Cedar Point now requiring special limited passes to ride Top Thrills

RC, was one of those parks Knoebles? Never been there but want to go even though it's a 7 hour drive. Probably sounds stupid, but it is just to play Facination. My mom played that game hours and hours every trip we took when I was younger. Now that my wife cannot ride coasters anymore I would like to see a new park and play facination with her.

We had a trip to Niagara Fall for the end of the month. Sucks about the NY restrictions. We canceled and rescheduled for a place in West Virginia. It's a State Park, not sure which one, wasn't involved. Still haven't made it back to CP or KI. To me it just seems to be a lot of people to come into contact every day, whether you wear a mask or not. I wanna go. Especially since there aren't a whole lot of people there every day. I don't have any complaints, because I only bought my platinum pass last fall, and not the rest of my family. I hope at the end of the year I can take my grandson to KI and get his for next year. But It all depends on what we hear in the morning with the quarterly call.

Yes, it was. I went for two days. I’m in Ohio and it’s a similar drive, but I really felt the need to go.
Knoebels is one of my favorite places on the planet. I usually go in the fall to attend PPP and the Covered Bridge Festival, but the more I read about the park coping with the pandemic, this time I decided to take a solo, summertime trip.

The place was empty- on one of my days there was maybe 4 rows of cars in the lot. The park has done everything they can to assure safe practices and social distance, following state-wide mandates, but a contributing factor is the “locals”, otherwise faithful customers, who refuse to wear masks.
Funny you should mention Fascination- they have a decent sized parlor and I played both days I was there. I spent maybe 10 bucks and came home with a stack of coupons from all the games I won.
Attractions like that are important to the park- the lengths they took to equip the game for safe social distancing was pretty impressive.
The other “park” I stopped at was Lakemont in Altoona, for the elusive (to me, anyway) Leap the Dips and Skyliner. I drove by nearby Del Grosso’s- a cute place with a water park, rides, and spaghetti dinners- but sadly they made the decision not to open at all in 2020, looking forward to 21.
So I’ve been to a total of 4 parks this summer and I think I’m finished now- CP, KI, Knoebels, and Lakemont. In each instance I was cautious in my participation. There, just like at home, I was careful and worried about the pandemic and acted accordingly. Truthfully, between their and my own efforts, I felt at less risk at the parks than I do at, say, the super markets here at home.

Not sure how it could be enforced. As far as I know they are hoping it is self policed, and if not they are hoping others will tell on you. There is a link to report others that you think aren't following protocols. Snitches get stitches as far as I'm concerned, but I wouldn't want to risk get slapped with the big fine associated with getting caught

Yes, they are relying on people self-policing. Or put another way, they are relying on people caring about others' health and aliveness . Which is apparently asking a lot of some people.

MrJohnJLewis said:

Well there are people who don't choose to live in fear and are willing to take necessary precautions to visit their favorite place.

This is a silly argument. Fear has nothing to do with it. People avoid stepping in front of moving buses because they'll get hurt, not because they fear the bus.

But some people will avoid crossing the street at the crosswalk with the light because they fear the bus. I think it's those people he's referring to.

I doubt it. There are still a lot of people who seem to think that the way to beat a pandemic is to man up.

We just finished our only trip of the year to the park, Wednesday/Thursday this week. Staying at Breakers as usual, we had a pretty good time.

A lot of the comments in this thread were helpful in navigating the access passes. It was stressful, but we did well. Both days we opted to go directly to the 11am-noon standby line for SV at 10am and was able to hit the 2nd public train both days. We then went to Maverick and waited at the entrance for the ride host to allow more guests into the hour 1 standby queue. Got in around 1130 both days. At 3pm we got in the 330 Dragster access pass line, then walked quickly to Millennium after getting 4pm-5pm at Dragster, both days got 5-6pm Millennium. It worked out, but honestly I hope it's not a thing by 2022.

The park was very busy both days, which was good to see for them. The weather was perfect, and the forecast is great through Sunday so I anticipate a busy weekend. App and observed wait times were extreme for a lot of rides. Magnum, Rougarou, Blue Streak and Corkscrew ran 45-60 mon waits on the app both days. We personally waited 45 min for Magnum and Rougarou during our stay, 75 min for Valravn and 30 each for GateKeeper and Raptor in the late afternoon, showing higher earlier. The train cleaning and empty cycle (not used on TTD or Millennium) really slowed the pace each half hour, lines moved well during the breaks between cleaning cycles. We got lucky on all 4 meals over the 2 days with short waits, but observed long drink lines most times we passed open locations.

With the park so busy and lines long pretty much everywhere, it's a short day to be sure. I'm glad we went, we saw good mask adherence and enforcement, one father was getting mad on Rougarou as the host at the end of the main queue enforced the rule on his party but I liked that the hosts I saw were not letting it slide. Distancing in line was the best, by far, of the 5 parks we visited this summer, and hand sanitizer was plentiful.

My biggest negative is the early line closures. With all lines busy to close both days, the closure of lines well before 8pm was not great. I realize it's for cost saving this year, but jumping in a line to end the night right before close is something i missed both days. We observed Raptor closed at 725 last night, Valravn at 715 on Wednesday. I sincerely hope that process also ends if and when the park returns to "normal-ish" operation.

If there is a Winter Chill Out 2021, that's our next trip to the park. If not, see you in June hopefully! Now home for our quarantine...

Good report, thanks !

James,

Did you happen to notice whether people were using Fastlane? I ask because this isn't the first report I've heard of the park being "crowded." Starting to worry about my trip tomorrow if weekdays are getting that crowded.

Scott,

I went to the park Friday, and had Fast Lane. Hardly anyone was using Fast Lane; there were hardly any other people using Fastlane, and I believe most of the presold Fast Lane passes will be ones that aren't valid on Saturday. Hopefully this is helpful to answer your question.

Thanks, I've been to the park quite a few times already with Fastlane and it's been wonderful but each time the park was dead. I figured it should be same regardless of crowds considering they're not selling it but you never know.