After work this past Friday we met up with Kim’s dad and her brother Nick at Kings Island to get our season passes processed and ride a few rides. Even with our 7 PM arrival, we were able to squeeze in quite a few rides in just over a couple of hours time.

The new ride this year is called Banshee and it is a record breaking inverted coaster that reaches 68 miles per hour on nearly a mile of track. It also features seven inversions and a 150 foot drop. We were shocked to find just a fifteen minute wait! Nick and I took advantage of the situation and rode it twice, the second time from the front row. It is an amazing roller coaster and I will definitely ride it again this year.

WindSeeker

After Banshee we took a quick ride on the Racer before heading over to WindSeeker for my first ever ride on the 300 foot tall swing ride. The view from the top is pretty impressive and the ride was actually a little more scary that I had anticipated, despite only moving at 30 miles per hour.

Character Carousel

From there we headed straight for The Beast to make sure we got a ride in before the park closed. There really is nothing like riding The Beast at night. The way the track follows the contour of the wooden terrain and speeds through the tunnels is truly breathtaking.

Kim took the kids to Planet Snoopy while the rest of the were riding The Beast. We met up with them afterward and I was even able to squeeze in a last second ride with the kids on Trey’s favorite, the Woodstock Whirlybirds. He had already ridden it twice before, but he wanted a third ride with his dad. We may likely never see Kings Island as empty as it was on another Friday night this summer, so we had to do as much as we could before the fireworks capped off the night.