Kings Dominion (KD) Discussion Thread

[Yamez]

^ No, but I'll be visiting on Saturday with the family. Which maze/scarezone are you working? I'll try and drop by.

[KingB24]

I'm working Zombie High.

[cfc]

^So that was you sort of breaking character and calling me by name on Sunday night?

[KingB24]

^ Not really breaking character. We're told to use names to our advantage if we can.

[cfc]

^Interesting. Zombie High was a pretty good maze, by the way. I'll be posting a report tonight (I hope).

[jray21]

If someone called my name in a maze, that would definitely creep me out!

[JonnyRCT3]

 

Haha!

[Jman0477]

Does anyone have any information about the trim break on the Dominator. I was at the park yesterday morning and the first train out in the morning the at the top of the lift grabbed and also the 2nd trim before the break run. Later in the afternoon it was still grabbing before the midcourse break run. Any ideas why from all my trips to the park never had that experience

[Vigil]

I was at King's Dominion this past Saturday, and while we only got to do one maze--Club Blood--because one of my sisters wasn't feeling well, I will say that it did make my younger sister cry...and it was fantastic. I may be terrible for saying that, but it was great. She's 14 and had never done any sort of haunted house before. When we were waiting in line a vampire came out the exit and just pointed at her and slowly backed inside. And then did it again right before we went in. Needless to say, she was absolutely terrified. And then inside the maze, of course they are going to go after the small girl in the pink jacket. Too easy. But I'm going back on Friday and definitely looking forward to finishing everything up. It seems as good as last years and when you're used to Howl-O-Scream, Haunt really kicks it up a notch!

 

Side note: we got to witness a Volcano rollback and evac. We were the next people too. If only we had gotten on the previous car!

[Intimidator305]

I went to the park Friday night (7-midnight) and Saturday morning (10-1) for my final trip of the season. We left at 1 knowing the park was going to be near capacity on Saturday.

Overall thoughts on Haunt 2014:

-Love the return of Maze of Madness, it was actually everyone's favorite maze of the night

-Cleaver Brothers Carnival was loaded with scare-actors, best zone of the night

-Longest maze wait was 10 mins, and that was for Club Blood

-Weren't any bad mazes for the first time ever, even Bloodbath had a few scares

-I really miss having a maze in WWC. Please bring one back, that area of the park seems so sad w/o one

-Five seasons down, and Intimidator 305 is still glass smooth <3 Reached 110 rides this season

 

From best to worst of the night I'd rank:

Mazes-

1) Maze of Madness (love to see how they improve it next year)

2) Zombie High (much better than last year)

3) SlaughterHouse

4) CornStalkers

5) Club Blood

6) Doll Factory

7) No Vacancy (weaker this year, but still good)

8) Outbreak

9) Blue Ridge Bloodbath

Zones-

1) Cleaver Brothers Carnival

2) The Lair (big surprise)

3) Feary Tales

4) IronWorX (love the new details)

5) Necropolis

6) The Ruins (very small this season)

[cfc]

Asylum was the best one the night I went, too. Outbreak: The Evolution was the worst one; for some reason, the mazes in the Flight of Fear queue are usually bad.

[nicman]

I do not think I would want to go to the Halloween Haunt, seems so scary. Especially with all the people in costumes jumping out at you. I Probably could not go to sleep for a week after that.

[coasterbill]

We made the 6 hour drive to Kings Dominion this weekend and visited on Saturday. We always try to visit once a year as we really enjoy this park. The park was packed, but that's nothing Fast Lane Plus couldn't fix... I really think this park has my favorite skip the line program of anyone. The way the Fastlane lines are set up you don't wait more than 10 minutes for anything and this is on a Haunt Saturday when it's over 70 degrees and every single coaster had a line spilling out the entrance (even rides like Grizzly and Anaconda which unfortunately weren't on the system). Just to give you an idea of the crowds... Volcano had a 2 1/2 hour wait, Intimidator had a 90 minute wait that went all the way out to Flight of Fear... even Windseeker's line was all the way over to the Skycoaster. All of those rides were less than 10 minutes on Fast Lane plus. It was worth every penny.

 

I won't bore everyone with the details of everything we rode, but there were a few stand-out things from our visit. We didn't do any of the mazes but we did watch the Skeleton Crew show which we're a big fan of.

 

1) I305 is flat out amazing. Everyone knows this already but it has to be said.

