The Great American Ballpark has met the Midwest’s amusement park this summer! New to King’s Island this year is the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Grille. It is a full-service, sit-in restaurant and bar in the Riverton area of the park (which is near Diamondback, White Water Canyon, and at the edge of Planet Snoopy, though you really can’t miss it).Beat the heat in their refreshing air-conditioned building, and get your fill of sports while you consume some of the most quality food in the park! Enjoy a meal with ribs, burgers, and wraps, while being surrounded by authentic Reds memorabilia and about twenty television sets airing ESPN. You can also learn some of the rich history of the team from the seventy-five Hall of Fame plaques honoring the players and management, along with jerseys, photos and more dating back to the first professional baseball team in the 1800’s. Also available is a ticket kiosk where you can buy and print tickets for your next trip to the Great American Ballpark. You can also dine out on their patio that overlooks the Diamondback ride. If you’re a member of the Reds Hall of Fame, or have a gold or platinum pass to the park, there’s even more for you to enjoy, including half-off an appetizer when ordering two entrees. Thrills certainly connect at Kings Island; and this summer, the thrills of local baseball and adrenaline-pumping coasters have joined to add even more to your summer fun in southwestern Ohio.
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Imagine with me: the sight of many exciting roller coasters and thrill rides, the thunderous sounds of these rides in action and the shrieking delight of those upon them. The taste of succulent icee drinks and funnel cakes. The feeling of wind slapping your face and your stomach shifting as your ride descends a hill or spins through a loop! Now, imagine all that experience on seven hundred and seventy-three acres of land where eighty rides and attractions stand. I hope you’re imagining Kings Island, the largest amusement park in the Midwest! Can you imagine this place has been operating for forty years?! Pouring dedication into improving the experience with each year since the very beginning, the popular theme park has gone through quite an evolutionary process. Envision with me now the many faces and changes of Kings Island.
Kings Island opened on April 29th, 1972 after two years of construction in Warren County, Ohio. It was conceived in the early sixties to replace Coney Island which became limited in expansion and suffered damage by a major flood. The iconic park landmarks like International Street, the 1/3rd scale model of the Eiffel Tower, and the Royal Fountain—the 600,000 gallon pool shooting 10,000 gallons of water a minute into the air—were some of the original attractions. The park was originally owned by Taft Broadcasting Company, which was largely possessed by Paramount Studios and came to own Hannah-Barbera Productions. With these connections, the children’s section of the park promoted Hannah-Barbera for a long time, starting with a junior roller coaster named at the time, Scooby-Doo. Popular seventies sitcoms The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch (made by Paramount Studios) both staged episodes in the park. Another major event to be staged at the park was Evil Kneivel jumping fourteen Greyhound buses in the parking lot in 1975. In 1979, The Beast was added, the biggest, baddest, longest, fastest wooden roller coaster in the world! The popular water ride, White Water Canyon, was added in 1985. The Vortex was added in 1987, and in 1989 a twelve acre water park, then named Water Works, was added.
In 1993, Kings Island was sold to Paramount Communications Inc. Under this ownership, themes from their movies were incorporated into the rides, so names like Top Gun, Face/Off, and The Italian Job Stunt Track came to be. Nickelodeon themes began appearing in 1994 and would remain until 2009. In 2000, the Son of the Beast was added, being famed for breaking five world records, tying with one, and being the first wooden coaster built since the Beast. In 2006, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, owners of Cedar Point, bought out Kings Island and removed the cinematic themes. Also in this year, a freak accident closed the Son of the Beast. After making some changes, Cedar Fair reopened it on July 4th, 2007 and ran it for nearly two years before closing it indefinitely after another injury report. In 2009, Cedar Fair opens its own first edition to the park, the Diamondback. It was the biggest investment for the park to date! The newest ride, the WindSeeker, opened last summer. It is a three hundred and one feet tall swing ride featured in several of Cedar Fair’s parks. It is the highest riding attraction in Kings Island!
