dadofgage

If you have a meal plan / drink cup added on to a Platinum Pass, it works at all parks. The benefits are tied to the pass, so if your pass works elsewhere, so will your benefits. In 2017 my family did a Carowinds - Kings Dominion - Kings Island - Cedar Point trip (with our home park and Platinum Passes from Knott's) and our meal plans and drink cups worked at all parks no problem. I suppose it's possible things have changed in the last two years, but I am certain the option exists! To add to this: You have two options: the plastic souvenir sipper cup or a paper cup every time you get a drink. We opted for the paper cup. You might get less drink per visit, but you don't have to walk around with the plastic cup, which can't be stored at Fury or CS. You also have to remember to bring it every time you visit, and clean it between visits. Too much work when I know I can walk up and get a cup without any worries. Great - I definitely am going to do the drink option - and get the paper cup - I don't want to try and deal with hiding my cups in a bush or try to travel with them - paper cups are the way to go. Thanks for the responses!

Quick question about Cedar Fair platinum passes - I'm headed to Carowinds this week and I see there is an option to get an all season drink cup added to your platinum pass which I'm interested in doing. My question is does the drink pass work at all other Cedar Fair parks too? I'm curious since we are headed to Cedar Point in June and KD in August.

Has anyone visited the park on Easter weekend in the past? If so, how were the crowds? Also, has anyone had experience staying at Comfort Inn At the Park? Good/bad?

My son and I just returned from a two-day trip to KI and had a great time. In a lot of ways, I enjoyed it more than CP. Obviously the lineup at CP is better - but this park just seemed to have a better feel to it. I'll leave out most of the details and just give a few opinions: 1) we LOVED the Beast at night - holy crap that is insane, the right amount of roughness and felt out of control - excellent - we finished both nights with rides on this coaster 2) Mystic Timbers - our favorite ride at the park - fun, crazy, air, twisty, and the shed - a great experience all the way around 3) Banshee - the front is great, but the back is where it's at - especially down that first drop 4) Racer - please just tear that thing down - wow that was rough and unpleasant - one and done for us 5) Operations - some of the best I've ever seen outside of DIsney - just incredible - for example, on Banshee - they were calling out 'zero-g-check' meaning they wanted to have the entire train locked and checked by the time the train in front had gone through the zero-g and in many cases were sending trains out well before the second vertical loop. Even on many of the smaller coasters and flats - the same, quick operations were present - and well appreciated. 6) Operations Part 2 - one day we didn't have FL+, the second day we did, and though we probably didn't need it - it still did cut those 20 minute waits into less than 5. I liked the fact that you got to the station on coasters as opposed to some random meeting point back in the line (think MF at CP) and the groupers at the station were all excellent keeping the trains filled and having a good balance of FL vs. general line. There were many more things we enjoyed - it made for a great trip - my first time at the park in over 30 years and my son's first trip - we will definitely be back.

That was my first upside down coaster - my dad paid me $20 to ride it LOL. I'm trying to find some other pictures - I know I have more.

Here's an old picture I found from packing for an upcoming move of the Tidal Wave probably from the late 70's to very early 80's. Thought some of you might enjoy seeing a pic of the park from that era.

Cool - thanks for the responses! I'm excited to take my son - I haven't been to the park since the early 80's.....

I'm working on planning my summer visit to Kings Island. What's a good, reasonably priced hotel that's close to the park?

Yeah, my guess is that they would put Gatekeeper on regular Fastlane and put Steel Vengeance on Fastlane Plus (though they could leave them both on Fastlane Plus if they want). I'm honestly really curious to know how many people actually buy the base level Fastlane. There's definitely value in it since a lot of the rides on the base level can get really long lines (especially Millennium Force) but I always found the price difference between Fastlane and Fastlane Plus to be too small to justify buying the regular Fastlane. If you spring for Fastlane, you might as well get Fastlane Plus. I don't feel the same way at Six Flags parks where there's usually a huge difference in price between the different Flash Pass tiers. Interesting - I was considering it on Sunday (9/3) since the normal FL price was $99 and FL+ was $149. The other times I've been there there was only a difference of maybe $15 or $20.

I don't really know if there's anything they could do aside from raising prices even more (which might be a good idea). I will admit that I find it pretty surprising that Millennium Force is still on regular Fastlane. Personally I'd take Gatekeeper off of Fastlane Plus and put Millennium Force on. I think it will be interesting to see what they do next year with Steel Vengance - I would think they would move GateKeeper to normal FL - that just never seemed to have a line Friday or Saturday (usually at the bottom of the stairs). They were charging $149 for FL+ and sold out of it - so they make bank on that one part of park operations on Sunday.

