It’s a beautiful summer’s day during the holiday season in Mason, Ohio. Friends and family have
traveled to enjoy the rides and attractions at King’s Island. The amusement park boasts
the biggest wooden roller coaster in the world - Son of Beast. But at 4:45 p.m on July 9, 2006,
the fun stops. Screams ring out, but not the ones you’d typically expect from a roller coaster.
The Son of Beast ride malfunctioned, resulting in a total of 27 people being rushed to the
hospital with mostly chest and neck injuries. One of the victims said, “When we hit, immediately it
was like hitting a brick wall. You just know, wait a minute, that’s not part of the ride.”
She recalled her thoughts going through the loop:‘“I was thinking,
oh my god, we’re going to die. We’re going to die.”
Thankfully, none of the victims were critically injured,
and most of them could leave after five hours. However, this incident was not
isolated; It was one of many on this notoriously dangerous roller coaster.
Son of Beast was initially a highly ambitious project, costing the owner, Paramount Parks,
$20 million for construction. Roller coaster engineer Werner Stengel designed the ride - a
legend in the industry. He is credited with creating the first-ever modern looping coaster,
Revolution, in 1976. The park announced plans to build the ride in 1999.
Stengel was involved in the early design of the ride, but the Roller Coaster Corporation
of America undertook most building work. Construction involved 2.5
million board feet of wood, 2,400 concrete footers, and 225,000 21-inch steel bolts.
The ride was named after the biggest roller coaster globally,
The Beast, and was supposed to continue this legacy. The Son of Beast became the first-ever
wooden hypercoaster over 200 feet (60 meters). It also had a 118 foot (36 meters) tall vertical loop
and traveled at 78mph (125km/hr). The ride’s size and structure broke
seven world records and was characterized by its terrifying speeds and multiple drops.
Son of Beast had issues right from the get-go. During its construction, a 50 by 100-foot
section of wooden supports collapsed due to strong gusts of wind. Later on, Paramount
Parks would fire the Roller Coaster Corporation of America and finish the project themselves.
Things didn’t get much better. The ride was first opened on April 28,
2000, but had to be closed the same day to repair a small area of the track.
With the opening already delayed, an additional month was an unexpected setback. Son of Beast’s
first year went on to have further track and sensor malfunctions. It became notoriously
rough and would often jolt. Since the park was now losing money and damaging its reputation,
it sued the Roller Coaster Corporation of America for damages but lost the case.
Later that year, while in motion, the Son of Beast stopped abruptly. Although there were no injuries,
the passengers had descended via the staircase, and the ride was shut for three hours.
Inspectors discovered a rough 15-foot section of track.
In 2001, two more incidents occurred. One left a rider with a broken vertebra,
the other a broken neck. Then in 2003, someone who hurt their back was admitted to hospital.
Despite this, no design flaws were reported to be responsible. Instead, the injuries were
attributed to the victim’s preexisting conditions. No further information was published about them.
However, July the 9th, 2006, was different.
Late that afternoon, one of the trains - which was passing through - cracked a support
beam. The accident took place in the ‘rose bowl,’ which is halfway through the ride.
Although this train made it back safely, this crack would prove problematic for the next train.
The lack of support led to sagging in the track, which was further exacerbated when the
force of the second carriage passed through. However, the crash didn’t stop the train,
and the carriage made its way back to the loading station.
A vertical wooden support was simply unable to carry the weight, forcing it to crack as well.
The ride jolted abruptly, leaving riders with multiple injuries. Thankfully, nobody died.
What separates this incident from other accidents was that the ride’s designers were responsible.
A state ride inspector said that the wooden support beams were
"cracked and had actually splintered in places."
There was also an abrupt bump, which he believes was why people were injured. The Ohio Department
of Agriculture, which is also the authority responsible for roller coaster safety, said
that the beam caused a "slight dip in the track,” resulting in “a pothole effect, injuring riders."
Theme Park Consultant Dennis Spiegel said, "It's not unusual to have timbers
break in wooden roller coasters. As coasters have stress placed on them,
and as they age, they will have those kinds of situations."
