Kings Island Pandemic Precautions
We’ve made our single visit to Kings Island this year amid the pandemic. Normally as pass holders we visit Kings Island fairly often, typically on Sunday evenings when it’s least busy, throughout the summer. Holding off was absolutely necessary, but I took a day off work and we visited the park hoping for a low attendance day to round out our precautions. We practice social distancing and mask wearing and expect others to do the same. If we go somewhere and that’s not the case, we leave immediately. No bullshit.
Our fears for safety seem to be as allayed as possible by park management. Walking into the park you get your temperature checked while a man on a loudspeaker gives information on other safety precautions. Everyone wore masks that we could see, including both of my kids who happily donned them for a chance to enjoy a few hours of fun. I really don’t understand the consternation towards mask wearing. There’s no debate about it, mask wearing is the top way to go.
It’s absolutely pathetic reading the wining and moaning people on social media pour into mask wearing. My two year old had no problems at all so not sure why others do too. My feeling is if you can’t wear a mask because of health reasons, and I don’t see you in a wheelchair with an oxygen bottle attached to it, I’m calling bullshit. It’s also not a HIPAA violation to ask why you can’t wear one (HIPAA applies to medical practitioners only) and no idea why the American with Disabilities Act gets brought into it either. If you get asked you don’t have to answer, but it’s not like there are civil or criminal penalties attached. It’s just not a valid reason to not wear a mask.
What kills me too about this pandemic and those who dismiss it as a hoax are also people I’d consider fairly intelligent and successful in life. Like, I’m open minded, maybe you know something I don’t, but this is a done deal. Social distancing and mask wearing makes all of this go away. It’s worked for Europe and Japan, why can’t we get it to work here? Why let our economy go to shambles while the federal deficit explodes to keep us somewhat afloat? It’s all avoidable.
The backup argument when pressed against the wall for those who won’t take precautions is that we should be striving for herd immunity. They straight faced argue this while ignoring the simple statistics that show for us to get to a point of this fictitious standard that we’d have to accept losses in the millions. MILLIONS. Who gets to be the unlucky ones who die? Their response is that we can protect the most vulnerable, the aged, the affirmed, and the sick, while espousing the false narrative that children can’t get it. Wrong. Children CAN get it, and so far we’ve protected them from it. However, with schools resuming in the fall without proper precautions, I predict we’ll start seeing youth deaths that will shake the nation, or at least those emotionally capable of caring for the welfare of others.
We did have fun at Kings Island, not withstanding my rant. At least the people there with us understood the importance of social distancing and mask wearing and how if we did it we could still enjoy ourselves. I hope next year will be better for Kings Island given that their very popular Kings Island Haunt and Winterfest are now cancelled. Also, what a shame to have the pop of adding Orion get wasted. In any other time it would be the talk of the town, not foreshadowed by everything else going on.
I’m happy that Kings Island extended our park passes through next year. We will be back again and very often to make up for lost time in 2020 for sure.
