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 I woke up on the morning of the 12th in some crazy pain from the carnage the day before. I had a bruise on my thigh from the lap bars on the Voyage, but I would do it all over again in a heart beat. I finally was able to roll out of bed, pop a few Ibuprofens, and then I hit the road again for Kings Island.
The traffic going into the park was crazy, and it sucked to see that the trams weren’t working, but we finally survived the line to park and made it to the entrance.
Talk about first impressions, the pool and fountains were a great way to enter the park, and the Eiffel Tower in the background was awesome. The park was really clean, and for the most part, it was really beautiful. Too bad I couldn’t enjoy the rides the same way.
My friend is a bit scared of heights, so naturally we headed for Drop Zone first. After about 10 minutes, we were onboard. The climb to the top was great, and I loved how it rotated. The drop was good as well, but I still think Superman: Tower of Power at SFOT is my favorite drop ride.
After Drop Zone, we decided to get the worst part over with and headed for Son of Beast. As with Voyage, what can be said that hasn’t? This ride is just as crappy as everyone has made it out to be. It wasn’t so much as painful as it was uncomfortable, and I think the park decided to skip on the square wheels and go straight to the triangular ones. You know the ride sucks when the photo is taken before you are even on the lift hill. I didn’t think it was as insanely bad as everyone makes it out to be, but it’s still pretty much the worst coaster I’ve ever been on. After our ride through hell, we made the hike to Top Gun. Who the hell decided to make mile-long walks to get on a ride that is a walk-on? The whole ride seemed pretty run down, with lots of rust and just ugly brush and stuff all around. It was kind of an ugly ride too. Anyway, Top Gun was pretty cool. It was my first suspended coaster, so that gives it some extra points, but it’s just too short to really do anything. Once you start to really get going, it just ends. Fun, but entirely too short.
We decided to avoid the rest of the Action Zone and the crowds until later in the day, and headed to Adventure Express. It was about as mediocre as possible. The ride ending with a lift hill is pretty dumb as well. I know it’s a family ride, but it was just boring. Why can’t all the so-called “family rides” be like Powder Keg at SDC? AE had some cool scenery and some weird theming (the tiki-god things in the final lift hill were absolutely hilarious), but overall it was just a standard mine train.
We hit Racer next, and I was really intrigued by this ride. It is probably the most beautiful ride ever built. We went forwards first, and I was let down. It was really rough and boring, with no airtime at all. My friend didn’t want to go backwards, but I finally convinced him to, and it was much better than the forwards side. It actually had some good spots of airtime. A bit bumpy, but much better than the forwards side. Still a pretty average ride though.
On a side note, I really loved the Coney Mall area of the park around the Racer. It was officially cool.
Flight of Fear was fun and intense. I really loved the layout of this ride. I just wish B&M or Intamin had done it instead of Premier. It was pretty jerky and I can only imagine what this ride was like with the OTSRs. It was fun though.
The ride made my friend pretty mad though when the ride op stapled him in and he asked if maybe he could get a little more room. So the ride op proceeded to walk over and press his restraint down another click. My friend was pissed. I thought it was pretty funny, but it was rude on the employee’s part, and left a bad taste in our mouths as the day wore on.
Up next was Vortex, and I really liked it. It was a bit bumpy, but not as bad as your standard Arrow. It was also pretty intense, which was a good thing. I love how the Arrow loopers all have straight drops, I wish that was something B&M would do more often. Anyway, back to Vortex. It was a cool ride. The drop off the midcourse brakes into the corkscrews was probably the worst-designed part of any ride ever, but other than that, it was a cool ride. Nothing spectacular, but a whole lotta fun. It reminded me of my first looper, Orient Express, so definite bonus points for that.
We walked over to Italian Job, which had the longest wait in the park, at about 30 minutes. It was fun, and I like the cars and how they had little doors. The theming was cool too, and I really like fire effects. But the ride was really actually pretty dull. The idea for this ride is brilliant; it’s too bad they have to bring it down with a boring coaster.
Up next was the most anticipated ride in the park, the Beast. I can see why people love this thing, but it was really rough, almost too rough to enjoy. My ribs killed me on this ride, and I almost couldn’t wait for the ride to be over. I loved the layout through the trees though, and I thought that it was a pretty good ride even with the trim brakes. I can’t imagine how crazy it is without the brakes. The gradual drop into the helix really gets the train flying. It seems to be going faster and faster, and just when you think it should finally reach its top speed, it gets even faster. The train basically explodes into the helix. The helix was really intense and absolutely nuts. This single element is definitely one of the craziest parts of any ride anywhere. As for the entire ride however, I really wanted to like it, but it was just crazy rough. It was a fun ride, but after seeing what a wooden coaster can be like at Holiday World, it wasn’t nearly as amazing as some have said.
Tomb Raider had cool theming and was a really good idea, but probably had the worst Top Spin program ever. I understand letting riders view the “scenes” inside the ride (I couldn’t tell what was going on anyway), but why does the ride have to be so dull. I can only imagine what PKI was thinking when they put this in, “let’s take a perfectly good flat ride that flips and instead we can just hold the riders face down for minutes at a time, sounds like a great idea!” The concept for a ride was really good, but why can’t they take a ride that is supposed to flip and have it actually, I don’t know, FLIP? This ride frustrated me. I wanted to like it, but I came off puzzled as to why it was so boring.
We headed through the Nickelodeon section of the park, and I can see why it always wins awards for this section. There is so much to see and do, and I thought it was a neat area. I wanted to ride Avatar and Fairly Odd Coaster, but my friend was complaining with every word by this point, so we decided to hit a final few rides and get the hell out of there.
We headed back to Face/Off, and found a pretty good-sized line, close to 30 minutes. It’s way better than a standard boomerang and almost worth a re-ride, but nothing amazing. It was smooth through the boomerang part, but why in the hell do your ears bang on the straight parts of the ride through the station and the bottom of the loop? Pretty much another amazing creation by Vekoma. [/sarcasm]
The last thing we did (after eating a few Skyline chili dogs, which were awesome by the way) was the Eiffel Tower. It was cool, and obviously gave a good view.
Anyway, after one loop of the park, we decided we were done. I would have liked to stay longer, but my friend was miserable, and in turn, making me miserable. I did like the park, as it was very nice, clean, and a lot of things to see, and it is great for families, but it is really lacking one or two “great” rides. Nothing there really made me go “wow” other than the helix alone on Beast. If any park is crying for a good Beemer or a hyper, this is it. This is definitely a good park, but with no amazing ride, there was nothing else that I wanted to do.
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