Kings Dominion and really liked it, especially the queue line that was heavily themed to an alien abduction. The other coaster here had extremely limited themeing, mostly just cryptic posters that lined the queue. This was Orion, which opened at the height of the pandemic in 2020. It was labeled a B&M hypercoaster (topping 200 feet high), but technically it was a gigacoaster (300 feet). The ride's lift hill was listed as 278 feet tall, but the drop was 300. For being that tall, there really wasn't much to the ride: five hills and two turns. Karen passed on riding it, so I queued up. There weren't many people in line, and the queue moved quickly. In fact, there was an entire enclosed queue section that had been cordoned off. When I arrived at the station, I discovered Cedar Fair's new loading procedure (which I first encountered earlier in the year at Cedar Point): assigning seats. The attendant at the station gate attempted to tell me which seat to take. So I simply asked if I could line up for the front, and she said fine. Within a few minutes I was seated comfortably and being pulled up the tall lift. The first drop was swift and smooth. The next hill was a tall camelback that banked sharply to the left. That was followed by one of B&M's tilted turnarounds. Then came a little bunny hop followed by a taller camelback, another turnaround, a hill and then the brake run. I was surprised it was over so quickly. I heard someone behind me exclaim, "This is the smoothest ride in the park!" That may have been true, but given the size of the ride I was disappointed in its brevity and lack of interesting elements. It seemed like the coaster's designer didn't have much room to work with and just gave up. Or maybe the park was on a budget. They probably would have had a better ride with a shorter lift hill and more camelbacks, like Apollo's Chariot at Busch Gardens. Maybe they thought that bigger was better. In this case, it wasn't. We continued down the Coney Mall midway and came to a dead end at a rather short antique car ride and Windseeker, a giant swing tower similar to the one at Cedar Point. From there we turned right and passed the 1950s-themed Jukebox Diner (similar to Coasters at Cedar Point). In the distance I spotted the other main coaster in the park I wanted to ride: Diamondback, which I hoped would fix my complaints about Orion. Along the left-hand side of the the path we followed was a tall wood fence, which seemed out of place, as if the park were trying to hide something. The path opened up next to LaRosa Pizza in the Rivertown section. And at that point, the skies opened up and torrential rain came down. We were lucky to be standing next to the pizza shop, which had a large covered veranda. We stood there for shelter as the midway turned into a rushing creek. Meanwhile, Diamondback was still cycling people through before it shut down. Riders were being pelted with heavy rain at 70 mph. It reminded me of that first ride I took on the Beast. Speaking of which, when the rain stopped after about fifteen minutes, we headed back out onto the midway toward the center of Rivertown, looking for the Beast's entrance. But I couldn't find it. We did, however, find the entrance to the station for the Kings Island & Miami River Railroad. Very few people were waiting for it. With the amount of water that had just come down, I didn't even know if it was running. But in a short time, I heard the engine's whistle and the propane-powered steam engine came chugging around the corner. Meanwhile in the background, the park's 2017 wooden coaster, Mystic Timbers, had begun testing after the rain. We boarded the train's large passenger cars and were soon rolling along the shady course. The train made a stop at the entrance to Soak City (the waterpark) at the opposite end of the park. Quite a few people got off the train to go there. Then we continued along back to the station in Rivertown. The second half featured boomtown scenes in a similar fashion to Cedar Point's Boneville on their own railway. It was a pleasant ride. We continued walking toward the park's Planet Snoopy area. We passed the entrance to Mystic Timbers, which was still testing. To the left was the old flume ride, re-themed as Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. It wasn't running, so we continued on. The area was beautifully landscaped and had plenty to offer children. And then we were back out on International Plaza. The park seemed a lot smaller than I remembered it. We headed over to the nearby Eiffel Tower to see if we could get a birds-eye view, but it was closed. Next to it was the park's beautifully preserved PTC carousel, similar to the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round. Across from the carousel was the Tower Gardens, so we took a walk through that. It was a series of shady paths that offered a walking history of Kings Island. There were various Eiffel Tower models placed about, each one illustrating a major roller coaster that the park added, and sculpted with details pertaining to that ride. For instance, the tower commemorating The Bat had bats on it. By then it was 2:00. The park was starting to get really crowded, but I wanted to see if I could get a ride on The Beast. So we headed back in that direction and I finally found the entrance tucked away near LaRosa's Pizza. The gate attendant said it was an hour-and-a-half wait to board. We were scheduled to go out to dinner at 3:00 with Karen's brother who lived in Cincinnati, so we called it a day. The next morning, Karen and I got an early start. The weather was