Kings Island/Cheez Whiz Open Thread

September 23, 2009, 9:17 PM · Long DayWell, that was a long day of posting.

We'll do the open thread thing again tonight/this morning. Please post in the comments if anything newsworthy happens while your lazy west-coast editor actually spends some time with his family, then tries to sleep.

Will Blackstone buy Busch's theme parks on Thursday? Will a certain Orlando restaurant critic discover that Disney has replaced the cheese in its Cheddar Cheese Soup with Cheez Whiz? What other crazy rumor do you think you can get a Central Florida TV station to believe?

And, if nothing newsworthy happens before I return and you have nothing else to discuss, you can always talk about this.

Kings Island fans, perhaps you have some 'splain' to do.

Replies (6)

September 24, 2009 at 4:31 AM · Whoops. Well, obviously the people didn't respond well to that little image. People are ok with walking through a maze of very realistic hanging dead bodies, but not this. This does bring up a thought about Halloween events and our culture. Here's some food for thought. Those who go to Halloween events see all kinds of morbid scenes. The parks become filled with (sometimes graphic) references to death. Look around you at a Halloween event or a haunted house, and you will see that bad taste an incorrectness is a very very blurred line during Halloween.

The answer to my question calls more for a societal observation than it does for personal opinion. Before you answer, consider this thought. Yes, McNair's murder was a real event, but I'm sure that somebody has really hanged themselves since then. There have been plenty of real murders and real car crashes leaving mutilated bodies, and many people were killed in the electric chair.

And now the question. Why would it be that a dummy being lit up in an electric chair or a body hanging from a noose, or a bloody, mutilated dummy is passed off as "Halloween fun", but a campy, non graphic depiction of Steve McNair and his "lover" using no more than skeletons and a helmet used for popcorn would strike a nerve?

Is it our insensitivity to violence? celebrity worship? Is this story just the media (you know...the ones with the old mantra "If it bleeds, it leads) trying to stir a little controversy? Is it hypocrisy? Is it anything at all?

Thoughts?

September 24, 2009 at 7:04 AM · Is the announcement that Universal got the rights to Barbie their reaction to the Disney/Marvel deal? Can they compete with the Disney Princesses? Are they going to paint the Hulk coaster pink and rename it "Barbie goes to the mall"?
September 24, 2009 at 7:27 AM · "Celebrity corpses" are NEVER a good idea for a theme park. The fantasy of a horror remains compelling as entertainment for some so long as it remains fantasy. References to real events and real people, particularly ones beloved by many, are certain to offend. Trash as many Chucky dolls as you'd like, but leave the real people out of these events.

On the Universal/Barbie deal, here's the link. It is a movie studio deal, for a film. No mention of any theme park implications.

Though we can certainly begin the speculation on who will play Barbie in the flick. And Ken. :-)

September 24, 2009 at 7:34 AM · You should lead with the KI story. Here is a link that leads to pictures. I think its pretty bad taste!


http://www.wlwt.com/entertainment/21043973/detail.html

September 24, 2009 at 12:20 PM · Kings Island has pulled the display out of their lineup.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/21102054/detail.html

September 24, 2009 at 4:04 PM · I guess my point is that a lot of scenes at Halloween haunted houses/mazes, depict the death of a person just as much or worse as the McNair scene did. The difference is that McNair is a celebrity and the public knows that particular story...whereas they don't know or don't consider the 4 person car crash that mutilated 4 anonymous people, or the fact that someone they don't know was stabbed to death, yet they say nothing about that particular scene. Celebrity skeletons may or may not be in bad taste depending on the person, but they aren't any worse than a lot of the stuff that the public seems to enjoy in some way at these events.

I guess that my opinion is this. The McNair skeleton is campy, and questionable at worst, but it's Halloween...the time of year where human beings celebrate a day with buckets of blood, chainsaws, zombies and dead bodies. They put heads on a platter, coffins on their porch, and run around with toy knives, axes, and the like. This wasn't a graphic recreation, and other celebrities had their own skeletons. I'm sure that the McNair family wouldn't like the scene, but I'm also sure that the family of a non-celebrity woman who was stabbed to death, or family of an anonymous person that hanged himself wouldn't like a different scene that was on display. It shouldn't make it any different or more special because the guy was famous. If the male skeleton was wearing a black t shirt instead of a McNair jersey with the dead female draped over him, nobody would have said a word. So to me, it doesn't seem that the uproar is about someone dying. It seems to be that the person was famous, which to me isn't a valid reason to be offended. There are far more disturbing images to me used in horror movies and halloween displays than that one.

Now...Disney using cheez whiz...that's offensive, and quite frankly disgusting. How many more of these little stories are going to come out?

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