Lareson

At least Gatekeeper's station feels sturdy. The one over X-Flight feels temporary and looks if a strong wind would just blow it off. Cedar Point isn't known for their flashy, themed stations, but I do have to say, it's very open with the raised roof. Same thing with the exit gift shop. The high ceiling in there makes it feel less claustrophobic, like some gifts shops can feel. The buildings around the front entrance are looking great though. I have a feeling some people are going to say that it looks like plywood for siding, but that's the kind of design that I feel is more modern and is "trending" in the design world. I really can't wait to see all of this in person! As of right now, it doesn't even look like you're walking into Cedar Point, looks like a completely different park. If it wasn't for the existing rides sticking out in the background, I would of said, "what amusement park is this?"

Kind of random to bring that up, but okay. The $30mil was over the lifetime of the ride, Cedar Fair only put a small portion of that into Son of Beast. Paramount knew how bad of a ride Son of Beast was, they just kept putting money into it to try and fix it, but of course the year that Cedar Fair takes over, a bent breaks which pretty much begins the end of the ride. Things were just going wrong from the moment it was built: - Roller Coaster Corporation of America had (what I think) faulty support design which eventually led to the 2006 accident. Mind you they were also the company that was the center of the whole Rattler debacle back in 1993. - The construction company for the roller coaster using sub-par wood to keep cost low, even though they still managed to spend over $20mil on construction. First sign of this was when a section of the lift collapsed during construction, which I think was covered up by either the construction company or Paramount as "weather related." - Premier's heavy 3-bench trains, which destroyed the track more than what PTC trains do and was a factor in the 2006 accident. - The loop was probably the best part of the ride, due to it being a steel structure. Unfortunately the Gerstlauer trains were too light to complete the whole course with the loop so it was removed. I think this was one reason why the ride additions after 2000 at Kings Island, before Cedar Fair bought the Paramount Parks, weren't anything spectacular. All of the major expenses went towards getting Son of Beast back into a rideable shape.

Yep, only one single Timberliner. Because of how high the station is and that there's no transfer track, currently no plans to add a 2nd train, even though it could use it. We'd also have to see if they're sticking with the 20-capacity train or bumping it up to 24.

Yeah, Kings Island is one of those parks where it can be dead or pretty busy, no matter when you go. I've gone near the end of July the past 2 years and it hasn't been bad. Don't think we waited any longer than 45 min for all of the coasters, with Flight of Fear being the longest with Diamondback and The Beast the shortest. I'd wait until you get to the park to decided on FastLane, especially this early in the season. If there's a lot of busses and the parking lot is fairly full, I'd get FastLane so you can bypass them.

Kings Island has been fairly quiet on the social media end of things, posting a couple pics on Twitter, but Facebook has been pretty quiet. I did see though that on the 14th they did post that work was being done on Racer this year, including the queue and station. I did find though that the blue side last year was brutal, as it's so far the only coaster to leave a visible bruise on my arm, so hopefully there's going to be some new track on both sides. Did find this image that they posted on Twitter pretty cool, showing the wooden coaster parts stock. I can point out a couple of the parts here too! Did notice though that they still had the ride number for Son Of Beast listed there. Can't imagine they have many parts of that left. No idea what they're going to do with the trains either as Cedar Fair doesn't own any other wooden coaster with Gerstlauer trains so it's not like they can part the parts off to another park. Maybe they'll sell them to a Six Flags park since they still have a few of those trains running.

The new paint could of been part of the inspection process. I know that PTC does that to their chassis, strip the paint, inspect the parts, then re-paint them. Steel coasters really don't have anything to cause any wear and tear like what happens to wooden coasters. Wooden coasters have to have grease applied to the track and with the wheels being steel on steel, you also get metal dust coating the train, especially if it rained. Wooden coaster trains are really hard to keep clean, for anyone that has worked on a wooden coaster before and had to clean the train, you know what I'm talking about. Steel track, there's nothing to cause it to look worn unless there's some water element to it. No grease is applied to the track and the wheels don't cause any wear on the track cause they're made out of various plastic materials, whether it's resin, polyurethane, rubber, etc.

Think it's just an optical illusion, with the last picture taken on a lower plane than the first one. If they changed the seat angle, Hershey wouldn't of had the chassis the offseason. It kind of looks like the angle of the lap bars have been changed though, it looks like it was parallel to the seat in the first pic, but now it's at a slightly higher angle.

