Skramp

Looks pretty nice!! On a side note, having just stayed at Disney's Art of Animation, that "refillable cup" thing is the exact same price point as the Disney resorts. We were on a dining plan and got them free, but if we hadn't been, the prices were exactly the same as you showed there. Universal seems to be starting towards an "all-inclusive" area, very nice to see.

KI owns a lot more than you would think. If you want to talk about just the park itself, it stretches east to west from Kings Island Dr on the west to the Little Miami River on the east. North to south is from Great Wolf Lodge to Western Row rd on the south. They own all of that and could develop anything they wanted. But that's not all, if memory serves me correctly, they own/owned a lot more land to the north where the restaurants and College Football Hall of Fame sat. I know they sold off a bunch, but I believe they basically owned from 71 to the river and from Kings Mill road to Western Row rd.

Man, seeing that angle makes you realize that Banshee is really going to be hauling coming into that valley! It has to get through the Batwing, the loop and up that Heilx and through the roll. It is going to be screaming through there! On another note, you can't see a lot of The Bat from behind Great Wolf. You can drive down the access road a little to get closer, but that puts you pretty much right behind the station so Banshee would be completely blocked. To the poster who was talking about expansion, there is all the room starting behind Banshee that runs all the way down behind the Racer and expands over to the river that you never see. It would be very cool to see some kind of launched terrain coaster like Cheetah at BGT or something back in there. They could run a path between Adventure Express and The Racer to expand into that area.

They may be done by lunch time today. That is really impressive how fast they were able to assemble it. Might be able to start testing in mid-Feb/Early March. Still alot of mechanical/engineering work to do, but man that was fast.

Man, they must be getting some huge bonus for having the track work done by January. It's like 10 here today with a windchill of -5 and they are still pushing away, looks like they have maybe half of the helix done now. Unless something crazy happens should be done by Thursday if not maybe tomorrow. Part of the helix circled in red

I wonder if they are getting any work done, it's just a little snow:

^welcome to Ohio:

I say we start a contest, maybe Robb could throw in a "Bag O Crap" to the winner. Who can predict the date and time it will be finished?

I second this. The museum is huge and they have a lot of really cool stuff in there. Last time I was there they had an SR-71 Blackbird, a B2 Stealth bomber and the Bockscar (the plane that essentially ended World War II). I believe all of those are permanent exhibits in Dayton but you may want to double check that. It's a free museum but if you're a history buff you can easily spend a full day there. That place is top notch. Yeah, that's why I suggested it in my response. They still have the sr-71, B-2 and Bockscar. They also have an F-117, a-10, a lot of the F- jet series, a MiG, and the new Space Shuttle stuff should be open by then. If you're planning to spend a few hours there, get their early and register for the Presidential and Exhibition gallery tour. You can walk through the actual plane that took JFK to Dallas, brought his body back home and LBJ was sworn in on. There is also a lot of bombs, rockets, engines and tons of other cool stuff to see there.

Honestly, there really is no easy way to get from KI to CP, you can take 75 north to Toledo-area, then cut east and find Route 2 somewhere.....or you can take 71 to Cleveland area, to turnpike to Sandusky area. You could stop at a prison, but would be hard to tour it or anything because of regulations. Neil Armstrong museum is decent, but if you want something cool, take 75 north to Dayton and go to the Air Force Museum, very cool history there. Then you can go up 75 and head to CP.

Looks like they are working late tonight!

Looks like they may get the rest of the batwing done today.

So maybe it's just me, but if you look at the ride layout rendering, it looks like after it comes out of the batwing, it is going to interact with The Bat somehow. I mean the station is at a 90 degree angle to the back part of the coaster and looking at the webcam and estimating where that would put it in relation to The Bat, it seems there may be some overlap of tracks somewhere. Am I just looking at it wrong? And if you look at the recent webcam, right near the end of the station track seems to be a piece leading into the second loop, that looks to be in different location than the rendering.

Robb, he is in the process of changing the webcam setup over. Before it was mounted on just a bracket that vibrated when the machine typed. But he's currently mounting it in some conduit from the ceiling to make it more static and stable. The actual cam is about 1.5 feet from the machine.

My brother gave me and my sons a tour of Real Art yesterday. It's a very cool place with a "Pixar"-ish vibe to it. (If you've seen the movie A Pixar Story, you will understand.) But all in all, seems like a great place to work and see how they do some of the great stuff. Got some pictures of some stuff that wasn't confidential. I present you with the actual teletype machine, the result of all your messages, and the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots from last year! The whole setup Other angle Another angle The machine is sitting at the top left and the paper is streaming down the wall after being typed the enormous stack of paper we have all used over the few days it was on Remember the robots you could control and fight with? Here they are!

Looks like they might get one half of it done today!!

Yeah, they redid the software to try to stop the hacking and attacks that were going on.

Also, every message that comes through the teletype, also is sent as an email. So someone's inbox is going to be packed tomorrow!!

Ha! This was all your fault, wasn't it? Yeppers!! Helps to have an insider who works there as a brother!! You should see the stuff they've done for Hobart, it's hilarious and ingenious!!

I'm so glad I could turn everyone on to this fun!! Hope you all enjoy it.

Take a look at B&MBoy1982's pic to see how the terrain really drops though. The Zero-G roll would be off to the right and the "pretzel" element will be down to the left. That thing is going to be screaming down that hill, and that should be where it hits top speed, should give tons of force to the "pretzel." Credit to B&MBoy1982

^^Robb, never thought to tell you, but my brother was there with the claw in New Orleans for the Super Bowl. Verizon hired Real Art to bring it down and set it up. They bought new wraps for the machine, but same "bones" as before. I asked him the other day about it, and he said no one has rented it lfor Christmas, but they probably wont be running it again. It probably wont be around again unless someone rents it out again. On a side note, Real Art has bought a satellite to send into space and my brother is currently working on that. It will send data out that can be received. Any "geeks" out there interested, I can get you the info. PS-If you want to send them a message, you can actually Teletype a message to them and see it printed out, just like the olden days!! http://realart.com/contact.php

Just so everyone knows, Sharknado is now available on Netflix!!

As far as rides I've ridden: Flashback-SFMM Psyclone-SFMM Screechin Eagle-American Enchanted Voyage-PKI (Either original cartoon version or Smurfs version) SOB-PKI Bayern Curve-PKI (Simple, but so fun!!) Racer (Backwards!)-PKI King Cobra-PKI Disaster Transport-CP The Mill Race water ride (where Raptor is now)-CP Flight Commander-PKI Rides I didn't ride, but wish I did: BBW-BGW High Roller-Las Vegas Tomb Raider-PKI Orient Express-WOF

Stayed at Great Wolf on Monday with the family and saw The Bat in person. Must say that it is going to look amazing when it's finished. Just hope they do some theming in the station also to tie everything together. And, on my Christmas Wish list would be for themed cars (think old Bat cars) for it also. (credit to KI Fansite, http://kifansite.com/2013/02/the-bat-revisited/bat1-3/)