Kings Island Trip Report — Long Lines, Fun Rides

After moving to Indiana in mid-July, I’ve been hankering to hit one of the many parks at my disposal at any given time. It’s a strange feeling after living in Idaho and three hours would get you Lagoon and…. well, that’s it. Here, three hours gets me either Kings Island, Cedar Point, Indiana Beach, Holiday World and more.

Anyway, a friend from Michigan came down for the weekend so we headed off to Kings Island on Saturday as early as we could and arrived at the park around 11 AM. We then proceeded to hit a major rookie mistake.

We hit the Delirium first, the HUSS Giant Frisbee in the park. Yes, instead of getting our Firehawk, Beast, or Vortex ride out of the way first, we hit the Delirium. One thing I will say is that the line may not look very long but it will take a deceptively long time for you to make your way through it. After finally riding it, we had waited a total of 50 minutes. The ride was great, thrilling, and a lot of fun but I don’t know if it was worth that kind of wait. At this point, you’d think we would have said screw it and grabbed Fast Lane Plus passes, but we figured the roller coasters would provide quicker lines making the Fast Lanes worthless on those. We were wrong, but I’ll get to that later.

Next, I decided to take a look at the construction area of the Banshee. Not much to see except the creepy graveyard out front. At least they’re finally doing something with the Son of Beast area though, the park could use more coasters.

As we made our way past the construction zone, we found the queue for Flight Deck. I had ridden this before, but I figured it would be worth a quick ride because I know it’s a short ride and doesn’t usually command a very long wait. I was correct, because Flight Deck only took about 15 minutes in line before we were flying down the track. This was more thrilling than I remember, and much more disorienting too. It probably didn’t help that we hadn’t fully recovered from Delirium yet. Also of note was no Fast Lane on Flight Deck at all, which probably sped up the line considerably.

Next, we decided to make our way to the Racer or Adventure Express depending on the line. Turns out that Adventure Express had a rather long line so we decided to just push on to the Racer. Racer has a Fast Lane, but they were running both sides of the tracks that day so the lines moved very quickly and it only took about a 20 minute wait to get on. We grabbed front row seats because the wait was so short, and it was a complete blast. Racer gets a lot more airtime than I remember giving it credit for.

After the Racer, we decided it was time to eat so we headed over to Planet Snoopy where there’s a Chick-fil-A just outside of it. Ate some chicken. It was good.

Planet Snoopy happens to be very close to the Diamondback, so that was next. The queue wasn’t terribly long, but we did end up waiting 45 minutes to get on. However, the queues did have plenty of misting fans to make the wait more bearable.

After riding Diamondback in both the middle and front, I can safely say waiting for a front row seat is highly recommended. I don’t scare easily, but there were times when Diamondback was whipping around that I felt I could come out of my seat to my doom. That alone made it a much more thrilling and intense ride than Apollo’s Chariot (which was my favorite coaster until this ride).

Next was the Beast, which had a sign claiming it would be an hour and a half wait. Once we got in line, we saw that it would likely take as long as claimed, because all three queues were being used. Beast was also one of the two rides that commanded the Fast Lane Plus being used (the other being Firehawk). After standing in line for the full hour and a half, I wish we had had one for sure because if you did, there was no wait to get on the ride at all.

However, if there is one ride that is worth waiting for, it’s probably the Beast. This coaster seems to just get better with age as it felt more wild than ever. I forgot how intense the final double helix is, but I think that just added to the thrill and made the wait entirely worth it.

We were going to at least hit the Vortex after this, but the line looked ludicrously long and we were very tired after an early morning and tons of waiting in lines. The Vortex eluded me in 2010, so it once again got away from me. I promise this will not happen next time, though.

When I was last here in 2010, there was no Fast Lane for people to purchase, so the standard line would move much quicker. With this new Fast Lane system, you are definitely encouraged to purchase it (especially on a day like this). For most of the rides, it seemed your wait would have been less than 10 minutes all day. Next time, I’ll pick up a FLP pass before taking on the park, and will be doing it when I probably hit the Point later this year.

Still, the park was a ton of fun and it’s still recommended you go, just keep in mind that you will be waiting for a lot of time unless you grab the FL pass. I’ll hopefully be back next year, and maybe with a season pass as well.