Richard Bannister

This park was known as Paramount's Kings Island at the time this trip report was written. The ride names from that time have been left in place in this report.

I've made several trips to Kings Island over the last few years. Today was to be a different visit, predominantly because I was only interested in riding one coaster. James joined me for a fairly simple mission; the desire to ride The Beast as many times as we possibly could. We did not arrive in the park until the early afternoon on a relatively crowded day, but it was still possible to get six laps in, all of which were in the front seat. There are many nice things about Ohio's leading wooden coaster, but the single best thing is its capacity. Three trains seating thirty six keep the queues moving quickly, meaning that even a crowded day in August had a wait time of less than twenty minutes.

It occurred to me later on that I hadn't actually taken a day time ride on The Beast during my visit in June. Being able to see where you're going does take some of the thrill factor away, making it easy to see why many enthusiasts claim that the Beast only comes truly alive at night. Even in daylight, however, it remains an awesome coaster, well deserving of its top ten ranking in this year's Amusement Today poll.