After a surprisingly early finish at Holiday World, we arrived at our – very conveniently straight across the road from Kings Island – motel early evening. Though we had no further park plans for this day, armed with Cedar Fair annual passes, a couple of hours park time, and an undying love for night rides, there was only one thing to be done! The rarest of things on this trip: an evening in the park. At King’s Island this was even more of a win, given celebrations for the 50th anniversary were in full swing, and we’d now be able to catch Fun, Fireworks and Fifty, the 50th Anniversary celebration show… or maybe even a legendary night ride on The Beast!
Our visit to Kings Island coincided with one of the lowest points of the trip, physically and mentally. My head had been aching continuously for a couple of days at this point and every ride was taking its toll on me. In hindsight, I believe this was down to dehydration (I didn’t even consider this possible at the time as I’d been drinking endless diet soft drinks from the all-season cups, but I should have been focused on getting electrolytes) but at the time I was worried I had injured myself on the rides, so was taking it easy. The stress of feeling abysmal on this once-in-a-lifetime trip also put me in quite a bad place mentally. With that in mind, I sadly missed quite a number of attractions at this park, powering through the headliners with painkillers and deep heat.
But even feeling more than a little tender, it was hard not to be enamoured by this park. Walking in, I was taken aback by how beautiful, and how open, it was. The entrance plaza is similar to Kings Dominion, with the same International Street surrounding a vast water fountain. But whilst Kings Dominion’s International Street is rich with foliage, everything here is bright and open. Admittedly, this was something of a flaw with the park as during our very hot visit, shade was somewhat hard to come by, but it sure made for a very dramatic vista on entering the park!
Kings Island is a strong contender for the park on the trip I knew the least about. Unsurprisingly, one thing I had heard of was Orion. The park’s newest, and largest, coaster hulked imposingly over the rear of the park, and obviously had to be our first stop!
Deep breath. I am aware of what a spoiled little coaster snob I’m going to sound like here, but lord Orion did nothing for me. 300 foot of drop and… nothing.
Okay, that’s not really fair. The drop was fun. Of course, it was fun, it’s 300 feet! The airtime throughout was a floaty joy too, and I love floating. But, and this is a big but, this was a 9 pm ride toward the rear of the train, on a relentlessly hot summer’s day, and it was still entirely forceless. Now I’m not a huge fan of intensity, but I like to have some feeling of speed on a ride and this was just almost unbearably tame. I was riding this with a raging migraine and I still wanted it to do more to me, it was that mild! I simply do not understand this ride. It was fun, and I’d happily ride it every time, but if I was planning another road trip, you’d never catch me saying ‘Oh, I really need to get back to Kings Island for Orion!’ Whereas Fury? I think about that beast every damn day.
However, we did notice something verrrry interesting from Orion. Over in the centre of the park lay Backlot Stunt Coaster, a clone of a ride that we’d all found to be a disappointment over at Kings Dominion and accordingly hadn’t conjured much excitement up until this point. But as we were ascending in to the heavens, we couldn’t help but notice fire erupting from what looked very much to be the location of the ride. Could this Stunt Coaster actually have, y’know, stunts?! There was no question about where we’d be heading next! On to Backlot we hopped, ready for a perfectly acceptable family coaster. Starting again with the absolutely bananas launch into a triple helix (why!?) before dipping in and out of a pleasantly themed backlot, we eventually reached the show stop, and you know what?! It had stunts! The helicopter made noises! It sounded like we were under fire! And there was – as we had hoped – actual fire! Finally, this ride ceased to feel awkward and was just a good time. Kings Island was already winning me over.
I’d give anything to be able to say at this point that next I went off to score the famous, no, legendary night ride on The Beast, but alas. My head was simply in no fit state for a wooden coaster, especially the longest wooden rollercoaster in the world – not after how The Voyage had made me feel just a few hours earlier! But it wasn’t all bad! Sure, I was heartbroken to miss out, but as part of our group headed off to score the ride, myself and my friend Kellie got ourselves ready for a night-time spectacular. We hadn’t really had much chance to catch them on the trip, so I was more than a little excited to see what Fun, Fireworks and Fifty had in store!
Whilst we waited, we pottered around International Street awhile, taking in the various gift shops and snack stands and more than once, gazing in awe at some of the merchandise available. I mean, just look at this entirely NSFW shirt! USA theme park merch is in another league.
Fun, Fireworks and Fifty. What to say about Fun, Fireworks and Fifty. Well, it was a night-time spectactular featuring *deep breath*: pyro, fireworks, drones, lasers, fountains, lighting, and a soundtrack that slapped. In a regional park! This was a show that had me tearing up over the history of a park I’d first stepped foot into just two hours prior. Sure, I was heartbroken to miss a Beast night ride, but oh boy did this soften the blow. I’m so glad I got to see this beauty of a celebratory show! It’s worth noting that we didn’t even see the drones. It had been raining lightly and the weather still wasn’t quite good enough for the drones to take off, but the park performed the rest of the show without them and it was still incredibly emotional!
Check it out for yourself!
Whilst the majority of park guests poured out of the park immediately after the show, that wasn’t the case for us – we had some night riders to wait for! You see, in a move that was very impressive to me, whilst the end-of-day spectacular was occurring, the majority of the ride’s coasters couldn’t operate. But rather than close down the queue on some of the park’s most popular attractions early, they simply paused operations, allowing everyone already in line to hold their ground and ride after the show, when the park was officially closed. This was an operational decision that definitely added a good hour minimum to the ride’s operating day, but in our case for sure, added so much guest satisfaction! For those of us who weren’t lined up waiting for The Beast to re-open, it did end up meaning quite the lurk on a rapidly emptying International Street. To the point that we were shuffling around in order to give the custodial team a chance to clean up the benches! It really was something to have those gorgeously lit fountains all to ourselves for a while though.
Three hours down, and I was head over heels for Kings Island.
The next morning, we were back at the park bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for rope drop. There’s something so relaxing about rocking up to a park knowing you’ve already knocked out a couple of headliners!
Our first stop of the day was the park’s other B&M hypercoaster – yup – Diamondback. Diamondback is a 230ft tall hyper which, in my opinion, did everything Orion did, but better, with the one exception being the first drop – there’s no beating a giga on that front! Diamondback still provided floater airtime for days, but it did so with a far superior sense of power. Despite reaching speeds 11mph below Orion, I found I actually felt the speed far more here than I did on that coaster, and that was a morning ride compared to end-of-day! Again, it’s worth saying that I only had one ride on both coasters so my word definitely isn’t gospel but from those, it’s Diamondback all the way!
As an up-and-coming GCI fan girl, I’m more than a little bit stunned that prior to the trip I’d never heard of Mystic Timbers. I think I’d just gotten it confused with Twisted Timbers and immediately assumed that everyone was referring to that gorgeous RMC every time it was mentioned, but thankfully this changed a few days prior to arriving at Kings Island. Whilst we were out in the USA, a whole host of our fellow UK enthusiasts were too, all on the Pleasure Beach Experience American Dream Tour (which looked awesome), hitting up many of the same parks but a few days ahead of us. Thanks to this, I started to see a lot of comments about Mystic Timbers and The Shed. By the time we arrived at the park, my interest was more than piqued and I was very much looking forward to seeing what this GCI had to throw at me. Well, GCI just keep on winning because this thing was fun! Just like almost every other modern GCI I’ve experienced, Timbers hauls, flying through its layout at a speed that seems almost impossible for the scale of the ride, providing seemingly endless pops of airtime as you speed through trees and over water. Until you reach The Shed. Spoilers ahead! At first, I thought this was a little bit of a joke. In hindsight, our train had clearly stacked as we sat there for a good few minutes with nothing happening. All the while I became more convinced that the shed was merely a themed brake run – seriously? But then, just as I’d begun to laugh out loud at how strange and awkward this all was, the scene began. Amid atmospheric lighting and intimidating noise, a grotesque, bat-like creature filled the large screen at the back of the room, screaming horrifyingly at us, aaaaand then we rolled out and into the station. Personally, I love that they decided to do something a little bit different and throw together a massively themed final set piece for the brake run, and it would have been very effective had the train pulled straight in at the end of the ride. As it was, the operations made the whole thing feel a little disjointed, but I’m still a fan. I even heard from my friends who rode a few more times that there are multiple creatures that can come and attack you, how cool is that?! Mystic Timbers is by no means a life-altering coaster, but it’s smooth, fast, and a heck of a lot of fun.
In another win over Kings Dominion, whereas their central Eiffel Tower had been closed to guests, the one at Kings Island was fully operational, offering nothing less than stunning views out over the park. It feels like the opportunity to ascend a park’s ‘weenie’ (lord, that’s a weird sentence) is unfortunately rare, but in the cases where it’s offered you can bet I’ll be soaking up all those views! With a bright cloudless day, we could see for miles across Ohio, and with the format of the attraction – you ascend an elevator to a viewing platform and walk around at your leisure – we were able to take as much time as we wanted to take in the view. A nice change from the usual observation tower rides that always seem to be over too soon!
Next on the itinerary was yet another ride that I can’t believe I didn’t know more about prior to the trip: Banshee. Banshee is the world’s longest inverted rollercoaster at 4,124m and is also really, really weird. I’ve experienced quite a few B&M inverted rollercoasters across the world at this point, but none quite like Banshee. The first major difference I noticed was the conspicuous lack of dropping floor in the station. It felt nothing short of bizarre to be walking onto a B&M invert across a solid concrete floor. What?! It even had me questioning the manufacturer. Even more so when I sat down on the train, pulled down the restraint, and… was greeted by a vest. I mean sure, this was arguably evidence that the ride was indeed B&M, given that these were the restraints seen on the manufacturer’s wing coasters, but what on earth were they doing here? As a woman with curves, I was less than enthusiastic about yet another restraint not even nearly designed for my body shape. But you know what? I really, really enjoyed this ride! I know it’s got it’s share of detractors, but maybe because I was feeling tender, a super smooth B&M beauty was exactly what I needed – one that also had some forces at least, looking at you Orion! The vests were surprisingly comfortable and I had a blast sailing through the endless layout. I’m also obsessed with that ride sign! I wish I’d come back to this part of the park during our evening visit because that smoke looks amazing in the daytime and I bet it looks even more so in the dark.
