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luseendesi said:
Anyone know the showtimes? I'm going to try to check this out tomorrow after the ACE media event.

The show runs Tuesday through Sunday (Monday Off).

There are 3 shows (2:00 | 4:00 | 6:00) on the following Days:

Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday

There are 4 shows on Saturdays (2:00 | 3:30 | 5:00 | 6:30)

Course, show times are always subject to change.
 
Finally got the chance to post some pictures that I took one of the last times I saw this show. The "Reds" are my favorite part of this show. Especially the shortest guy who gets "stuck" at the start of the show. :3
 

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WasabiDragon said:
Finally got the chance to post some pictures that I took one of the last times I saw this show. The "Reds" are my favorite part of this show. Especially the shortest guy who gets "stuck" at the start of the show. :3

Awesome pics :)
 
I forgot how to post pics and vids from my gallery but I only had the first 6 minutes of the show recorded. I managed to watch the first ever show for the year (2oclock showing) and needless to say I was delighted.

Not watching it last year (seen vids though) I was delighted! Imo this outdid all the shows at Busch(not into that type of stuff). The story based on the show was cheesy but still great(i couldnt figure out if they fell in love or got married?) It was funny and was filled with great stunts, my favorite part of the show was definately when the female came out of the tunnel and the little goofballs where scared something evil was coming out of the tunnel! Again this show was superb, By its self id rate it a strong 9/10. For an amusement park it deserves a 10/10. Great show and glad I saw it. Fyi the show runs about 25-30 minutes and is a must if your at Kings Dominion!
 
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I was very curious about the cast of this show returning for 2016. They were so fantastic last year that I saw the show more than ten times. Well, they are all gone except for a couple of the clowns. I was shocked. It's not that the show wasn't good today. It was full of very talented performers. It was just missing every single one of my favorite things/performers from year one. The completely awesome hoop performer was replaced with a bunny hopping mountain biker(biggest disappointment). No more high rise hand stand guy or sequence. Rope girl gone(although the sequence remains). I'm only guessing here, but I can only assume that Carowinds has stolen my favorite things about this show. I will see this years show a few more times for my Daughter because she loves it of course. But I can't see myself having ten shows under my belt this time around. I'll say great job to all of the new performers, and a selfish BOOooooo to Cedar Fair for shipping our cast elsewhere. (I'll be keeping my eye on youtube to prove out my theories)
 
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I'm pretty sure Cedar Fair isn't the one to blame, as much as it is the company that Cedar Fair pays to produce and cast these shows all over the chain. Last year, KD's version was arguably different from KI's because KD had All Wheel Sports, meaning that the BMX portions that KI's version contained had to be substituted with more cirque style acts. However, now that AWS is gone, the company that produces CI appears to be changing the show with more BMX-type acts. Although I never loved this show in the first place, I know that good or bad, it is not a direct reflection on KD or Cedar Fair, but mainly the company it was outsourced too.
 
You're telling me that Cedar Fair has no say so in the return of a cast that drew repeat visitors to the show. That makes no sense. I'm not calling BS on you Matthew, just saying it makes no sense for a park to give that kind of influencing decision to some outsourced entertainment company.
 
That's a shame about the hoop sequence. It was a good "light" act that gave a needed break from the more "robust" acts of the show. Not sure if I will find the BMX portion as interesting. I enjoyed the BMX portions of All Wheel Sports, but I'm not sure how well the bikes will fit with the cirque style of the show.

However, I'm VERY glad to hear the high rise hand stand sequence is gone. That scene took far too long, and I think the audience got bored as we watched minutes on end of nothing but boxes being stacked. I felt that this sequence didn't work ever since I first saw the show, so I'm glad to see it removed.
 
MAZ said:
You're telling me that Cedar Fair has no say so in the return of a cast that drew repeat visitors to the show. That makes no sense. I'm not calling BS on you Matthew, just saying it makes no sense for a park to give that kind of influencing decision to some outsourced entertainment company.

The performers are all contractors (in a business sense). They are not full time employees. While under contract, they are employees for Haut-Vol; when the contract is over, they are unemployed. The cast members from last season could be working for Haut-Vol in a non theme park production or a show that runs other than the summer, they could be working for another company, they could be taking the summer off. They could have decided to get out of that line of work altogether.

