info
Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
TR: Cedar Point Opening Weekend (5/8 - 5/9/2015)
41 views
Skip to first unread message
GodsOnSafari
May 20, 2015, 9:50:55 PM5/20/15
to
Two years ago, Meredith and I swore off Cedar Point opening weekend. It is terrible, we decried! The rides barely work, the weather is awful, and the employees inefficient! And yet, here we are going back again like we hadn't learned our lessons. Or had we? Rather than risk staying in a hotel on its first night of operation by selecting the Breakers, we opted for an outside motel, the Motel 6 Sandusky-Milan to rest. And instead of blowing out a bunch of money on a whole weekend, we opted to take a couple of hours off work, go to the first Cedar Point passholder night ever, and then visit the park until, well, whenever we were ready to depart. The only question - when would that be?
Spoiler alert: Saturday around 12:30 PM. Hey, on the bright side, we were really happy overall with our very cheap Motel 6 room and plan to stay there again a couple more times this year in getting maximum usage out of our passes. There is the good possibility that you have read a trip report already from someone somewhere about opening weekend at Cedar Point, but if you haven't because you are looking at this from the far future as historical record or because you live under a rock, here are the core points of contention many had:
-Rides opened late. And when I say late, I mean really late. Sometimes not at all during the weekend. While the weather was gorgeous, at one point, all of the following rides were not operational:
-Millennium Force
-Wicked Twister
-Magnum
-Mean Streak
-Mine Ride
-Windseeker
-Tiki Twirl
-Maverick
Add in the water rides and the Blue side of Gemini being down, and healthy crowds were often just aimlessly wandering, looking for something working. This has been the case in the past when rides were not operational due to Cedar Point's "unfortunate" rain and weather policies, but with clear skies and good temps, this was still a huge issue on Saturday. The park didn't seem remotely ready to roll. These issues also generally filtered over to long lines at food stands.
Not everything was a mess; the new Sweet Spot is top-notch and shows definite high potential for Cedar Point dining and retail moving forward. The replacement of the Frontierland shooing gallery with a Coke Freestyle space is probably for the best, all things considered, and, oh yeah, Mantis got new trains. I'd love to tell you about Maverick's restraints, but we never saw it open. Rougarou is a different story.
With only one ride, I can't give any definitive opinions about it, but I will say that Rougarou will probably please many, many more people than Mantis ever did. There's a little more "intensity" here thanks to that mid 90s B&M layout that the trains have been applied to that some people can probably detect and will make their ride .01% better. I can kinda feel it, I guess? The huge plus here is the elimination of the discomfort from the standup trains and the great increase in dispatch speed in the station provided by the new floorless trains. The switch of seating does make the ride feel like a new attraction, and the vast improvement in overall ride-ability means we have another future core attraction to our Cedar Point rounds.
Another point of contention for many attending opening weekend was the Passholder Preview on Friday night. Arriving 20 minutes before the start, crowds were pretty deep. The line for entry stretched all the way from the gates back into the parking lot, and down to about where we parked in section 28D. We found that the line moved fairly quickly, to the credit of the park, perhaps aided by the decision to stop scanning passes and simply just let anyone line come into the park. Season Pass processing also came to an abrupt stop, and our new friend Joe ended up just being ushered in rather than wait in a perhaps 90-120 minute line to get his pass picture done. We all ultimately got inside and were joined by a number of close friends likely in excess of 10,000.
The original plans were pretty much blown to pieces immediately with rides like Magnum barely working and Millennium Force only running empty trains. Meredith and I had given up any hope of riding Rougarou that evening before getting in, and instead found ourselves getting walk-on rides at Blue Streak and Raptor before crowds caught onto the incapacitation of most attractions. After admiring the new dirt patches that once were Turnpike Cars and the Good Time Theater, we met with Joe and hit the train and Gatekeeper in quick succession. Joe and I rounded the night out riding Corkscrew and the surprisingly active Dragster before heading back around to see if we could get in Rougarou's line before it closed off. Alas, it was not to be, and while there were people waiting out in front of Millennium Force, there was no reason 10 minutes after the end of the preview that it would ever subsequently open to human riders.
Come Saturday morning, we had our fill of closed attractions and long lines by noon and ventured out the door for lunch. Joe had only been the day prior for the preview, and our ol' buddy CoasterBob was too busy shooting video. The rest of our usual wolfpack was off doing something else with their lives, so it seemed rational that we should too. In seeking food, I wanted to try something that we hadn't been to before but was well acquainted with Cedar Point - Berardi's Restaurant in Huron. Berardi's name is tied to the theme park as the original producer of french fries there way way back in the days when outside concessionaires were allowed into regional amusement parks to do business and sell a product to the masses that they really liked. By the 70s, mass food service and frozen fries were an option to replace Berardi's Fries, and they found themselves on the outside looking in.