I'm impressed with the Planet Snoopy upgrades across the chain and this one is probably the best I've seen so far! The fountain is pretty cool, something that is only at the Kings Dominion Planet Snoopy. Can't wait to see what it's going to look like with the water running! I have a feeling Kings Island is going to finally have some decent competition in the GTA Best Kids Area this year! Dominator looks great too. This must be one of the B&M coasters where they're not allowed to paint the rails, or are painted grey? Excited to finally head over there this summer, along with a stop to Hershey! The Cedar Fair parks are looking great and can't wait to see all of the changes this year in person!

Wow! These trains are kind of cool! That optical illusion on the back of the seats, might be a bad idea. There are a few people who can be motion sickness to those kinds of things and throw that onto a coaster that has 14 inversions, let's just say those trains will be cleaned kind of often! Still though, the yellow accents are nice! Even the bogeys are yellow! Too bad it has OTSRs, but they look to be another new style, with a different padding in the head/neck area. Must be doing some marketing thing with the trains against a green screen. I don't see that these days with the actual trains before they're on the ride!

I think with them getting more advanced in computer models, with forces being able to be calculated close to real-life, it's something I think they're getting more conscious about. I don't know if it's any correlation when they went from their original support to troack joints. I've ridden all but 1 of their models (floorless) and each of them have their own "quirks" that I either fine enjoyable or just plain brutal. If I'd rank their models, balance between "forces" and an enjoyable ride, this'll what I'd rank them: 1. Dive 2. Hyper 3. Inverted 4. Wing 5. Sitting 6. Flying 7. Standup The way I see this in my mind, 1, 2, 3 have great forces and I find riding those coasters enjoyable, but maybe not several times in a row. 4, 5, have the perfect balance of forces and are enjoyable and can ride several times in row if I could. 6, 7, forces are there, but they're uncomfortable and I find them not very enjoyable riding more than once a day. Personally, I find the standups coaster very uncomfortable, even though I've only rode 2 so far. Iron Wolf was just brutal, was more concerned about my ears not bleeding than anything else. Mantis, the ride was not bad, but when I got off, my legs were trembling so I don't know if it was because I locked my knees on it or what, but never felt that before on any coaster before.

Yeah, these are looking like completely different chassis. The bogeys I think maybe are slightly larger, maybe that could of been the flaw with the original ones. I still think B&M did an awesome job with these trains on a coaster that's had such a troubled past.

Both are still unlimited, they just did a 2nd tier to it now with 2 more coasters (in Cedar Point's case, Gatekeeper and Top Thrill Dragster) added with FastLane Plus. This was mainly a fix to add coasters that previously though FastLane wasn't a good choice because of already existing capacity issues, but now with a more limited FastLane Plus, they're able to add those rides, and then they just pulled out the most popular ride from the normal FastLane to add to FastLane Plus. I completely agree with Robb on this one, if you don't like it, don't buy it! I've seen 1st hand how the whole system works and I find it pretty flawless, both for guests and operations. It's why this is my favorite front-of-line pass system out of the rest.

Don't know where you're seeing it, but Dorney is not offering FastLane Plus, and you don't even have Carowinds on the list either, which are offering FastLane Plus. Only the top 5 parks are getting it: Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, Kings Dominion and Carowinds. Mind you, people are more than likely to go in a group, not by themselves so people will rarely pay the $80 ($90 is Saturday rate) These are all Saturday or weekend rates, they're $5-10 more than the normal weekday price.

Bump time! Just saw a spam thread pop up, and it's been a month since this was shown on the main page.

Yeah, they basically subtracted The Beast from the standard FastLane. I think the reason why they added the FastLane Plus was to add rides that they weren't sure it was a good idea to add previously cause of already existing capacity issues, but decided to add the "Plus" option to cut down on the people who buy it so that it wouldn't disrupt operations too much. They added Firehawk, Top Thrill Dragster, Nighthawk, and Volcano to FastLane at their respective parks under the Plus pricing. It's only rolled out to the major parks that have around 20+ FastLane capable rides.

Don't let the recent rumors about the Arrow coaster removals scare you into thinking the coasters are going to be removed soon. More than likely still about 5+ years away from that ever happening. There's still plenty of parts floating around the chain from roughly 39 Arrow train cars (Orient Express trains in storage up in MI, Double Loop trains from Geauga somewhere at Cedar Point along with Corkscrew's 3rd train) and I think there's more uncomfortable, rougher ones that could go out first, like Anaconda at Kings Dominion than Vortex. I mean, it still has quite the large capacity for the park, and it could be staying until the next major coaster after 2014 before its removed.

Ha, like how in the top picture, the train looks like it keeps going on forever with 2 of them on the storage track like that! I really can't wait to see this fly across the whole front of the park. This is certainly the facelift Cedar Point has been needing for years and Gatekeeper is perfect to do so!

