Kings Island Postcards

Last month was my Kings Island 40th anniversary palooza, and here's something that I never got around to posting until now - it's a Kings Island postcards book from the late 1970's...

Here's a great closeup of the Turnpike Ride above...

It looks to me like you needed to show your AARP card in order to drive.  Sorry Junior I know this looks like a kiddie ride, but you're gonna have to let Grandma drive.

Mammoth Cave Wax Museum Brochure

Let's celebrate Independence Day by visiting Mammoth Cave Wax Museum in Cave City, KY. It's appropriate since you can see the cover of this early 80's brochure proclaims "AMERICA'S HERITAGE EXCITINGLY ALIVE."  Albeit it's "EXCITINGLY ALIVE" as much as wax can be...

This next page folds out to show you many of the American historical figures and early movie stars on display.  There's even Jesus too for good measure.

While you're at the Mammoth Cave Wax Museum be sure to check out the Huckleberry Hill Craft Village next door - they even have a 17 foot great white shark.  It's fake, but it's still big and scary.

If you were thinking about visiting you can stop looking at that map above. Mammoth Cave Wax Museum closed it's doors last year, and it's contents were auctioned off a few months ago.

For fun I looked up the auction house, and learned how much some of the figures went for:

Charlie Chaplin - $25,000.00 (highest price for a wax figure)

Jean Harlow - $16,000.00

Rudolph Valentino - no price listed

Jesus went for only $1,000.00.  That's very affordable to have your own personal Jesus. A little Depeche Mode humor for you (very little).

Kings Island Brochure 1976

Still more Kings Island.  It's been a month-long event here, and now it's time for the 1976 brochure...

The above page has a lot of cool stuff, for example, look at that shot of the Kenton's Cove Keelboat Canal...

I don't know about you, but that looks like a 100 foot drop, or at least that's what it looked like to me when I was a kid. Shockingly, my mother rode this with the rest of the family, and she was one to shy away from them thrill rides

Next, and to the best of my knowledge it's the only picture on the ultra-nets from this Kings Island show in existence. It's a picture of the marionettes from the Krofft Puppet Theater...

FUN FACT: The Krofft Puppet Theater was in an inflatable red building. (Can it truly be called a "building" if it's inflatable?)  You can see this building in the first couple of seconds of this Partridge Family music video.  EXTRA FUN FACT: I only recently learned that the Brady's weren't the only 70's TV family to visit Kings Island...


Back to the Krofft Puppet Theater...  I don't remember much about the show.  Basically the only thing I vaguely remember was a Frankenstein Monster skit.  If I remember correctly, it was a black-light segment with the monster's table/slab on the right side of the stage.  A jaunty tune played as a row of disembodied hands past the parts of the creature from the left side of the stage down to the table.  Once assembled the creature rose from the slab and walked into the audience.  That was a neat trick. I was slightly alarmed that Frankenstein was walking into audience, but to my relief he didn't come near me.

Now it's time for the giant fold-out...

 

Kings Island Brochure 1979

Since I recently posted the 1979 Kings Island souvenir booklet, here's the 1979 Kings Island brochure. Unfortunately I think this brochure was damaged in a coffee spill so it's a little less than mint condition...  

1979 was the year the giant wooden coaster "The Beast" debuted at Kings Island.  Today The Beast is renowned as one of the greatest roller coasters ever built, but totally lost in the mists of time is the "New in '79 Hanna-Barbera's Yabba Dabba Doo Caperoo Show."  Hopefully one day some YouTuber will post this forgotten show.

The brochure folds out into this huge thing. Click to see how big it gets...

Kings Island Souvenir Booklet 1979

Here's a little more Kings Island stuff to celebrate the parks 40th anniversary.  It's a full-color souvenir booklet from 1979...

The page above should have won some sort of special proofreading award. Check out the animals pictured at the bottom of the page and the corresponding labels.

Since the "Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera" is no longer a part of Kings Island I thought it might be good to post extra big photos from this page.

This spining ride is called the "Witches Cauldron" and features a figure of Winsome Witch rotating on top of a spooky tree. I wish there was a shot of her face, or the other creatures on the big fake tree.

Enchanted Voyage was a fairly elaberate dark ride into the world of Hanna-Barbera cartoons.  Although mostly the more obscure ones - no Flintstones, Jetsons, Yogi and Boo-Boo or Scooby-Doo here. 

Let's grab a snack at Gulliver's Galley.  The Adventures of Gulliver was a cartoon created in 1968 for ABC-TV.  Only 17 episodes were produced, yet Gulliver was featured prominently in the Enchanted Voyage ride, had a small boat ride named Gulliver's Rub-A-Dub, and this snack bar.