Jennifer Wright was among the 27 victims and took Paramount Parks to court. Part of her evidence
was a video interview with Rick Schmizze, who the Ohio Department of Agriculture assigned to
investigate the incident. The investigator gave quite a damning reflection on what happened.
Shmizze claimed that the park should have known that an accident like this could happen
since its inception. He testified during the court proceedings, saying,
“They would fix them in a Band-Aid style and then wait and see what happened.
They never really stopped and said, ‘we’ve got a problem with this ride as a whole.’ ”
Additionally, the investigator said there was “excessive lateral motion,”
where the track would constantly sway from side to side. This led to loose
timber connections, wearing of bolt holes, track misalignment, and unexpected vibration.
He explained that fixing issues on one part moved the problems onto another part of the track.
Jonathan Yanik also took the park to court after suffering a shoulder injury that required surgery.
The lawsuit asked for $500,000 in compensatory damages
and more than $350,000 in punitive damages.
Other lawsuits were filed, but most of them reached settlements.
Both Jennifer Wright and Jonathan Yanik wanted to bring this to trial,
so it would be made public, and nothing like this would be allowed to happen again.
The victims said that when individuals agree to settlements instead of going to court, the
public often assumes that the claimant was simply looking for money. The pair were confident that
there was wrong-doing, feeling unthreatened by the multi-million dollar company’s high-paid lawyers.
Wright said, “All I ever wanted was the truth to come out and no one to ever be hurt again.“I am
still fighting, and I would love to offer any help or evidence. I feel their pain and suffering.”
Eventually, Wright accepted damages on the basis that Shmizze’s testimony was made public.
She said, “I would feel like garbage if I held on to this information
and then a year from now somebody was really hurt bad.”
After the incident, the general consensus was that
the most sensible option would be to close the ride forever.
The editor of Theme Park Insider, Robert Niles,
said, ‘A broken main support beam on a roller coaster is like a broken leg on a racehorse.
Sure, you could spend many millions to repair it. But in most cases, you just put 'er down.’’
But the park didn’t ‘put ‘er down’. Instead, the ride continued after a number of changes.
Most notably, removing its vertical loop, which they denied was related to the incident.
Kings Island spokesperson Don Helbig said,
“The removal of loop was a decision the park made so we could use different trains.
The trains the ride now uses are lighter and more comfortable than the original trains.”
This decision to not retire the ride would come back to haunt the park
in 2009 with yet another accident. According to Dayton Daily News, Jill Tavella said she
“felt dizzy and had a bad headache” after riding the roller coaster on May 31 and was
later diagnosed with “a broken blood vessel in her head.” However, an investigation into the incident
cleared the park of any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, the park was still reluctant to reopen the ride.
Speaking at the time, Kings Island General Manager Greg Scheid said, “Eight days after I took over,
the accident occurred. We have struggled with it ever since. We have smoothed out the ride.
Most people will say they are comfortable with the ride, but I am not comfortable with the ride.”
Subsequently, the Son of Beast never ran again.
The park never announced its retirement; instead, the ride just faded out of existence.
In 2010, the ride had disappeared from the park’s website. Then, in 2012, the ride was demolished,
and all of those years of building and maintaining the ride was now reduced
to rubble on the ground. The park was left with a ten-million-dollar loss.
Paramount Parks wanted to sue the Roller Coaster Corporation of America, but that company went
bankrupt in 2005. King’s Island then shifted its focus on suing the now-defunct company’s insurance
provider. In 2008, they lost the case, costing the company even more in legal fees. This was
on top of the settlements paid to the dozens of people who were injured by the roller coaster.
It’s hard to look back at the Son of Beast ride as anything but a complete disaster,
both in terms of how it put people’s lives at risk and was a colossal waste of money.
Hopefully, the park (and the industry as a whole) will learn lessons from it.
In the Son of Beast’s place at King’s Island is an entirely different ride and a commemorative
tombstone to it where riders queue. The new attractions’ name is aptly called The Banshee,
a wailing ghost in Irish mythology while the ghost of the Son of Beast lives on.
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