Kings Island

Mason, Ohio – Sunday, June 18th, 2023

We rolled up to Kings Island by 6:00pm after starting the day at New River Gorge National Park, Camden Park, and Serpent Mound State Memorial. It had been over two weeks on the road criss-crossing the southeast to visit countless parks and destinations, so it felt like a homecoming to finally make it back to a park I was much more intimately familiar with… with the sun correctly illuminating the Eiffel Tower at the end of International Street. I’ve been to Kings Island well over a dozen times going back as far as 1996, and long considered it a third-ring home park after Michigan’s Adventure and Cedar Point, although my most recent visit hadn’t been since 2017. In that six year span, there was one major new coaster to look forward to, along with two removals, as well as a handful of other changes. Although truthfully, I was more interested in renewing my acquaintance with some old favorites than I looked forward to the new offerings.

The plan was to spend the last four hours tonight and a couple hours the next morning at the park before flying out of Columbus the next day, although (spoiler alert) poor weather and a general travel exhaustion put the kibosh on the morning plans. I definitely needed more time; the first coaster on my review list below I didn’t even get to ride on this visit, but rather am basing on previous experiences in 2017 and 2014. But since I haven’t written about this park since the first year of this website’s existence in 2009, I figured this was a good occasion to comment on some of the changes that have taken place since then, both to the park and in my own thinking regarding some of the rides.

Banshee

I’m probably in the extreme minority on this but Banshee is my favorite B&M coaster at Kings Island. As I write this more than a decade after it opened, Banshee is still the second-newest inverted coaster by the Swiss manufacturer, once one of the most sought-after coaster models ever produced that has now clearly reached its saturation point. Yet Banshee feels less like a culmination of lessons from the thirty-some installations that preceded it, and more like a new experiment with the old formula.

The quality of the track engineering is very “swoopy” in a way that seems to lack the traditional heartlining techniques that B&M made their name for, going as far back as the original Z-Force “Space Diver” model. Whereas nearly every previous B&M inverted coaster has fairly snappy transitions that quickly rotate around the centerline, Banshee more slowly tips up and over into its upside down maneuvers. Even the traditional arched zero-G roll has a different kind of shaping that’s more like it’s been stamp-pressed. The extended dive down the hillside on this element, reaching top speed after three inversions, makes Banshee a more effective terrain coaster than Diamondback, followed by the very unique pretzel knot, a sort of dive loop and Immelmann combo with more of the swoopy track shaping. While the result is arguably a gentler ride with longer transitions, it trades whippiness for hangtime, spending more time upside down in each maneuver with more time to savor the sky beneath your feet.

Of course, the irony is that the final inversion is one of the only times B&M built a straight inline roll with traditional centered seating where you can see down the barrel of the heartline.¹ Again, there’s a lot of odd hangtime in this maneuver, and it serves as an effective change of pace to mark the end of the ride, which culminates immediately after with a fairly traditional helix finale.

Ultimately, Banshee stands as the longest inverted coaster ever built, even if that length doesn’t quite add up to one of the best inverted coasters ever built.² The unique layout is an interesting experiment that helps set it apart from older nearby installations like Raptor or Batman, but the deliberate pacing just doesn’t quite hold as much variety or excitement as some of the classics. Yet it still offers more variety than Diamondback, and a more complete ride than Orion. I particularly like sitting in the back middle row, where the revised car design offers a clear “tunnel vision” looking down the middle of the train as it twists and warps around the elements. I rode Banshee a handful of times in 2014 and 2017, and regret that plans to reacquaint myself in 2023 didn’t pan out; if I had known the weather forecast for the next morning I would have made more of an effort on our first night. It’s possible I’d be less enthusiastic about it, as I’ve heard the new train design has developed some roughness issues, possibly a reason why 2021’s Monster in Sweden reverted to the traditional car design. But for now, I’d comfortably rate it a top three coaster at Kings Island.

Adventure Port & Adventure Express

After sister park Kings Dominion transformed its Safari Village into the elaborate Jungle X-Pedition themed section, for 2023 Kings Island followed suit, splitting part of the Oktoberfest section that contained the Adventure Express into a new tropical themed area called Adventure Port. In addition to the mine train, it got a refreshed restaurant in Enrique’s Cantina, as well as two new flat rides, Sol Spin, a Zamperla Endeavor, and Cargo Loco, a Zamperla tea cups. On paper, all good ideas. However, where Jungle X-Pedition demonstrated a high level of creative ambition for a budget constrained regional park, Adventure Port set its sights much lower, and the result is a rather disappointing mismash.