Can you imagine such a modern, innovative amusement park replacing such a classic, long-standing one? Can you visualize some of the most highest-riding, fastest, and most furious roller coaster rides around? Can you imagine new thrills and excitement developing year after year? Can you imagine forty years of it all? If you’ve never been to Kings Island, it’s probably hard to imagine. Experience it for yourself if and when you can! Go to visitkingsisland.com to buy tickets, passes, and plan a trip today!
We are so plugged into things these days. We plug in phones or music players to charge and manage them. We plug in appliances to use them. We plug in extension cords to power tools at a distance. Sometimes we need to plug in extra plugs for all our things that are electronically powered. I’m sure we all own a power strip or two for that purpose. They’re rectangular plastic blocks, usually a white or cream color, with a glowing red switch on the end. You’ve seen one power strip, you’ve pretty much seen them all, right? Well, not exactly. It’s highly unlikely you have ever seen a Power Squid before.
The Power Squid is a squid-shaped plug board. Acting as the tentacles are bendable power sockets and the body possesses the breaker switch along with other functional and protective units. Some models have surge protection and power filters. The power cord of the Calamari edition-the most technologically customized and most expensive Power Squid-has a rotatable platform for flexibility in plugging into the wall. Available on powersquid.com, the products are sold a few different colors. All Squids are under lifetime warranty. The Calamari edition and the other costly cephalopods come with a $75,000 equipment insurance policy. This company strives for prompt delivery service. They do their best to ship orders received before noon (EST) on the same business day. At the most it will take about three business days to deliver.
The Power Squid is a product of Flexity LLC, a subsidiary of Trident Design LLC. They’re based out of Columbus, Ohio. Chris Hawker conceived the idea of the Power Squid in 2000 when he noticed a mess of cords underneath his stereo late at night. Hawker documents the process of bringing the Power Squid to life in a six-part blog series titled “The Song of the Power Squid: The Inside Story of the Life of an Invention”. In addition to this products history, he shares useful information surrounding the business of innovation. You can read these blogs on Trident-design.com.
You haven’t seen it all until you’ve seen the Power Squid! It has all the electrical capabilities of your typical power strip (if not more), but its sleekly designed for greater function. Get plugged into a Power Squid!
Think back to your days in kindergarten or preschool. Upon arriving to class each morning, you stowed away your favorite cartoon backpack and lunchbox in your own cubby hole. Thanks to Ampersand, the days of the cubby hole have returned in a modish new way, wall pockets! Ampersand wall pockets are three-dimensional pentagon shaped interior décor made of 100% recycled e-flute cardboard. While not quite big enough to hold your backpack and lunchbox, these wall pockets are ideal organizers for smaller belongings like office supplies.
Ampersand carries a few more exceptional home products in addition to the wall pockets. Inspired by the visual beauty and physical regulations of nature, Ampersand also carries a bulbous lamp, a multi-functional rubber rug, and a kitchen table constructed with no hardware or adhesive (the company says its held together by gravity and pressure). Ampersand products can be purchased in one of three business locations in Cincinnati, Ohio. There is nowhere on the internet they can be found.
You’ve come a long way from kindergarten, and so has the “hole-in-the-wall” storage concept. For a storage unit, Ampersand wall pockets give a cool vibe to the room. The other products bear the same taste. See them for yourself at Ampersandbrand.com.
Sometimes the older crowd misses the days when they were able to play with building blocks and get away with it. One company recognized that and decided to do something about it! We all used to love building crazy creations with blocks and wasting countless hours making intricate structures out of blocks to then just take it apart. Nanoblock is all about the building of smaller block creations only not to be taken apart afterwards but instead collected and displayed! Nanoblocks are the building blocks designed for those more skilled than the average child and more patient. These little blocks are really quite small and measure smaller than a coin. Patients and time is no doubt a factor required when building with Nanoblocks, but one that pays off in the end with an individual piece of collectable art!
It makes sense really, why spend time building something only to take it apart? You don’t have to with these tiny building blocks, in fact they come packaged to where you have enough blocks to build the specific design that you buy. It’s not hard to build with them, but it does take some time compared to throwing a few big toy blocks together. So if you fall into the category of those “too old” to play with blocks, then Nanoblock are most certainly for you! With plenty of designs to choose from and a continuously growing catalogue you are sure to be entertained with these little blocks for a big amount of time!