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Kings Island
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cedar Fair Entertainment
 Park News - (6/3/13) Kings Island reports that on Friday night f rom June 21 to July 26 their Soak City waterpark will be putting on Dive-In Movies on two-large screens over the huge Tidal Wave Bay wave pool. The movie line-up includes Madagascar 3 (June 21), Happy Feet (June 28), Jurassic Park (July 5), E.T. (July 12), Monsters, Inc. (July 19) and Finding Nemo (July 26). Movies begin at dusk and are free with park admission.
(5/30/13) Kings Island has announced that Ed Alonzo will return with an all new follow-up show to last year’s popular show called ‘Psycho Circus of Magic & Mayhem 2’ in the Kings Island Theater.
(5/6/13) Windseeker is open
(4/22/13) For anyone wondering about the Fun Perks test program that launched at Kings Island last year, the park has sent out e-mails to participants to let them know that, “after a lengthy and thorough evaluation of the program, we are working on other ways to provide more value for our season passholders in the upcoming season.” So Fun Perks has come to an end.
(4/19/13) Three members of the original Brady Bunch will return to Kings Island to entertain park guests on May 19th. Present at the event held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the episode filmed inside Kings Island back in 1973 will be: Barry Williams (Greg Brady), Christopher Knight (Peter Brady) and Susan Olsen (Cindy Brady). The shows will take place inside the Kings Island Theater and will be free with park admission. Seating is limited, first-come, first-serve basis.
(4/10/13) Kings Island will add a new surprise to the park’s Dinosaurs Alive display this season. The upcharge attraction was the first of all the Cedar Fair parks to get Dinosaurs Alive and many have been wondering what Cedar Fair’s game plan was for them a few years down the line when attendance may start to wane. To let everyone know the Dinosaurs Alive is still there, they are adding a life-sized Sauroposeidon, which will be their largest animatronic dinosaur. Standing the height of a six story building and the length of three school busses, the “Earth Quake Lizard” is estimated to have weighed between 50-60 tons at full size. Also new this season is a new display showing a pack of Albertosaurus on the hunt together.
(3/28/13) The Fast Lane system at Kings Island will be split in two this year, offering regular Fast Lane passes (starting at $35) as well as new Fast Lane Plus passes (starting at $45). The only difference between the two is that access to Firehawk and The Beast is only included in the Fast Lane Plus tickets.
(3/11/13) Source tell me that every Cedar Fair park with a Windseeker ride have also taken delivery of one of the same new Evac Platform contraptions that we saw pictures of at Knott’s Berry Farm last week. The new Cedar Fair policy on this is that the park’s can not run their Windseeker rides unless they have an Evac Platform in working order and ready to go. (For example, I’m told that Kings Dominion already has their platform and is keeping it stored nearby in the old Hypersonic station area.) With the platforms in place, we should seen the Windseekers ready to run on opening day at most Cedar Fair parks. (Canada’s Wonderland, Carowinds, Cedar Point, Kings Dominion and Kings Island).
(3/8/13) Kings Island will open a new themed eatery this season called Reds Hall of Fame Grille, themed after the local Cincinnati Reds baseball team of course. The new restaurant will open near Diamondback, in the park’s Rivertown area, and will be a full service indoor air-conditioned dining experience, full of authentic Reds memorabilia everywhere you look. Over 20 video screens will play highlight reels from various games in Reds history, and in a unique twist, there will actually be a kiosk on-site where you can purchase tickets to the Reds home games. The menu will feature an array of burgers, wings, pulled pork, baby back ribs, salads, appetizers as well as a collection of draft beer and wine to choose from. Guests can also opt to dine out on a new patio overlooking Diamondback in action. (Note: This is a renovation of the former Rivertown Junction Dining Hall, so you will have a great view of the Diamondback splashdown pond.)
(2/4/13) I’ve got one quick update this week on those “fountain upgrade” projects in the works for Kings Island, Kings Dominion and Canada’s Wonderland. Screamscape sources tell us this is actually a project that wont see the light of day until the 2014 season, so don’t look for any work to start in the parks anytime soon.
(1/31/13) The rumor mill on what is planned for the park entrance fountains at Kings Island and Kings Dominion has been abuzz with talk about adding a sort of Bellagio style light and fountain show that would perform to different music tracks. Unfortunately it seems this was just a leftover whisper from a previous proposal that was canceled months ago. Instead I’m told it has been replaced by a more modest and smale scale fountain improvement project according to the latest rumors.
(1/21/13) Comments made by Matt Ouimet have indicated that Cedar Fair will perform some kind of special update / upgrade to the fountains at Canada’s Wonderland, and followed by upgrades to the fountains at the entrance to Kings Island and Kings Dominion as well, based on something they saw at IAAPA. Anyone have a clue what could be in the works?
2013 - No New Rides Expected -
2014 - Banshee / New Coaster - Rumor - (6/6/13) I’ve been sent a number of messages and tweets about our latest prediction for Banshee to be a B&M Wing Coaster, mostly because Matt Ouimet stated in an interview that Cedar Fair had no Wing Coasters on the drawing boards for 2014. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time a man in his position has told a white lie to protect a future project in the works… and at the same time, I can’t verify that the 2014 Kings Island ride will be a Wing coaster either.