My first impression was that, for being newly re-themed, this area feels much less immersive as a remote jungle outpost. Many of the mature trees formerly lining the pathway have been cut back to make room for the new elements and increased crowds, replaced with rather pitiful planters covered with woodchips and a few shrubs. Banshee, once peeking through the foliage, now dominates the skyline, and the widened walkway adds much more pavement, creating a heat island effect. There are a few temple-like stone walls around the entrance to Sol Spin and Adventure Express, but it seems the theming budget was stretched by mostly adding lots of cargo crates, barrels, and rough hewn wooden fences and signs. The result of this approach is a jungle setting that feels thoroughly depleted by the ravages of colonial capitalism, with nearly every natural resource and cultural artifact in the vicinity stripped and shipped away. These elements have long been part of “adventure” motifs that romanticize the legacy of white European colonialism across the third world, but when packed shipping crates exceed 50% of the visible thematic elements, the tenor of storyline dramatically changes in a far darker direction.

That said, it quickly becomes clear that Adventure Port’s goal is less a cohesive storyline or sense of place, but rather an onslaught of easter eggs. At some point, the theme park nerds took over, and every single crate and environmental sign within Adventure Port contains a not-so-subtle insider reference to one nostalgic theme park thing or another; the deeper the cut, the better. Not even just Kings Island’s own legacy, but winks and nods to the entire Cedar Fair chain can be found scattered about. The whole point of easter eggs is to experience a brief delight in being one of the cognoscenti to understand the meaning of something that most others would overlook. But there’s hardly any other way to experience Adventure Port than through these never-ending non-sequitur self-references, and either you get them, or you realize you’re left out. And even if you do get them all, the constant recognition is tiring. There’s no cognitive engagement with the land or story, it’s all interrupted by repeating some prior cognition, literally where the word “recognition” comes from. Lord help me if I ever get the opportunity to lead the design for another themed land that I can have the strength to banish all easter eggs from the final design to focus on creating an experience that’s actually cohesive worthwhile in the present moment, no matter how clever the hidden references may be.

Adventure Express remains the heart of the revised Adventure Port. The entry area took a bit of a hit; the trees that once shrouded the queue’s entrance and created an inviting sense of mystery beckoning you in to explore have been cut back to accommodate more overflow queue and crates. The ride itself is still the same great Arrow mine train it’s always been, one of the best of the genre, with most of the original theme elements still intact and given a refresh to ensure everything is literally presented in the best light. The biggest addition is a bit of dramatic irony to the fictional rail company’s slogan that the Adventure Express is “on the right track.” This predictably pays off near the beginning of the ride when a left turn detours past a faux piece of track on the right side, sending us down the left/”wrong” track. The placement could have been refined a little bit to better sell the illusion, but it’s an overall reliable bit of theme park misdirection.

Audio on the lift and final brake run adds a little bit more storytelling, which mostly harps on the “right track” motif, probably a bit more than necessary when the Adventure Express already had enough other elements of worldbuilding they could have incorporated into the new narrative. But the “you will pay” idols doing their arm day workouts still make one of the best mine ride (anti) climaxes around, and they’re looking very good after the renovation. If nothing else, the Adventure Port refresh needed to pay these long-standing (since 1991) idols proper tribute, and in that regard the project is a success.

Orion

Walking through the queue for Orion, the final new for me coaster of the entire two week journey, I was once again confronted with numerous references to current or past attractions at Kings Island which all supposedly fit into the ride’s backstory as a space flight training mission, although in places it feels more like a coaster enthusiast’s rec room.³ Maybe it’s the simple corrugated steel station or the ride’s imprecise placement in the middle of a large backstage area, but my first impression was that for being the second giga coaster in Ohio, Orion feels much less significant than Millennium Force to the north. It stands “only” 287 feet tall, which to me isn’t much of an issue (the whole “is it a hyper or giga” controversy is stupid). But it made me reflect on how the elemental simplicity of Millennium Force probably wouldn’t be enhanced if it was given a backstory that’s mostly easter egg graphical references to stuff like the Jumbo Jets or Disaster Transport. A futuristic ride should look to the future, not back at the past.

