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I'm curious how you came to mention Paris. The latest data I can find is from 2020 and Paris is ranked 17th in most visited parks in the world. Disneyland is number 12 with over 1.5 million more annual visitors. In 2019, a normal year pre-covid, Disneyland (rank #2 on earth) had almost DOUBLE the attendance of Paris (rank #17, unchanged). Tokyo, Shanghai, even friggin Chimelong Ocean Kingdom are ranked higher than Paris. At least in the NFL you get first draft pick for being the worst. Six Flags gets Larson Loops.

They're fixing it up in-house. It's going to be a full refurbishment after being sadly neglected over the years. It's all being done by hand. There's a display off to the side of the ride entrance with several informational boards explaining the history behind the Batmobile and the extensive process to restore it to its original glory.

I'm not. and you are COMPLETELY incorrect on everything else you say. . as usual. if you think that SFOT is the crown jewel, or even a better park in ANY way/shape/form than SFFT? you simply haven't been to the park in more than a decade. Period.

how nice you can show your ignorance again. . . . SFFT . . you are SO completely incorrect, that being right is not only in Greek to you, but it's in an unbreakable code. 1st park to get FreeSpin, one of only two parks in the chain with Premier Spaghetti Bowl, the first park in the world to get RMC Single Rail Coaster (and the 1st park to have two RMCs), the 1st park to get a 7 across B&M Dive Coaster, one of the 1st two parks to get the giant Pendulum - and the ONLY one to get a themed indoor queue for it. oh. . lets see. . how else are you wrong? SFFT is absolutely a destination park - with SWSA right up the loop, and the Alamo, Riverwalk, and San Antonio Zoo in the area as well - not to even bring up the only wooden shuttle coaster in the world less than 40 minutes away in Sequin? Yup. . . it's absolutely a destination, multi day stay in the San Antonio Area, and SFFT is a big part of that. you're so wrong about so much, I just keep waiting for you to be correct about at least one or TWO things (even a broken clock is correct twice a day)

I won't say disappointed bc that's too harsh and 1 Big Bear Mountain looks kinda cool 2 I get it. It fits with the park...it's a more family oriented park guess just a shame that after Dragonflier they didn't go with at least more of a thrill esp for how big the investment is. But I get it of course, and this looks better than Dragonflier. What can ya do? I wont make it this year so least there will be a fun new cred for my next visit. The "slowed down even more" myth has been debunked. The person who took the 2021 video said it was very early morning and if you look it up its from March. So well before the park was running regularly. I recall them saying it was maybe 50 degrees when filmed. So that is not accurate to a warmed up in season ride, and whoever made that dang triple comparison video maybe didn't do it on purpose to stir the pot....but its very inaccurate. And don't get me wrong, I have been one of those bitterly disappointed people that never got the OG experience and I too was very sad the ride was maybe "neutered" farther. However...when I rode it in 2021 it was nothing like that video, was much much faster. Also for each comment I've seen from someone commenting "I rode opening year. its nothing the same! A sad shell of how great it reallt was yall really missed out sorry!" I've seen three saying "I rode opening year, I legit can't tell any difference really" so yeah...

Early report: Breakfast at Pink Cadillac was excellent as always, our traditional opening of Capt'n Jack's at 11 went off without a hitch, rode the world's greatest Boomerang which was great, and now sitting at Capt'n Jacks drinking Pina Coladas again watching them test Zoom Phloom so I won't be getting burned by a closed Flume today. Surfside opens in 10 mins. PigDog in a couple hours. Great White and Screamin Swing laps tonight. I sure wish I lived here!

Agreed. I used that park as an example for a reason. Pricing aside ( because pricing can always be adjusted), it's a park that used to feel cookie cutter and out of focus when it was my homepark. And I enjoy it far more today.

I'm walking a tightrope here because I feel like a lot of people are giving Cedar Fair too little credit , though at the same time I do acknowledge that they also shouldn't be given too much credit either as they did show us all last season that they can definitely be a rudderless-ship at times. "This city's population is x and the median income is y so we should get a giga coaster" is really over-simplifying things a bit though. They may very-well feel like the demographics of the city are fine, but the nearest major parks are 3+ hours away and they've saturated the market so there's no reason to invest much. If they know they can throw open the gates and make a bunch of money every year without doing much then I get why they'd want to do that. A place like San Antonio (mentioned on the last page) may even have a similar metro area in many ways, but there's also a major competitor ten minutes away that keeps adding new rides every year and trying to grab market share. At the same time though, there's also Carowinds which has also saturated their market and is a similar distance to their competition where they invest heavily so... idfk. I don't even know what point I'm trying to make, I guess just that we should keep in mind that "Cedar Fair is dumb" is always a plausible explanation for anything but they also do have access to numbers and data that we don't and they may have a very good reason for not feeling the need to invest much in this park.

