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Son
of Beast
Wild
Child.
Sequels can be a tricky
thing. Take The Exorcist, for example, an unqualified masterpiece. Exorcist II: The Heretic? A megaton bomb so deplorable,
even the crater was embarrassed. But then there was Alien,
another masterpiece, and its follow-up, Aliens. In that
last instance, I'll argue till I'm blue in the face that the second
film is more satisfying than the first.
Now, Paramount's
Kings Island's Son of Beast (Cincinnati, Ohio) is really
just a "sequel" in name only. But let's face it; the
park's creative types threw down the gauntlet when they settled
on this coaster's moniker. Intentionally or not, they implied
that this new machine would strive to equal, or perhaps outdo,
the magnificence of its "father," the exalted Beast®.
Quite a challenge.
The good people
at PKI, Roller Coaster Corp. of America, Premier Rides and the
master Werner Stengel himself (the entire team behind Son of Beast),
certainly didn't shrink from the task. Son, as announced way back
in Spring of 1999, would upstage Pops with not one, but two massive
spirals and the first vertical loop on a woodie since the
dawn of the 20th Century. Even more, Son of Beast would be the
tallest and fastest woodie ever built. They were talking 218 feet tall, another 84 feet higher than The Beast's
largest drop and 78 miles per hour, about 13 MPH better
that the Beast can muster during normal operation.
This past Spring, it opened. And almost immediately shut down for some minor
retracking. And then reopened with just one train on the circuit.
Much enthusiast grumbling ensued.
But over time,
this beastie boy has settled in, with dependable two-train operation
becoming the norm. And more and more people, yours truly included,
have finally been able to sample this outrageous record-smasher.
So is it Exorcist
II or is it Aliens? Or is it something else?
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Before we
get to that, a little history. According to roller coaster authority
Robert Cartmell, efforts to include loops on a coaster started
as far back as 1846, primarily in France. An engineer by the name
of Clavieres is credited with the design of the "Centrifugal
Railway" and samples of these diminutive rides appeared in
Paris, Havre, Bordeaux and Lyons. Passengers would board a single
car at the top of a 30-foot-tall, 100-foot-long slope, glide down
and somersault through a 13-foot-tall loop, and rise up another
ramp, where they'd disembark. Novel as they were, these Centrifugal
Railways proved to be little more than curious oddities with little
appeal and went the way of the dodo in short order.
But the idea was revived at Coney Island's Sea Lion Park in 1895. Designed
by Lina Beecher, the Flip-Flap was another modest single-looper,
yet a bit grander in scale that Europe's early models. This time,
a two passenger car was hauled up a lift hill, made a left-hand
turn, and dived to whistle through a 25-foot-tall loop. Sadly,
the Flip-Flap's perfectly circular inversion was a literal pain
in the neck; as riders entered the base of the loop, they received
a sudden jolt, resulting in numerous complaints of whiplash. The
addition of taller back supports in the seats did nothing to alleviate
the problem and the Flip-Flap was razed within years of its debut.
Fortunately,
another Coney coaster soon appeared that improved upon the Flip-Flap's
flawed engineering. Edward Prescott's Loop-the-Loop, erected
in 1901 at a then-staggering cost of $400,000, featured an elliptical,
more tear drop-shaped inversion that eliminated the Flip-Flap's
unpleasant neck-snapping effect. But even this marvel, while garnering
nationwide attention, failed to generate the kind of business
that justified its expense. More folks watched the Loop-the-Loop
in action than actually rode it (signs posted around the attraction
warned "Beware of Pickpockets") and those that did ride
felt little need to come back and do it again. The sole gimmick
of flipping upside-down just wasn't enough to generate enduring
fascination. A smattering of additional Loop-the-Loops were constructed
elsewhere in 1902, but within a decade, all had disappeared.
Flash-forward
to 1975 when Arrow Development (now Arrow Dynamics) unveiled the
first modern looping roller coaster, Knott's Berry Farm's seminal Corkscrew. With tubular steel rails, polyurethane wheels
and man-on-the-moon technology, the Corkscrew blew the barn doors
open wide. And unless you've been living in a cave since then,
you're well aware that loop coasters almost instantly became a
worldwide rage, growing into freakish spectaculars equipped with
more varieties of inversions than anyone back in the early 1900's
could have possibly imagined: Barrel rolls, Zero-G rolls, Cobra
rolls, Top Hat inversions, Immelman dives, Heartline spins, etc.,
etc., etc. But every last one of them has been fabricated with
the same basic steel track and polyurethane wheel configuration.
Until now.
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Big Daddy prowls unseen through the impenetrable forest at the back of the
park. Its spawn, on the other hand, lives large right up front,
baring teeth and rising up on its hind legs so's we get an eyeful
of him from the moment we enter the Kings Island's Action Zone,
just to the left of International Street. And what an eyeful it
is: the colossal lift hill of the world's first and only hyperwoodie.
And then,
as a train climbs up that lumber Mt. Everest, we hear him growl, a metallic clatter that seems to carry for miles. Sonny Boy may
be many things, but bashful ain't one of them. "You wanna
piece of me? I'm right here...Come and get me."
Come and get
him we will, in a sunburst yellow/fire engine red Perimeter Surveillance
Vehicle, a Premier Rides-designed contraption specifically engineered
to handle the high intensity "hard target" pursuit we're
about to begin. Our point of departure is Outpost 5 and to get
there, we've got to stroll up a series of ramps. It may seem odd;
they could have built the station far closer to ground level.
