Kings Island, Cincinnati, OH - Son of Beast ride closed - not told when would re-open - other poor experiences

# 13 for July 16, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on July 15, 2003:

From:

RE: Kings Island, Cincinnati, OH - Son of Beast ride closed - not told when would re-open - other poor experiences

While taking my family to King's Island I noted a few disappointments with the park. One of which has already been mentioned by another complaint on this site.

While waiting in line to ride the Son of Beast, the ride became temporarily closed for an unspecified amount of time. No one ever came out to tell us for how long, or why the ride was being closed. When we reached the ride finally, I asked an attendant what the reason was for the delay, she claimed she did not know.

Many of the attractions were canceled or delayed with no explanation.

There are not enough rides that children and adults can ride together. (It seem as though anything my son was tall enough to ride, I was too tall to ride with him.)

They have a "No beverages allowed to be brought in park" policy, they claim this is for our safety, which makes no sense. Once you enter the park you can buy the exact same beverages you could bring with you, including beer. Where exactly is the danger?

I expect to have to open my wallet and dig a little deeper while taking my kids out to a amusement park, however King's Island is beyond ridiculous. We realized that we forgot the sunscreen for the kids, when we went to the store there in the park, they wanted $15.00 for a small tube of it.

Coke cost $2.75 for a twenty ounce. $10.00 for a photo of you on a ride or in other various places in the park. $3.00 for lemonade, $9.00 to park,(you get the idea) not to mention that once you pay the huge cost to enter the park, you'll come across a few rides that, guess what!, cost money to ride. It's worse than most movie theaters prices. That's pretty bad.

And finally many of the lines could've gone quicker had they filled the seats, many times I witnessed empty seats not being used, On Congo falls a ride where there are five seats per row, I saw as little as two people in a row.

On the 3-D Sponge Bob ride, the seats are divided into pairs, many people riding the ride went on in pairs, and if one person is going solo for the ride, the next people behind him ride as a pair, neither would sit by him, and just take the next two available seats leaving an empty seat, this would happen every two or three pairs of seats. They could easily enforce a policy making people sit in the next seat or find someone else riding solo.