Diamondback: A New Installment

On April 18, 2009 Kings Island will unleash its newest upgrade to the Cedar Fair Park. Standing at 230 feet high and speeding over 5,280 feet of track, the Diamondback will be the tallest, fastest roller coaster to ever come into Kings Island. The ride will cover over 10 acres of land going at top speed of 80 miles per hour.

This new thrill ride is the park’s first hyper coaster and will have new style trains that no other coaster in the United States will have. According to

Kings Island’s website, the Diamondback’s trains will feature unique, open-air stadium-style seating which will allow all riders to experience a view of all the excitement destined to come.

The First ride on Diamondback is up for auction. Until April 15^th the park will auction off a minimum of 96 seats to the highest bidders. A winning bid will include a memorable first rider ticket, a special gift from the park and an admission ticket.

All of the proceedings for the auction of seats will go directly to A Kid Again, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to support children with life threatening illnesses. A Kid Again currently has over 1,380 children with life threatening illnesses enrolled into its programs.

The first rider auction is currently at a minimum bid of 100 dollars. The bids have surpassed over 75,000 dollars, but the highest bid, at this point, belongs to Blackhawk Network from California with a bid of $5,000. The Blackhawk Network is a subsidiary of Safeway Inc., which is a prepaid payments network, a market leader in card-based financial solutions and the largest provider of third-party cards.

Finally, after more than 1500 tons of ride structure and 22 million dollars of investment Cedar Fair Entertainment Company gives us something new to look forward too since the Firehawk after the change from Paramount’s Kings Island in late 2006.

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