Thursday the 20th of June, which you will observe is more than a month in the past, was the planned last day of our trip. And we had the plan to start the day in Kings Island, getting the ride on The Bat and on Backlot Stunt Coaster that we had missed the day before. (Invertigo was the only coaster we chose to skip; it's a common model that appears at parks unless they work pretty hard to keep them out.)
Banshee did not open, as we'd expected. I don't know when it did open. The park or maybe the authorities were still doing investigations of some kind. I saw a couple people on the Banshee roller coaster's infield, while riding on The Bat.
And The Bat was a good ride, more fun than I remembered. I'm not sure how much of that reflects good maintenance in the nearly five years since we rode it last, how much was that a ride feels fresh and new when it's been a long while, and how much reflects being in good spirits from a quite good weeklong vacation. Backlot Stunt Coaster was also in good shape, with more of the props working than I remembered from last time we were there. I may be conflating it with the ride's twin at Canada's Wonderland. But --- especially given that we'd skipped Backlot Stunt Coaster the day before because it did have long lines --- walking onto that coaster made a nice capstone to a parks tour with very little waiting.
We rode the carousel, of course, but didn't take the time for The Beast which may be the first time we've ever been at Kings Island without riding it. It's certainly the first time we've been at the park and not closed it out.
Kings Island gave us a good place to get breakfast/lunch, of course, so we've way earned out on the all-season dining plan we got last year. And we got the time in the main gift shop that we hoped for. The main gift shop is one with like a half-dozen facades of different shops, all along the main midway near the entrance; it only pretends to be different shops and not very hard. We also discovered they had WPA-style travel posters for many of their rides and a couple feature attractions, some of them very hard to pass up. But, you know, we can't buy everything, especially not for the walls, as we're running short on places to hang things. And I knew that I had something to hang on the wall that would eat up a lot of what remaining available space there was. You'll hear about that soon.
We had to leave, though, fairly soon. Not for work; I'd taken off the next day and I will now swear by the joy of having a day off after the vacation ends. (Three days, if you count the weekend days.) But we planned to pick up our pet rabbit from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents on our way home, and that implied getting from the south end of Ohio to south-central Michigan before 10 pm. And we did have one more place we had to go ...
New month, still not at the end of Halloweekends last year. Here's some more as the sun works on setting.
Jack-o-lantern-y monster folded up, visible by day, because for once I thought to take a picture that wasn't at night with all the fog effects and mood lighting going. It's a weird body design.
Here we got in our ride on Maverick, which had a line of reasonable length for once in the season.
Gargoyle set up outside the Town Hall bathrooms that used to be where the Frontier Sky Ride station was.
Here's another look at that gargoyle who loves touching their chest.
Skyhawk's always a favorite and also a nice big bold pillar of ride.
Here's some of the scenery panels on the giant swing ride, which we admire every time we see it but ride about one year in three.
Trivia: Six invited countries did not send teams to the 1988 Seoul games. North Korea and Cuba refused to participate unless events were held in both Koreas; Nicaragua had internal problems keeping them from fielding a team; and Albania, Ethiopia, and the Seychelles did not respond to the International Olympic Committee's invitation. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.
Currently Reading: John Adams, David McCullough.
