The Beast

The Beast is a wooden roller coaster located at Kings Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio. Designed and manufactured in-house for $3.2 million, the ride opened in 1979 as the tallest, fastest, and longest wooden roller coaster in the world. Decades later, it is still the longest, spanning 7,359 feet across 35 acres of hilly terrain. Two lift hills contribute to the ride's duration of more than four minutes, which also ranks as one of the longest among roller coasters.

The Beast was designed over the course of two years without assistance from scientific calculators and computers. Lead engineers Al Collins and Jeff Gramke consulted with legendary coaster architect John C. Allen, who shared design formulas and strategies to assist during development. Issues discovered during early testing delayed plans to build an enclosure over the helix finale until the following offseason. Ruth Voss, the park's public relations manager who would often overhear construction crews calling it "a beast of a project", is credited with coming up with the ride's name in early 1979.

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