I know this is a few weeks late, but I vowed to be better about posting TRs this summer and wanted to document my first experience riding Valravn. On Saturday, May 21st, my family and I drove out to Sandusky for a little evening trip to Cedar Point. The weather was great that day -- high temp in the low-60s, low around 50 degrees -- so we dressed in jeans and light hoodies for the cooler evening hours. It was Season Passholder Appreciation weekend with ERT on Valravn after the park closed at 10pm, so we were excited about that.
We arrived to the park around 5:45pm and checked the CP App for ride wait times. As a general rule, my family and I typically don't wait for a ride unless it's posted at 30 minutes or less. We frequent the park enough times each summer that we get plenty of opportunities to hit all the major rides. It was fairly busy at the park, which we expected on a Saturday, so Millie, Maverick, TTD and Valravn were all 90 min - 2 hour waits. Even Magnum had a longer-than-expected wait that went several rails deep into the queue below the steps/platform. Magnum is our usual first ride of the day since we park in the Soak City lot, but we skipped it and decided to come back later. The shortest wait times according to the app were Rougarou (5 minutes), Wicked Twister (5 minutes), GateKeeper (30 minutes) and Raptor (30 minutes). We decided we'd save Valravn for the ERT after park close and headed towards Rougarou. The queue didn't look too bad. It was longer than we would have liked it to be, but we waited maybe 20 minutes at most for an exhilarating ride.
Next we headed toward the front of the park to ride GateKeeper and Raptor. GateKeeper was a quick 10 minute wait and ran a lot faster than I remembered it being. Wicked Twister was next, but I skipped it since I was feeling nauseous after my first few rides of the season. On the way to the park, we stopped at McDonald's just off the highway for a quick bite and I hadn't eaten that garbage in a LONG time, so perhaps that was the culprit? They were done riding Wicked Twister after 10 minutes, so we walked over to Raptor. Another 10-15 minute wait. The new paint job really stands out and I love the LED lights that were added to Raptor's lift hill.
Next we redeemed our voucher for the season-long drink cup at the new Coke Freestyle stand next to Fresh Cut Fries. We received an orange Valravn cup filled with bugs, which I didn't notice until I had already filled our drink. So I had to go back to the stand, get the cup re-scanned, and wash it out before refilling the beverage. At least we were fortunate enough to stop at a machine that had ice. Anyone else having problems getting ice at the Coke Freestyle stands? I can only imagine the problem getting worse as the weather gets even warmer.
We had about 2 hours left til the park closed and the kids (ages 12 and 14) were hungry again, so we stopped into Chickie & Pete's. Selfish decision by me to stop there since I wanted to watch the first quarter of the Cavs game (it was Game 3 of the Raptors series that night). This was my second time eating at C&P. I ate there the year it opened and documented my experience here. All four of us decided to split various items on the menu and ordered The Classic, The Parm, The Chicken and two orders of Crab fries. I was not impressed with the chicken sandwich, which was very bland even after I added grilled onions to the sandwich. The consensus favorite was The Parm. Portions and service were good, but definitely not worth the $70-plus I spent on the meal, tip included.
With an hour left until the park closed, we walked towards Valravn to snap some pictures and check out the views. The wait time on the app said 45 minutes and the attendant was moving the time up to 60 minutes when we arrived. We had originally planned to do ERT on the ride after the park closed, but we didn't feel like walking elsewhere (Millie, Maggie) and made the decision on the fly to get a locker for our drink cup and get in line for Valravn. We waited roughly 75 minutes in what seemed to be a slow-moving line at first, but it picked up as we progressed through the queue. We got nervous to find that additional section of the queue (after the initial part), but it was a breeze and our excitement for our first ride on Valravn (at night, no less) kicked up into overdrive. To our surprise, we were ON THE RIDE right after the steps and were seated in the second row. LOVED it! The view at the top of the hill, the 4-second holding brake, the speed down the 90-degree first drop and through the Immelmann into the turn, the 270-degree roll... it was fantastic. My only gripe was the length of the ride, but I realize the wait time would've been even longer if the ride duration was 3 minutes. We rarely purchase our on-ride photos but this one was just too PERFECT that we had to buy it. Unfortunately, the printer was down at the photo booth so our only option was to buy the digital copy and print at home, which was kind of annoying since our printer was out of ink.
By the time we were off the ride, it was 10:15pm and the original queue was still pretty long. I thought it might be 11pm before they let the ERT line through, so we decided to end the night on the high note and head home. Overall, it was a pleasant evening trip that I didn't think would be all that great upon our arrival due to how busy it was. Instead, we got runs on Rougarou, GateKeeper, Wicked Twister, Raptor and Valravn in the four hours we were at the park. Of course we would have loved to get on more rides, especially Millie, Maggie and Maverick, but .e all had a blast and the kids didn't even argue once! I'd call that a successful adventure!
@RyanRufe
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