Fortunately the B&M giga coaster is high capacity and there was very minimal wait, allowing us two rides, first in the front and then in the back. We could have easily done more, but we were limited on time and, after two rides, thought we’d rather spend more time reacquainting ourselves with Diamondback instead. Admittedly, Orion was not the disappointment that I had with Fury 325, but that’s mostly because I didn’t have high expectations to begin with. And based on those two laps, I would still rate Orion ahead of Fury if I were to rank them all, although Leviathan still gets the giga formula most correct of the three (the first half, at least).

The first drop is like every other big parabolic first drop being built these days. It’s big! No further comment there. I wasn’t sure how I’d like the banked camelback hill that follows. It’s not really a good airtime maneuver due to the inward banking along the curve, but I suppose that’s what Diamondback is for. However, I had underestimated the impact of being that high in the air while tipped sideways, and sitting on the left side of the train made it interesting to look left down at the ground so far below for such an extended time. The turnaround offers a similar sensation, only for the right side of the train, so I can appreciate that it uses the first part of the layout building a pattern that’s fair to everyone. After diving down there’s a fast speed hill that follows the curvature of the terrain. This was my favorite single element, and I suspect the favorite of most every else who rides Orion as well. (It’s also an experience that Fury conspicuously lacks despite having a much longer “speed run” than Orion.) A second, larger camelback hill follows, again establishing a pattern that the middle section is for airtime, even if it’s not quite as effective as similar hills on Diamondback.

Next comes an inclined helix, which feels like a middle break but acts more as a concluding finale… all of six elements into the layout. The actual ending that follows is the worst of all the giga coasters ever built, not just for coming far too soon, but for not even acting like a proper conclusion. A 180 degree upward inclined curve followed by a dip and rise into the brakes are both half elements, the kind used as transitions in the middle of the layout between full elements. Full elements like helices, complete inversions, or a camelback are how the ride choreography can signify finality; even better if they’re extended even longer, like a double helix or a set of multiple airtime hills. Instead, Orion feels like it’s setting itself up for a finale that’s revealed simply to be the brake run. Both Diamondback and Banshee have a much better idea of a well-balanced experience with a satisfying conclusion. Heck, when factoring out the extra length of the brake and lift hills, the older, 85 foot shorter Diamondback has a longer gravity-driven track length, and a solid 20 seconds of additional ride time from lift to brakes.

Ultimately, despite being Kings Island’s largest and most expensive attraction, I’d put Orion as the least essential of the B&M coasters at this park, and just outside my top five overall at Kings Island. Orion’s not a bad ride, but a giga coaster should be a defining ride at any park, not the kind of experience where you ride twice with no wait for the very first time and still decide to move on to older, more familiar attractions. For as long as a giga coaster had been rumored for Kings Island,⁴ and for as long as a giga coaster is built to stand the test of time, Orion feels like a last-minute rush order addition. It’s a generic product to drop into an open plot of land mostly to help market a single 2020 seasonal cycle that ended up being a wretched year all the same, and is overshadowed even in its own queue by what came before. I’ll give it a second consideration with an open mind whenever I make a return visit to Kings Island, but I’m not going out of my way for it.

Diamondback

Diamondback was one of the first coasters I wrote a dedicated analysis for, being one of the most significant new for 2009 rides when I started this website. I can’t bring myself to re-read the whole thing, although I remember attempting to court controversy by proclaiming I didn’t like airtime. I think what I was really responding to was how much enthusiast assessment of rides at the time felt like just counting up the quantity and duration of airtime moments and rating rides off that total figure. But the appeal is self-evident: in a world where we spend our entire lives under the thumb of Earth’s gravity, to have a device that allows us to temporarily become uplifted and experience weightless flight is one of the most magical sensations that roller coasters can provide us, and is markedly different from any other physical force it can produce. Airtime is not just enjoyable on its own merits, but increasingly essential to scatter pops around layouts that are becoming increasingly intense and forceful as a counterbalance to prevent draining riders’ stamina too quickly.

