Mostly Musical Theatre

Kings Island Live Shows 2012 (Review) June 10, 2012

Kings Island has an interesting array of live entertainment this year….and lets start with the oddest:

ED ALONZO’S PSYCHO CIRCUS OF MAGIC & MAYHEM at the Kings Island Theater is one of the oddest shows I’ve ever seen in a theme park. Fresh from Knott’s, the show mixes music, dance, comedy and magic that is really quite good. There is a bit of psycho, there is a lot of magic, and there is a modecum of mayhem (at the performance I saw, the show exploded in an unexpeted frenzy of mayhem when one of the children asked to participate in the magic peed on stage, leading to plenty of jokes, and (quite seriously) really really bad parenting on display as Ed Alonzo begged the parents to come get their wet kid, while a stage hand mopped the stage and the parents took photos thinking it was all hilarious.

AMERICAN COUNTRY is back at the Festhaus for the late afternoon/evening shows. Its a 25 minute mix of new country music. Its best suited for watching/glancing while you are chowing down on your Panda Express or your Pizza. At least it has a good cast and a decent mix of country music that goes down well with your chicken and rice.

BRITISH INVASION is the new daytime show at the Festhaus. The show is an entertaining mix of British pop rock, from the Beatles to Elton John. The costumes here are colorful, the cast very good, and the sound and light design adequate for the very large space. The problem here is not the enthusiasm of the cast, or the songs, or the sound. Its the god-awful show-choir staging of this 25 minutes canned-music mix entertainment. Its the worst kind of show choir, and you are likely to cringe my the time they get to the umpteenth set of touch-steps in the background while the lead stands front and center in the  triangle.

Several of the Kings Island shows are not yet open. See them and comment when you do, since I won’t be back to KI for a few years. Just a side comment: seen on a Sunday, the park itself was very quiet. I spent 5 hours in the park and saw all three shows and rode all of the coasters and major rides and still had time for dinner along the way. KI is a great amusement park, but it doesn’t hold a candle to my homepark: Cedar Point, where a day isn’t enough to get everything in.