No, the chain actually snapped on Vortex at Kings Island in 2011. On Ninja, the trough that the chain sits in looks like it somehow got deformed, as someone said a few posts back, that near the end of last year there was a weird bump when the train went over that part. It must of gave out during testing this year and the chain basically fell out. Should of been no physical damage to the chain, but they could replace it to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. I'm sure a new trough and possibly a new chain have been on order from Vekoma, just either waiting for it to arrive or to install it. Chain lifts breaking are quite uncommon. The only other one I can think of is when Ride of Steel at Darien Lake, the chain also snapped on that in 2011.

PTC is still making new trains, at least 2-4 train sets each year. Not many coaster manufacturers will pick the 3-bench models anymore due to maneuverability, but they're still available for manufacturers or parks to pick for an option for upgrades. PTC still offers the single-position lap bars, but they're out of favor now due to past incidents with them and many parks would rather have the individual ratcheting lap bars, more for the safety side. They can still make a brand new train for GASM from the ground up if PTC really wanted to. I can see PTC staying for quite some time, mainly because of the refurbishing they do to trains during the off-season. The process they go through to check and inspect every single aspect of the trains is absolutely amazing. Mainly the chassis, they sandblast the paint off of them, inspect every single part for deformities and cracks, then repaint the chassis again to the classic black. Even though there are parks that do this on-site, the PTC workers know those trains inside and out and having worked with over 100 cars over 1 off season, they know how parts are suppose to be and know when to replace them. Parks can then have their workers work on other rides during the off season and frees up that time to do other projects.

That could be a scenery sensor. When the train passes by it, the giant Smiler contraption activates a section of its arms or whatever the thing is, ahead of the train passing by it. Could be more along the track that's not seen yet.

Yeah, more than likely this is going to be the last B&M custom train, at least for a while, as I really don't know any other coaster where the trains are problematic like the old Morgan trains were on Steel Dragon. Maybe could see it happening to the few remaining Togo standups as those trains are, um, well, guys that have ridden one knows what I'm talking about. The Morgan trains, sure they're not exactly comfy, same thing with the Arrow trains, but they're really mechanically sound. Unfortunately parts for the Arrow trains could become very scarce in the coming years and could call for a new train design, but by who would be the question if and when the time comes around.

Hm... They did quite the refurbishment on that train. Even the padding looks brand new. They did an awesome job though! Those colors must be the new corporate favorites, as I've seen those colors appear on a few things, the darker green is the background of the maps this year, that teal very similar to Leviathan's track color. Like them much better than the old teal, orange and yellow. Also, did anyone else notice that these are Vekoma OTSRs on an Arrow train? I recognize those as they're the same ones used on the SLCs.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep tweaking that turnaround until I can get it the way I want. Which one did you have in mind? I know someone has already done Son of Beast. Unfortunately The Beast is too large to fit inside of NoLimits to do a proper recreation. I might decide to do one of the non-inverting steel coasters like Backlot Stunt or Adventure Express, but due to some of the uniqueness that Kings Island's coasters have to offer, I don't have the proper models, but will try to use the ones NL has to offer and get it as close to what I can get.

Yeah, looks like the chain trough is completely damaged there. There must of been a bend or something already wrong there and must of gotten worse over the off season and probably ended up like that when they were doing the initial testing. First time I've seen that happen on a chain lift. Probably waiting on a new one to get made.

Well, it was part of the reason why Morgan went into bankruptcy. Cost the company more than they originally thought and $52mil was the most ever spent on a coaster up until Expedition Everest when Disney spent $100mil on that. Morgan went under in 2001, not long after they began work on Superman at SFM and just completed work on the Steel Phantom to Phantom's Revenge transformation. Also need to remember that even though a coaster says it opens in 2002, it was really started to be manufactured the previous year. Michael Chance, the grandson of the founder of Chance Rides, acquired Morgan's assets after they went under with help of a few investors. Then Chance Morgan was formed in June 2001, which picked up the work on Superman el Último Escape, so technically, Morgan started on it, but Chance Morgan finished it. To put it simply, Chance Morgan and Chance Rides Manufacturing were 2 separate companies with Chance Morgan selling the rides for Chance Rides Manufacturing. Then in 2011 as part of the 50th anniversary of Chance Rides, the companies "merged" and are now all under the Chance Rides name. Very complicated history, believe me! ----- I'm still very impressed that B&M pulled this off. Just too bad that I won't be able to ride this coaster now due to the height limit at 6'1".