Photo TR: King's Island June 4th, 2009

[Rastuso]

King’s Island, June 4th, 2009

 

This year’s Summer vacation is a delay from last Summer, when my work trip to Asia totally screwed up everything. Lot’s of parks got some new coasters, so a trip from Ohio to Canada was in order. My son had a pool party after his last day of school, where he stole his first kiss from his girlfriend. As soon as his party was over, we headed to the airport and flew to Cincinnati. We head to our excellent Townplace Suites where my mom had already checked in. We stop at Steak n Shake and crash.

 

First on the trip is King’s Island, a park I’ve visited my whole life. It’s been 3 years since I was there, and my son has only been once before when he was very little. I get a CF pass for our vacation, since it gives free parking and other perks. We flash our ACE cards and are denied entry to the early rides. I go to guest services where someone was upset since they had apparently came just to ride Diamondback, which wasn’t open yet, and he wanted a refund since he had just came for an early ride before heading out on an airplane. Talk about hardcore! The guy at GS went with us and got us past the old guy and on to coaster riding. As I mentioned, Diamondback wasn’t open yet, so we head to Beast, which was a walkon. Still a shadow of it’s once great self, but my son did like the helix.

 

We go back to Diamondback which is still DDM due to an apparent midcourse problem, so we do another Beast ride. Diamondback is coming to life a bit, so we get in line as the GP show up. It starts up soon after and delivers one hell of a ride full of airtime and only one slight brake. They should have put this in instead of SOB years ago. A quick spin on Reptar follows, as a hopeful lead up to my son riding Raptor tomorrow.

 

I had to play the old basketball game next to the Beast I always won when I lived in Cincinnati. I got my wife and son a puppy in one game. We head to Stunt Coaster, which is a fun little ride. I decide to wait for the relocated flying coaster, which was dispatching trains fairly reliably, so the wait wasn’t too bad. These Vekoma flyers are quite intense, especially with you lying with your head below your body in the station to start out. My son discovered bumper cars while I was waiting. He rode them about 8 times. Then he asks me to ride the swings with him. That ain’t happenin’, so he decides to ride by himself and keeps running back to the entrance for another ride. I get some Skyline coneys for lunch. I’m not a big fan, but every few years, it hits the spot.

 

We do a quick Racer ride, which is uneventful, and do some shopping. They had lots of 75% off stuff in a store in Coney Mall. We then head off to Top Gun, or whatever it is now. We make a wrong turn and I ask my son if he’ll do the Drop Zone, surprisingly he says yes. We wait two cycles and hop on. After our drop, my son goes crazy. I think he has discovered adrenaline, he loved it. We then make our way out for a fun ride on the coaster formerly known as Top Gun for a fun ride and see the Great Wolf Lodge from the lift.

 

My son really wants a caricature, but there is someone there already. We go ride Adventure Express where we see the obligatory little black girl run across the grass to cut in front of us for a ride that never has a line. Even when we get to the station, she’s still cutting in front of people to get on a coaster that has no line. My wife confronts her, and she denies she cut, and gets mouthy. Gotta love 10 year old girls that can lie at will and talk back to adults when caught.

 

My son starts getting a caricature. I realize that I could go get another Diamondback ride in the single rider line, so I head off. I get there right when they start allowing folks in the single rider line again, and basically walk right on. I really like this ride, it’s got lots of air, and is really smooth. Plus, it’s got a nice setting, and really was placed well in the park.

 

I then head to the Nick store for more stuff on sale, but it was only 50% and was mostly Dora stuff. I decide to finally get some blue ice cream. I remember when it was Smurf flavored, now it is apparently blueberry flavored, although not very strong. It is amazingly cold and hard. Very difficult to split up into a cup. It was nice that the guy working there was honest enough to say the regular cone came with more ice cream than the waffle cone, and was cheaper. The workers at KI in general were VERY nice. My son’s caricature was finally done, I couldn’t believe how long it took, and his face wasn’t really well done. I’d guess it took about 30 minutes.

 

We did skip the Fairly Odd Coaster because they were dispatching trains painfully slow, the one bad case of operations I saw all day. So, we ended the day with the Scooby dark ride. Of the three guns on our car, one was dead and the other two were barely working.

 

I pick up the groovy Beast 30th t-shirt. Since I’m old, I was there that first year, but chickened out and didn’t ride it until the next year, waiting over 3 hours for a ride. The shirt is quite cool. I get my 10 dollar parking fee back after getting my season pass processed. I’m quite surprised they do this. I could see this being abused by people getting their friends their parking fees back.

 

KI had a lot of specials going on. All the upcharge rides were about half price, the awesome $10 unlimited drinks paid off well too. Again, I’m sure this gets abused, as even I was getting drinks for 4 people. Of course, since they charge ridiculous sums for their drinks, I didn’t feel too bad. Season pass holders get double tries for some games too, although it wasn’t real obvious.

 

All in all, a very good day at the first park I remember going to, really sharing it with my son for the first time, enjoying the excellent Diamondback and the other average rides at King’s Island.

 

I head to Maverick’s comics to see my friend and talk comics and cards for a few hours. We then head to Montgomery Inn for some always excellent BBQ ribs and a Ted’s Ale to wash it down. I do miss Cincinnati in the Summer, the weather was about 20 degrees less than Houston is right now, and we have a grand total of 1 coaster in a hundred mile radius.

Nothing like a slab of the best ribs in the world to end a great day.

Reeking havoc at Mavericks. This was when Leo had a nervous breakdown. Tell him CCM sent you.

Although I'd give anything to ride Enchanted Voyage, even the Smurfy version, this Scooby facade kicks ass.

OMFG!! A ghost ate my son's head. Like, Zoinks (yeah, my nickname was Shaggy at the plant I used to work at.)

2 hours into having his caricature drawn, all excitement and adrenaline was gone.

Braving this was a good omen for how much fun my son was to have on this trip. He was high on adrenaline for quite some time afterwards.

Since I ate at Skyline once, their super secret addictive ingrediant that has all of Cincinnati under its spell, makes me buy at least 3 coneys when I'm in town.

My son is now a spin an puke enthusiast. SOmething he will NOT share with his awesome dad.

Just another Diamondback pictures. Gee, had KI built this instead of SOB, maybe they wouldn't have been bought by Cedar Point.

The first time I saw the Beast, I was my son's age. Yeah, I'm old. But not as old as JJ, thank God.