Episode 279 - King for a Day

We are finally on the road and hit up our first amusement park for the 2026 season, Kings Dominion.  Check out our park adventure and see why we make this park a must visit every season.

Transcript

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the 125 Roller Coaster Challenge, the Trimmed and Stapled Podcast. Now, some people have asked me why the Trimmed and Stapled Podcast? What weird name. What is that? Well, we are coaster enthusiasts, or I'm a coaster enthusiast. And uh two things you never want to be when you're a coaster enthusiast is stapled into your chair. That's when they push down too tight so you can't float around and bounce around in the uh seat. Because it's all about airtime when you're a coaster enthusiast, right? And uh the second thing is trim brakes. When you're flying down the hill and you're having a great time and everything's going green, and then all of a sudden they hit the right there and you know slows you down a little bit there. So we call it the Trimmed and Stapled Podcast. You guys, thanks for listening there. But uh, hey guys, this one is called King for a Day, and uh we're gonna let you know why it's called King for the Day in a second. But before we get started, make sure if you like this podcast, we have grown exponentially in the last week. I don't know what happened. We just hit 10,000 downloads with um Bud Sprout. Uh, we used to be with another brand uh company. Now we're with uh Bud Sprout, and we just hit 10,000. And the second we hit 10,000, I don't know if the algorithm picked it up or something like that, or Spotify or Apple Podcasts started pushing it more. But we are drop we are getting 100 to 200 to even 500 downloads a day right now uh with this podcast. So thank you guys so much. And if you like uh roller coaster talk, amusement park talk, uh that kind of stuff there, you're in the right space. We try to keep it between 20 minutes to a half hour because our goal is to uh make your drive time back or forth to work enjoyable. And we've been dropping about uh two episodes a week, so and we're mixing them up. So make sure if you're on Apple uh podcast, over on Spotify, anywhere you can get your podcast, make sure you follow us. Now, what we're doing with the YouTube channel is we're gonna make the first three episodes, so three episodes long, are going to be there for the general public. And then after that, they drop over to the members only there because uh we don't want to clog up our feed with um you know a hundred episodes of the podcast. We want to just give you the most recent ones if you are a uh someone who follows there. And we are trying to get to 10,000 subscribers. We're at looking right now today, we're at 7676. Kind of a cool number there, but definitely not 10000. So if uh you like our content, make sure you like and subscribe. We're going to 50 parks this year, and that's what this episode is all about. The first official amusement park that we got to go to in 2026. So we've been to Chocolate World, we've been to Zoo America, we've been to some water parks already with Dreamworks Water Park and of course Sahara Sam's. But this episode is talking to you about our first amusement park that we went to there, and it was King's Dominion in Doswell, Virginia. Um, now this was an old Cedar Fair park, now it's a Six Flags park, but a lot of different things were going on this day. We went during what they call the spring break time. So uh what they do is they open up the park for a week. It's funny because when you're walking around the park, you see people that, you know, hey, don't you work at Dawny Park? Hey, don't you aren't you from there? Yeah, they bring in people from all over the uh Six Flags area to uh basically uh the family there to um you know operate the rides, get the food and the whole nine yards. And uh we went basically at the end of March. So we actually got our first park in there, I believe it was the 29th, is when we went, and we went there with a couple goals. So the first goal that we had going to King's Dominion was how is our membership going to be now incorporated into the uh legacy Cedar Fair chain? Um now, if you remember, you know, they merged about two years ago, then last year, you could use your Six Flags membership to get into the Cedar Fair parks, Dorney Park, King's Dominion, Cedar Point, all those now would work as if you walk into a Six Flags America, Six Flags Darien Lake, Six Flags Great Adventure. So we were able to go into the parks. And even we could probably get preferred parking if you wanted to play around a little bit there. However, the big perks like the Bring a Friend Pass and the uh discounts on food and merchandise and that stuff, that was not incorporated until this year. So now this year, you're able to go to a uh Six Flags Great Adventure and you would be able to get your 50% off food, 50% off merchandise at the Six Flags. Well, now I wanted to see would that work at King's Dominion? Now, it was a little bit weird on that. So when I went there, I got my four frontal line passes, which is fantastic for when I go to these big parks. That's going to help me when I go to Sear Point, jump in line there for the three credits I need to get, which is Top Thrill 2, uh Sirens Um Call or whatever the Sirens Siren 8 or whatever it is, the Sirens one. And then the mouse. I actually still have to get the mouse. So got the four frontal line passes, went through the system there. I'll do a sidebar real quick here. Um, not a big fan of having to bring my phone into the line every time. I am somebody who's pro locker. When I go to a park, I want to lock myself up and five dollars. I mean, I