Kings Island - June 7 and 8, 2023

After four days of nonstop amusement park action, my wife and I were exhausted. We took a "break day" in Cincinnati, seeing the zoo and experiencing our first Skyline Chili (btw - loved it). We went back to the hotel early and rested up, needing to be fresh for our next two days at the legendary Kings Island in Mason, Ohio.

I'll start with the coasters and rides, and address park quality, crowds, food, lodging, etc afterwards. Embedded photos may not be mine.

The flat rides were pretty good here as well, with some unique attractions:

Kings Island is one of the best amusement parks I have ever visited. I was excited to ride the Beast, but I absolutely fell in love with the rest of this park. The International Street theming is wonderful and the Eiffel Tower is a unique and fun touch. Just like Cedar Point, the park is immaculately maintained, landscaped, and manicured.

The lineup of rides is very strong, and overall I felt that the rides were a bit smoother and easier to ride than those at Cedar Point. That may just be a function of the intensity of the rides themselves. That being said, this lineup does feel like it is missing something. An intense Intamin, a big looping B&M floorless, or an RMC Raptor would work really well here. After all, they do have space to fill now that Vortex is gone.

It wasn't too hard to find our way around, but the park itself is very large, so if you're by Banshee and you want to ride the Beast... you're going to be walking for a while!

I broke a personal rule and got a big meal at the park on day one. The burrito bowls looked real tasty, and they absolutely were. I'd recommend if you don't mind having to wait a little while before doing basically anything with your day. I would skip the big meal if I were to return! Then again, hard to resist the siren song of Skyline Chili.

Much like Cedar Point, I thought the B&Ms here had some roughness issues. Orion is barely three years old and there were some rattley moments in the pullouts of the drops. I would really like to know why Cedar Fair's B&Ms feel this way, when I've never had this experience at other parks. It doesn't really destroy the experience, especially on coasters with clamshell or vest restraints, but it's an interesting thing to note.

Of all the parks we visited, Kings Island was the most generous with its hours. Early entry allowed us into the gate at 9:30 AM and the park was open until 10 PM. This was on a Wednesday and Thursday! There is a great firework/drone show at 10 PM that we watched from the queue of the Beast.

Staying in Mason near the park is a bit pricey. We stayed a few minutes away in a nice area called Blue Ash. The hotel was reasonably priced and only about 10 minutes from the park.

Before our second day at the park, we caught breakfast at a decent little joint in Sharonville called Scramblers. It was a solid breakfast, not too heavy, and kept us going for a while. We hit up Skyline Chili on the way out of town as there's one basically across the street from the park.

We left around 6 PM on day two and picked up some merch from the gift shops. The shirts were actually pretty well-designed (no garish back prints) and I picked up a really nice embroidered hoodie. There were also some great magnets, the designs for Beast and Flight of Fear were especially cool. And I just had to get the Beast snowglobe.

The two "centerpiece" parks of the trip were now sadly behind us, but the fond memories will stand forever. We began the long drive to Pittsburgh to visit a strange playland of century-old woodies.

TL;DR: