6/22-26 (grab a sandwich and drink.....long post)

This was our first trip to Cedar Point(after at least 8 years of my dh dreaming of it).

ACCOMODATIONS: We stayed at Days Innin Milan because I got a sweet deal (30% off and a $50 gas card) forbooking there. It looked to be a little bit of a drive, but worth itfor the cheap rate. Decent hotel, very nice pool (although too muchchlorine), clean, very hard beds, and a train (which didn't bother meat all) which ran behind the hotel. It was about a 20 minute ridein. We had purchased Carowinds Platinum Passes at the beginning ofthe season, since we live only a few hours from there so we could getin during early riding hours and we would spread out the cost of thevacation. It also meant we could “break in” our dd on smallercoasters to prepare her for the coolest rides at CP.

We got there about noon Sunday, andafter checking in (which we had no problems with even though it wastoo early for official checkin) we ran out to the park. I figuredsince it was afternoon we would just go in the front entrance. Westood in line for 30 minutes for Raptor (just because we knew ourdaughter could handle that one since her favorite ride at our homepark (Carowinds) is AfterBurn which is basically the same ride on asmaller scale. We rode Iron Dragon(2x), Mantis(2x) and some“spinny-pukeys” as my husband calls them – he didn't ridethose. My daughter's fave was ID – I think because of the mist,which was really piling out!!! I think they need lots of those forCarowinds because it gets hellish there in the summer.

The rest of our 4 days in the park arepretty much a blur in my mind, so I don't remember exactly what werode when or how many times. We do know that the early entry thingfor Platinum Pass guests made the trip worthwhile every time. Ithink if we had not had the early entry we probably would not haveridden Maverick at all, since the lines were pretty much a minimum of1 ½ hours as soon as park opened. Our daughter is not patientwith lines at all, especially for rides she has not ridden before.

MAVERICK – We rode twice, the firstwas beautiful and the second tried to rip my ears off, not sure whythe difference. On Tues. it was broken when we arrived in themorning so we had to cut our losses and move on even though we wereAT THE TURNSTILE when it died. We didn't even try the last morningbecause the second ride had been very rough, and we didn't feel likerunning again to beat the crowds. It was weird because on Mondaythey held all the early arrivals outside the gates and everyonestayed in a line, so getting there first actually gave you anadvantage over the ones who were there for the early time, but gotthere after you. The rest of the days they let us through the checkgates, and then piled us up under Magnum's tracks. That made it verymuch harder to get a good spot in Maverick line unless you wereyoung, fast and unencumbered.

MILLENIUM FORCE-- My favorite by thelongest mile!!! This one terrified me while I was in line the firsttime, and I couldn't believe my 9 year old was brave enough to trythis one. I think we rode it about 5 times during the week, andwould have ridden more if the lines had been shorter. That thing isas smooth as silk and was my first coaster ever for me to raise myarms and fully enjoy the “air time”.

RAPTOR – We rode this 5 or 6 times,with 3 rides on the morning we went straight to Milli and found it“down”. The second ride was front seat!!! Awesome. It was ourfirst ride on Sunday and our last ride as we left on Thursday. Itwas kind of miraculous that we got the last ride, because storms werepopping all around the park and the rides were being opened andclosed constantly. We were not going to stop and try for anotherbefore we left, but as we were going by toward the exit, we sawriders on it. We ran to the queue, and got on. We got the last car,as it started raining halfway through our ride. The train that camein right behind us was empty pulling in, and they closed up therestraints on ours as soon as we got out!!! That was too amazing.

TOP THRILL – Honestly, I wasn't sureif I was going to ride this one. It sounds so killer, is so tall andthe lines are usually so long I had figured that I wouldn't go. Myhusband said he couldn't leave without trying it at least once, sowhen we saw a 45 min wait on the sign, he went and my dd and I playedon the “spinny-pukeys” while he rode. We came back at the 40 minmark so we could catch him go, and got to see him as he went up thehill (missed the launch). He said it was not as scary as it looked,and that he hardly remembered being at the top. I rode it the lastday because all signs said it was the thing to do. The sign said ½hour, the girl behind me had a “Go with God” sticker on hersleeve and I got row 7. I pretty much believed I had lost my mind towant to go up there, but I did it anyway. There were two delayswhile I was in line, so it was closer to 45 minutes. The seconddelay was the worst because I was in the gate with only one set ofriders in front of me when they “shut down”. From what mydaughter and husband said, someone in the back car started freakingout and wanted off, so they had to shut things down, roll both carsback, and release the restraints for the back car to let the personout. It was thankfully a fairly short delay (maybe 4-5 min). I saidthat if they closed the ride while I was standing there, so close toriding, I would never ride because I wasn't brave enough to stand inthat line again. My husband was right. It was not nearly as scaryas it looked and sounded. He and my dd were right there beside mewhen I got to launch. Very cool. DD didn't ride, and I still don'tblame her.

IRON DRAGON-- was my dd's favoriteuntil after she had ridden SkyHawk, which became her favorite ride. I enjoyed this one, but it was a bit too tame for me. I like the endpart with the spinning and the mist, and the best swing is as youpull into the brake zone.

MANTIS-- I liked this better each time. We have Vortex at Carowinds which I don't like at all. The crew atCP were a billion times more efficient with the restraints, which isone of the big faults of the Vortex. It took forever to load atCarowinds, but was efficient and much more comfortable on Mantis eventhough it has the exact same restraints!! I like the first half ofthis ride, with its large loops and air time, but am less fond of thesecond half which has many direction changes and beat me up prettybadly the first time. After I got used to it, I could “look ahead”and brace for the changes and it got better and better.

WILDCAT – Best darn “crazy mouse”type I have ever ridden, no jerking around and lots of air for such asmall coaster. This was my favorite of all the smaller coasters atthe park. I think we rode this one 2-3 times. But it was down quitea bit for maintenance, which I could understand due to the rollbackthat happened a few weeks before.

MAGNUM-- We only rode this once, mostlybecause my dd didn't like the smoke and I found it to be a roughride. It was also closed for at least one day, maybe 2 while we werethere. I am also not fond of the “clicky hills” since that isthe scariest part of the ride for me.

MINE TRAIN-- We all like the one atCarowinds better even if it is shorter in duration. This was a VERYrough ride, and killed my dh because being over 6 ft tall meant hisknees were crammed up against the back of the next seat and made it apainful experience. My daughter rode this one all by herself on thelast day since we found it to be a walk on, and she wanted to goagain. First solo coaster ride!! YOU GO GIRL!!

WOODSTOCK EXPERESS-- I had to ride thisbecause I love Snoopy so much. My dd enjoyed it a lot. Fun for akiddy coaster for sure.

WICKED TWISTER – We didn't get tothis one until the last day, and wish we had tried it earlier. Thiswas fun but short. We walked on and could have probably done soagain and again.

DISASTER TRANSPORT – I liked thisone, except we were stupid and stood in line for it. (30 min) Itwasn't worth the wait, but since Space Mountain has nostalgic pullfor me, this one had that same sort of feel. My dd hated it, mostlybecause the theming freaked her out before we got on. My husbandfound it to be very rough, but he was in the back seat, so I don'tknow how that changed it for him.

CORKSCREW – We rode this only once. I found it extremely head beating, and REALLY stinkin' short. Ihonestly thought I was hallucinating when I realized we were pullinginto the station. I have read later that the only way to ride thisone is in the back seat, since it is actually the smoothest place toride.

GEMINI – We rode this once, mostlybecause it turned into a chiropractor on that last whip at the end. We were not prepared for the end. We lost in the blue car, andenjoyed every bit of it except for the end. My husband's spinecracked 6x in an instant and he was afraid he would not be able tomove. Our dd now says Gemini is my daddy's chiropractor.

SKYHAWK – We rode this a bunch oftimes. Loved it. I love the sound it makes, it does remind me of ahawk.

MAXAIR – this one was almostdisappointing in how NOT scary it was once on board. Enjoyable, butnot very scary to me at all.

We rode many “spinny-pukeys” likeCalypso, Witches Wheel (dd's favorite of this type), SuperHimalayan, Matterhorn and rode the old fashioned cars in the frontierend of town. We didn't to any water rides.

SHOWS – We watched the “Big BowWow” (told you I am a big Snoopy fan) and the “Molly andMaverick” show while we were there. I was thinking about the BMXshow, but the day we could go was too doggone hot to sit in anoutdoor stadium. The “pregame” for Bow Wow was cool, I enjoyedthe whole show a bunch, I love the acting and the expressions theymade. The tricks were awesome and even when they messed up or fell,it made it better because it made them real people. “Molly andMaverick” was on our last day as what we thought was our last inpark fun as storms were brewing before we went in. Saphire sat withus for a few moments before the show and chatted with our dd beforethe show and it made her day. They talked about her favorite rides(Milli) which Saphire said was great since it was her favoritecolor... The show was fun and my dd even went back up to Saphireafter the show to tell her how much fun it was. I loved the personalinteraction here. My dh said next time we should plan a meal theresince the food looked decent and it would be a good sit-down typemeal.

FROZEN CUSTARD – We had to try thissince it was something unique we had never seen before. I wouldsuggest, though, that if you are trying for the uniqueness that youshould get vanilla instead of chocolate since the custard's flavorcomes out more in that. My dd got a swirl waffle and my dh got achocolate waffle and I shared from both (hubby was a better sharer :)hee hee) I think next time I will do the vanilla with the fruit,because that sounds delicious!! It was our only in park food, as wepulled our usual trick of packing sandwiches and such in the van andgoing to parking lot to eat at lunch (saw a LOT of people doingthis... budgets w/ gas prices I guess).

FOOD-- We did not eat in park at allexcept for the Custard treat the last day. We did get the refillcups partly as souvenirs and partly because we were going to be therefor 4-5 days and knew the refills would be worth it. We ate atFriendly's for dinner.... awesome, but we had lived up north for awhile and it was partly nostalgia. Chicago Pizza Buffet – rightoutside the park and pretty good stuff for a buffet. Not the mostexcellent pizza, but lots of variety and very good quality. PaneraBread – as good as always, one of our faves from home. Reminded usof our CiCi's chain locally, w/ a bit steeeper price. Taco Bell,what can you say... other than I miss my freakin' tomatoes!! Ryan'sbreakfast buffet as we left Fri am. very good and filling. I likedthe omelettes to order. (didn't seem to be open early enough for areal CP day and the Early Entry)

It was a great visit and we areplanning to be back in 3-4 years depending on finances and familyobligations/vacation time.

Sorry for such a long post!!

Trouble with your space bar? Because every other word is missing the space between it and the next word.

What's a DD and a DH? I'm assuming you mean daughter and husband? I've never seen those shortforms used before.

Sorry about the space issue. I guess it didn't transfer well since I typed it into my word processing program originally since I wanted to keep a copy of it. As for dh and dd, I didn't realize they were not used enough to be confusing because boards I frequent use them as often as lol. I really didn't mean to be annoying or to break the "netspeak" policy. (dh= darling husband, dd=darling daughter)

That may be the first time I've ever heard someone declare Disaster Transport 'rough'.

I think some of that was that he is very tall and had a hard time fitting into the seat. Maybe it was kind of like the Mine Train discomfort. I didn't find it rough at all and I was in the same train as him. He also said it felt like his behind was directly on the track, which was part of the discomfort.

misushavoc said:
I typed it into my word processing program originally since I wanted to keep a copy of it.

Use Notepad. Or if you want to keep a copy in Word format, type it into word, then copy into Notepad before transferring it to the site. Word inserts some funky characters for CRLF that don't mesh well with actual text editors.

You could always just use "Save as..." in Word, and choose to save it in the "Plain Text (*.txt)" format.

carolina_canes_8 said:
Trouble with your space bar? Because every other word is missing the space between it and the next word.

What's a DD and a DH? I'm assuming you mean daughter and husband? I've never seen those shortforms used before.

Trouble understanding the basic rules of the English language? Try reading your own post before lecturing others, and you'll see what I mean.

That was a great trip report, and not the first time I've seen someone talk about ID being rough.

^

Maybe you should do the same over in another thread. And you're the "owner" of a photography business. Do you take class pictures and misspell "Class" when you imprint the photo? I understand that redundantly is a pretty big word but the root was only a few posts above yours.

Thanks for the tips on word processing/notepad :) I will definitely do better in the future.

It is hard to be back home after such a fun week :(