Decades later, their standalone restaurant pulls a strong Yelp rating and gets equally strong local business. While no specific item menus jump out at you, the food is just generally solid. The two of us actually ordered the same salad containing fruit, spinach, and nuts - it sounded like it had color, and color usually means nutrients. I don't know that it is so great as to demand you venture out to eat here, but it is better than most of the places we've eaten at in the Greater Sandusky area.
Prior to heading home for the last time, we set the GPS for something we hadn't previously seen or done - the birthplace of America's most legendary inventor happens to be nearby, so why not see it? Thomas Edison was birthed in the town of Milan (pronounced My-lin) just a short drive down OH-250 from Cedar Point, and that house is kept as a museum piece today, open for tours. It is a good deal larger than it appears from the street thanks to the slope that the house exists on, and the tour guide was very good, giving us plenty of info and stories about the house's history. One interesting fact I was unaware of - there was a canal here in Milan running from Lake Erie to town, making it an important hub for grain distribution at one time. The home was positioned overlooking it - today, no remnants remain following a pair of brutal floods and its abandonment in favor of rail transport.
Driving back home, we again found ourselves laughing at Cedar Point's general ineptitude for their opening weekend. We can no longer act surprised. So why keep going? Because within the badness, there's sometimes fun. Sometimes there's a lot of fun. In our case, we probably exhausted the fun in a mere 6 hours, but we didn't pay a ton for the "privilege." We accept that what matters is our trips later in summer when the park should actually have their shit together. And like most years, I dread the possibility that they won't.
Spoiler alert: Saturday around 12:30 PM. Hey, on the bright side, we were really happy overall with our very cheap Motel 6 room and plan to stay there again a couple more times this year in getting maximum usage out of our passes. There is the good possibility that you have read a trip report already from someone somewhere about opening weekend at Cedar Point, but if you haven't because you are looking at this from the far future as historical record or because you live under a rock, here are the core points of contention many had:
-Rides opened late. And when I say late, I mean really late. Sometimes not at all during the weekend. While the weather was gorgeous, at one point, all of the following rides were not operational:
-Millennium Force
-Wicked Twister
-Magnum
-Mean Streak
-Mine Ride
-Windseeker
-Tiki Twirl
-Maverick
Add in the water rides and the Blue side of Gemini being down, and healthy crowds were often just aimlessly wandering, looking for something working. This has been the case in the past when rides were not operational due to Cedar Point's "unfortunate" rain and weather policies, but with clear skies and good temps, this was still a huge issue on Saturday. The park didn't seem remotely ready to roll. These issues also generally filtered over to long lines at food stands.
Not everything was a mess; the new Sweet Spot is top-notch and shows definite high potential for Cedar Point dining and retail moving forward. The replacement of the Frontierland shooing gallery with a Coke Freestyle space is probably for the best, all things considered, and, oh yeah, Mantis got new trains. I'd love to tell you about Maverick's restraints, but we never saw it open. Rougarou is a different story.
With only one ride, I can't give any definitive opinions about it, but I will say that Rougarou will probably please many, many more people than Mantis ever did. There's a little more "intensity" here thanks to that mid 90s B&M layout that the trains have been applied to that some people can probably detect and will make their ride .01% better. I can kinda feel it, I guess? The huge plus here is the elimination of the discomfort from the standup trains and the great increase in dispatch speed in the station provided by the new floorless trains. The switch of seating does make the ride feel like a new attraction, and the vast improvement in overall ride-ability means we have another future core attraction to our Cedar Point rounds.
Another point of contention for many attending opening weekend was the Passholder Preview on Friday night. Arriving 20 minutes before the start, crowds were pretty deep. The line for entry stretched all the way from the gates back into the parking lot, and down to about where we parked in section 28D. We found that the line moved fairly quickly, to the credit of the park, perhaps aided by the decision to stop scanning passes and simply just let anyone line come into the park. Season Pass processing also came to an abrupt stop, and our new friend Joe ended up just being ushered in rather than wait in a perhaps 90-120 minute line to get his pass picture done. We all ultimately got inside and were joined by a number of close friends likely in excess of 10,000.