clear and mild, a welcome relief. Our Comfort Suite just around the corner from the park was really nice. They had a waffle-maker along with many other complementary hot and cold breakfast choices, so we ate there. It was the Fourth of July, and we had expected the park to be a mob scene. So we got there for 9:15 to find ... no one. The parking lot was nearly empty. We parked in a space right next to the entrance. The park was letting people in, though nothing yet was open. So we walked onto International Plaza and checked out the park's main gift shop. I spotted some really nice magnets and t-shirts. An announcement was made that the National Anthem was going to be sung by two of the park's performers. The few people on the midway stood respectfully as soprano voices echoed through the park. It was actually one of the best versions of the National Anthem that I'd heard. And with that, the park was open. The first thing I wanted to do while it wasn't too crowded was to make a walk-thru video. So Karen relaxed in the shade while I walked the grounds. Amazingly, covering the entire park took me less than a half-hour. We met back up at the entrance and headed over for the Eiffel Tower, but once again it was closed. So instead we headed for the Beast. Along the way, I watched Diamondback run through its course. The last stretch before the break run was a long splashdown across a pond. The angle of the sun was just right, and the spray from the train made a bright rainbow. Just around the corner from that was the entrance plaza for the Beast. The only people there were two attendants. We followed the long zigzagging queue. No one else was in line. In fact, we encountered people leaving the line. I was hoping that didn't mean the ride was down. When we arrived in the station, only a couple of people were there and no one was waiting for the front. So naturally, that's where Karen and I went. As legendary as the coaster was, the Beast was never a big favorite of mine. It offered virtually no airtime. It was essentially a high-speed railroad in the woods. It did have a fantastic finish to it, but for me that was about it. However, for this year the park had done a lot of work on the ride, replacing a lot of track and extending the first drop a bit. So I was interested in how that turned out. We took our seats in the PTC train and buckled in. We rolled out of the station into a wide right-hand 360-degree turn. There was a lot of unused land next to the coaster's station, on the other side of that long wood fence I had seen the day before. That was once the home of Vortex, the huge Arrow multi-loop roller coaster that had been at the park for decades. After it was removed in 2019, I guess the park couldn't figure out what to do with all that land and just blocked it off. The train rolled up to the long lift hill and slowly climbed it. I was pleased to see that the park had been greasing the track. That usually meant a faster and smoother ride. We crested the top of the hill and stared down at the seemingly tiny tunnel at the bottom of the first drop. We began rolling down towards it, and I could feel a trim brake holding us back. We rolled through the tunnel and up into the second hill. It was a really smooth transition, so the track work paid off. As we descended the next hill, another trim brake pulled us back. It was like that on every single hill. Rather than the out-of-control experience I first had on the coaster so many decades ago, the Beast had been tamed. Every drop was slowed down. I suspected that helped reduce maintenance. We rolled up toward second lift hill. This was the start of the big finale. At the top of the lift we turned left and began coasting down into the huge tunneled double helix. It was one of my favorite views on a coaster, the long straight descending stretch of track that began precipitously tilting on its side. Then there was another strong trim brake holding us back before letting us coast into the helix. Even with the trim brake, we barreled through it at a fairly high speed, the tunnel amplifying the roar of the train. We repeated the giant circle and then leveled out and rolled into the brake run. It was still a pretty exciting finish. Karen found it to be too intense; I found it less so. I was disappointed by the relentless trim brakes. We walked over to the station of Diamondback, and it was down. So instead we doubled back and I decided to try Mystic Timbers, the 2017 wooden coaster near the train station. I wasn't expecting much from the ride. I assumed it was like InvadR at Busch Gardens, which was advertised as a fun family ride but proved to be pretty violent. Mystic Timbers was promoted with a peculiar ad campaign that asked, "What's in the shed?" It reminded me a lot of another Busch Gardens coaster, Verbolten, that had a similar creepy vibe to it. Interestingly, the queue line theming bore some similiarities to Verbolten, with a wrecked and rusted vehicle just outside the queue. From other coaster enthusiasts, I had heard that the answer to the park's question was pretty anticlimactic. So I decided to see for myself. Evidently, it was a popular ride because even with so few people in the park, there were a lot of people in the qeueu line. Fortunately, the park was running three trains. It wasn't a very efficient operation though, and the line moved slowly. After about 20 minutes I had made it to the station and queued up for the front seat (after asking the attendant if I could do so). This was a Great Coasters International ride, and it used their comfortable and open Millennium