I went yesterday for my annual trip with a buddy to Cedar Point. Since it's (likely) my only trip this year, we purchased Fast Lane Plus.
We parked in the Soak City lot at about 9:15 and went to the ticket window to get our FL wristbands. We had purchased Plus but the girl at the window informed us that Gatekeeper and TTD would be "down all day for maintenance". I figured she meant the wind. We had already spent the money, so we still kept the Plus wristbands, knowing full well that they would only work on Maverick (plus the regular FL rides).
We only had normal tickets but at 9:23 they let us in for early entry. This was a nice surprise. We walked over to PipeScream and rode it. I was pleasantly surprised with this ride. It's actually quite intense. Next we headed over to Maverick, which had almost no wait. From the first lift hill, we could see that MF was down, so we decided to stay at Maverick. We were able to get 3 rides in prior to 10 0'clock (this was without using FL+, since it's not able to be used until 10).
From there we headed over to SkyHawk and got two rides there. We saw Millennium Force running, so we started down the Frontier Trail to get a few rides on it. When we came out of the walk-through tunnel, the yellow train was stopped about 30 feet up the lift hill. We kept walking to see if perhaps by the time we got to the entrance it would start back up. However it was still stuck, so we continued on. (We would return later and the yellow train was still in the same position, so they must have evacuated the train with the cart.)
From there we went to Blue Streak. I hadn't ridden this in years and was happy to get on it. From the station we could see Gatekeeper open, so we went to that next. We were able to get 2 rides on this before we started getting hungry, so at about 1, we started to head back to the SC lot to grab some of the sandwiches we brought with the intention that we'd head back to the front of the park later to ride more GK and Raptor, which was running at the time.
We did quick walk-on rides on maXair and Power Tower during our walk out before lunch, not needing to use our FL passes. After eating, we did a walk-on ride on Magnum and headed back to Pipe Scream for another "loop" of the park. The ride was just as enjoyable the second time. Interestingly, the ride op instructed everyone to "PLEASE keep your arms down for the whole ride". Halfway through the ride I spotted two camera crews filming the ride from different perspectives. They were both wearing CP shirts, so it must have been for some promotional video or something.
After this, we headed back to Maverick for 2 more rides before deciding to go back to the front of the park. After another walk down Frontier Trail, we spotted the yellow train still on the Millennium lift hill and continued on to the front of the park. By now, Raptor, GateKeeper, and Power Tower (along with TTD) were all down due to the wind.
Sort of pissed off, we stopped to get some drinks and saw the yellow train go over the top of the hill of MF. So we hustled over to there and were told that "the ride is still down for mechanical issues" but we decided to hang around just in case. Several minutes later the blue and red trains came around several times and they re-opened the ride. This was at about 2:30 PM. Since we were near the front of the quickly expanding line (and were able to bypass many of the people in front of us since we had FL and didn't have to walk as far), we walked all the way into the station and got on the first train. I saw they had pulled the yellow train out of operation, so perhaps the issue was with the train itself and not the ride. We got two more rides in a half hour (even with only 2 trains in operation), and went to see if the GK and Raptor were back up (they weren't) and if PT was running (it wasn't).
We decided to try Corkscrew and walked all the way to the station and onto a train. The ride was a lot rougher than I remember and we only rode this once. The TTD trains were still on their storage tracks, so it looks like they had no intention on running the ride that day. Oh well. From Corkscrew we wanted to do "one last loop" of the park so we walked back up to Magnum and wanted to ride Pipe Scream but it was down too. So we got quick rides on LE Eagles, Mine Ride, and another on Maverick.
After this, we took a trip on the train to the middle of the park to check one last time if anything had opened back up but alas, it hadn't. It was about 6 o'clock and we had our fill of rides for the day, so we decided to head to the car for the ride home.
Looking at the day, it was definitely successful. Even though there were some rides where we didn't need it, I was happy that we had purchased Fast Lane for the day, it certainly helped. I wish there hadn't been as many rides down throughout the day but that's the risk you take only going one day a year.
Ride Count:
6 - Maverick
3 - Millennium Force
3 - Sky Hawk
2 - Gatekeeper
2 - Pipe Scream
2 - Magnum
1 - Mine Ride
1 - Blue Streak
1 - maXair
1 - Power Tower
1 - Lake Erie Eagles
1 - Train
Total - 23 "rides"
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