The Brady Bunch Kids Nearly Faced Disaster While Filming A Classic Episode

If you were the star of a beloved network sitcom with a huge 20th century ensemble, chances were good that you would also have to act as a walking advertisement for something the network in question had an interest in. Does anyone else remember those special episodes of ’90s ABC sitcoms like Family Matters and “Full House” where all the characters went to Disney World? I’m sure of it. It wasn’t an entirely new concept, of course, as “The Brady Bunch” had already devoted an entire episode in its fifth and final season to Cincinnati’s Kings Island theme park in 1973. Since the 1970s sitcom was produced by Paramount Studios, which was a shareholder in Ohio-based Taft Broadcasting, the company thought it would be a great idea to promote the relatively new tourist destination using one of television’s largest families.

In the episode in question, titled “The Cincinnati Kids,” the architectural patriarch of the Brady clan, Mike Brady (Robert Reed), tells the family that he’s taking them all with him to an amusement park, where he’s scheduled to submit some sketches to its supervisors. The Partridge Family had visited the park a year earlier, but the “Brady Bunch” episode was remembered more fondly. In a video on the Kings Island YouTube channel, Barry Williams, who played older brother Greg, remembers the show’s crew riding the racer. Reid clearly didn’t care much for rollercoasters, and the camera test he requested proved him right:

“They set up the camera in front of us to face us, and he said, ‘I think you should run this thing around the track once because it looks like it’s too high.’ And they said, ‘Okay,’ and they did. They ran it empty, and it came back with no camera. I thought it was too loud.”

The original run of “The Brady Bunch” only lasted 11 more episodes before it was canceled (not counting the various spinoffs), but I’m just being vocal here when I say that it could have been really bad if one of ABC’s TV families had been crushed to death. What makes Reid’s off-putting reaction even funnier is that the episode ends with Mike being the one suggesting everyone take a roller coaster ride, only to cut to the footage where he anywhere To be seen.

“The Cincinnati Kids” may have been popular because it put Kings Island in the national spotlight, but it’s pretty lackluster as far as sitcom park ads go. The central conflict occurs when Mike accidentally loses his drawings before his big meeting, prompting the children to scramble around the park to find them. The issue was resolved fairly quickly (by passing the torch set on William Tell’s introduction), allowing more time for everyone to get a little vacation on their Paramount dime. In fact, a big part of the episode is just the Brady family taking a bunch of trips and talking about how great the place is — and to the actors’ credit, it sounds like really fun. There aren’t even many jokes about the show’s characters going on certain tours; It’s all about watching them have a good time.

What I find most impressive is that the episode was clearly filmed when the park was bustling with people. Many of the episode’s shots were set up of the “Brady Bunch” cast walking around, but I can’t imagine the amount of teamwork to make sure none of the tourists caused a delay in filming.

Every season of “The Brady Bunch” is currently streaming on Paramount+.