8/20/15 - A Productive 3 Hours

I love random, spur-of-the-moment trips to Cedar Point.

Last Thursday (8/20) afternoon, I was bored at work and scrolling through my Twitter feed when I noticed a tweet from Cedar Point indicating it was Platinum Passholder Ride Night on Raptor. My family and I have been Platinum Passholders for years, but we rarely get to attend Ride Nights because we're usually very busy during the week. Fortunately, we didn't have anything going on Thursday night aside from the middle child having to get to bed early for school in the morning. Our oldest (age 13) didn't start school til Monday, so I thought it might be cool to take a trip to Sandusky with just him for a few hours until close. We're the type of people who like to ride as much as possible when we go to Cedar Point, so when our entire family of 5 visits the park, we often get impatient when the others have to use the restroom, dry their hair and wait for our youngest to ride the kids stuff. It The weather was absolutely beautiful on this evening and I noticed via Cameras 1 & 3 and the manner they were positioned that day that the front and Soak City parking lots were near-empty.

We ate dinner before we left Cleveland at 6:34pm and made great time, arriving exactly at 7:34pm. I REALLY tried making it there in under an hour, perhaps speeding a bit past the willow trees along the causeway, but I digress. The SC lot was, in fact, near-empty and we found a spot right near the security guy for Hotel Breakers. We walked the path to the right of the go-Karts and headed straight for Maverick, which looked to be about an hour wait with the line backed up to the outside queue. I wondered why the line was so long despite the sparse-looking crowd and eventually came to realize some rides -- namely Dragster, Raptor, WindSeeker and Sky Ride -- were down due to high winds. It didn't feel that windy to me, so I was confused. Skyhawk was running, however, and we waited two quick ride cycles before getting on our first ride of the day. I absolutely love the airtime you get on that ride!

Next was a walk through Frontier Town to Millennium Force, which we estimated was a 30 minute wait when we passed the queue line on our drive back to the SC lot. The line was much longer when we go there, however, so we opted for a couple walk-on rides on Rougarou instead. They had the fog running at the loop, which definitely adds to the ride. The line for Millie was still too long after that, so we headed towards the front of the park. That's when we noticed Sky Ride and Raptor were down. GateKeeper was running but the line was backed up to the entrance and we opted not to wait. Instead, we took a quick break and got the Platinum Fry deal near Raptor. I checked my Twitter feed for an update on Platinum Ride night and saw the announcement that it had been switched to Millennium Force instead of Raptor due to high winds. SCORE!

After our snack, we made a quick stop inside Sweet Spot to escape the bugs as we finished our beverages. I've experienced a Mayfly storm before -- no seriously, it was raining Mayflies during one of my visits a few years ago -- so the bugs don't bother me too much. Still, you can't help but feel slightly annoyed as you walk through clouds of bugs down the midway.

I hadn't been on Corkscrew for a few years, so we decided to make a stop there. They were running only one car, so we waited two ride cycles (about 10 minutes total) before we got on. For some reason, I couldn't get comfortable in the seat and winced with back discomfort as we came through the end of each loop. Nothing too painful though. Magnum was next, which I avoided all of last year due to a horrible ride that destroyed my thighs the season prior. We walked on and I directed my wingman to a middle seat, which definitely made the ride much smoother.

We love Maverick, so that was our next stop and we got in line at the ramp. We barely got to the covered section of the queue line when a huge Fast Lane group exited, telling others the ride was down. I often wonder whether to truly believe people when this happens, but my wingman was content with leaving. He went further to say he wanted to skip Platinum Ride Night on Millie and head home (I think the bugs were too pesky for him), so I reluctantly agreed.

On our walk back through the Gemini midway towards the Soak City lot, I noticed Dragster was running with people on it. We didn't get to ride Dragster last year because the line was always too long or our timing was always way off. I talked him into a quick ride and we entered the line just before the park closed to the GP at 10:00pm. We waited about 30 minutes and covered our faces with our shirts as we boarded the ride in the 2nd row. Fortunately, we didn't get pelted too bad. Obviously, the ride is fast as hell at 120mph, but it seemed MUCH faster than I ever remembered it being. Maybe it's because it was my first time in over a year getting on the ride. I've gotta say, Dragster is a hell of a way to cap off the night.

Sadly, I couldn't convince my ride wingman to take the short walk over to Millie for a few rides during Platinum Ride night, but we still had a blast and got plenty of good rides in what turned out to be a 3 hour spur-of-the-moment adventure.

It didn't feel windy on the ground but we were on Big Wheel and at the top the wind was quite strong.