 

2) Dominator is my favorite floorless by a wide margin. In the very back row this ride absolutely rips you down the drop almost like it forgot it was a B&M for a second and the hang time in the loop is really awesome... I love the pop of air off the mid course too. This is a very underrated coaster as it unfairly gets grouped in with all of the other fun but forceless floorless coasters.

 

3) Flight of Fear is awesome. I don't know why this ride is so much smoother than the one at Kings Island but it really is. This is another highly underrated ride.

 

4) I want to sincerely apologize to Kings Dominion for what we did to the flyers. We may have ridden these more than anything else in the park since they were on Fastlane. While they're not on the same level as the ones at Knoebels you can really get these things snapping and they make some great crashing and banging sounds along the way.

 

5) Any park that leaves the flume open in October deserves recognition for being awesome... so good job Kings Dominion. This is one of my favorite flumes and we ended up riding it 3 times. In the middle of the day it had a pretty decent line (though not for us) and we ended up on the last log of the night since the ride closes at 7 PM. That ride was pretty cold but still a lot of fun.

 

6) I want to preface this by saying that I know this ride sucks... but I really, really liked Anaconda. I could hear everyone else on the train groaning... my girlfriend who was sitting right next to me hated it, but for some reason it didn't bang my head once. I'm 6'4 so maybe that has something to do with it... I really don't know but I loved my ride on Anaconda and could have ridden it all day if it were on Fastlane and if my girlfriend wouldn't have ended up with head trauma. We rode in the first row of the back car... I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I just got off of this ride confused about why I liked it so much.

 

7) We rode Grizzly for the first time in years and really enjoyed it. I don't know why we don't ride this more often... the location is ridiculously stupid though.

 

8) Do those mushrooms ever sing or do they just sit there?

 

Overall we had a great day at the park as we always do. I actually really like going during Haunt because of the long hours (10:30 to Midnight). Between that and Fastlane Plus we got a ton of rides in.

[vacoaster09]

^

 

I visited 2 weeks ago and I agree, the surprise for me was how great Grizzly was running. I took several laps on this ride whereas on past visits it was a "one and done". Whatever they did, they deserve some recognition because it was first time I can say I truly had an enjoyable ride on the Grizzly.

[GwaziBSRider1]

^^ I 100% agree with you on Dominator. It simply blows all of the other floorless coasters (at least the ones I've ridden so far) out of the water. It was amazing at Six Flags/Geauga Lake, and it's still amazing at Kings Dominion.

 

Also, with your comment about the seat on Anaconda. This is what we lovingly refer to as "the magic seat" (first row of the last car). On Arrows and Vekomas, this tends to be the smoothest seat on the ride. Even some of the mind-blowingly rough ones sometimes ride fairly smooth in that seat.

[cfc]

The mushrooms were singing earlier this season, but you had to be there at the right time (the show is very brief). But maybe they were turned off for Haunt.

 

While I'm glad you had a "good" experience on Anaconda, I still hate that ride.

[DJeXeL]

And by "Good" he meant he got a headache as opposed to a concussion......

[coasterbill]

No, and that's the crazy thing... I mean it was smoother than Volcano. And I don't consider Volcano rough. It was really... really smooth. Like I said I just got off the ride confused about why I liked it so much. I'm sure it's a combination of my height and the seat we sat in but for whatever reason I loved it.

[DJeXeL]

Understood. To be fair, Anaconda is a hell of a lot better than Vortex @KI!

[redfoot12]

I usually skip Ananconda but my niece wanted to go on it back in June. I was surprised at how relatively comfortable it was compared to rides on it in the past.

[Propeller Factory]

I loooooooove dominator it's so great my fav part is the turn after the loop like the speed and the head choppers it's one of my fav coasters there.

[mike541x]

I usually skip Ananconda but my niece wanted to go on it back in June. I was surprised at how relatively comfortable it was compared to rides on it in the past.

 

I think Anaconda received new wheels for the season. When I rode it earlier this year, I also thought it was running better than usual. It's not the best ride in the park, but I always ride it on every visit. And at least it's still better than Shockwave!

[nicman]

Is Dominator dangerous? Because I remember someone died after going on it.

[DJeXeL]

The lady that died had a brain aneurysm and died after being transported to the hospital. No operational issues were discovered with Dominator.

[CPmillenia94]

Kings Dominion is kind of an underrated park in general I would say. The ride lineup is one of my favorites of any park, since each ride has something completely unique to offer. I get most excited to go there over almost any other park other than maybe cedar point.