Longtime Kings Island employee shares what it’s like to work at the park, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer

Kings Island amusement park opened its doors to the public for the very first time on April 29, 1972. Owned at the time by Taft Broadcasting, the park got its name from a naming contest. The winning entry, Kings Island, came from a combination of the park location near Kings Mills and for Coney Island, the Cincinnati amusement park that was closing to make way for Kings Island. A few of the original attractions, including the carousel built in 1926, were relocated to the new park from Coney Island.

As the now 364-acre amusement park pays tribute to its milestone anniversary, one longtime worker says he’s still as happy as ever to be working in a job he loves.

Steve Wolff lives in nearby Fairfield Township and has been getting up early to start his workday at 5 a.m. for nearly 34 years.

“I was working for General Motors in Fairfield as a millwright,” Wolff says, “But they closed the plant in 1988.”

Wolff had already been a frequent guest and season passholder at Kings Island, bringing his two young daughters to the park with his wife regularly. He was hired in the rides maintenance department and has worked on almost every ride in the park.

Today, Kings Island is home to several record breaking rides, including the longest wooden roller coaster on Earth, The Beast and the newest so called “giga” coaster, Orion, the tallest, fastest and longest coaster in the park. And while these thrill rides are huge draws for the park, most people come for the fun of the ride and have no idea what’s involved in keeping them safe every day the park is open, all year round.

“When I first started at Kings Island, my team did maintenance in Coney Mall,” Wolff says. “We worked on original rides like the Bavarian Beetle and the Flying Dutchman.”

Wolff says he has always enjoyed the quiet mornings in the park before opening, when members of the maintenance teams walk the tracks, check the support structures and tighten bolts. During each summer season, every ride in the park is completely inspected top to bottom each day.

“Safety has always been paramount,” Wolff says. “We want to make sure our guests are there to enjoy themselves without any worries.”

In 1992, Wolff transferred to steel coaster maintenance and started servicing rides like King Cobra, Vortex, the still-operating Adventure Express and Top Gun, a unique suspended coaster that now operates under a new name—The Bat.

“I went from steel coasters and then got transferred to another coaster crew,” Wolff says. “I’ve stayed in coasters all this time.”

Wolff says safety is important to him personally because his daughters, and now his five grandchildren, come to ride these rides. When he is meticulously inspecting each coaster, he is not only thinking of guests he may not know, but of his entire family.

Over the many decades since opening day in 1972, Kings Island has grown, removed some attractions, rebranded others and added state-of-the-art attractions that park guests in 1972 wouldn’t believe possible. Just 11 attractions present on opening day still exist in the park, including the iconic wooden double coaster, The Racer; Dodgem; the Grand Carousel; Kings Island and Miami Valley Railroad; the Funky Phantom (now renamed Linus’ Beetle Bugs); the Monster; the Pee Wee Raceway (now known at Peanuts Off-Road Rally); the Kings Mills Log Flume (now called Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown); the Scrambler; the Scooby-Doo (now the Woodstock Express); and, of course, the iconic Eiffel Tower, which has given rides to the top 38,869,216 times in its history.

“The biggest changes I’ve seen to the park are the huge mega coasters,” Wolff says. “Diamondback came first and then Banshee. We also had the first linear induction motor (LIM) coaster, Flight of Fear.”

In fact, Kings Island was the first park in the world to play host to a ride using LIM technology and a catapult launching system. Like its counterparts throughout the park, it’s controlled by computers. Wolff says when the original ride—then called The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear—opened in 1996, he and his team were heavily involved in the installation of the launch system.

“The technology has improved everything,” Wolff says. “There are two computers that have to run together to get the same reading, or they will stop the ride.”

This safety protocol is one of many Wolff has seen implemented and is helping to maintain today at Kings Island. Most coasters now even have sensors in the seats that are connected to controls in the operating booths. And the rides will not operate unless every rider is secured.

“This is the primary reason I get up at 3:15 every morning—safety,” Wolff says.

And though the park is only open to the public nine months out of each year, Wolff and his team work year-round maintaining and sometimes completely dismantling rides. During the off season, the team cleans and repaints rides in addition to checking hardware and supports.

“When we finish, it’s like we have brand new rides,” Wolff says. “I describe it to my friends by saying if you take your car and remove the brakes, doors, upholstery, clean and repair or replace everything and then reassemble it, that’s what it’s like with the coasters.”

Wolff, now 65, knows every inch of the park where he spends most of his time. Though retirement is a possibility in the future, he says he enjoys staying busy and spending time with family when he’s not working.

“As long as I have a tool in my hand, I’m happy,” Wolff says.

For more than three decades, Wolff has been thriving in a job that is constantly changing. He joins more than 200 full-time employees working in a fast-paced environment that still brings new opportunities.

During this park season, Kings Island has asked guests and staff to share their favorite memories of the park. From popular sitcoms like The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch filming episodes there to daredevil Evel Knievel and acrobat Karl Wallenda performing stunts, Kings Island has long been a place where memories are made and cherished.

“My favorite memory is when my oldest granddaughter rode The Beast for the first time at age 11,” Wolff says. “My daughter called me to come and watch her and I saw her go up that first lift hill. Just to see the smile on her face—that’s what it’s all about and reminds me why I do what I do. Life is good.”