just did DreamWorks uh water park where it was a $25 locker. So when I see $5 or $6 or even $8 all day locker, I'm okay with that. But what they do here is before the six lives you used to have the wristband, I guess that got expensive, you know, they're trying to cut costs. So now they want you to have your phone. The problem with that is you do not show the attendant that you have the fast pass until you're almost in the station. Hence, what I used to do last year was I would show the attendant, boom, um, you know, hit it with the uh button there, I'll be right back. Let me throw this in the locker, let me jump in line. They don't let you do that now. So now you have to walk all the way through. Perfect example was RepTa. I walked all the way through the line for Reptera. Now, when you do something like Twisted Timbers, there's a locker. So halfway through it, because they don't want people having things in their pocket and flying out. So there, all right, I put my phone there and stuff like that. What kind of upset me with Reptera and other ones that I've done since then is okay, we're gonna scan your phone. Okay, good, you have the front of the line pass. Okay, here's a bin. And right in front of there, they have we are not responsible for uh lost or stolen items. And I'm sitting there like, you're forcing me to put my $1,500 phone in this bin and then leave it there as I ride it. And you're forcing me to do it. It's not a choice that I'm making. You are forcing me to use this front of the line pass to leave my phone unattended where anybody can come over and pick it up and go. And if you try to bring a bag, they're like, nope, nope, gotta put down the locker. I'm like, but I'd rather the phone be in a bag, so it's more of a challenge for somebody to steal it than someone to walk by, grab it, stick it in their pocket, and be done. So that's my little sidebar. Not a big fan of that. But I am glad that I got the frontline passes. Now, later on, I was getting ready to buy a Pantherian shirt, and it didn't, my my 50% off did not work at that store. So I went all the way back up to guest services. They said, Yeah, it may work, it may not work, we don't know. Later on, I bought Fudge, got my 50% off. I'm like, okay, so there's no rhyme or reason. So even though if King's Dominion, if you are a legacy membership, it will work eventually. It's just they're working out the bugs. All right. Now let's talk about what we did here. Now, going to King's Dominion, first of all, I love this park. It is one of my favorite parks. I love to visit this park, and I usually do it early in the season, kind of the case this time. But it's always, I gotta make sure I get there in July because I really, really want to get that water park. Every time I visit, even last year, which was very disappointing, every time I visit, the water park is not going. So I have no film or anything on the water park, and especially now that we're doing the um water slide challenge. Uh, I really want to get there to ride those slides. So I definitely have to force myself to go back in July. But this was I there's a couple videos that I've been willing wanting to do for a while. And if you're familiar with our YouTube channel, we do Let's Eat, which is all the food locations. We do Let's Play, which is all the carnival games and games locations, we do merch or let's go shopping. Because some people don't know what merch is, so that's why I changed the let's go shopping, but I call it merch. And there we do all the things that you you know buy, like even the henna's and all that stuff. We go through that, and then we have Showtime, which of course is here's the different live shows they have throughout the year. I kind of focus on the daily shows. So I've been trying to do all three of those at King's Dominion. Now, every time I start to do it, I give up because especially let's eat, because King's Dominion has so many food options. And I'm saying there is so many food options at King's Dominion that it gets really challenging because when you do a video like that, it's an all or nothing kind of thing. If I miss one, if I miss a location, the first five comments are what about Tower Fries? What about Tower Fries? Hey, you missed Tower Fries, so you almost feel like you have to get them all. The other thing is when the water park is inside of the park, like Hershey Park, you have the boardwalk at Hershey Park, they are kind of, you know, you have to go through Hershey Park to get there. If they're not a separate gate, like a lot of the Hurricane Harbors are separate gates and stuff like that. I feel like I kind of need to get those food options in there. But because I've never been able to do the um uh water park, Soak City, I was always dragging my feet. Well, this year I was like, nope, I'm getting a let's eat done. And we knocked out let's eat and merch. Um, and then what's new, of course. We always like to do what's new as one of the first ones we do when we enter the park. So those were the three videos we wanted to do. I was thinking about doing let's play, but I didn't want to get into a situation where I watered down what I did because I've kind of learned how to do this now. If I'm going into a park and I have to get those four done, I call them the cuts because the way I do it is I walk up to um a food stance, say the chicken shack, and it's like, hey everybody, I'm over here, this part of the park. Here's the chicken shack, here's the menu. And then I walk to another you know area, blah, blah, blah, and I do that. So I kind of cut it all together on the floor. You know, the editing is very simple. It's here's the beginning, here's the middle, here's the