But the reason they didn't will soon become clear.
As we reach the top of the ascending queue, returning PSVs slide into the
station on our left. Very slick, these angular go-mobiles, with
their wheel covers, warning stripes and biohazard-like graphics.
And best of all, no over-the-shoulder restraints. Excellent.
Before you
board, be sure to look down over the edge of the platform. We
are up there.
Settling into
the seat, you'll understand why shoulder harnesses aren't necessary
- a bulky wedge-shaped lap bar tucks into our hips for a very
secure lock-down.
And now it's
time to find out if this critter's bite is as bad as his bark.
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He sure does start the party with a bang, snarling right down a 51-foot-tall
plunge. Think about how many woodies you've ridden that never
fall that far... and then chew on the fact that it's only one-quarter the size of what's comin' up next. Makes yer fillings tingle,
doesn't it?
We swing around
to meet the base of the lift. And as that chain grabs hold and
we begin scaling this Southern Yellow Pine brute, the Son's growl
becomes an unholy racket. In every way possible, this coaster
is totally aggro.
Finally at the pinnacle, we curl over with the park's Eiffel Tower off in
the distance. The PSV picks up the pace, rumbling through a righteously
unsettling swoop curve and I say unsettling because this isn't
a whisper-quiet, butter-smooth steel coaster maneuver; this is
a down and dirty, rock 'em-sock 'em woodie swoop curve nearly
two hundred feet in the sky. Dang-diggity!
Up out of
the turn. Rushing forward. And there it is, people, a 214-foot-deep
chasm, laminated parallel rails diving at a 55.7-degree angle.
Holy Mother of Mary...
And as the
Son goes up, so must the Son go down.
Roaring like a hellhound, the train flat-out meteors into this timber
gorge. We thunder faster and faster and by the time we're starting
to climb back up again, traveling at that 78 MPH velocity, you'll
be thinking we're going twice as fast, 'cuz this is old school, friends. The vertical loop blurs by on the left, but you'll
barely register it. And before you know it, we'll be screaming
to the right, gettin' ready to enter Spiral Number One.
Seems like
we've regained some serious altitude, yes? We have, brothers and
sisters, about 164 feet. So entering the spiral means plummeting
down the second tallest wooden coaster drop currently extant.
And here's where things start getting seriously hot and heavy.
Ever been in an earthquake? Having spent many years living in Southern California,
I've gotten a taste of more than a few. The minor ones just shake
things up a bit. But the serious ones do more than rattle the
windows; the ground rhythmically heaves underneath your
feet. And this is about as close as I can get to describing the
sensation of exploding through the Son's mammoth spirals.
The train
doesn't just shiver. It convulses through this magnificently
fierce counter-clockwise whirlpool. Call me a madman but I was
totally groovin' on it. And it lasts a good, long time, 540 degrees,
up and down, around and around, non-stop bestial rage. Like father,
like son, this puppy runs the rings hard.
But once we've
escaped that chaos, there's an amazing moment of grace coming.
And that's the loop.
We pull out of the spiral, scoot across a mid-point brake run, make another
descent. And then we get to watch the world turn upside down, woodie-style.
In any other
context, this single vertical inversion would be fairly unremarkable.
But in contrast to the agitation we've just endured, the tranquility
of this element is a real surprise. And with no upper body confinement,
arms can spread wide, reveling in it all. What a rare treat, that.
Up and over we soar, about 100 feet high... Nice.
Don't think
Sonny's done thrashing yet, though. There's Spiral Number Two,
a clockwise gyre, right in front of us. It's not quite as large
or as intense as the first, but it's still plenty ferocious. Traveling
at a headlong clip, we plow through this clockwise cacophony deep
in the shadows of the gargantuan lift structure.
And then we
give up the chase, dropping out of the second helix, rising over
a gentle bluff, and whipping around 180 degrees. There's a tasty
final drop and we leap back up to the load station's elevation.
Whoa... Friends,
this coaster is something else.
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Is it as wondrous as The Beast? Sorry, kiddo, not quite. But
that's hardly a criticism. And is it the roughest roller coaster
on the planet, as some have stated? Ain't even close, at least
in my experience. (Been on the Coney Island Cyclone lately?
I love that coaster too, but it's a bare-knuckled brawler.)
But even if
it falls little short of measuring up to the Old Man, Son of Beast
is certainly a dazzling finale to Paramount's Kings Island's incredible
two-year, $40 million expansion, following 1999's Face/Off inverted Boomerang coaster and the Drop
Zone Gyro-Drop freefall tower.
Welcome to
the family, lad! Just makes ya wonder, though...
Will we ever
get to meet Momma?
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Son
of Beast
- TRACK LENGTH:
7,032 feet
- TOP SPEED:
78.382 Miles Per Hour
- MAX. HEIGHT:
218 feet
- MAX. DROP:
214.01 feet
- INVERSION
HEIGHT: 118 feet, Structure; 103 feet, Track.
- RIDE DURATION:
Approx.3 minutes
- TRAINS:
Three trains composed of six cars, accommodating 36 passengers
per train.
- TRAIN DESIGN:
Premier Rides, Millersville, MD
- CAPACITY:
1,600 guests per hour
- DESIGNER/MANUFACTURER:
Roller Coaster Corporation of America, Atlanta, Georgia; Werner
Stengel
Son Of
Beast logo artwork TM Paramount Parks. Reproduced by permission.
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