The original plans were pretty much blown to pieces immediately with rides like Magnum barely working and Millennium Force only running empty trains. Meredith and I had given up any hope of riding Rougarou that evening before getting in, and instead found ourselves getting walk-on rides at Blue Streak and Raptor before crowds caught onto the incapacitation of most attractions. After admiring the new dirt patches that once were Turnpike Cars and the Good Time Theater, we met with Joe and hit the train and Gatekeeper in quick succession. Joe and I rounded the night out riding Corkscrew and the surprisingly active Dragster before heading back around to see if we could get in Rougarou's line before it closed off. Alas, it was not to be, and while there were people waiting out in front of Millennium Force, there was no reason 10 minutes after the end of the preview that it would ever subsequently open to human riders.
Come Saturday morning, we had our fill of closed attractions and long lines by noon and ventured out the door for lunch. Joe had only been the day prior for the preview, and our ol' buddy CoasterBob was too busy shooting video. The rest of our usual wolfpack was off doing something else with their lives, so it seemed rational that we should too. In seeking food, I wanted to try something that we hadn't been to before but was well acquainted with Cedar Point - Berardi's Restaurant in Huron. Berardi's name is tied to the theme park as the original producer of french fries there way way back in the days when outside concessionaires were allowed into regional amusement parks to do business and sell a product to the masses that they really liked. By the 70s, mass food service and frozen fries were an option to replace Berardi's Fries, and they found themselves on the outside looking in.
Decades later, their standalone restaurant pulls a strong Yelp rating and gets equally strong local business. While no specific item menus jump out at you, the food is just generally solid. The two of us actually ordered the same salad containing fruit, spinach, and nuts - it sounded like it had color, and color usually means nutrients. I don't know that it is so great as to demand you venture out to eat here, but it is better than most of the places we've eaten at in the Greater Sandusky area.
Prior to heading home for the last time, we set the GPS for something we hadn't previously seen or done - the birthplace of America's most legendary inventor happens to be nearby, so why not see it? Thomas Edison was birthed in the town of Milan (pronounced My-lin) just a short drive down OH-250 from Cedar Point, and that house is kept as a museum piece today, open for tours. It is a good deal larger than it appears from the street thanks to the slope that the house exists on, and the tour guide was very good, giving us plenty of info and stories about the house's history. One interesting fact I was unaware of - there was a canal here in Milan running from Lake Erie to town, making it an important hub for grain distribution at one time. The home was positioned overlooking it - today, no remnants remain following a pair of brutal floods and its abandonment in favor of rail transport.
Driving back home, we again found ourselves laughing at Cedar Point's general ineptitude for their opening weekend. We can no longer act surprised. So why keep going? Because within the badness, there's sometimes fun. Sometimes there's a lot of fun. In our case, we probably exhausted the fun in a mere 6 hours, but we didn't pay a ton for the "privilege." We accept that what matters is our trips later in summer when the park should actually have their shit together. And like most years, I dread the possibility that they won't.
skiguy777
May 21, 2015, 9:11:19 AM5/21/15
to
> Driving back home, we again found ourselves laughing at Cedar Point's general ineptitude for their opening weekend. We can no longer act surprised. So why keep going? Because within the badness, there's sometimes fun. Sometimes there's a lot of fun. In our case, we probably exhausted the fun in a mere 6 hours, but we didn't pay a ton for the "privilege." We accept that what matters is our trips later in summer when the park should actually have their shit together. And like most years, I dread the possibility that they won't.
CP now features Yuengling (American) beer, and a RougaRou beer from a local craft place. The restaurant is called Quaker State and Lube, which took the place of TGIFridays at Castaway Bay. Better to support the local craft beer than Budweiser (In-Bev).
Yeah, I heeded the warnings of CP coming up to speed slowly last year. I went to Texas after Memorial day, and visited CP in the middle of June. Crowds were ok last year, I did my thrill ride tour in the morning, went back at night and got some ERT (extended ride time) on TTD. That would be a good idea for your future trips, to see when they are doing passholder extra ride time.
In the case of CP, they have rain showers every morning in May, and the muffle bugs. What's funny is I recently visited Carowinds and they had all the rides operating, but they're mostly B&M. I can understand the water park not opening, but the rides need to be running. It's almost like the 1st couple weeks in May are a soft opening, until they get to memorial day.
Biff Bifferson
May 21, 2015, 3:02:02 PM5/21/15
to
On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 6:50:55 PM UTC-7, GodsOnSafari wrote:
> -Millennium Force
> -Wicked Twister
> -Magnum
> -Mean Streak
> -Mine Ride
> -Windseeker
> -Tiki Twirl
> -Maverick
Wait, all those rides were closed and DRAGSTER was open???
> -Millennium Force
> -Wicked Twister
> -Magnum
> -Mean Streak
> -Mine Ride
> -Windseeker
> -Tiki Twirl
> -Maverick
A glitch in the Matrix has been detected...
0 new messages