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Kings Island: General Discussion

Screamscape are reporting that King's Island have applied for the trademarks "Orion" and "Polaris"

Cedar Fair filed for a couple of new ride name trademarks this week, looking to possibly use the names “ORION” and “POLARIS” for new rides in 2020. Chances are one of these could be for whatever coaster Kings Island is planning, and interesting to note that both seem to cary a celestial theme, with Orion being one of the most famous constellations in the night sky and Polaris also being known as the North Star. For longtime readers still keeping track, Cedar Fair finally released their claim on the name Centurion earlier this year, so that one is off the table, though they are still hanging onto “The Ledge” for some reason.
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Polaris eh, what sort of trademark? I know AMD use the Polaris name for their upcoming GPU architecture. Different field, but I am clueless to how trademarks work to be fair.

As one is a theme park ride and the other a computer graphics chip architecture, I assume there won't be much of an issue. I can't see people confusing the power plant of the upcoming PS5 with a diver coaster, however, this is America.
 
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When I hear the word "Polaris", I think of an SLBM capable of raining nuclear death upon multiple cities from a single launch.
 
So some plans of Kings Island's Giga have leaked:

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Praying that they are not genuine, it looks to be hideously short.
 
Rob said:
So some plans of Kings Island's Giga have leaked:

4mnys4p.jpg


Praying that they are not genuine, it looks to be hideously short.
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Where did you find these?

It surely can't be a Giga - that turnaround would need to be seriously high up, and the helix too - otherwise it would kill you. You would also be hitting the breakrun tun at a hideous speed.

I can't even make up my mind what it could be - a dive coaster, perhaps? Or maybe a wing or flying coaster?
 
I hope the pacing is faster than that POV depicts, otherwise it's going to be pretty forceless over the hills and quite frankly, a bit pointless....
 
I know it isn't exactly the longest of layouts, but I'm sure B&M will cram lots of thrill into the length that they have! Also, this is merely an overhead profile; the layout below could well be the world's best coaster for all we know!
 
Leaked plans confirm the above layout:



Antinos over on CoasterForce has managed to work out the following from the plans.
Antinos on CF said:
Here's what I've deduced from reading the high and low points on the drawing:
  • 296 foot lift with 301 foot drop
  • 170ish foot tall Stengel dive element
  • 170-200ish foot tall tilted dive loop esque turn around
  • 70 foot tall airtime hill
  • 140 foot tall airtime hill
  • 110 foot tall helix, probably more similar to Apollo's Chariot than Shambhala's ampersand
  • 90 foot tall "hive dive" turn
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It will clearly be a good coaster, but I am still concerned at the length. Oh well, there's always Beast!
 
Kings Island have started teasing for the new 2020 coaster with some posters on the construction wall:

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Screamscape have posted some interesting analaysis of this, suggesting that Invertigo could be closing at the end of the 2019 season:
Screamscape said:
Kings Island has begun posting some teaser items in the park regarding their 2020 coaster, which is being referred to as Project X. On Monday a couple of large posters appears on a construction wall which can be seen in this post from Wild Gravity Travels. On the left was a poster for Invertgo and one for Firehawk on the right.
Both list Vekoma as the Project Partner, along with some interesting stats for the ride, with Invertigo listed as “Project X; Sequence VIII; April 17, 1999” and Firehawk listed at the top as “Project X; Sequence IX; May 26, 2007”. While I’m not quite sure what the Sequence numbering is meant to mean, the jump from Roman Numeral 8 to 9 almost seems to imply that Project X would be the next one in this evolution. So what do the two have in common? Well, both were coaster designs that ran under the tracks, with Invertigo being an Inverted design and Firehawk being a Flyer. Follow along with this logic and it almost makes you wonder if they are trying to trick us into thinking that the 2020 coaster may be an Inverted Mega-Coaster… but with the track seeming to be under construction at the nearby manufacturing plant and clearly labeled as a standard Mega Coaster design, this shouldn’t be the case. Though the idea of an Inverted Mega Coaster does bring a smile to my face as something I’d love to see someday.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the Invertgo poster has a large ‘K’ in the background and Firehawk has a large “I’ in the background… so in order it says “KI”, which is fitting.
There is one other item of note… something that may be more disturbing to the Kings Island coaster count. Under the work Vekoma on the Firehawk poster it also says “11:AZ” According to a theory by one reader, the AZ designation could be a code to say that ride’s lifespan (A to Z) was just 11 years. This is actually true as Firehawk opened in 2007 and closed for good in 2018. If you take this line of thought over to the Invertigo poster, it is labeled as “20:AZ”, opening in 1999 and if it closed in 2019, that would be exactly 20 years. So this could be a hint that Invertigo will be leaving the park at the end of this season.
Jump ahead to Tuesday afternoon and the park added a third poster to the wall, located far to the left of the first two, with a healthy gap between. The third poster is for Flight of Fear, with a large “O” in the background and is labeled as “Project X; Sequence V; June 18, 1996”. Judging from a picture showing the entire wall, it does look like there is ample room to place more posters in-between the groups for Sequence VI and VII. As the “Partner” here is listed as Premier (aka: Premier RIdes) it would seem the only thing they all have in common now would be the fact that they are all Steel coasters. Also worth mentioning is that Flight of Fear’s designation is “23:NV”, and not another “AZ” reference, with 23 being the number of years Flight of Fear has been in operation (1996 to 2019). While I’m not quite sure what the NV may be in reference to, it does not do anything to deter the thought that Invertigo could be at the end of its lifespan.
It is possible that the large “O” could also be part of the new ride’s name… though the placement of an “O” as the 5th letter out of 7 possible letters, does not fit in with either the “ORION” or “POLARIS” names filed with the trademark database.
For now we have to wait for the next poster to arrive… but will it be on Wednesday or will we have to wait a little longer?
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Bit of an update on this. There are now various posters up on the construction fence and the latest is a hashtag that contains a QR code, and said QR code leads to an online petition:



The petition is from a 'Concerned Citizen' and is calling for Kings Island to reveal what is happening behind the construction fence. This all looks very fun for Kings Islands' marketing team!

Meanwhile, footers are going in on the construction site:

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Source

The annoucement of the coaster is set to be on 15th August.
 
Orion. 300ft. 91mph. 5,321ft long.

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  • Ride Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
  • Coaster Type: Steel
  • Classification: Giga
  • Lift/Launch System: Chain lift hill
  • Duration: 3 minutes
  • Trains: 3 trains with 8 cars. Riders are seated 4 across in a single row for a total of 32 riders per train
  • Capacity: 1,650 riders per hour
  • Minimum Height Requirement: 54 inches
  • Ride Opening: Spring 2020
  • Track Length: 5,321 feet
  • Height of First Drop: 300 feet
  • Length of First Drop: 447 feet
  • Total Number of Hills: 8
  • Height of Hills: 287 feet, 174 feet, 202 feet, 56 feet, 147 feet, 125 feet, 90 feet, 83 feet
  • Top Speed: 91 mph
 
Wow, didn't see that one coming! :p

It's clearly going to be a good coaster. And it is strange to a coaster that is over 5,000 feet in length short, but it just does seem short. This is however the shortest of B&M's Gigas and that brake run is so far off the ground showing how much potential energy is left wasted come the end.

A welcome addition to the park but it could have been so much better.
 
Gah! Even virtual POVs are now mounting the camera at bloody foot height! :banghead:

And I agree, Rob, this current fad of B&M only building the first half of the ride, then running out of interest after what should be the midcourse block brake is no longer funny. Just think how much better these coasters could be if they then went in to a nice fast twisty section to use up all that wasted potential energy!
 
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