Kings Island

About Kings Island

Kings Island is a 364-acre (1.5 km²) theme park located in the city of Mason, in Warren County, Ohio, USA. The park is located 24 miles (39 km) northeast of Cincinnati. The park owns close to 775 acres (3.2 km²) of land, but only 364 acres (1.5 km²) are currently developed. Kings Island is owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., and was part of the former Paramount Parks chain that Cedar Fair acquired from CBS Corporation on June 30, 2006.

Kings Island first opened its gates in 1972 in what was then Deerfield Township (close to Cincinnati, Ohio), developed by the Taft Broadcasting Company. Taft Broadcasting took the name from the previous landlord, the defunct King Powder Company, which founded the town of Kings Mills for its workers. The site is between I-71 and the Little Miami River. The park remained in Deerfield Township until it was annexed into the city of Mason in 1997.

Kings Island served as a replacement for Coney Island, a popular park on the Ohio River about 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Cincinnati. Coney Island was forced to close due to frequent floods, but has since reopened on a much smaller scale. Many of the rides from Coney Island were moved to the new park; the only attraction left at Coney at the time was Sunlite Pool, the world's largest swimming pool, which has operated every single year since 1926. In 1992 Kings Island was purchased by Paramount Communications, along with four other theme parks in America and Canada; the park was renamed Paramount's Kings Island. Two years later, Viacom purchased Paramount, then split into two companies - Viacom and CBS Corporation - in 2006, with the latter company inheriting Paramount Parks, and subsequently selling then to Cedar Fair Entertainment Company later that year. The deal made Kings Island sister parks with two other prominent parks in Ohio: Cedar Point in Sandusky in between Cleveland and Toledo right off of Lake Erie and Geauga Lake's Wildwater Kingdom in Aurora near Cleveland.