Ohio Road Trip

Hello everyone, looking at making an Ohio, Indiana trip next summer. Looking to head down Friday after work (Lancaster, PA) drive out for HoliWood Nights saturday. Stay in Cincinnati 3 days and hit Kentucky Kingdom one day, Kings Island another and use the third to do some stuff in the city/drive (I'm a Bengals fan and have never been), then spend two days at Cedar Point (weekdays), and hit Kennywood on the way back. All stops would be first time, and hopefully full days. Any tips would be great. We have season passes for Cedar Fair through Dorney, so free entrance to those two+ parking. This is a budget trip so cheapest possible hotel/ air bnb ideas would be appreciated.

Hey,

one day Kings Island can be enough, but if you want to ride alle the coasters and each one maybe more than once, you should consider buying a fast lane. It really lets you have a better day.

Same is for Cedar Point. Two days will be enough to get on every major coaster, assuming there are no major downtimes. But I would also start budgeting now for a fast lane at one day. So you will have done everything, as much as you like, on day one and you can use day two for reriding and having a great day at CP.

Just put some dollars in a jar every week from now until yout trip and your stress free, heavy riding days at CP and KI are safe!

Hey,

one day Kings Island can be enough, but if you want to ride alle the coasters and each one maybe more than once, you should consider buying a fast lane. It really lets you have a better day.

Same is for Cedar Point. Two days will be enough to get on every major coaster, assuming there are no major downtimes. But I would also start budgeting now for a fast lane at one day. So you will have done everything, as much as you like, on day one and you can use day two for reriding and having a great day at CP.

Just put some dollars in a jar every week from now until yout trip and your stress free, heavy riding days at CP and KI are safe!

With my new job i'm making way more than I need for my living situation, but I'm way worried about saving to buy a good car. (renting for the drive in the summer), so I'm trying to do this trip without too much of a cost. I think we're planning worst case 1200 a person, but if we get 2 plus people more it goes down. Or if we have a more reliable car we can drive out there.

What are you doing about lodging? The best way to cut down on expenses on a road trip is to start racking up hotel reward points now.

What are you doing about lodging? The best way to cut down on expenses on a road trip is to start racking up hotel reward points now.

....and forever.

The Cedar Fair Platinum Pass is definitely going to make this a lot cheaper. There are a good number of cheap hotels in the Kings Island area, since it's on the edge of the metro area. I like the Baymont near the Beach waterpark and can generally find it under $100. It's about 5 minutes from Kings Island. In Sandusky, I like the Hojo across the street from the Thirsty Pony. I'm into Wyndhams because they let my family of 5 stay in one room. Coasterbill will recommend a Choice hotel very near to these that is practically identical and those are also good recommendations.

You probably know this already, but just in case, the Holiwood Nights event is always Friday and Saturday. They have two ticket options: all day Friday and all day Saturday or after 5pm Friday and all day Saturday. So if you just go for Saturday, you're missing out on half the festivities. If possible, I'd recommend taking Friday off work and driving down that morning so you can take part in the hors d'oeuvres (which are really a full meal and soooo good). If you can't take Friday off work for some reason, then still worth going on Saturday.

I'd do this itinerary:

Fri 5/29: Drive to Santa Claus/Holiwood kNights

Sat 5/30 Holiwood kNights

Sun 5/31 Drive to Louisville/Kentucky Kingdom all day/drive to Cincinnati

Mon 6/1 Jungle Jim's/PBS Tour/Kings Island in the evening

Tues 6/2 Kings Island

Wed 6/3 Drive to Sandusky/Cedar Point in the evening

Thurs 6/4 Cedar Point

Fri 6/5 Cedar Point

Sat 6/6 Drive to Pittsburgh/Kennywood/Drive home

That's a good itinerary. I think the Friday thing is something I'm going back and forth on. It depends on how many people are going, if it's just me and my friend maybe we do the Friday thing, but if we get more people it will be harder to make that work. ME and my friend work together so we have similar time off policy. (different departments) It's a matter of making everything work. I know I want to visit the Library, but is their easy information on Paul Brown tours, and such. That would be fun.

This is what I could find:

http://thebankscincy.com/attractions/paul-brown-stadium/

They do tours April to mid-July on weekdays. The website didn't say what time or the minimum number of people for a tour. There's a phone number in that link though, so I'd give that a call and ask.

Thanks. My friend not as excited as me about Football, or Soccer, so going to my favorite team's stadium not on his list. At least i got him into the Union. Now if anyone has some info on Elitch Gardens or a short trip around LA hitting Magic Mountain and Knott's (looking at two days at both. Would like to get to Universal, but that would cost money huge HP fan.) as it looks like i'll be headed there for games and making weekends of it, that could be useful. Don't want to clutter another thread.

Denver in May, LA in March. Right during potential spring break which is half interesting, and half scary.

If you have time, go to Glenwood Caverns instead of Elitch Gardens. Elitch Gardens is going to probably close forever soon so a lot of people would argue that you should go but my opinion is that it should hurry up and close.

The Great Zo just posted a trip report from Glenwood.

Lakeside park also exists and is a nice place to kill a few hours, preferably at night. It's not a full day park. It's a dump but it's a fun dump.

Glenwood doesn't seem like it's exactly what I'm interested in. Different kind of thrills.

I've booked the road trip, and la trip. Something along the lines of the idea presented above. I'm doing 2 days at Magic Mountain and Knott's hopefully a minute somewhere to get over to the Boardwalk in Santa Monica as well, but we'll see.

So funny thing is this was fully planned an paid for.

But that is obviously not happening at this time, and still happening at some point.

So question does anyone have experience with Tickets at Work and cancelling stuff. All the hotels are "non-refundable" but I had an experience talking to them about it saying that there rule right now is refunds for everything up until June, or if the hotel/event will not happen, but most of my trip is in June. Holliwood Knights and Coastermania have already been rescheduled, and msot of the hotels on their sites mention refunds for June, but I had a bad call a few weeks ago asking questions. I'd prefer to get a refund, as it seems unlikely anything will be open for this "trip".