7/15

From 1994-2003, we traveled to CP every year. Got caught up in personal things and didn't get a chance to go in 2003 and 2005, so I was looking forward to this little weekend trip away from Western PA.

It was hot and humid, plain and simple. Most of the day I just felt, all hot and sweaty. I probably should've spent more time back in the Frontier area. Oh well, its the middle of July. I next year I will plan a May trip.

We got in the gates around 11:15AM. Our first ride was Maggie. MF is my favorite ride in the park and I have never rode Dragster yet, but I still chose Maggie as my first ride of the day. Call it a hunch. That went great, as usual.

Next was Gemini for a fun ride followed by a terrific front seat ride on MF. I was kind of surprised by the 45 min wait up to the station. I thought it would be longer. While waiting, MF had about five minutes of downtime because I assume they had no audio. None of the microphones and music worked. Once they tested that out, the ride opened back up. Could the lack of audio cause them to not run the ride?

After that was a Cheese On a Stick break followed by Disaster Transport to cool down. Next was perhaps our only mistake of the day: It was about 3PM, nice and hot, and we decided to wait an hour for Raptor. I love the ride, but I hate the queue. Ugh, those sections that are closest to the Blue Streak need some nice tent covers. I probably got burned up the most there.

Finally, it was time for Dragster. Like I said earlier, I didn't go in '03 when TTD opened. In '04, it was closed the day we were there. And of course last year I didn't go as well. Basically, I've been waiting three years to ride it. The line was back to the pop machines. I was in line for about five minutes when a train launches and only gets 1/3 of the way up the tower. It slowly rolls back and the op says that Dragster will be down.

Cue mass exodus. I was staying in line short of them saying it would be closed the rest of the day. With each passing minute, I slowly but surely inched closer. A funny moment during this downtime was when someone noticed Maggie was stopped about ten feet from the top of the lift and that said person remarked that nothing was working today.

Eventually an hour later a little after 6PM, there is only about 30 of us left as we hung out on the station platform. Suddenly they call the crew back to their positions back and start resetting the trains, whoo! We watch anxiously as they launch the first train (I thought they would do a test launch, but they went ahead to straight to loading)and it makes it over. Everyone clap and things start up.

We pull up to the launch area and it seems like we are there for minutes. Then off we go! Wow, what a blur! Next thing I know I'm staring right at the crystal clear sky. We come to the top for a too quick stay and I feel some small airtime. Then the disorienting twist and descending at a blur too. I was glad I stuck around through the delay for my first ride. I thought it was worth it and a great thrill. However, for the overall package, I would rather choose MF and Maggie. TTD is tall, fast, and intense and stands on its own merit, I enjoyed it.

Now it was finally time for dinner and then a nice ride on Iron Dragon. I always though this was an interesting ride, I think it does pretty well with the "out of control" sense (for a suspended coaster at least), especially around the lagoon. I noticed a few times they have to send out an empty train, I assume to keep with interval? I noticed this happened the train after the trainload took too long to enter.

Next was only a 20 minute wait for Wicked Twister. We had stopped over to ride this earlier, but it had just went down for some reason. We finished out the night with back-to-back awesome night rides on MF. We got in line for the first ride around 9:40 and got off the second ride about 11:10. It was just too good of an offer to pass up

All in all, we got to ride all the big thins we wanted to. We just had to do it baking in the sun and feeling all gross, it was worth it though. Looks like my girlfriend and I will finally make it out to check out Halloweekends for the first time, so I'm looking forward to going back in two months (wow, doesn't seem too far away) Another great trip at CP for me.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I passed up riding Skyhawk. I saw it had a pretty decent line and one side going. That, plus I have already rode Kennywood's version this year. I wanted to move on to coasters. *** Edited 7/17/2006 3:06:40 AM UTC by BeemanCP65***

Nice to see you had a good time and enjoyed your "Raaace for the Sky on Top Thrill Dragster!"

"I'm clear and outta here"

That's weird that all those rides went down for a little bit, usually Cedar Point's rides never break down!

Thats funny MR. Cedar Points rides never break down. Just have to look at the last 3 coasters that were built to break that trend.

I don't know of a ride that I haven't seen broke down, and I don't go that often.

Magnum and Raptor usually are the most reliable rides that I noticed.

I have never in all that I go seen raptor down for anything but weather conditions and, everytime im there I just get in line for chaos and it breaks down and i end up being the first one to ride after it broke. :) Other then that most of the rides do go down. But its not like they try to close rides each day. When six flags had control of geauga lake you would go and they were understaffed and only ran a certian number of rides. I dont think there is much of a reliabilty issue at cedar point. (yes the last three coasters but once they got going they are fine. And unfortunately we have another intamin to finish the trend. Im hoping that it will break it and actually work right. :) )