After Kings Dominion and Carowinds, Kings Island marked the third Boo Blasters on Boo Hill appearance on our trip. This spooky shooter varies slightly from park to park, but none so much as Kings Island. Whilst all incarnations of the ride were formerly ‘Scooby-Doo’s Haunted Mansion’, in Kings Island that attraction was retrofit into the show building of the former Phantom Theater (more on that later). This history offered this version a grandeur not quite achieved by the other attractions, particularly the queue line which after descending a curved staircase led into a vast, atmospheric queue complete with multiple chandeliers! Certainly a change from the wooded outdoor queue line at Kings Dominion. Whilst the ride style was identical with UV paint aplenty and featured almost entirely the same scenes, the scenes themselves were also larger and with greater depth. Combine this with the fact that it still maintained my favourite thing about these rides – the reactivity of the set pieces when you land a shot – and this was definitely my favourite of the Boo Blasters!
One thing I always try and do on my first visit to a park – if schedules allow, and there’s something that actually looks interesting – is sample their entertainment! Most of the time – unless it’s an animal show, in which case I’m always awestruck – it’s a pleasant enough time that breaks up the day nicely, but sometimes, just sometimes, a show is very special indeed. Phantom Theater Encore! was one of those times. Until I stepped inside the theatre’s foyer, I had no idea that Phantom Theater had been a ride at the park. I’d merely been drawn to the Kings Island Theater by the promise of a spooky show! But the foyer made sure to put that right. The whole space had been transformed in to a museum dedicated to the attraction and was absolutely packed full of exhibits and artifacts detailing the ride’s history, including a wall of concept art and even a full model. The more time I spent in here, the more I fell in love with this ride I never even got to experience, but sadly I couldn’t stay too long – the house was open and the show was about to begin! So into the vast theatre, I rushed, ready for a show that now piqued my interest far more than it had before I realized its context. From the moment our host arrived, and revealed himself to be an impressively performed puppet, I knew I was in for a good time. The scale of this show was magnificent. For the next half-hour I was treated to a non-stop spectacle of ensemble musical numbers, acrobatics, tap dance and puppetry, I was in my element! That all of this was in order to celebrate a defunct dark ride was just the icing on the cake! This was the sort of entertainment I never dreamed we’d see at a Cedar Fair park, which just proves that I underestimated them massively. Bravo!
Our final ride in the park was, fittingly, Adventure Express. How right to finish our time at Kings Island with an attraction featuring such a pleasant surprise! Adventure Express is another Arrow Mine Train, so, as with any Arrow product, I went into it with a little bit of trepidation. But, it was the last ride of the day so if it did turn out to be a janky hellscape, well at least I could kick back in the cool car afterward. But thankfully, I didn’t need to stress. This was another one for the impressively long ‘Arrow Rides That Were Surprisingly Pleasant’ list. The majority of the coaster wasn’t particularly anything to write home about, sure there were a good number of reasonably well-themed tunnels and some really nice terrain usage in the layout, but let’s be honest, we just need to talk about that final lift hill. Because this is a mine train with a show scene! Something I wasn’t expecting one bit, and was floored by! The train pulls into a tunnel, something it’s done multiple times before now, but this time something is different. Rather than a wooden shack, the tunnel is brick. Giant yellow bricks, the sort you might see in Tomb Raider or Jumanji, the ones that scream ‘jungle adventure’. Rolling onto the lift hill, for as far as the eye could see I was surrounded by giant drumming statues, with another domineering statue located at the very top. A statue with glowing eyes which appeared to be threatening me, declaring ‘you have disturbed the forbidden temple, now you will pay!’ Admittedly, this was a pretty bizarre thing to have happened immediately prior to pulling in to the station. Is my payment that I cease to experience the ride? My return to the cruel reality of everyday life? I’m not too sure, but either way, what a delightful way to end an otherwise unremarkable coaster! There’s something about it being at the end of the ride that makes it all the more surprising too. More weird stuff like this please!
It’s tough to explain why I love Kings Island so much. They don’t have a single coaster that has me desperate to return for re-rides. They have one dark ride, a UV-paint spooky shooter that is found in three other parks. Their list of supporting attractions is acceptable. But damn, I love Kings Island. The park just feels like somewhere that is loved by its own management, and that feeling is tangible. From the near-flawless landscaping, to jaw-dropping entertainment, to just generally being clean and welcoming, this park is cared for and it shows. Plus, they put on the best 50th anniversary celebration event of any major USA theme park in 2022!
As far as parks that are ‘just a nice place to be’ go, this is right up there at the top of the list. And if they were to get a top-of-its-class roller coaster? Oh boy. I’d be doing everything in my power to return.
Speak again soon,
Claire
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coasterclaire.co.uk 