Kings Island Opens New Slide Tower + Following the 2017 Project Clues

© Kings Island

Kings Island's water park, Soak City, has receive a large new slide tower for 2016, named Tropical Plunge.  It opened to park guests a few weeks ago, giving them three new ways to plummet toward the splash pool below on a total of six new slides.

The tower is the same that we have seen added at other Cedar Fair parks in the past few years, all of which have been very well received and popular.  The tower stands almost 70 feet tall and at the highest point features three trap-door free fall body slides.  A lower level of the tower has two traditional tube slides and one totally enclosed slide featuring tight 360 degree turns.

Here's a video the park released showing off the new slides:

Tropical Plunge joins Soak City's other exciting attractions, like the Mondo Monsoon tornado ride and the mat-racing Rendezvous Run.

While still early in the season, Kings Island's social media team has been teasing about what we would assume to be a major addition in 2017.

© Kings Island

Early on it became apparent that the Rivertown section of the park, already home to Diamondback, was seeing some changes before the season started.  The park confirmed that the entrance to Whitewater Canyon, a river raft ride, was being moved to a new spot near Diamondback's first drop.

© Kings Island

Around the same time the park also confirmed that a brand new Funnel cake building was going up in Rivertown, with the former one (located by Whitewater Canyon's old entrance) being razed.

© Kings Island

Once the raft ride entrance and old funnel cake building were gone, this fence went up with a teaser sign showing a falling tree and a sign warning of... falling trees.

So if we look back at what we know so far from the air, the red dot is the old whitewater entrance, the yellow building is the now razed old funnel cake stand.  So clearly that little pocket of the area is being cleared out... for the entrance to something?  Looking at the area beyond it, the majority is filled by the raft ride - however that's easy to go over if we're looking at a coaster here.  I highlighted the area in green that makes sense to me for work to take place in... sort of imaginary boundaries of this hypothetical ride.

Kings Island's Twitter feed is especially full of clues... here is one of an obvious land clearing site reminding us, once more, to watch for falling trees.  Don't people yell "timber!" when that happens?

Seriously, be careful of those trees.  Since the aerial view above shows tons of trees in what I'm thinking the worksite is, then there are many to fall yet to make room for this addition.  But could this ride be in a very forested setting?  Some of the best wooden (and a few steel) coasters are in heavily wooden areas.

Also of note, and included in the Twitter clues, is that the park's train heads right through the area and if my plan is correct, will either cross over the tracks or have its entrance area include a crossing over them.

Many Cedar Fair parks have moved toward announcing big new rides fairly early in the Summer, so we might not have too long to wait to hear more!

P.S. - I'm aware that some plans leaked for the park's 2017 ride; however I'm choosing to not link to them here and just go off of what the park has said for now... mysteries are always more fun!