In general, I still prefer B&M’s looping coasters over their hyper models, which done correctly can offer more variation than the typically one-note focus on camelback hills. I would put Nemesis, Kumba, Raptor, Tatsu and Thunderbird all ahead of my top-rated hyper/giga model, which would probably be Canada’s Wonderland’s Leviathan. I’ve also had very good experiences with Great Adventure’s Nitro, which I’ve caught a couple of times on hot days when it was running way overspeed, as well as SeaWorld’s Mako, which is surprisingly aggressive for a smaller-sized hyper coaster. Yet despite writing what was essentially a pan of Diamondback in 2009, I’d still probably pick it as my number four choice among that ride model, of which I’ve done all except for three of the 17 operating installations.⁵ In 2009, I was disappointed that the special potential of a terrain setting was used for a formulaic layout that mostly focused on camelback and spirals and largely clear-cut the forest around it. But in 2023, I’ve concluded that despite being formulaic, it succeeds at hitting all the important beats expected of a hypercoaster, does so with a layout that feels well-balanced, and has what is still a quite unique splashdown that serves as an iconic finale anchoring Rivertown. The wooded setting isn’t used to its full potential, but it still adds something that most other hypercoasters don’t have. That’s much more than can be said for later attempts to “experiment” with the design but don’t even get some of the fundamentals of pacing and balance right, such as 2010’s Intimidator at Carowinds, or Kings Island’s own Orion, which helped me to compare the positive qualities in Diamondback I had taken for granted.

Mystic Timbers

Let me start by saying that Mystic Timbers is among the top five best coasters ever built by Great Coasters International, and the single best attraction Kings Island has built in the 21st century. It’s fast-paced and punchy, a rapid-fire dance of laterals and airtime, a terrific night ride, very good capacity, and even some good (or at least memorable) theming. If this ride didn’t have so much competition at Kings Island, I could ride Mystic Timbers all day long, especially into the evening hours after dark.

However, there are other attractions at Kings Island, including the longest and most famous terrain wooden coaster ever built directly next to it, and as such Mystic Timbers does have to compete in ways that don’t feel fair to either coaster. Son of Beast was not nearly as good of a ride, but it at least had a sense of how to build upon the legacy of The Beast while still being its own unique, separate creation. Mystic Timbers, on the other hand, is both similar and different from The Beast in ways that neither coaster adequately contrasts or complements each other. Both are terrain coasters prowling the woods beyond Rivertown, but where one is a minimalist operatic epic, the other is a maximalist pop riff. Mystic Timbers strikes me as a Beast-style coaster intended to appease those who have long found The Beast overrated and wanted a similar idea in more modern packaging. And for those who adore The Beast, Mystic Timbers can feel uncomfortably like a cheap bastardization that adds lots of bells and whistles while scaling back and missing the soul of the originator’s greatness. Of course it’s also possible to love them both (they’re my #1 & #2 rides at Kings Island), but not completely free of complication as the inevitable comparison between these similar but opposed design philosophies lined up next to each other practically insists we pick sides. Coke or Pepsi? Beatles or Stones? Hegel or Schopenhauer?

I’m solidly on Team Beast, and so I can’t help but find some flaws in Mystic Timbers that I might have overlooked in a different context.⁶ The main one: it’s too short! Even without the world’s longest wooden coaster next door, the 3,265 feet of track puts it around the median of GCI twister layouts, but the ground-hugging layout means it takes it at a faster average speed, completing the run from lift to brakes in about 45 seconds. A good mid-sized wooden roller coaster should be about 50 to 60 seconds; just a couple hundred extra feet of track would have really made it. This feeds into the next couple of points.

I wish the main out and back run could have gone just a little bit farther, past the rail tracks and into the woods. The forest setting is far better than most, but it still has the rapids, the train, and some back-of-house interrupting the sense of a mystic forest. The farther out it goes, the more sparse the trees seem to get. And again: The Beast is right there next to it! My favorite part of Mystic Timbers is the serpentine s-bends leading up to the tunnel turnaround which get a really good flow going, but there’s something about how the tunnel is built at a high elevation and the long curve hits a couple beats too soon that feels awkward to me.

I also wish it had a bit better of a finale. In some ways I concede it’s good that it doesn’t try to compete with The Beast in that regard, but after a really cool double-skip over the water, it rises up and does an uncomfortable left-hand shimmy slam into the brakes. There was a bit of empty space to work with between the lift and the brakes, a couple of cool GCI twister curves or even a flat Prowler style final turn might have helped the ending not feel so abrupt.

“What’s in the shed” has attracted some criticism as an anticlimax, although I think it’s more a factor of a layout that leaves riders wanting something a little bit more once they get to this point. But as a way to ensure that riders have something to interest them while waiting for the station to clear, especially in the event of a cascade stop while balancing three train operations, I think it’s better thought of as a novel value add where the alternative was an empty maintenance shed. The whole theme was clearly inspired by the 80s supernatural nostalgia of Stranger Things, and it’s arguably a much better fit for the rustic, midwestern-set Rivertown than the western-inflected Diamondback.⁷ That said, with three different possible endings, I find the story for Mystic Timbers a little more noncommittal than mysterious. Which, again, The Beast is the standard bearer for creating a sense of mystique and danger out of very little.