Flyer trains. And again like Verbolten, they were designed to look like old cars. We rolled out of the station and around a right-hand turn, then down into a set bunny hops leading up to the relatively short lift hill, a design that several Rocky Mountain Construction coasters had adopted. It was good to see that the track was greased on this coaster too. From the top of the lift, the track dropped away to the left and curved back on itself, a typical GCI design trait. There was a powerful airtime hill, followed by a sharp left-hand turn with strong laterals. The rest of the ride was a blur. It was really fast, but smooth, with lots of hills and surprising changes of direction. At 1/3 the height of Orion, it had far more airtime and action. The train cruised up to the brake run. Ahead of us was the infamous "shed". An announcement repeatedly told us not to go inside. Naturally, the train rolled inside and stopped. Around us, eerie sounds were playing. The walls had various spooky projections on them (i.e.: an old swinging gate that was in front of us). We sat there for a few minutes. A 3D animated snake began crawling on some projected fenceposts to our right. Then we rolled back into the station. I'm pretty sure that the only reason for that interlude (and the entire premise for the ride) was because the coaster was fairly short and they were running three trains. So it was inevitable that they were going to "stack" the trains (leave one sitting on the brake run for a while). So to entertain the guests while they sat there, there were those strange projections. I think it would have been more effective to have taken photos of the train at various sections of track and then project those so people could have a laugh at seeing themselve riding the coaster. That would have been a lot more entertaining. As for the ride itself, I enjoyed it. It was surprisingly smooth and filled with airtime. While I certainly wouldn't call it a "family" coaster, it was a lot less intense than InvadR. Just around the corner from the coaster was the flume, and it was running. So we got in line for that. The queue seemed really long, but that was only because they hadn't fully opened the queue; it was just a single line going up the stairs and over to the loading platform. The station had the ability to load both sides at the same time. Initially, they were loading only one side and the line was moving really slowly. Once they opened up the other side, it took just a few minutes to be seated in our boat. Outside of the few Peanuts statues near the entrance, there was no attempt to theme anything else on the ride. The course was fairly short, but enjoyable. The splashdown was really mild ... for me. Karen was in the front and got drenched. But in the heat, she didn't mind it. I was determined to ride Diamondback, the 230-foot-tall B&M hypercoaster from 2009. So we headed over to the station once again, and this time it was open. The queue was virtually empty. I couldn't understand how, on what was traditionally one of the busiest days of the year for amusement parks, there was hardly anyone here. It took us just 15 minutes to get to the front seat. The trains were beautifully designed to look like (obviously) a rattlesnake. They also had a feature I had never seen before: on each car, the middle two seats were place forward and the two outer seats were behind them. The supposed purpose was that it offered unobstructed views no matter where you sat. But if you were behind someone, your view was obstructed. So I'm not sure if the concept worked. But I was a front seat guy anyway, so I didn't worry about it. Karen and I both took those middle two seats in the front. The seats were comfortable, as were the restraints. We were quickly dispatched and riding up the tall steep lift, as if it were sending us into the clouds. The first drop seemed really steep as well, curving to the right and sending us into a huge sustained airtime hill. Then we dropped and curved to the left into another airtime hill. That was followed by the typical tall B&M turnaround (like on Orion). Then came yet another tall sustained airtime hill. A tight fast left-hand rising helix followed that. Then a hop up into the tall mid-course brake run. That was followed by two more huge camelback hills, then a warped helix turn into the splashdown finale, with one more airtime hill following that for good measure. What a great ride! It was exactly what I loved in a coaster: airtime, airtime, airtime and more airtime. And it was smooth and comfortable. It became my favorite steel roller coaster. We emerged back onto International Plaza near the Eiffel Tower (which was still closed). The midway looked deserted. We strolled down the quiet stretch with the fountain's splashing for company. I had a hankering for a milkshake, and Karen spotted Graeter's, an ice cream shop that her brother had told us about. But it wouldn't open until 2:00. A little further down the midway, outside one of the shops, was a sculpture of Don Quixote under an archway riding his burro, followed by Sancho Panza. By then it was noon and we were getting hungry. So we headed for the Festhaus, which supposedly served veggie burgers. From the outside, the bulding was fairly non-descript and easy to miss. But inside, it was surprisingly huge. And hardly anyone was there. They indeed did serve veggie burgers, and that's what we ordered. Oddly, the park advertised nearly all of their concessions as being vegan or vegetarian -- even those that served only barbecued meat. I think they got away with that because