Kings Island

Visited: October 19, 2024

Attending: Brian, Mullet, Allison, JohnMike

The middle of 2024 turned out to be a weird time for me, for personal and professional reasons. As a result, I had less spare time and money than I have in years past, so I didn’t visit any parks during the summer. However, by October, I had a new job that loosened the restraints on my spending a bit, and reintroduced me to business travel.

I was requested by the new job to be in St. Louis for a meeting the week of the 21st. I needed to be in Raleigh the following week for the All Things Open conference. It started to seem like a road trip was in order, and given that I’d never been to Six Flags St. Louis…well, it kind of spiraled from there.

I left home after work on Friday the 18th, and unusually for me, I didn’t try to go to Kennywood. Instead, I drove about five hours to Ohio and stopped. The plan was to spend Saturday at Kings Island. I got in touch with Mullet, and he said that he and Allison would be happy to meet me there, and that JohnMike would come as well. So that looked like a promising start. I knew it would likely be crowded, but I figured I’d take what I could get.

Mystic Timbers

I arrived right at opening time, following my standard strategy. Even still, the parking lot was filling quickly. The others wouldn’t arrive for a while, they told me. I figured Mystic Timbers was a pretty good choice for a rope-drop coaster, as it’s out of the way. I guessed right, and was rewarded with a station wait. Lots of people rave about Mystic as the best GCI. I’m not entirely sold. It’s good; it’s intense from beginning to end, and has lots of twisting sections, especially at its furthest point in the layout. It does bear some resemblance to a wooden Maverick in that way. However, it uses the terrain, and lacks a really impressive drop, which I think is important. Also, the shed remains a completely nonsensical gimmick that just wastes time at the end of the ride. It was fun, but not mindblowing.

Diamondback

When I was here in 2022, Doug and I were unimpressed by Diamondback, which has a reputation as one of the best B&M hypers. I thought it deserved a redemption ride, and the entrance was convenient, so I went there next. It was still a fairly cool day, and I didn’t want to risk getting wet, so I opted for row 12, rather than the back. Result: It’s…pretty good. There was more airtime than I remembered, which was good, but it’s not super-sustained. It’s got a trim right after the turnaround that was rather unfortunate. It’s got two helixes, which I think is one too many. The problem is that it’s an older hyper design. It’s better than Apollo’s Chariot or Raging Bull, but it doesn’t have the super-refined profiling of a Mako or even Candymonium. Even comparing it to its own peers, I’d prefer Nitro or Behemoth. So it wasn’t a crushing disappointment, but it wasn’t a revelation either.

At this point, it was getting close to the time when I was expecting my friends, so I decided not to risk getting stuck in line for Orion or Beast. Instead, I went up the Eiffel Tower to take some pictures. It was a gorgeously clear day, but there wasn’t much to see that I hadn’t seen last time.

Racer

After everybody arrived and we had some lunch, we decided to hop on Racer, as the line seemed pretty minimal. I certainly wouldn’t have had Racer on my list, given the unpleasant experience I had on it in 2022, but JohnMike assured me that Gravity Group had done a bunch of work on it over the offseason, and it was much better than I remembered. It was also racing both sides, which I never see in the older racing coasters anymore, so that was pretty cool. Darned if they weren’t right about the restoration work. It was much smoother, and there were definite moments of airtime. Not magic airtime, but more than just a quick pop. Until the brakes, anyway, which were as rough as ever. I still don’t know if I’d have Racer high on my must-ride list, but it was a definite pleasant surprise.

Adventure Express

I’m not really sure why we chose to ride this, but it was there, the line wasn’t long, and I’d declared that I didn’t care much about what we rode. Unfortunately, Allison managed to drop her phone through the wooden slats in the queue, so we were worried about that for a while. And the ride…was pretty bad, really. There was Arrow jank, and not in a good way. I felt pretty badly beaten up, and the layout isn’t really anything to write home about. JohnMike seemed to really enjoy it, in the same way you enjoy something so-bad-its-good at your home park, but I could have done without.

Fortunately, Allison was able to retrieve her phone quickly with the help of park staff. While they did that, JohnMike and I decided the Bat was probably least likely to have a line, but when we got over there, the queue was longer than he’d ever seen before. Banshee was down, which may have contributed, but still, we didn’t like the Bat quite that much. We took a look at the Son of Beast homage nearby, met up with the others, and then tried to find something without a terrible line. Unfortunately, we failed. Even Mystic Timbers had a wait of over an hour. It was a gorgeous day, a Saturday, and Haunt, so we knew that might happen. We all had plans for the rest of the day anyhow, so we decided to act like passholders and just leave at 2:00-ish. I was a little bummed not to have ridden Orion or Beast, but I had that choice at opening, and I went a different way.