Maybe I’m alone in my fixation on comparing the two rides. I’ll definitely concede some defensiveness, worried that with more time, Mystic Timbers might supplant The Beast as the favorite among the public, rendering the older attraction’s sprawling layout more valuable for other real estate ventures. I really, really like Mystic Timbers, and my three dusk to night rides were among the best of this entire two week trip. But The Beast is a lifelong passion, and we don’t get to have many of those. Am I allowed to feel protective of it?

The Beast

We jumped into line for The Beast right at 9:30pm before the start of the fireworks show. Mystic Timbers had been great, but at this point I was feeling a little disillusioned. At first because we’d be stuck in a cattle pen as the ride suspended operations for nearly an hour while the fireworks launched nearby, and required crews to manually check the entire ride area after the show to confirm no falling embers had caused any fires. This renders getting night rides on The Beast, the most famous night ride coaster on the planet, needlessly difficult. Just make it a 100% drone show! If nothing else it would be immensely better for the environment.

But as we waited for the ride to restart in order to conclude our last night of the two week journey, I also had to reflect feeling a little disappointed about the trip as a whole. It was a great experience, and I felt very lucky to have the means to take it. With only a few exceptions, everything went according to plan, and the diversity of cities, landscapes, and discoveries along the way nearly all surpassed my expectations and gave me newfound appreciation for this corner of the country. But the roller coasters and theme parks—not so much. I expected a top five steel coaster in Fury 325, and instead just barely got a top five coaster for that park. Big Bear Mountain was another much hyped family coaster for 2023, but the one ride I got between breakdowns didn’t leave much of an impression. Thunderhead was still a favorite, but I was disturbed by how much the landscape around it had changed. In fact, the best new-to-me coasters I reckoned were ArieForce One, Copperhead Strike, Intimidator 305, and Pantheon, and all of those came with some major caveats that made me question if I wasn’t pumping them up just so I could have something to be more positive about. Even today, my overall assessment of Adventure Port and Orion made me question if my long admired Kings Islands was still on the right track, as it were.

Yet I also had to contend that maybe it was all subjective, and I was setting expectations for myself and what I wanted out of this hobby that didn’t have as much basis in the real world. I was worried about this last ride of the night: would The Beast still mean the same to me now as it had in all the years past, or would I finally discover the rampy, over-trimmed, over-long, over-rated coaster that its many detractors had always insisted? Or would the recent reprofiling work to “modernize” the first drop and curve, take away some essential quality I was expecting from the ride? We tend to get from our experiences what we bring to them, and maybe I was becoming more of the pessimist, increasingly perturbed that I’m unable to recapture the spark of enthusiasm from youth simply because I’m not young anymore and the world isn’t the exact same as it was back then?⁸

Finally, The Beast reopened. Forty-five minutes after the park closed, we got a seat in the back car. (There wasn’t enough queue behind us to wait for the front.)

Four minutes later, we were back on the brake run. We looked at each other, instantly in agreement:

“That was—by far—the best single ride of this entire trip!”

It was incredible. Everything I remembered loving about this ride came back and bit just as hard as it did all those years ago. The roar of the wheels over lumber, through the stillness of the dark forest and the crisp night air. The rampaging sense of movement, restlessness, pushing harder and faster as we go, lifting off and taking flight through the trees as if hovering between dreaming and hyperalertness in the dead of night. The momentary return to calm and civilization as we’re pulled, clink clink clink, back up the hillside, only to turn and face the long, inexorable ramp pulling us into the event horizon of a black hole. And then all hell breaks loose. Still to this day the most vicious, face-rippingly intense finale to a roller coaster ever built… and it happens twice.

It restored some measure of faith in myself, that there was still a ride out there capable of making me feel the depth of pure elation that at times seemed replaced by my hypercritical tendencies. Yet I also realized that such experiences tend to only supercharge that way of thinking: if this much good is possible in the world, then why can’t everything else be at this level? For as many words as I spill trying to ask that question of everything else I come across, I still don’t have the answers, not least about my own strange relationship to this hobby. But at least I still have The Beast, for me the greatest wooden roller coaster ever built.

Next: Otherworld

Previous: New River Gorge National Park & Camden Park