end. Mix these guys up, boom, here you go. So I call them the cuts. And when it comes to the cuts, uh in the past, I used to do, okay, we're gonna do all the let's eat and then go around the entire park and do all the food. Then, okay, I want to try to do this one now. Let's play, let's go all around the park and do that. I learned with Busch Gardens, Tampa, if I have enough time, that's always the key. Does he have enough time to do it? Because you got it's all or nothing. Go to one section like Old Virginia and just walk through it. And hey, there is a merch stand, a uh t-shirt shop. All right, let's go in there and do that. Okay, oh, look, right here is a dipping dots. Let's do a thing with dipping dots, and that's how I do it now. But I got to the point where I'm like, I can do merch because I knew there's a lot of stores, and I knew let's eat. There's a ton of food options at King's Dominion that I didn't want to try to get greedy and try to do let's play along with that. And showtime, the shows haven't started yet, so I couldn't even do that. So I only focused on the two big boys, let's eat and merch. And let's eat is up right now on the channel. Merch will be up probably in about another week or so. I like mixing up. I don't like having here's all the King's Dominions, here's all the blah blah blah. I like to I have five, five uh or six parks going right through the system right now. So I like to jump them around. Also on the YouTube channel, if you haven't noticed, we aren't doing daily content anymore. There's days that we just skip. Um, because I don't want to overwhelm people, especially on the shorts front. If you like shorts, you want to become a member, or follow us on Instagram uh or Facebook or Tickety Talk uh because we would put the shorts up on there. But we are cutting down on our shorts on the YouTube channel because I think it was just watering down the um you know people doing it. I and I think it was actually hurting our subscribe uh subscriptions. If you're a shorts person, you are already on TikTok, you're already on there, and it's 125 Roller Coaster. Um, so definitely check it out there. But if you're looking for full-time uh full length content, and every day you're getting a notification, this guy dropped a short, this guy dropped a short, this guy dropped a short, you're not going to subscribe, you're gonna unsubscribe, actually. We we do see people, you know, come in, come out, come in, come out. Um, and like I said, we're at 7676. I'm hoping to get to 10,000. So I think one of the things is if you do like shorts on YouTube, definitely become a member. It's 199, you know, not a big deal. So because of that, I'm not filming as many shorts. But um, but where I was going with that is, you know, you're gonna get a lot of full length on that in there too. So we did a what's new, we did a let's eat and do that, and uh let's eat and a merch. We're done talking about that. Let's talk about our day. So when we got there, went to guest services, found out that hey, friend of line passes. So I'm walking through, and there was a couple rides I needed to get uh during this visit. So, first of all, uh we are not counting coasters that we um have done before. So if um last year we did Twisted Tempers, we did uh Grizzly, we did Dominator. So if I ride them, I'm riding them for fun. And I did Grizzly, uh, love that the retracking on that says fantastic. Uh did Twisted Tempers, of course. You know, it's a top 10 coaster, top five coaster in my mind. Uh so I always got to get on those. But there was two coasters last year that we weren't able to get on. First one is Pantherian. Because we went early in the season, they were constructing it, they were painting it, they were re-theming it, but it actually wasn't functional when I visited the two times last year. Uh, first time was really early, during spring break. Second time was right after Memorial Day, but before the water park opened up. So I never got on Pantherian. So that was when I had to get on. And then the other one was actually when I went last time, Racer75 had they don't really um, they've been running one track. Every time I go, they they're running one track. And last year, they were doing, I call it the inner track. Uh, the track that basically when you're going up and down, you are on the side of the water park and the woods. All right. So on the right hand side. So last year I never got to do the midway so uh way, the one on the left. Uh I call it the midway because it runs right along the midway. And this year, it was actually the opposite. So I was able to do that. So got on Racer 75, jumped on that, got that credit. So that is one of the three that we got that day. And then uh near the end of the day, um, because Pantherian, uh Pantherian, I believe it's called, um, was on was open and closed, open and close, open and close, and we finally got on it. And man, it the intensity of this ride is just still so crazy. I can't believe um I grayed out, uh, going after the drop and doing that turn, grayed out, but the rest of it just the transitions to me, it's not so much that drop with that sharp bank turn at the bottom that makes you gray out. To me, there's one part of this ride where you're turning to the left, and then it just in like two feet of track, you're changing direction in the other direction, and you're like, what the hell just happened there? It's like, how's this thing staying on this track? Um thank you, Intamin, you know, with that experience there. But the new theming is great. I actually got a Pantherian shirt um because this is a it's great. The theming is fantastic, it fits in with the jungle expedition. I'm still really