To be completely honest with you, I do see Kings Island, even plus'ed up with projection mapping and better fireworks, as a "cheap park" compared to Universal or Disney. You can get a pass to go every single operating day for less money than it costs to go to Universal Studios Orlando for one of the two parks for one day. I don't think there's a dramatic difference between operations at most Cedar Fair parks and most Six Flags parks. Cedar Point has had lousy operations now for about a decade for most of it's season: Six Flags Great America usually has been in better shape. Cedar Fair has built some decent stuff, sure, but there's plenty of parallel examples of Six Flags doing the same (Justice League, the SFGAdv Safari) from a "themed entertainment" lens. I also don't think the CEO anticipated the losses being what they were or that he was going to be firing a bunch more of his senior leadership right before the last earnings call. Nor do I think he was necessarily chasing to have his company downgraded by institutional investors. edit: also, just for clarity - the reason why I asked about the demographic mix at Kings Island was because of what I was arguing earlier: they might have managed to increase per capita spending, but it hasn't fundamentally changed who goes to the park. If you don't do that, the people who won't go now because "its unsafe" will never go. Not to mention that when CF did their earnings report, they no longer try to separate out the performance of the parks they have now vs. what they had pre-COVID. Remember, they made the deal to buy Schlitterbahn in mid 2019. They should be showing an increase in attendance and revenue vs. that year or prior years because they have more facilities. Oddly enough, no one seemed to notice this when the reports came out except me.

Bingo. If we use the example of Kings Island, well, sure, let's examine that. First, we had Dick Kinzel buy it and try to crater season pass sales to seek more valuable per capita attendance figures in the middle of a pandemic. Oopsies, that didn't work, and Dick Kinzel got shown the door. Then his replacement (you know, the guy who came from Disneyland) emerged and reset pricing for season pass products in the marketplace, getting people back in the park. Since then, they've spent a decade constructing new rides and attractions and plussing up infrastructure to get to a point where, when adjusted for inflation (https://web.archive.org/web/20120827093407/https://www.visitkingsisland.com/season-passes and https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/), I find that the cost of a Kings Island Season Pass is now....9 dollars cheaper in real terms.

Who are the people going to Kings Island? Really, are people seeing some massive sea change in the demographics of individuals visiting the place because the season passes are priced at $9 more than Six Flags St. Louis? That's what these parks are. They are regional parks serving regional audiences who often have few or no serious alternatives for full day amusement facilities because the competition has been closed forever. And that's why it keeps failing to try and jack up the prices without investing heavily in the facility. Cedar Fair hasn't even been able to increase costs to the consumer in the fashion Six Flags has attempted this year; why would anyone expect a different outcome than what did happen (loss of revenue greater than the improvement in per capita spending)?

I think it's all in the eye of the beholder. I thought the city proper has less than 200 K, and the overall area is less than 2.5 million. I understand they draw some people from Nebraska, Oklahoma and surrounding states but to me less than three million is small, and explains why the park only draws less than 1 million annually. I think it's a great park, it just can't draw like larger areas like in California, Florida, etc., unless something changes to make the area a big growth area (like what happened in Charlotte), OR more of a tourism market.

The biggest piece of the 50th were the (really great!) shows, and unfortunately they almost all ended on either August 14 or 21. The only one left is Fun, Fireworks, and Fifty which only runs during 10 p.m. closes.

Prob a corp buy out like yesterday.

But yeah, being the original park isn't enough of a reason. It's the parks that will get the best return on investment. Disneyland is the original, but isn't anywhere near the destination of Florida or Paris.

I'd reschedule.

I admitted as much as that I didn't know. And I haven't lived in NJ for almost 20 years. Welcome to the forums, newbie. You're off to a rocking start.

