5/20 thru 5/23

Our first trip of the year had us arriving Thursday, May 20th at the Camper Village right around 3PM. I started getting excited when we turned into the park entrance by the marina, and not seeing any boats in the slips. I hoped it was a good sign the park would not be crowded. When we reached the parking lot, WOW, I have never seen so many buses. Math/Science week, indeed.

I had expected crowds during the day but was hopeful that on Thurs and Fri, all the HS kids would leave around 6PM and I'd have plenty of good riding time where I could walk-on to whatever I wanted.

Thursday at 6PM I waited 15 mins for Gemini. Not a good sign. The crowds thinned out towards 8PM when the park closed and I managed a few other rides, notably, MF, TTD, and Magnum a few times. Bear in mind I have little children, so I can't spend the ENTIRE time riding big rides, but most of it :)

Friday we got in for early entry and didn't ride anything meaningful since it rained till noon. The park got crowded quickly again (dang Math/Science week!!). Now when I went to the park 16 years ago for Math/Science week in HS, we had lots of work to do estimating heights, velocity, volume, g-force, etc on many of the rides. And the info boards on the rides were all taken down or covered, and the park ops were instructed not to reveal these figures. This time I did not see a single kid with a pencil, and all the info was readily available. What gives? Don't call it math and science week, if there's no math and science. Just call it "savage HS kids run wild at CP week". Which is what it really is.

Saturday was quite crowded. This, I expected. It was "music in the park" day and lines got pretty long pretty quickly. Still lots of busses. We spent much of the day back at the RV, and the pool at Lighthouse Pointe. Nice day for that.

Sunday, early entry again and got 3 straight rides on Maverick inside 25 minutes. Awesome. One was a parent swap, the other two I waited in line. Parent swap rules! Not so much for MF, but for most of the other big rides.

Now, onto some general thoughts. After spending a week at Disney this year, I have a new perspective on CP. First, some of the safety stuff is ridiculous. I posted about this already. It's even worse this year, no surprise. The cadillac cars seem to have been slowed by 50%...not even worth riding anymore. My 4 year old said "this is boring, Dad". Was the 5mph the cars used to go too fast??? Secondly, Disney does a 1000x better job of customer service. It seems nobody at CP really cares, and maybe this shouldn't bother me so much, but I can't help it. Ride ops are in no hurry whatsoever to do their job, and laziness was very evident to me especially on smaller rides like Troika, kid dodgems, and some others. I don't have the energy to type all my thoughts on this, except to say customer service isn't great. I was even told that my 3 year old could not ride Jr Gemini AFTER being buckled in because she "looked too scared". Seriously? MF was running only one train on Friday till early afternoon. WTF? Power tower only running one column on each side despite 1 hr line. Several rides down/broken during my time there, especially TTD, but also including wicked twister, CCMR, and others.

TTD does not even open for testing until close to 10AM (From what I could see). Then, when there are problems the technicians waddle out and ry to fix it. How about starting testing at 8AM and getting it fixed before the park opens? I mean, this is one of the premier attractions at the park, am I right?

Then I almost got denied entry returning into the park because I declined the disease infested hand stamp, thinking that I could just scan my Platinum pass a second time. The girl treated me like I was an idiot for not knowing that you can only scan the pass once per day. Where does it tell you that in any of the literature?

All in all, it was a good trip. I'm sure I come off sounding a little bitter, which I am, but we still had fun. CP has so much potential going to waste to create a much better experience. I'd gladly pay double the price for park admission if there were a few less people, and better customer service.

Here's the final ride tally:

Maverick - 5
Gemini - 6
Magnum - 11 (see my handle!)
MF - 1
TDD - 2
Raptor - 2
MS - 2
Skyhawk - 2
CCMR - 1
PT - 3
BS - 1
Cadillac cars - 1 never again... :(

I don't have a pass this year, so I can't verify whether it's on the pass or not, but I do know for the past 3 years they've not allowed the pass to be used more than once per day. Re-entry requires a hand stamp (Disease Infested or not!)

The only downtime we saw yesterday was on TTD (which seemed to be off and on all day). We lucked out and got off Corkscrew just as they tested a train and opened the queue TTD queue again.

Frankly, I don't think we'll ever see the kind of customer service that Disney has, especially since CP is a seasonal park.

Visiting the park during the week in May is kind of risk/reward. Sounds like they weren't quite fully staffed yet, which means wait times were higher. Also, there can be more frequent mechanical issues as they are still working out the offseason kinks. If possible, I would recommend your next visit during June week days for comparison.

Hand stamps are mentioned on the trip tips page on the website, but that's pretty obscure. Hopefully it's also in the park map when you go in. Again, they typically have people at the gate to tell you, but if you go out early in the day or if they are understaffed that might not have been the case.

Dragster opening late is nothing new, especially early in the season. The difference from years past is that now it tends to stay open throughout the day. I have never felt confident in attempting it first thing in the morning though. This is the same reason why it is generally not included as part of resort guest/platinum pass ERT.

When we got there yesterday we saw people line up for Dragster at around 9:00, at around noon I saw some of the same people still waiting and I thought there were out of their mind. Wasting half a day in hopes that Dragster opens up, yikes. I'd rather just wait in the 2 hour wait eventually than bank half the day on hoping it opens.

I don't get why Cedar Point cares so much about the one scan a day rule on the passes. If it is such a big deal, they should just hit the X on the screen and let the person through. I don't think the stamps have any germ infested bacteria on it though because bacteria usually grows on an item after being on it for 30 seconds.

I saw the people waiting for TDD also. That was nuts. Good for me though, as that was less people waiting for other rides! :)

Oh, and what's up with Magnum almost NEVER having a wait? I know it handles a lot of people per hour, but sheesh. Power tower can have an hour wait, and Magnum is walk-on. I don't understand it... IMO it's one of the top three rides in the park, despite being my personal fav. Especially if you know how to work the restraints to minimize pain on the last three bunnies.

If you're worried about the stamps, you probably should wear rubber gloves and a face mask all day. The stamps are probably one of the least disgusting things you'll touch around the park.

I was there on 5/23 and was very dissapointed with downtime. With early entry we went straight to MF which was down but only for about 20 min. Iron Dragon was down for a period of time and the line was all the way out the entrace, I haven't seen that ever. CCMR and Gemini were down. TTD was down for most of the day as mentioned by previous posters but we were able to get on it for the last ride of the day. I believe that the Satuday night before was prom... unfortunately we had to deal with people throwing up on MF, Corkscrew AND Raptor.... Hungover teenagers from the night before I'm sure. We ate lunch at Fmaous Dave's and it seemed like the price went up a little from what I remember last year. Weather was PERFECT all day!

^Seems like all of the reasons one would avoid CP like the plague that day...