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Looking Back at Son of Beast Four Years after Its Deconstruction
Not all things are as promising as they seem.
And that was the case with Son of Beast, a wooden roller coaster that opened at Kings Island in May 2000. The coaster was one of most iconic in the entire world after its announcement. Son of Beast opened as the tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster in the world. It broke five other wooden coaster records, including its most iconic record broken, which was becoming the first wooden roller coaster to go upside down.
Courtesy of Dane Thomas
Now, Son of Beast actually was not the first wooden coaster to feature an inversion. It was one of a few, but its predecessors weren't successful. Kings Island was smart and didn't include the actual truth when declaring what records Son of Beast would break upon opening so it wouldn't be confusing to those with little knowledge of coasters and their history. Son of Beast was also the first wooden hyper coaster, a coaster with a height or drop exceeding 200 feet and topping out at 299 feet or less. At the time, only steel roller coasters had topped 200 feet, and, oddly enough, Millennium Force at Cedar Point, in the same state as Kings Island, opened thirteen days earlier and was a 310-foot tall steel coaster. Want to know what's even more odd? Even now, sixteen years after Son of Beast opened, still no wooden coaster has topped 200 feet.
Even though this coaster was so renown and praised after it was announced, the coaster had a lot of bad things going for it. The manufacturer of Son of Beast, Roller Coaster Corporation of America (RCCA), was not known for smooth coasters. Only six of the ten coasters built by the company are still in operation today, and all of them haven't been very well received. Even worse, in the middle of Son of Beast being built, Kings Island fired RCCA.
The coaster ended up not living up to its potential. Even though it broke many records, Son of Beast followed a path similar to Mean Streak at Cedar Point. It aged very poorly, had low ridership, and was poorly received by critics and riders. This and a couple accidents led to the indefinite closure of Son of Beast mid-season 2009. Son of Beast never opened again, and the $20.5 million coaster was completely demolished on November 20, 2012, four years ago to date, after another $9.5 million was put into repairing and operating Son of Beast, totaling $30 million invested before deconstruction. Mean Streak also closed, almost four years after Son of Beast was completely demolished, in mid-September 2016.
Courtesy of newsplusnotes.blogspot.com
Sounds like a disaster, huh? Well, it sure as heck was. Kings Island knew that a 218-foot tall wooden coaster that reached speeds over 78 mph and had a 118-foot tall vertical loop would draw in crowds on paper. But, guess what? They were wrong. The park actually drew in nearly 120,000 less guests than the previous year. The park blamed weather for the drop in guest count, but the trend of attendance becoming smaller was nothing new. The park had had dropping attendance for several years in a row before the 2000 season, in which Son of Beast was added. The coaster even had an accident that caused a train to stall mid-course, and another that a woman blamed for a head injury, which led to Son of Beast's closure immediately after the incident. Even though the coaster was a failure, Kings Island's attendance has increased over the years, to 3.335 million in 2015.
So, sixteen years later, Kings Island has built several new attractions, including Banshee, a Bolliger and Mabillard Inverted Coaster, that used some of the land formerly used by Son of Beast. We're lucky that roller coaster technology has improved since the disastrous Son of Beast opened, because without it, we wouldn't have coasters like Outlaw Run at Silver Dollar City and Goliath at Six Flags Great America, two record-breaking roller coasters built by Rocky Mountain Construction that were among the first three wooden coasters to go upside down, successfully. And, luckily, all three are operating, absent of any issues.
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