Kingda ka g force series#

With its four vertical drops, eight banked turns, top speed of 65 mph and “Guinness Book of World Records” title for longest roller coaster at 7,359 feet, its uncompromising presence made it the first roller coaster to win over the attention of national media.

At its 1979 debut, the ride, located at King’s Island in Mason, Ohio, was touted as the world’s tallest, longest and fastest wooden roller coaster. If the Beast was anything, it was a bigger, badder and more boisterous return to tradition than anything before had dared. The groundbreaking attraction and its signature double helix now exist north of its original Buena Park, California, location right between the Tilt-A-Whirl and Roaring Creek Log Flume attractions at Silverwood Theme Park in Athol. The final product became the tubular steel tracks that would find their way beneath Disneyland’s Matterhorn Bobsleds, redefining what tight turns and glossy maneuvers were possible for the roller-coaster industry.īuilding on the clunky, inverted ambition of Coney Island’s spiraling Flip Flap Railway from 1895, Knott’s Berry Farm’s Corkscrew brought the vision to life not once, but twice in the span of a single ride in 1975 as the first modern inverting roller coaster. Looking to emulate the gliding feel of a toboggan, Disney called on his Imagineers to create a smoother form of track without the restrictive angles and harshness of standard flat tracks. With the afforded convenience and efficiency of the device, its characteristic rattle would become a staple of the roller-coaster experience just before a climactic drop for centuries to come.Īs innovation in the roller-coaster field stagnated, the next major leap for roller-coaster design would have to wait until a commission from Walt Disney. One of such developments was Phillip Hinkle’s integration of a powered lift chain that pulled carts up steep inclines for the Gravity Pleasure coaster in 1885. The immense popularity of the gravity-driven ride made up for its rudimentary blueprint, but more importantly, it pointed the way for more complex and increasingly daring designs to follow.

Kingda ka g force series#

Modeled after a repurposed coal transport in Pennsylvania, which drew buzz for its thrilling steep slope down, LaMarcus Thompson streamlined the idea into an accessible and conventional take on what the prototypical roller coaster was to become with the Switchback Railway.Ĭosting a nickel and a trip up a flight of stairs, riders boarded at the top of a wooden tower and were pushed forward into a series of slopes that spanned 600 feet of track at 6 mph. Since the stateside start of the Switchback Railway roller coaster at Coney Island in 1884, the evolution of the thrill-ride authority has quite literally been taken to new heights across its 100-plus-year history.ĭespite its European origins, the adoption of roller coasters as a wholeheartedly American institution has produced many of the rides that routinely top international lists for speed, drops and sheer g-force, like the brooding Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and the breakneck-paced Kingda Ka of Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey.īut the modern thrills afforded by a century’s worth of innovation for adrenaline junkies and common indulgers alike owe their existence to a lineage that’s part exhilarating, part terrifying and entirely pioneering.