Kings Island (KI) Discussion Thread

[anonymouscactus]

Glad you had a good time. You're right, the vegetarian options are very limited. I do like that the website outlines everything for vegetarian, vegan, egg free, etc.

 

For vegetarians you get:

 

Soft Pretzels - Cart locations around the park

 

Auntie Anne's Pretzels & Nuggets

 

Strawberries with Whipped Cream- Festhaus, LaRosa's International St., LaRosa's Rivertown, Skyline Chili International St., Coke Market Place

 

Coleslaw - Reds Hall of Fame Grille

 

Fresh cut Fries - Rivertown Potato Works

 

Mac-n-Cheese - Festhaus, Snoopy Grill, Reds Hall of Fame Grille

 

Burrito Bowl - Hank's Burrito Shack

 

Side Salad- Festhaus, International St. LaRosa's & Rivertown LaRosa's

 

Hope you like pretzels!

[RAWKIN_coaster38]

^Don't forget cheese pizza (La Rosas), veggie sub (Subway), and veggie grilled cheese (grilled cheese place by Diamondback). So, mostly sandwiches (or foods similar to sandwiches), and I work for a sandwich place and make myself free sandwiches all the time.

[prozach626]

Sounds like you had a fun time and I'm glad you broke your friend out her coaster shell. If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times. It's a pretty good formula to pack a cooler lunch and go out for dinner.

[Arthur_Seaton]

Oh, on the topic of park food, I have a mini rant. I've been vegetarian for about 12 years now and I seriously have been disappointed with the number of vegetarian options at theme parks in the Midwest. We wanted to go to Red's, but I found there were no vegetarian entreés on the menu! I've basically eaten at Subway the last few times I decided to eat in the park. Even Six Flags has locations that serve veggie burgers. Unless I'm missing something... WTF KI? It's not like I'm the only vegetarian on earth. I feel even worse for my vegan counterparts.

I've struggled to find anything edible at a number of parks I've visited (SFOT stands out) — I think unhealthy / bad food just comes with the territory of hedonic spaces? It's odd, though, in that you'd think there'd be a calling for legitimately healthy options at theme parks, given that they can be a workout just to get around. I mean, I understand why deep-fried-bacon-fat-on-a-stick-drizzled-with-sugar-and-fat would exist in a "carnivale"-esque environment (Bakhtin would have a few things to say about this, and Gargantua would definitely get walk-of-shamed), but surely there's also a real calling for food that's not terrible? Perhaps it's not realistic for parks to get fresh-delivered produce over frozen / pre-packaged stuff? Seems like there's possible business model waiting to happen. I wonder how food trucks might work in parks if they were developed in such a way to handle massive crowds?

[prozach626]

We've found salads and wraps at a lot of parks. These food options are not that healthy for us considering how we normally eat, but they're definitely the healthier choice over other park foods. If legitimate health food stands could hold their own in parks, they would probably already exist. However, healthy food is usually more difficult to keep fresh and healthy food is often more expensive to produce. Also, people who eat healthy differ vastly in opinions. A vegan might think a vegetarian eats unhealthy. Someone who eats a paleolithic diet might think that vegans and vegetarians eat unhealthy. A ton of people who eat healthy don't think that a whole wheat sandwich with a tub full of fruit is healthy at all, so how do parks cater to all of the varieties and opinions of health conscious eaters? They don't. My wife and I are picky and we don't expect what boils down to a carnival type atmosphere to have what we're looking for.

 

Again, if you're diet is strict there's a solution. Pack a cooler lunch and leave it in the car. Our Igloo cooler is our sidekick. We carried cold food brought from home across three parks in a week on our Pennsylvania trip in order to eat our healthy lunches. (Notice I didn't say Sh*t about dinner...) Ice is cheap and filling/draining our cooler is only a minor i nconvenience.We should all know what we're getting into before going into a park.

 

Emily and I don't eat bread or processed foods unless we're cheating. I can only imagine what a gluten free coconut wrap using unprocessed meats and toppings would cost at Six Flags/Cedar Fair and they would be discarding old supplies constantly. There's a lot less shelf life without preservatives. Be realistic. Bring your own food.

[anonymouscactus]

^ well said!!

[Arthur_Seaton]

My wife and I are picky and we don't expect what boils down to a carnival type atmosphere to have what we're looking for.

Exactly. We usually just assume we won't be eating when we visit a park. If we do find something, then it's a bonus! It's not that hard to find surrounding locations that serve decent food. I'm just surprised there's no real push for it at such places, even though fresh / natural food probably wouldn't be sustainable there.

Again, if you're diet is strict there's a solution. Pack a cooler lunch and leave it in the car. Our Igloo cooler is our sidekick.

That's definitely a great solution if you're traveling by car! Unfortunately, we often fly when we travel or travel light, so it's a bit tricky. Good idea for road trips, though!

[ytterbiumanalyst]

We've found salads and wraps at a lot of parks. These food options are not that healthy for us considering how we normally eat, but they're definitely the healthier choice over other park foods. If legitimate health food stands could hold their own in parks, they would probably already exist. However, healthy food is usually more difficult to keep fresh and healthy food is often more expensive to produce. Also, people who eat healthy differ vastly in opinions. A vegan might think a vegetarian eats unhealthy. Someone who eats a paleolithic diet might think that vegans and vegetarians eat unhealthy. A ton of people who eat healthy don't think that a whole wheat sandwich with a tub full of fruit is healthy at all, so how do parks cater to all of the varieties and opinions of health conscious eaters? They don't. My wife and I are picky and we don't expect what boils down to a carnival type atmosphere to have what we're looking for.

 

Again, if you're diet is strict there's a solution. Pack a cooler lunch and leave it in the car. Our Igloo cooler is our sidekick. We carried cold food brought from home across three parks in a week on our Pennsylvania trip in order to eat our healthy lunches. (Notice I didn't say Sh*t about dinner...) Ice is cheap and filling/draining our cooler is only a minor i nconvenience.We should all know what we're getting into before going into a park.

 

Emily and I don't eat bread or processed foods unless we're cheating. I can only imagine what a gluten free coconut wrap using unprocessed meats and toppings would cost at Six Flags/Cedar Fair and they would be discarding old supplies constantly. There's a lot less shelf life without preservatives. Be realistic. Bring your own food.

Post of the week nominee!

[coasterbill]

So I normally ignore teasers but this one is pretty interesting. Kudos to the guys at KI Central for doing the heavy lifting and piecing this together because I had no clue what any of it meant. Hell, I didn't even know about this teaser existing before reading that write-up so I'm just regurgitating some information here.

 

This teaser was found at Cedar Point

 

The obvious references here:

 

- The building in the top right appears to be the Beast's Station

- Kings Island has 4 wood coasters. "Number 5" might imply a 5th.

- The text about bringing it "back into service" may imply a ride that's been removed

- Outpost 5 was written on the Son of Beast station

- Evidently the old boarding message from Adventure Express quotes a portion of this poster directly though I haven't been able to verify that and I really don't know if I'm nerdy enough to try. Evidently Adventure Express is headquarters to this "mining operation" and its where all the outposts are linked too.

 

 

So... that's fun.

[AmyUD06]

Imagine if it's SOB being rebuilt with the exact same layout but using RMC's topper track.

[DavidB]

Someone from RMC was seen over by Racer; at least I seem to remember that from a few pages back. Could this be RMC racer? The bottom says "track 2 is no longer in use." Maybe a Twisted Colossus sort of deal?

[Cj1990]

that Would be cool. You’d have to go around twice like on twisted colossus to make that ride worth it for an rmc makeover.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Beast's Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate confirmed!

[AmyUD06]

Beast's Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate confirmed!

 

Will it go ludicrous speed?

[kenban]

Someone from RMC was seen over by Racer; at least I seem to remember that from a few pages back. Could this be RMC racer? The bottom says "track 2 is no longer in use." Maybe a Twisted Colossus sort of deal?

 

The track 2 part is a direct quote from the audio on Adventure Express. I doubt it has anything to do with the Racer.

[KIJester]

"Plan on bringing Number 5 back in service once again"

 

Purely conjecture but what if #5 is referring to the fact that SOB was (un-officially) the 5th coaster the park built if you take into consideration that Racer is One of Two coasters. IOW...

 

Racer #1-#2

Scooby Doo #3 (I know, old school name)

Beast #4

SOB #5

 

Just throwing it out there, but could we be seeing an SOB ground-up RMC?

[bluestreak]

The idea was brought up at Coasterstock during a Q&A and after the person who asked it was booed and sworn at, the GM (or some other higher up I forget who) said "well there's your answer. I wouldn't worry about Racer for years and years to come.

[dadofgage]

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.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Beast's Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate confirmed!

 

Will it go ludicrous speed?

Hmm...I don't know if the coaster could take it.

[Rai Fox]

It is far too early and there is far too little information to possibly start getting all excited about a reborn Son of Beast.

 

That would be stupid. Beyond premature. Absolutely idiotic.

 

OHGODS PLEASE GIVE IT TO ME PLEASE NEW SON OF BEAST PLEASE COME ON RMC SON OF BEAST I DESERVE IT WE ALL DO PLEASE

 

*ahem*

 

Yeah, would be a silly thing to even think about.

 

...please?

[prozach626]

So I normally ignore teasers but this one is pretty interesting.

 

God damnit, Bill... You caused a train wreck in one of my favorite threads.

[savetheclocktower]

I'm not saying I am expecting it to happen, but how awesome would it be to have an "RMC Beast"? Yeah, yeah, I know, "It's too much of a classic legend to change!", "They better not change such a historic coaster", etc., but considering what a new legend it would become I think it would be hard to miss the "original Beast", especially when it would then be without constant straightaways and trims.

 

Something that I think would be awesome for the giant helix after the second lift is to bank the whole thing at a steeper angle, making the first high point be outward-banked, and the second high point basically be a high-speed and forceful inclined loop. Even if that never happens, it's just as fun to imagine it!

[AmyUD06]

Take that blasphemy elsewhere. Beast is perfect as it is.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Mike240SX

[prozach626]

Beast seems to be one of the most popular rides in the park. It's the only ride where I actually have to occasionally wait with the FL+. Beast isn't going anywhere and it won't be changed.

 

I actually don't expect much from the teaser.

[LiftThrill]

They're gonna replace the Mystic Timbers shed with room where you sit there and watch a POV of Son of Beast. You heard it here first.