The Beast, A Wooden Roller Coaster,Shown In illistration,The Beast Roller Coaster Is Behind The Vortex Roller Coaster.
The Beast is a wooden roller coaster located at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio. It is currently the longest roller coaster in the USA [1] and the longest wooden roller coaster in the world. It sprawls over 35 acres (14 ha). It was also one of the fastest and tallest roller coasters in the world when it opened in spring 1979.
The Beast has been constantly rated as one of the top roller coasters in the world since it first opened, having earned itself a cult-like following among coaster enthusiasts. Even after more than 30 years, it is still one of the main attractions at Kings Island, located at the rear of the park in the Rivertown section. To date, over 40 million riders have ridden The Beast.
It has been incorrectly reported by some sources that the Philadelphia Toboggan Company was involved in the construction of this coaster. This is thought to be true because the trains are the same as the Racer which the Philadelphia Toboggan Company constructed, but for The Beast they were responsible only for the trains. Construction was handled internally by Kings Island's Maintenance & Construction department.[2]
Charlie Dinn, who spearheaded the park's maintenance and construction team, oversaw the vertical construction of The Beast. Dinn later left Kings Island and formed his own construction firm, which later went bankrupt and re-organized as Custom Coasters International, which also went bankrupt in 2002.
While Kings Island was owned by Taft Broadcasting, the design and engineering was largely subcontracted to Curtis D. Summers Engineering, which was a structural engineering and architecture firm located in Cincinnati. Summers' team worked with Taft staff designers Al Collins and Jeffrey Gramke to design the Beast with John Allen providing profiling and dynamics specifications; Taft was unique in having constructed most of their wood coasters at Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, and Canada's Wonderland during the 1970s and into the 1980s. Following KECO's sale of their theme parks to Paramount, Summers continued to partner with Charlie Dinn's firm on several coasters at parks around North America. The two firms continued to work together on coasters up until Summer's death in 1992. Bold text