Re: Kings Island | "Banshee" | Mahoossive B&M Invert
Snoo said:
2012Jarrett said:
Hyde244 said:
^ Steel won't be the only thing getting erected.
Hayoo!
The funny thing is that there's a running joke in my family that I'm romantically attracted to certain coasters.
But I laughed HARD when I read that! :lol:
You should probably get checked.
It's kind of an inside joke, I'm fine. Not going into why, but let's just say I accidentally worded something VERY badly talking about Dollywood...
So I have construction shots from today! This transfer track assembly is flying up! They were lifting beams that ran perpendicular to the long sides of it earlier, and I saw a lot of track onsite, including two pieces towards the back of the lot near Adventure Express that looked like they could be for the drop.
I FLIPPED when I saw this queueing for Adventure Express!
Say hello to Mr. crane!
Construction walls are updated with Banshee layout renderings and logos.
Well the park has introduced this new ice cream cone called the Banshee Twist to go along with the coaster. It's a swirl of blueberry ice cream that boasts a suspicious shade of royal blue, and a mixture of vanilla ice cream and red dye number four that sports an equally sketchy shade of pink. And it's HUGE.
Well this is me with mine...
If you think that this oddly-colored ice cream wrecks your insides, you're probably right...
I finished it, but not happily. I ate it all because it was four dollars, but honestly, I wanted to blow chunks afterwards. So we have the cinnamon challenge and the gallon of milk challenge, now we have the Banshee twist challenge! Eat an entire Banshee twist in under twenty minutes without vomitting! (Do NOT get one of these and eat it all in one sitting. They're messy, get all your stuff blue, and make you wish you were never born. I wish they made a smaller version, though, because it was actually good ice cream.)
Footers and supports! I feel like those supports are for the lift hill.
We can see a lift support rising out of that triangular footer soon!
Those closely bunched beams that go perpendicular to where the track will be was what they were installing today. I have footage coming later.
It might help in the future, but there's a large gap in the bottom of the construction fence. When more of this goes vertical, you might want to try using this in October to snag pictures.
Supports!
Those two track pieces behind the truck intrigued me since they were out all alone like that. Could these be for the first drop?
Both of them a bit closer. They look like part of a pullout.
It's small but here's a pretty clear picture of them.
Didn't notice it at the park, but I noticed that they flattened out that area in the grass. Just ways for construction crew to get around or a temporary thing that will become permanent in the future?
This one shows a bit of everything. You can see the brake run/transfer track supports on the far left, and those lonely pullout supports on the far left of the shot.
Noticed that bar-shaped footer on the bottom left of this shot that had space for two supports. If I'm looking at the rendering correctly, the support on the left is for the entry into the dive loop, the one on the right will be used for the pullout.
The fact that you can't see the transfer track assembly from here is a great indicator to just how huge this thing is going to be. I would definitely classify it as a giant invert with Alpengeist, Montu, and Jubilee Odyssey.
Again, if I'm looking at this rendering correctly and matching the right supports to the right footers, the dive loop will be just to the left of where I was standing when I got this shot.
Back to marketing the coaster. There is Banshee merchandise in the gift shops, which include (pretty plain) Banshee logo shot glasses, travel cups, and water bottles in black, blue, clear, and metallic. They're not that exciting right now, but they do have a second style of t-shirt with the Banshee logo against a night skyline of the park, and I bought the blue one. I also noticed that the generic logo t-shirt also came in pink, which I found fitting for Cedar Fair's first female-inspired thrill ride.
Also noticed that they sold (very plain) Banshee hoodies. As much as I'm not keen on the plain merchandise, I did ask a cashier at Thrill Seekers (the logo merchandise shop on International Street) if they had anything more interesting. She told me that they would start getting the cooler stuff in next year when it opened, which is what I was expecting. This stuff's already pretty cool, can't wait to see the bulk of it! Diamondback and Beast have some great things already, I can't wait to see the cool stuff they sell for Banshee!
About the marketing, I've lived in Dayton (an hour from Kings Island) for 13 years and I've NEVER seen them go at it with as much gusto as they are for Banshee! They left a lot of viral advertising stuff up in Action Zone (owls, Gaelic gravestones, video surveillance signs) and every now and then they'd sound the Banshee scream in the area. They had the different rendering videos playing on a cycle on all of the gift shop TVs, and it was working. I saw a lot of people stop and look up to see this, even recall one woman smiling at the end and saying "that looks awesome."
So I have a few videos on the way (I'm still VERY tired, probably tomorrow for these) but that's how Banshee is. I realize some of it you've seen, maybe some of it you haven't, like those two lonely pullout supports in the back. Once I get my license this weekend or the next, on Tuesdays when I don't have class I'll be able to just run on down there and grab pictures. And even in the offseason, I might be able to [strike]steal[/strike] borrow my dad's big, fancy camera with the telephoto lens and just find some place nearby to take pictures across the parking lot. Think Great Wolf Lodge would let me? Worse comes to worse I just pull over and hop out.
