Carol Motsinger

cmotsinger@enquirer.com

Kings Island is getting another wooden roller coaster.

The park's 16th coaster, called Mystic Timbers, will have more than 3,000 feet of track and will hit a top speed of 53 mph.

This coaster's length will give Kings Island a new accolade: It will have the longest collective footage of wooden tracks in the world at 18,804 feet. And when Mystic Timbers opens in April 2017, it will become the park's fourth wooden coaster.

After months of clue-dropping on social media, officials at the Mason theme park announced its next attraction late Thursday.

Here's a closer look at the Mystic Timbers design details:

The theme is "an area surrounding a lumber company becoming overrun by a mysterious Medusa-like overgrowth of vines as nature reclaims its land," according to the announcement.

It will be 3,265 feet in length.

Reach 109 feet in height.

Reach speeds up to 53 mph.

Will feature a total of 16 airtime hills, a mid-course tunnel.

Three trains will accommodate 24 passengers each.

Capacity is 1,200 riders per hour.

Experience will last more than two minutes.

Guests must be at least 48 inches tall to ride.

It will weave "along steep cliffs, down ravines, cross over water and go through an extreme S-turn, among a forest of trees" and interact with a part of the Kings Island & Miami Valley Railroad, as well as the White Water Canyon attraction, the press release said.

Mystic Timbers will be designed and built by Great Coasters International Inc. of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Mystic Timbers, however, will still be homegrown.

That's because Adam House, design engineer, is from Northern Kentucky. His early experiences riding wooden roller coasters at Kings Island "really put something inside of me that (made me want) to design these rides," House said.

"This is the mecca for wooden coasters," he said.

Mystic Timbers will be in prestigious company. Since 1979, Kings Island has been home to The Beast, the longest of its kind in the world. "I think The Beast put us on the map," said Kings Island’s vice-president and general manager Greg Scheid said. "We've always had an affinity with wooden coasters."

The last major new roller coaster announcement at the 364-acre amusement and waterpark? That was for its record-breaking Banshee, the world's longest inverted steel roller coaster, back in 2013. The $24-million project was then Kings Island's largest investment in its more than 40-year history.

Scheid said the park is no longer releasing cost amounts of specific projects.

Banshee, which opened in 2014, was manufactured by Swiss firm Bolliger and Mabillard. The construction employed hundreds of local workers from various area construction and fabrication companies.

Earlier this year, a new water slide opened in the Soak City Waterpark. Cedar Point on Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, which is owned by the same company as Kings Island, also got a new roller coaster this year.

Mystic Timbers might not be the last new attraction at Kings Island in 2017.

Officials said Thursday night that they have another big announcement coming this year.