That video makes me sad I wasn't there!
At least it gets to be the first coaster I drive to ride next year! If all goes well at Dollywood (which should considering I'm just credit hogging Sideshow Spin) and Busch Gardens Tampa this season, this'll also be my 80th credit!
LONG BORING POST ALERT, HERE'S A SUMMARY OF WHAT I THINK:
*If Cedar Fair has success with this invert, they might be able to pull something similar off at Valleyfair and Kings Dominion
*If Banshee isn't as successful as GateKeeper, Cedar Fair could go back to wing coasters and put one called The Bat at Kings Island. Vortex isn't as popular as it once was and a wing coaster would be a good replacement, especially if called The Bat since it would be on the site of the original Bat.
*The announcement said that Banshee was part of a line of rides being used to clean up aging areas of the park (Diamondback cleaned up Rivertown, Windseeker cleaned up Coney Mall, ect.) so with that the only two areas of the park that haven't been recently renovated are International Street (new turnstile building) and Oktoberfest.
I think that if this one does well we could see another one of these inverts go up at Valleyfair (I feel like that park REALLY needs a new coaster) and possibly Kings Dominion (true, they get Volcano but as great as a ride as it is it really doesn't feel like it fully fills the role of an inverted coaster, I see it more as the park's launched coaster alongside Flight of Fear and Backlot) and then maybe they'll start putting more wing coasters up. Carowinds, CGA, Knotts, and Canada's Wonderland all feel like parks that could nicely pull off Gatekeeper-esque wing coasters, although maybe not ones that fly over the entrances. For instance, I personally like the deep south architecture on the Carowinds entrance and I don't want to see them mess with it.
In regards to the future of just Kings Island, I was thinking the other night while trying to fall asleep, could Vortex's station be converted into a wing coaster station? It already has a queue that crosses over the track. With a little modification, I could potentially see a wing coaster station in there. Only big issue I can think of is the length of those massive trains. But aside from the station, Vortex was all the rage when I was younger but now I feel like nobody likes it. In middle school for me (when I was still GP), I remember that the rides you couldn't miss if you went were Son of Beast, Firehawk, and Vortex. But just last time we went, Vortex barely had a wait and felt pretty much forgotten. As nice as it looks from around the park, I do feel like it's coming close to being on the chopping block. And what a better replacement than a wing coaster in the same spot called The Bat on the same plot of land originally occupied by the original The Bat? Wing coasters are close enough to inverts that they can fill their role if needed, but different enough that it would be okay to have both at the same park, and I could see a wing coaster looking very nice in that spot. They're obviously aware that they have the ability to do this as seen from all the false leads and having two spooky-themed coasters (Beast and Bat) right next to each other would be great.
If they don't do this, then I bet they do something with the park's Oktoberfest area. Maybe give Adventure Express's special effects some TLC (I can understand Cedar Fair not wanting to spend money building and designing theming, but with Ouimet's Disney background I see no reason why he wouldn't want to fix it up a bit) and maybe refer to my idea from earlier and tear down Sling Shot and expand Oktoberfest back into the undeveloped land, maybe building a path between Banshee and Adventure Express. Of course, they should also fix the existing Oktoberfest up a bit, maybe justify doing it by putting a flat ride (a Gerstlauer Sky Fly or Barnstormer-scale S&S Screamin' Swing would work well for this) beside that path behind Delirium on the pond opposite of Viking's Fury) in? What Bavarian theming still survives there to this day is beautiful and if Banshee's placemaking is as well themed as it appears to be then I think putting the same amount of effort into this aging section of the park could end up working out nicely. In that video they mentioned that they got to clean up a lot of the park with new attractions (Windseeker and Dinosaurs cleaned up Coney Mall, Diamondback cleaned up Rivertown, Banshee is cleaning up Action Zone, Soak City conversion cleaned up the waterpark in 2012) and after factoring in the Planet Snoopy conversion, I looked at the map and marked off all the areas they had yet to renovate with a new attraction and ended up with International Street/entrance, X-Base, and Oktoberfest. X-Base I marked off since it's so small and they recently got Firehawk even though it wasn't spoken about, so that leaves Oktoberfest and International Street. I already mentioned what potential I think Oktoberfest has, but International Street, while it isn't aging as much as Oktoberfest, could definitely use a bit of a facelift for some of the storefronts and definitely a new turnstile building.
Holy crap I'm getting off topic!
Back to the present, I do want to see what they do with cattelpens on Banshee. The rendering probably didn't show them for a reason, which worries me. I'm scared they'll be like Firehawk's or Diamondback's where there's little to no shade or theming. While I'm not saying that they have to build a giant gothic cathedral with air conditioning and music and a preshow, just something that looks sort of nice like GateKeeper's with the awnings and view of the beach would be nice. Maybe play some eerie music and build a wrought iron pergola over the cattlepen and plant some vines that could climb it. It doesn't seem too extreme for Cedar Fair and would provide some much-needed shade.
And I'll probably sound goofy for saying this, but one of my favorite parts of GateKeeper and Wild Eagle were that
clang...clang...clang noise that wing coasters make when they go out of the station into the turn into the lift hill. I know it isn't a wing coaster, but with the similar turn into the lift I hope Banshee makes a similar noise when it exits the station.
So I know I basically listed the park's future for the next decade or so but that's the direction I feel like Kings Island is taking and what Banshee could be seen as in regards to being an indication to the park's future.
