![]() ![]() There is space to leave your bag in the ride station. If you are apprehensive about this, try to face backwards first. You have to really trust the harness when facing forwards first as the car is pulled up the first lift hill quite slowly. Sitting at the front or back gives a fairly rough ride when facing forwards. We found the that the ride was a lot smoother sitting towards the middle of the car. Joe thinks it is better to start the ride facing backwards, but Hayley prefers to start facing forwards. In particular, we found going backwards to be very enjoyable. Our view: We were pleasantly surprised by this ride. What makes this ride unusual is that half the seats face forwards and half backwards, meaning all riders experience both directions at different times. At the end, there is an identical hill which lifts the car up and then releases it backwards through the same track. The ride begins with the car being lifted backwards up a lift hill before running back through the station and onto a track with two inversions. On the day we were there it seemed to be smoother to sit on the right side than the left, which may be due to the wind direction, but worth trying.Ī ‘boomerang-coaster’ with a car that travels through the same track both forwards and backwards. You can take your bag and leave it in the ride station there’s no need to pay for a locker. But either way you look at it, this is an excellent ride and hyper-coasters remain our favourite style of coaster.Īs with most rides of this style, it is smoother at the back but a bit more thrilling towards the front. Joe found that the airtime came to a slightly abrupt halt at the bottom of each hill. Our view: Hayley enjoyed this ride more than Joe as she found that it gave a lot of airtime, whereas Joe found it gave less airtime than other rides of this style (although still a lot overall). There is also a brief splashdown into water at the end, although riders do not get wet Like all rides of this kind, there is a high, steep drop initially followed by lots of hills and turns that provide airtime. Since its debut April 29, 1972, The Racer has given more than 106 million rides – by far the most in park history! Its record year was 1976, when a Kings Island single-season attraction record 3,681,338 rides were given.A hyper-coaster with the same style of v-shaped seating and harnesses as in Shambala (Portaventura). ![]() While it has been more than 40 years since The Racer was the tallest, fastest, longest and most thrilling roller coaster at Kings Island, the ride remains popular with our guests, annually ranking among the top five attractions for the most rides given. He considered The Racer to be the finest roller coaster he ever built. The kit includes a slice of wood from the rides structure, an exclusive 50th anniversary Racer. On Kings Island’s online store, the park is selling a Racer NanoCoaster Collectable Kit to celebrate the park’s 50th birthday. ![]() It was one of the largest roller coasters ever built at the time, and the largest that Allen had built. For the low price of 150 a piece of one of Kings Island’s most historic coasters can be yours. The Racer was the first roller coaster built structurally on the ground with prefabricated sections lifted into position and bolted. It worked perfectly the first time, as Allen predicted it would. The first trial run came a year later in September, 1971. Actual construction began in September, 1970. He started to design the ride’s blueprints in 1969. Kings Island officials coaxed the legendary roller coaster designer John Allen of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company out of semi-retirement for the task of designing and building The Racer. On May 28, 1982, one side of The Racer became the world’s first full-length, backwards traveling roller coaster. In addition to being considered an important part of the roller coaster renaissance of the 1970’s, The Racer was the site of several world record-riding attempts and is notable for its appearance in the “Cincinnati Kids” episode of The Brady Bunch, filmed at the park in 1972. More than 500 feet of the old and mostly original track through this section of the ride will be replaced this winter, which will ensure smoother rides when the park opens for the 2021 season. Carpenters are currently busy removing the stacks of wood used for the track from the base of the first drop through the 65-foot tall fourth hill on both sides of the ride. Some years may require more extensive work than others, with this year being one of them. Annual work on the ride during the offseason months may include replacing a number of the running rails made of flattened steel strips mounted on the wooden track, replacing support bents and ledgers, or sections of track. An incredible amount of care goes into The Racer each winter to keep the 48-year-old roller coaster in peak operating condition. ![]()
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