most places had sides, like rice, that could qualify as vegan. But sides weren't a meal. While we were ordering, Karen asked one of the attendants why there were so few people in the park. He told us that people were still at home having cookouts. He said wait until about 5:00; the park was going to be mobbed for the fireworks later that night. We sat down at one of the many empty picnic tables. Our burgers were the Beyond Burger variety, stacked with fresh lettuce, tomatoes and onions. They came with fresh French fries and a drink (in my case, lemonade). It was really good, very filling. At one end of the building was a large multi-level stage that was dark. It was flanked by seven large video screens that were running park promos. As we were eating, musicians emerged and began warming up their instruments. Then some vocalists appeared with the typical wireless microphones strapped to their heads. They were dressed casually and could easily have been mistaken for park guests. Suddenly the band began playing and the singers launched into renditions of modern pop songs in an almost comically bland way. We assumed they were just doing a sound check because after a couple of tunes they all left the way they came in. So we took that as our cue to leave. I had intended to ride Adventure Express and the Racer, since they were nearby. But instead we headed back to the Eiffel Tower. It was still closed. We walked over toward the Planet Snoopy area and instead queued up for the former Phantom Theater, now Boo Blasters on Boo Hill. The entryway was largely unchanged with the exception of some scenery pieces that had been removed. The interior was air conditioned, which was welcomed as the heat outside was getting pretty intense. There weren't many people in line. There was a strange large picture frame containing a plexiglass sheet on the wall where the entrance was, but there was nothing else in the frame. There were holes in the walls where previously eerie busts had been mounted. Basically, the queue area was a plain black box. It didn't take long to arrive at the loading platform, which was still pretty much the same as in the Phantom Theater days. The ride was a typical Sally shooter, but our "blasters" didn't seem to work that well. There was no visual guide to where we were shooting, so we just randomly fired every which way. The scenes were the usual blacklit spooky-but-not-too-scary scenes of skeletons and ghouls. I would have been just as happy as a spectator on the ride, rather than wrestling with the malfunctioning blasters. We went back onto International Plaza and sat next to the fountain at a shaded cafe table. Across the fountain was an Auntie Anne's pretzel concession. Seeing as how it looked like I wouldn't be getting a milkshake, I opted for pretzel bites as a dessert. Karen wanted an order too. So I headed over there. Two women were in front of me, each at a different cash register, arguing with the cashiers about wanting an all-you-can-eat food wristband. The cashiers repeatedly told the women that the Auntie Anne's concession could sell only the snack wristbands, not the meal ones. The women insisted on buying them and when the wristbands were attached, were really angry that they couldn't get a meal, only snacks. Meanwhile, a long line of people had formed behind me. It took nearly 20 minutes for the women to depart. The cashier apologized profusely. I ordered our pretzel bites and took them back to Karen. They were some of the worst bites from Auntie Anne's that I ever had. They were more like burnt pretzel strips. And they cost a whopping $7.50 each (with our Platinum Pass discount). We didn't finish them. I noticed the elevators in the Eiffel Tower going up and down, so I assumed it was finally working. We walked over to it. No one was in line and the attendant there said the ride wasn't running, but it probably would be in a few minutes. Karen waited there in the shade while I headed back to the gift shop in Rivertown to get a nice Diamondback t-shirt I had seen there. When I returned, the Tower still wasn't running. So we stood at the empty queue. After a few minutes, more ride attendants arrived and the ride supervisor signed off on it. People began gathering in line behind us. I wondered if staffing had been purposely delayed, since park officials knew that the big crowds would be at night. After a few more elevator tests, two of the attendants went up to the top of the Tower, and the attendant on the ground opened the queue line. We boarded the elevator that had tall glass windows on all sides and glided 300 feet up to the observation deck. We were treated to spectacular panoramas of the expansive park. We then decided it was time to leave. We had one more park to visit that day. So I stopped off at the main gift shop. They had a book about the history of Ohio's Coney Island for the bargain basement price of $7.00 (cheaper than the pretzel bites). So I got that, plus a set of coaster magnets. Then we bid farewell to the park just as hundreds of guests began streaming in. We walked out of the entrance plaza, turned left, walked a few hundred feet and there was our car. I was really glad we spent two days at Kings Island. Even though it seemed smaller than I remembered, there was plenty to do (and plenty we never got to do). I was pleasantly surprised by Mystic Timbers, and I was blown away by Diamondback. It was a bonus that our Cedar Fair passes got us into the park for free. I could have easily spent another day there, but we had a rare treat ahead of us.

Return to Karen and Jay's Excursions