Personally, I think it’s a bit kooky to build follow up Gatekeeper at The Point with such a similar style coaster at Kings Island. As I’ve said before, I’d rather seen a gigantic B&M Inverted coaster or Floorless coaster added instead, something with more than 7 inversions. Of perhaps even a B&M Dive Machine would fit the bill.
Of course, there is the remote possibility that we could perhaps be seeing the evolution of the Wing coaster come to Kings Island as well. Going back to when the first rumors about the very first Wing coaster were coming out of Italy, our source said that B&M wanted to evolve their Wing coaster design after a few years to include 4th Dimension style spinning seats. It’s a remote long shot…and no one has even suggested this to me for the Kings Island 2014 project yet, but… I’m just going to put that idea in your heads for now. Don’t even think of it as a “maybe” yet… just think of it as a “What if?”
In the meantime, if your local, keep an eye on the track fabrication yard in Batavia, I hear they have some wing coaster track sitting around destined for somewhere…
(6/3/13) Screamscape sources have confirmed to us that not only is the new Kings Island 2014 coaster from B&M, but that they expect it to be a new large Wing Coaster. And yes… unless things change, we can expect to see it fly under the Banshee name.
(5/31/13) CoasterFusion has a construction update from Kings Island this week, checking in on the footers and progress made for the rumored 2014 coaster project. They also uncovered an odd shaped large triangle shaped footer which they also recognized as similar to a shape used on Leviathan. (You can also clearly see one near the far turn on Behemoth in the Bird’s Eye view here.)
Is it a scientific assumption to say that this is more evidence of a B&M at Kings Island in 2014? Not really… but I’ve got to admit that I’ve been hearing B&M for quite awhile for this project and this does add a small new piece to the puzzle.
(5/6/13) We’ve got a possible ne
w name for the rumored Kings Island giant coaster project coming in 2014. Cedar Fair has just filed for the trademark to use the name “Banshee” on April 24th, 2013. Amusement history buffs will note that Banshee was first used by Cedar Fair as the original name for Mantis at Cedar Point, before they got cold feet about the evil overtones of the name. The never used Banshee logo was actually used as a playful teaser (wink!) by the Cedar Point blog in the early marketing for Gatekeeper at one point as well. Now that they’ve filed a new trademark to use it, Kings Island is the most obvious location where it would do the most good.
The local fanboys will all remember the name and Cedar Point connection, but Kings Island also can put the Banshee name to good use with the marketing of other monsterous coasters like The Beast, Diamonback and the now defunct Son of Beast. Not to mention putting a “Banshee” on the site of the deceased Son of Beast coaster is simply very fitting as well.
While we’re talking about the 2014 coaster… lets take a look at some new construction site pics sent in by readers as seen from the Eiffel Tower. The site cleared (former SOB site) is massive, but we’ve also got a clear look at what seems to be the footers in place for what may be a station or maintenance shed/transfer track area. It’s also worth noting that the old Son of Beast station has been saved and is sitting not far away as well and could possibly be reused as well.
(4/29/13) Kings Island has now opened for the 2013 season and presented guests with an interesting new construction wall blocking off access to the former Thunder Alley go-kart area. The wall is quite eye catching with the black and yellow warning tape design with large red warning signs stating that monitoring is in progress due to an increase in “mysterious and bone-chilling screams” in that area while they identify the source of “this evil phenomenon”.
The whole thing just gave me a big flashback to Son of Beast, where the lead car on the original Son of Beast trains used the same black and yellow pattern and the cars that followed were the same bright red. (See here). It almost gives me chills that we just might just see another descendent of The Beast come to Kings Island. Stay tuned, because I’m sure this will get even more interesting as the summer goes on. Just check out what’s going on behind the wall… looks like they are already hard at work making footers for “something”.
(2/5/13) While I put my bid in for a Super-Sized B&M Inverted coaster in 2014, there are quite a few other people out there who are hoping that Kings Island follows the example of Canada’s Wonderland and adds a Leviathan style 300+ foot GigaCoaster to Kings Island in 2014 instead. That’s a hard rumor to follow, as the Leviathan project at Canada’s Wonderland took so many by surprise as being a very unusual move.
(1/31/13) The latest rumors about the Kings Island 2014 coaster project are interesting, especially due to all the land being cleared out in the park to make way for it. I’m told that this is not for a new land, but really just for one large new steel coaster. While my source is being a bit coy with me regarding the nature of the coaster itself… I did take a moment to really think about what Kings Island already has and what few coaster styles they are still lacking, which isn’t much. The one really big standout and popular coaster design that Kings Island is still strangely lacking after all these years is a true Inverted coaster. Sure, they have Invertigo… but an epic large B&M Inverted coaster that would traverse through the landscape, perhaps taking a nod from Montu and using trenches, tunnels and towering structures to dodge, would be an excellent choice in my opinion. We’ll have to wait and see for now…
(10/2/12) While we really haven’t heard much at all regarding plans for Kings Island in 2013, the early rumors suggest that the park will be getting a very large and expensive new coaster experience for the 2014 season.
(8/28/12) The latest rumor for Kings Island’s next big coaster says that we can expect to see something very large rise up in 2014 on the Son of Beast site. No word on just what kind of ride it may be just yet.
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