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I surprised my son and daughter with a quick weekend trip from Florida to CP for the Labor Day weekend. We flew from Orlando to Cleveland on Frontier for just over $200 total for the 3 of us. We stayed at the Motel 6 in Milan on Hwy 250 and found it to be clean and best of all, very affordable. Since I am a Platinum Pass holder, I got bring-a-friend tickets for Friday-Sunday for $26/day/person. We got to the park about 4:30 on Friday and hit up most of the major rides with minimal waits - I think our longest wait was Maverick at around 25 minutes. Dragster was the only major ride closed. It was cold and super windy but so worth it. Saturday was about the perfect day at the park - minimal waits all around - probably the longest wait we had was MF at around 30 minutes. We hit Maverick first thing and did it 3 times before there was even a wait for a train, went right to MF for a quick lap and then over to Dragster to make sure we got a ride and ended up riding it about 5 times before the ERT at the end of the night. The only ride we didn't catch was Valravn that carried a line of almost 90 min the entire day for some reason. Sunday, on the other hand, was a disaster all around. My party got in around 9:30 for early entry and my daughter and I hit up Valravn that was about a 45 min wait. That jumped to well over 1.5 hours right after the park opened. From there we got a lap on MF with about a 30 minute wait. After that, we met up with my son who had gone to Maverick for a couple of laps and then Dragster for 2 laps. By now, we are around 11 and every line was carrying 60 minutes for the major rides - even the smaller rides like Gemini were well over a 1/2 hour. We grabbed some lunch and got in line for Dragster since we wanted one last ride on it in the front row - waited about an hour to the station and then another 25 minutes for front row and the ride broke down when we were three trains away from riding. After waiting through one reset and a failed launch, we gave up. I think it finally opened up around 7pm from what we saw on Snapchat. At that point, we decided to try our hand at Plinko and won a couple of FL passes. We played some games in the arcade and did some shopping. Now, all the lines were 2 hours for any major ride, most coasters we at least an hour, many of the flat rides were huge lines as well so we finally gave up. The kids took the FL plinko passes and did Maverick which took over 30 minutes for it, stopped by MF to try it and it was over an hour for FL people and they gave up and we left the park. I would have been livid spending $150 on FL+ to still be in line that long for all of those rides. Dragster was down most of the day, Raptor never opened from what we saw, food lines were huge - 30 minutes or more to get chicken tenders - it was just a bad day. I'm sure they had massive complaints at the end of the day. Anyway, Steel Vengance looks awesome. That alone will probably get us back to the park next year. We didn't take a lot of pics, but we liked this one from Saturday night as we left the park around 11. Thanks to everyone for the good advice on hotels, food, etc. - it make our trip that much better.

Well, I live in Florida - I have a Platinum Pass for myself - I'm just now trying to figure out the tickets for my two teenagers and what's the best deal for that.

Great - thanks for the response. I'm looking at like $75 a night - I can't justify going for $150+ at Breakers Express - I'd rather just concentrate on being there at 10, making the run to Maverick and then getting FL+ for my couple of days.

Hotel question: Anyone have recent experience with with the Motel 6 Milan or Super 8 Milan? Just wanting to make sure I have clean room/bed and trying to save $$ so I can get FL+.

I was at the park on Wednesday and Thursday and Maverick was up all day Wednesday (a great ride!). Maverick was down a lot of the day on Thursday. Dragster was down all day Wednesday and Thursday. It did open on Wednesday around 6 for what was reported to be about 3 trains that were 1/2 full only and then went down for the day. We talked to a couple of ride ops that were cleaning around Dragster (the trains, rails, etc.) about Dragster and none of them knew what the issue was nor if would eventually open. We saw a mechanic on Wednesday just before it opened but nothing on Thursday.

Question for you CP regulars: I'm going to be visiting the park on July 4 and July 5 (coming from Florida). We are going to get FL+ for one of the two days. Right now, the cost for FL+ for July 4 is $30 more per person compared to July 5. How do I interpret this - as though they are expecting large crowds on the 4th so I'm better getting FL+ on July 4 as opposed to July 5?

Quick question - if you stay at Breakers Express, do you still have to pay for parking since they don't have a shuttle service?

Thanks for those tips and the information. The All Day Dining plan comes out at about $32 per person and figuring with two teenagers that this is easily worth the investment for the couple of days we are planning on being there. The 'availability' resets every 90 minutes for meals as well which is great for snacking and the food list choices looks to be fairly impressive.

Planning a trip for this summer and I have a couple of questions: Anyone that went this past summer use the All Day Dining plan? What were your thoughts on the food? Was it fairly easy to use? Fast Lane cost - anyone that went on a Wednesday/Thursday care to comment how much it was for those days? I'm looking at the FL+ to make sure we have all the rides for one of the two days we are going to be there. The website is showing a base cost of $80 per user for the FL+. Hotel Breakers - has anyone booked a package there that included tickets? Was there at least some discount going this way? (I fully understand that there are factors that are still unknown to the public, as far as how much the hotel cost is, etc. but I'm trying to work up an estimate on how much the trip would be for us.)

Not sure how often they use it but they did have signs up on the main entrance where you pay for parking that that specific gate was open that day. There were maybe 20 people back there at park opening.

Good call. The strange thing was that around 3pm last Friday (the day we were there) - Nighthawk had only a one train wait. I was thankful that the park was running all 3 trains on Intimidator and had very minor stacking - that crew was working their butts off. It was possible to get re-rides if no one was in your row or just to move to a different row. The front row wait was 3 trains maybe the entire time. Have fun!

Also, if you are at all interested in the waterpark area, hit the two new slides right away when the waterpark opens or the lines will get unbelievably long. We just went and while the coaster side of the park was basically empty, the new slides had super long lines that move very slow. Also, consider parking in the back by Afterburn, it was easy to get multiple rides on it right when the park opened with no waiting.

Are there any discounts around for tickets around? They are selling them online for $34.99 today only. Didn't know if there were better prices at any grocery stores or coke can discounts.

Has anyone been to the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party and if so, can you tell me when you can get into the park? I know in the past that we were able to get in early and wondering if this is still possible.