Beast still a marvel 30 years later

Updated 5:49 PM Thursday, May 7, 2009

Many of the important moments in Jeff Gramke’s life have occurred at Kings Island.

Gramke met his wife there. His daughter was married at the park. And over the course of three years, Gramke gave birth to a 7,400-foot-long baby.

Gramke is one of the designers of The Beast, Kings Island’s most celebrated wooden roller coaster, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this weekend.

“We knew we were building something special, but I don’t think we realized it would be this long lasting,” Gramke said, standing under the “helix,” a towering maze of planks arching upward and around into a nearly full circle.

At the time it was built, The Beast, made all of wood, was the longest and fastest roller coaster ever constructed. It’s still listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest roller coaster.

Gramke first came to work at the park in 1971. He was taught to survey by crew chief Al Collins. Neither had any experience building roller coasters.

In 1976, the park’s owners decided to build the largest roller coaster in the world. Gramke and Collins hoped to hire John Allen, at the time the foremost expert on roller coaster construction in the world, to design the project. Allen, however, was semiretired and declined such a stressful project.

“We set in a restaurant trying to lure him in,” Gramke said. “He wrote all the formulas for roller coasters on a napkin and gave it to us.”

Gramke and Collins spent two years designing the project, checking and re-checking calculations on the ride. Even today, when Gramke speaks of his creation, it’s nearly possible to view the ride not in twists and falls, but physics equations and mathematical constructs.

Gramke also remembers slicing through the swampy land near the back of the park with a machete to clear out overgrowth.

“The deerflies just about carried us away,” Gramke said. “I built up a tolerance to poison ivy because it was just everywhere.”

Today, Gramke focuses mainly on coaster repairs, both at Kings Island and as a consultant at other parks. A bad back has left him unable to ride, but he says he can still picture the thrills by reading the layouts.

The power of the Beast remains in ways unexplainable and fascinating. At a preview of Kings Island’s newest coaster, the Diamondback, which dwarfs the Beast, members of the American Coaster Enthusiasts still proclaimed their love for the Beast.

“It’s the Holy Grail of wooden roller coasters,” said Kings Island spokesman Don Helbig. “New roller coasters may surpass it on a ranking for a couple of years, but they fall off and the Beast stays.”

Kings Island will hold a 30th birthday party for the Beast Saturday and Sunday, May 9-10, where it will be descended upon by thousands of roller coaster enthusiasts from around the world.