Vacation 2008 - Part III - Cincinnati

You may ask, "Why in the world would you want to Cinciannti?" Well, I have 14 reasons and they all go vacation inreally fast. Cincinnati is the home of Kings Island amusement park which has 14 roller coasters on site. My sister and I both love roller coasters and Ryan is becoming a roller coaster freak so this was a great place for us to visit. That's not to say that there was not plenty of fun things for the rest of the family to do. They have a whole section of the park called Nickelodeon Universe where you can see characters from Rugrats, SpongeBob, and many other Nick shows. We saw a show featuring Dora the Explorer and Boots.










The biggest roller coaster that Kings Island is known for is The Beast. Built in 1979, The Beast is the longest wooden roller coaster in the world at 7,400 feet. It nearly reaches speeds of 70 mph and has two big drops, one 135' and one 141'. The ride lasts for nearly 4 minutes. As you expect from wooden roller coasters, The Beast is one rough ride. One of the other big attractions is the Son of Beast, which is also a wooden roller coaster. The Son of Beast is the tallest wooden roller coaster, holds the top two positions for the tallest wooden coaster drops, and reaches a top speed of 78mph. Now I am not a big fan of wooden coasters because of the roughness of the ride, but Ryan really enjoyed the Son of Beast and wanted me to ride it with him a second time. Now if you want to talk about an ultra-cool, adrenaline rushing coaster, you have to ride the Firehawk. You ride this coaster in a laying down position and you actually get the feel of flying while soaring through the 1/2 mile track with 5 inversions and a top speed of 51 mph. If the line had not been so long for this one, we would have ridden it several times. I also enjoyed Vertigo where you go through the track forward then take a return trip backward. Then, there was Vortex which has 6 inversions and reaches speeds up to 55 mph.

On the lighter side, Ayden rode his first "big boy" rides. Some by himself and some with Ryan. There were even a few rides that Camden could enjoy. He really like the Nick-o-Round, the carousel in Nick Universe. He rode that so many times and cried when it was time to get off. Nicole really liked the Rugrats Runaway Reptar roller coaster, where the track was on top and your feet dangled. She doesn't mind going fast, but doesn't care at all for loops or going too high.

There was so much to do that two days was just not enough. We didn't even make it to the water park!