So, in my opinion, Kings Dominion does not have any control over the casting.

P.S. the Facebook site for Les Productions Haut-Vol has the 2016 cast pictures for Kings Dominion and Carowinds. I don't recognize any of the 2015 KD cast members in the 2016 Carowinds cast. Also, scroll down a little and look at the pictures of the new cirque show "Origins" at Kings Island. Great set and amazing costumes/makeup!
 
I'll say the same thing to you. It makes no sense that CF does not have control over who and what performs in their parks. If they ever want a hit show with high ratings, they need to be in control of what goes into their parks and make sure that a successful show has at least some repeat performers. Thanks for the production info. I'll check out the photos.
 
MAZ said:
I'll say the same thing to you. It makes no sense that CF does not have control over who and what performs in their parks. If they ever want a hit show with high ratings, they need to be in control of what goes into their parks and make sure that a successful show has at least some repeat performers. Thanks for the production info. I'll check out the photos.


From what I understand, concerning Cedar Fair entertainment, is that they create a general singing/dancing show with a theme/storyline and song list. The parks in the chain pick the show and then hire a 3rd party entertainment company to take care of the casting. Depending on each Cedar Fair park, they may give other responsibilities to the 3rd party company to do costumes, sets, lighting, and sound; or, the park takes care of those things in house or hires another person/company to do them.

For the specialty shows like "All Wheel Sports" and the Haut-Vol "Cirque" shows, I believe the 3rd party company tells the park that this is what we can do / have done and let the park decide if they want them to do a show or not. For these productions, I don't think the park has much say in who gets cast to perform them. I have never seen any in park casting calls for circus experienced / acrobatic / gymnast / stunt bike, etc; just for singers, singer/dancers, dancers, and musicians.

I guess Cedar Fair could try what KECO did back from 1972-1992 and do everything centrally as far as show creation and outsource stuff like costumes, sets, and so forth. But, the show would be done EXACTLY the same no matter what park it was playing in. Unless there is a major change in corporate thinking on entertainment, I don't see that happening.
 
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Thanks for the thorough description of entertainment casting. I enjoy seeing familiar faces each year at BGW's productions. They seem to roll like the old KECO did. I was kind of hoping to see some familiar faces at KD's show this year. I looked at the photos on the FB page you mentioned above and I didn't see any familiar faces in the other shows.
 
^I noticed the male lead from several of the park's singing shows, like KD40 On Stage, On Broadway, and Eternal Jamnation, performing in Playlist LIVE on Friday. He also played Young Scrooge in Scrooge No More at Christmas Town 2015.
 
Finally saw Cirque Imagine this year. My initial impression is that I think the show itself is slightly better than in 2015.

The bit with the guy who climbs a metal tower and does handstands is gone. In its place is a BMX biker who hops on and off the stage, and eventually climbs up the big set in the back without leaving his bike. There is also a new chase sequence with the clowns, as the biker terrorizes the clowns while they try to run away from him. I thought this scene was much better paced than the metal tower hand-stand scene, which dragged on and on.

The "hoop" scene has also been removed, and replaced with a contortionist guy who balances himself on a small platform made of wooden pegs. I thought the hoop scene was a little more exciting, but this one added some more variety to the show's roster.

Both of the new scenes retain the same soundtrack of the scene they replaced, by the way.

One criticism I have is that the "rope" girl was not as graceful as the girl from 2015. I'm sure the rope act is very difficult, and I could never do it without falling on my face, but for a professional, I thought this year's performer was too "clunky" with her movements. I would recommend that she try to smooth her movements out a little bit.

Also, the clowns were hilarious as ever (the addition of a female clown added to the dynamic, in my opinion), but the juggling scene was very sloppy. Whereas I never saw more than one or two bowling pins dropped last year, there were easily five or six drops in the show I saw alone, which was disappointing. Mostly, I'm disappointed for the performers, who I'm sure are terribly embarrassed when they drop a pin. I don't blame the performers, because they still are excellent jugglers who pull off some great tricks, but it does detract from the "awe" of the scene when there are so many mistakes.

Other than that, the show is more or less the same as last year, which is to say, I thought it was really good. Cirque Imagine remains the best show at Kings Dominion, and the best show they've had in a very long time.
 
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