curious what they're gonna do with uh back lot stunk coaster, and of course, Flight of Fear. Flight of Fear, they might be able to change that into a jungle environment, you know, with some lights and shows. But I don't know what they're gonna do with um back backyard stunk coaster, because that just does not fit into anything uh there. But so I got those two, and I imagine I got a third credit. Well, it's March. All right, it is March when I'm visiting, but yet it was 85 degrees, and I walked by the old Virginia section and no, the rapids ride was not going. But the flume was, the log flume was the Shenandoah Lumber Company was going. And if you're familiar with what we've been doing, this year, yes, we're not gonna do coasters that we did last year, but we're gonna add the log flumes into that count because log flumes are kind of like roller coasters where they're kind of custom, uh, each one's different than the rest. And I like log flumes, and I want to eventually do POVs at log flumes. So that being said, we jumped on Shenandoah um lumber company, and I want to tell you right off the bat, this is not one of my favorite log flumes. Uh, you go up the hill, you know, the lift hill, and then in the back, you kind of just meander on this flat land in the woods, and it's great because it is in the woods, but all you do is go left, right, left, right, left, right, turn around, left, right, left, right, go up the hill, and then a big drop. It is not one of the most aggressive um log flume designs I've ever seen. Um, so it's definitely a bottom-tier log flume, but it's March. It's March, and I am on a log flume. I could not be happier with my life, and it's 85 degrees. I got sunburned because I was not expecting it to be a cloudless day. Um, but it was just great. All in all, it was great. So coasters that day that I rode. Uh I am bummed I didn't get on uh Dominator, but I did get on Grizzly, Twisted Timbers, of course, Racer75, Pantherian. Uh, I also got it on Reptilian, and of course RepTerra. And this time I went on RepTERRA, I went on the back, and it was a much better ride in the back than the front. And also, there's always a less line because people want to be in the front. Uh, the launch was great, all the turnarounds were fantastic. It's a really good ride. Now, if you're looking for intensity of a coaster, this one on the lower side of the intensity. It's more a lot of swooping turns and all that. Not you don't have the upside-down twists going through keyholes and stuff like that. But it's something that it the general public would enjoy a lot more. And remember, you've already got i305 Pantherian down the road, and you got Twisted Timbers that has all the inversions and quickness. So there is enough thrill rides. This Reptera definitely uh fits a better niche, uh, you know, that they need. You know, let's be honest, volcano was a neat concept, but it wasn't very intense. You had that flip out of the volcano, and after that, it was just meandering. This, you got that launch, and then you got the meandering. So they kind of fit the same scheme there. But all in all, ride-wise, had a great time there. A little bum again on Dominator. I'll make sure I'll jump on it later because that is one of the best floorless coasters, and that loop is just fantastic. Um, food. I actually did all the food sites there, uh, a lot of traditional ones there, and a lot of the what's new for this year is their food. Uh, they're changing a couple um other storefronts to different names, Blue Ridge, um, or eatery or something like that that has turkey legs and stuff like that. Um, yeah, they changed the uh mac and cheese place into a cantina, so it's more of a Mexican uh burrito bar kind of thing there. I think uh Chipotle or something like that. But for me, when I went to go eat there, I wanted, I really wanted to get to the firehouse barbecue. But uh this was a Tuesday that I went and it was mobbed, it was packed, and the only time you really saw it wasn't so much in the lines because I had the front of the line passes. I saw the crowds when I was trying to film the food locations and then trying to get food. So, eating-wise, um I didn't eat. I didn't eat, I ate when I left. Um met up with uh Kylie over in DC and grabbed food there just because the lines were kind of crazy there. But I definitely want to check the chicken shack out because it looks like they got some really unique um the Cheetos uh breading and stuff like that. Really neat on that end there, too. The firehouse uh barbecue is a place I definitely want to make sure I try. And then the other one, too, is the um the one with the pig over the barbecue, I believe it's the barbecue bar place, the perky pig or something like that. Um that's over in old Virginia section. I do love the old Virginia section because um it's more of a laid back. It's it's not Wild West, but it's definitely a lot more laid back than Candy Apple Grove or Jungle Expedition, because that one's huge. But all in all, fantastic day at King's Dominion. Now, when I go back, I definitely want to hit that water park. I want to get the water slides, of course. But I also want to do a spotlight on the food at Soak City and then the stores at Soak City. And then when I go back, I gotta do the uh let's play and all that stuff. But what is your thoughts on King's Dominion? Let us know in the comment section. Is that where you want to kick off your year? What park is the park that you, when you when it's time for you to go to a park, which one is one like I gotta kick off my season here? Uh let us know in the comment section once again, guys. Thank you for listening. And I cannot wait to see you in the queue in 2026.