Online, and no. I know you already visited, but I answered in case someone else wanted to know. The park also does not allow entry within the last operating hour in the day, since some rides close early depending on how full its line is. And if you were talking about the 13th, then yeah, it was indeed slammed that day. Apparently both UPS and Amazon workers were having a gathering that day. Unrelated, earlier this summer, WDRB dropped this article about the Kentucky Fair Board proposing a massive revitalization of their property, but the article leaves out how it would directly affect parking, roads, and Kentucky Kingdom's front entrance too: https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/millions-from-state-could-revamp-kentucky-expo-center-with-sports-complex-hotels/article_d682bd54-dc60-11ec-b60e-633df27ae2b8.html And yes, they misspelled "Kingdom." Twice. In the proposal, the big changes adjacent to the park is that fancy "VIP Parking" area, which isn't a thing currently. Also, the new 6 lane road running along the left side of the park would be new too. It would join with the redirected road that circles the whole fairgrounds, and would make it easier to drive thru Gate 2 (bottom center of first image) and go straight to the expo center or KK's front gate without being forced to drive under the park's pedestrian bridge. Maybe several years down the line, if this turns out a success, they'll raze that road entirely and join the two halves of the park? One can dream. EDIT: I totally glossed over the bottom right of the first image! (That's THREE "Kingdom" misspellings too!) Maybe this would mean the Fair Board is finally giving Kentucky Kingdom their own parking, free from the expo center, and that road between the park really is going to be totally discontinued! Bright side, visitors might not have to pay fairgrounds prices to park. Down side, it is a significantly further walk to get to the front entrance...

I had a great day dodging storms at KI today. Outside of the beer and food options for the 50th anny, I didn't really feel like there was this huge celebration going on. The park has a massive dead space from Orion to Beast; Antique Cars is the only attraction of note there and its nostalgia is wearing off tbh. There's nothing to do. No, no one is spending $ on the big games from the 70s still standing there taking up most of the space in the area. Beast is SMOOTH! No I don't believe any trims are different but the way they bumped up the entry intro the first curved tunnel perhaps that zaps the speed to the 2nd lift. Definitely not as aggressive but love the 2nd lift and helix, still legit. I am willing to pick row 18/back row over front row Beast which would usually be unheard of. Great work on Beast and I'll bet 100 bucks this coaster goes on for hundreds of years to come. They'll just keep it going. Beast for life. Orion front row is the spot! Relentless. Mystic Timbers tried to take off my shirt every ride lol but god the operations were slow. Getting stacked outside of the shed in the rain is not fun ha!

I swear every post I see from you kills more brain cells in my head. Also, for the love of all that is holy, use the multiquote.

Idlewild is like what Six Flags should model their parks after. It has such a distinctly American flavor with all the picket fences and “downhome” energy. The signs at Columbus Zoo were also in that downhome Americana energy. HW does well IMO bc their rides have clever names and themeing. Clever themes dont have to cost much but have a lot of impact. I havent been to HW since Pilgrims opened. I forgot why it was removed

Best inquiry ever into the park! You bribed your husband with turkey legs! I'm sure they go well with a cold beer. At Six Flags Saint Louis, the turkey legs are so good they're worth fighting for.

I feel like maybe we were on the same page, with a miscommunication. *Off topic* But, I disagree with one point. Saint Louis is a shithole. I live here. It is FAR from a wonderful city. Crime rates, depression, happiness, infrastructure... Aside from a decent handful of attractions for tourists and locals, it's a nice place to visit, but a bad place to live. We rarely go downtown, and we leave the general Saint Louis area by mid-afternoon. You have to be selective and smart about where you go, and what routes to take. Building wonderful zoo's doesn't take away from the cancer that continuously spreads from the inner city, going north and east. It crosses the river into one of the most dangerous areas in the country being East Saint Louis. People keep moving further and further away from the city, just to get away from the growing chaos. Remember, we were the beginning of the nationwide anti-police riots. It didn't escalate because it was in a sleepy area. It escalated, because it was already in a war zone, and the incident was a spark to make the fire. I just started a job with a 10k pay cut away from the North Saint Louis area. It's a nicer bedroom community, because it's more isolated. It chooses to have no entertainment district draw to bring people in. There's no draw for non-locals. It's where we're moving in a couple years. The problem with my old job is that North Saint Louis came right across our bridge into Illinois, and made a bad town much worse. Kind of like when a soccer mom is driving home, and has a handful of criminals jump out and point AR rifles in her face trying to take her car. They came from right across the bridge, and went right back. The same place they come from when they steal cars, or play shoot-em-up on the weekends in the bar district. 20 years ago it hadn't made it this far, but it's there now. My boots are on the ground here, so don't tell me otherwise. *End rant.

You can keep them out of the park, but you can't keep them from shooting people in the parking lot.