Setting the scene
If there’s one thing that the original Beast is celebrated for it, it’s secrecy. The ride is famously concealed deep in the woods of Ohio, occupying 35 acres of forest. So well hidden is The Beast that you can barely catch a glimpse of its 110-foot tall lift hill unless you know where to look.
Located deep in the park’s Rivertown section, the ride’s backstory is understated, but clear: there’s a menacing creature lurking in the mysterious woods on the edge of an early Ohio settlement. What is it? No one knows. What does it look like? We can’t be sure. What does the ride do? Where does it go? The only way to find out is to face it.
The Beast is all about fear of the unknown…. Guests hoping to ride first have to leave the historic village of Rivertown behind and trek to an old, broken down, dried up mill outside of town. As if it could be the subject of its own urban legend, the abandoned mill is adorned with a few wooden signs: “Ignore the screaming in the woods.” “Everything is fine.” Are those drops of blood? The mystery and intrigue of the Beast are half the fun.
Can you find Son of Beast in the map above? Better question: how could you miss it?Subtlety is not one of the words you’d use to describe Son of Beast. The gargantuan ride absolutely towers over Paramount’s Kings Island.
If The Beast were a movie, it would be a slow-building 1970s thriller; a mysterious nail-biter focused on drama and intrigue… On the other hand, Son of Beast is an action-packed summer blockbuster sequel… car chases, explosions, giant monsters… forget secrecy. Leaving his father behind in the quiet forests of Rivertown, Son of Beast towers over the frantic, kinetic Paramount Action Zone backlot.
Son of Beast is loud, fast, and large. It’s a massive, twisted vortex of wood, with its iconic loop dwarfed by its elegant-looking curves and helixes.
First, the queue for Son of Beast proceeds down a pathway lined with chain link fence, passing under a high-security bridge (which also serves as the militaristic entrance of TOP GUN). Flashing blue warning lights illuminate the path, signaling that this sequel departs from the antique Rivertown.
The ride’s station is Outpost 5, a metallic platform that’s high-tech and even higher-security. The radical shift from The Beast’s setting is intentional. In this not-so-subtle sequel, the mysterious offspring of the Beast has been captured by an unknown agency and relocated to a high-security pen for examination. Your job is simple: board a Perimeter Surveillance Vehicle and ensure that the creature is under control. What could go wrong?!
Think you can handle what Son of Beast has in store? Let’s take a ride.
SON OF BEAST
As your train slowly advances out of Son of Beast’s station, you pass beneath the towering first drop – a veritable engineering marvel of criss-crossing wooden pieces that might as well be toothpicks thanks to the grand size of the structure. As you coast slowly forward and through the unintentional tunnel of wood, directly ahead, something comes into view: a towering vertical loop.
But before we get there, we’ve got a whole lot of track to navigate. Right away, the roller coaster train twists and dips to the left, diving down a 51-foot drop that’s bigger than the main hills on many wooden roller coasters. But on Son of Beast, this is merely a warm-up. The 51-foot drop is a tease, meant to build up enough speed to bring the train around to the base of the coaster’s lift hill. Two. Hundred. Eighteen. Feet.
The train engages with the anti-rollbacks of the towering lift hill, proudly producing that unnerving click-click-click that serves to build mind-numbing anticipation and anxiety as the train advances slowly up to record-breaking heights. The speed leftover from the first drop is enough to jump-start the climb, but it’ll be more than 40 agonizing seconds of fear until the train reaches its apex.
And unlike a traditional roller coaster, just because you’re at the top doesn’t mean you’re about to fall. Instead, Son of Beast teases yet again, dangling riders high up in the air along a dipped stretch of track. So terrifying is this 20-story dip that it leaves riders begging for the real thing. And boy, do they get it.
The train levels out and aligns with a distant section of track. The only way to get there is through a 216 foot drop at 55.7-degrees. Along the way, the train reaches its top speed: a staggering 78 miles per hour.
The train rumbles violently down the massive drop and up a second hill. Son of Beast’s 164-foot tall second hill is still taller than the next tallest wooden roller coaster on Earth. And here, the ride really picks up steam. While you might expect Son of Beast to be an out-and-back, terrain-hugging roller coaster like its father, you’d be wrong. What follows will not be a series of ever-smaller airtime hills. Instead, Son of Beast, tears off to the right and enters into the ride’s iconic helix often called the Rose Bowl. The massive inclined double helix is dizzying and intense, the train battering along as it jackhammers against the towering structure at well over 70 miles per hour. Around and around through the helix, the train spirals. It’s massive, and it’s wild.
Then, the train levels out and enters the mid-course brakes – a brief moment of relaxation as straight track fills the horizon. But a breather is short-lived, as the track banks and dips off ahead. The destination? The ride’s signature: a 118-foot-tall vertical loop that makes Son of Beast the only looping wooden roller coaster on Earth.
Up until now, traditional knowledge has used a few very simple ways of differentiating steel and wooden roller coasters. For example, steel coasters are often smooth, and wood coasters are often rough. A tried-and-true rule, though, is that steel coasters can go upside down, and wooden ones can’t. Son of Beast famously bucks the rule, but now, facing a loop taller than most roller coasters main drops, you may question whether that rule really needed to have been broken.
But the train sails through the 118-foot tall engineering marvel as smooth as glass. In fact, the famed loop is the gentlest part of the ride. That’s because the structure of the loop – its backbone – is steel, giving the loop a rigid and sleek skeleton. But make no mistake, the rails are 100% wood, making this undeniably the world’s only wooden loop.
The train then soars into a second massive double-helix (this one nestled into the curve of the ride’s towering lift hill, creating an illusion of endless wood wrapping all around). At last breaking free, the train hopes and dives in a few last manuevers meant to burn off the excess speed (still at breakneck pace, mind you), before finally arriving back at Outpost 5.
We invite you if you dare to take a virtual ride on Son of Beast via the video below. Be warned: even digitally, it’s a doozy:
Taming the Beast
Remember Six Flags’ ambitious plans for Kentucky Kingdom? To put it lightly, Kings Island’s $40 million investment in Action Zone (with FACE/OFF, Drop Zone, and Son of Beast) had successfully scared Six Flags away. Defeated, Six Flags more or less let the Kentucky park wither (instead diverting the planned B&M floorless and Intamin Impulse coasters to Six Flags’ new pet project: Six Flags Worlds of Adventure near Cleveland – a park they’d formed in 2001 by merging Six Flags Ohio with SeaWorld Ohio, creating the world’s largest theme park… and taking on Cedar Point directly).
Speaking of which, consider how the year 2000 must have felt like a leap forward in the amusement park industry. Cedar Point had shattered records and expectations by debuting Millennium Force, the tallest, fastest roller coaster ever, and the first to break the 300-foot height barrier. In the same month and just a few hours south, Paramount’s Kings Island had broken the 200-foot wooden barrier and built the tallest, fastest, second-longest, and only looping wooden roller coaster on Earth.
A new age of the coaster wars had dawned, and Son of Beast stood as an ultra-extreme icon of the push to built tallest, further, and faster. The momentum must’ve seemed unstoppable…
But take a look at Kings Island’s park map from 2010 – exactly ten years later – and you’ll notice a structure conspicuously missing from the (Paramount-less) Action Zone. Let’s confess what we all know: Son of Beast today is remembered as one of the biggest failures and theme park busts of all time. How could a record-breaking ride fall so quickly? Read on…