Kings Island’s Banshee Ridership Numbers Are In…….

It was an incredible debut season for Kings Island’s Banshee, the World’s Longest Inverted Roller Coaster, becoming a smash-hit for the Cedar Fair park. The most exciting addition to the park since 2009’s Diamondback, the lady inspired coaster screamed and scared up an impressive 2,000,305 rides in it’s first season!

This is the first coaster at Kings Island since Vortex’s 1987 debut season to give 2 million rides in it’s first year of operation. We recently wrote about how it helped Cedar Fair’s 2014 results with attendance and guest spending in the park; the new latest coaster in the Kings Island collection certainly turned heads and re-ignited thrill ride interest in the beloved theme park. While there have been other additions that have been intriguing within the last 15 years during the Paramount Parks era, adding thrill rides is what keeps guests clamoring for more.

The $24 million dollar scream machine does have impressive specs. that’ll make it a destination for many years to come, much like the Vortex and Beast have been for a long time. Take a look at what all she can do to you in 2 minutes and 30 seconds:

Track Length: 4,124 Feet

Inversions: 7

Speed: 68 MPH

Height: 167 Feet

Ride Capacity: 1,650 riders per hour

The 15th coaster added to the royalty at Kings Island is another imprint of the golden touch that the Swiss-based  coaster manufacturer, Bollinger & Mabillard, has in the industry. With the park needing to finally put Son of Beast out to pasture (there’s a tombstone for the former coaster in the Banshee area), the highly anticipated ride has certainly been a great way to usher in a new era.

Overall, when you look at Kings Island’s Ride Record Book on their website, they have a lot of impressive numbers for the total number of rides they’ve granted with some of their most popular rides. The most notable is The Racer which has given 100.4 million rides since it opened with the park on April 29, 1972 [Sidenote: The Racer was in it’s best era when they had a frontward facing coaster and a backward facing coaster!]. The Beast has been unleashing over 50 million rides since it’s 1979 highly celebrated debut; Vortex is still dishing up thrills with over 41.6 million rides since 1987, when it had it’s record year of ridership. Diamondback is still slithering it’s way into coaster crazies’ hearts by giving over 10.6 million rides since it’s first bite in 2009. The mighty Eiffel Tower has given over 37.9 million rides in the last 42 years; while the Kings Island & Miami Valley Railroad has choo-choo’d over 52.1 million rides to park guests over the decades [remember those animatronic western people? Mercy, they were fun!].

To further get you through the offseason, here’s the Banshee POV video:

Some attractions that are going to hit milestones in 2015 at Kings Island include:

Viking Fury-30 Millionth Ride

Firehawk-5 Millionth Ride

Flight of Fear-15 Millionth Ride

Invertigo-10 Millionth Ride

Woodstock Express-45 Millionth Ride [Note: This coaster used to be called “The Beastie” for most of it’s era and numbers are from that time as well]

With all of the enhancements that Cedar Fair has been making to their parks in the last decade, the numbers will keep climbing for the debut season of new rides and the solid legends that have reigned for years. We’ll be watching as Kings Island continues it’s steady progress of adding new World-Class attractions; they’ve got a lot of wooded area still surround their park and that could give way to pulse-pounding, blood pumping coaster action!

For tickets and more info, visit the official Kings Island website by clicking here.

Stay connected with Coaster-Nation!

facebook: facebook.com/coasternation

twitter: @Coaster_Nation

Subscribe on YouTube!