Kings Island, OH

Total Timber Tour 2 Blog Day 5

Hello. If this is your first visit to our blog you’re very welcome. If you’ve stopped by before, welcome back.

Well, after the slow journey last night delayed by the driving conditions, we only managed to squeeze in 5½ hours sleep as today was the first of our trip special events – exclusive ride time (ERT) on Diamond Back at Kings Island.

Because we are visiting so many Cedar Fair Parks, we purchased Platinum Season Passes yesterday, giving us free entry and parking at all their other parks on the trip (6 in all). At Kings Island, Platinum and Gold season pass holders get ½ hour early ride time on Diamond Back before the park opens to the public, so it was important we were at the park by 9.15am at the latest.

Well that was the plan. We woke to more rain but it did ease off on the way down to the park and stopped by the time we got there. Forecast for the area didn’t look great – on some holidays that could be seen as a downer – but for us this means one thing – EMPTY PARKS. Park goers tend to stay away when the weather looks bad, so our ERT and, indeed, the rest of the day looked promising. Now for the not so good news. The park was still testing the ride past the scheduled 9.30am ERT time. We got one run on it before operations ceased – because of more rain. Yep – very few rides operate here when it’s raining. We could only think back to times at Alton Towers when we’ve ridden Nemesis in the worst weather you could throw at it!

So an eager wait for everything to re-open and we managed to get back on about 10.30. Then everything closed again. Then re-opened etc. etc.

By lunchtime the park was fully functional and crowds were light. Most attractions were “walk-on” meaning we could easily “max out” our limited time here.

So onto the reason for choosing Kings island today – Diamond back. We’ve been to this park quite a few times before but not since Diamond Back opened. In fact, it’s the 3rd out of 5 new “hyper/semi-hyper-coasters” in as many days for us. So how was it? OK. Not show-stopping and not a dud. Just OK. Better as the day went on and it got some speed going. So – for the blog – OK. Make of that what you will.

We decided to rank the 3 we had done so far this week in order of enjoyment and Diamond Back comes 3rd with Behemoth top and Goliath 2nd. It’ll be interesting to add the 2 Intimidators due tomorrow and Friday to the mix. It’s also quite good being able to ride them back to back for comparison, or should that be back to diamond back?

Surprise of the day had to be the 2 woodies at the park. Cedar Fair has done some serious track maintenance on the Beast and the Racer and both are running superb. The Racer is back to running both trains forwards and racing (La Ronde take note). We guess they’d have to change its name if it didn’t race! For non-enthusiasts reading – the Kings Island Racer is well known for being the ride that started the coaster boom of the seventies and eighties which, in turn, led to the fantastic machines we enjoy today. The Beast may be mourning the passing of her sibling, but she’s determined to carry on regardless.

After leaving the park mid afternoon, another 6+ hour drive before bed. It was nice to get off the interstate network and do a bit of “Real America”.

Until tomorrow....

PS – Happy Birthday Jim