A few questions about the beach

If anyone's curious, I contacted Cedar Point and asked when the beach opened. I was told it opens at 10 a.m., so it doesn't look like there's any way to access it before the park opens (unless you're staying at the Hotel Breakers of course.)

I’ve never seen beach access roped off and it certainly doesn’t have a gate to keep people off before 10am. I’ve also never seen the beach technically closed either.

TwistedWicker77 said:

I’ve never seen beach access roped off and it certainly doesn’t have a gate to keep people off before 10am. I’ve also never seen the beach technically closed either.

But unless you're staying at the hotel, you need access to the parking lot which apparently doesn't happen before the toll gates open at 10 a.m. At least that's my understanding. Do you think I was told wrong?

I do think so, yes. Communication is something that lacks at Cedar Point. Some employees tell you one thing, and some tell you the exact opposite. Not to mention, they don’t 100% restrict you from going into the parking lot. You can go to and from Breakers at any time of the day/night. You can access the beach from the Gatekeeper lot, water park lot, or Breakers lot.

If the parking toll gates don’t open till 10am, all those passholes who show up for Early Entry are gonna be PISSED.

On the weekends I usually go in around 8 am to walk the boardwalk and campgrounds before early entry.
I'm not sure what time the parking lot officially opens, but I'm never the first one there.
And as I recall, the signs along the boardwalk say the beach is open from 10 am-midnight.

It's not unusual to look at the webcam and see cars being parked in general parking at 8-8:30am. It seems to me that 8am tollbooths open unless staffing is not yet in place at the tollbooths.

At least one tollbooth is open 24/7 all year.

Bluestreaker said:

At least one tollbooth is open 24/7 all year.

Thanks for the information!

Ya, I've rolled in to the lot at 7 am due to making great time on the drive because I wasn't converting mph to kph right... Security did do a drive by and asked what the deal was, but I just explained I was really early and they told me they hoped I had a good day and went on their way...

Dennis Urban said:

Can't answer those questions. But I can't imagine CP allowing it to be open 24/7 because of no CP personnel/lifeguards present.

And that required access could be for daylight hours only, a Lake Erie Loch Ness creature might come out at night to gobble people up.

I stayed at Breakers last fall and there was nothing that I saw that indicated the beach was closed, even when my family took a walk on the beach after 11:00PM. I think it is a "swim at your own risk" situation when lifeguards aren't present. Granted, I may have missed some signage since it was dark... but we weren't the only group walking at the edge of the water, there were no physical barriers in place (Chains/gates/etc.) and nobody tried to stop us.

SarahB1863 said:

Cargo Shorts said:

It’s a small thing but once you start from the main lot on the Boardwalk the fence prevents you from actually accessing the beach until you get up by the rental shack and Windseeker and there are ramps or stairs. [...]

Yeah, I noticed that! I wonder why that is? It would be nice if they had a few set of stairs between the entrance and the Windseeker - that way you could walk on the boardwalk until you hit the spot you wanted, then step down into the sand.[...]

You need to understand the history of that "boardwalk".

When Soak City was renovated into Cedar Point Shores, it was accompanied by a summer of awesome waterpark weather. The park quickly discovered that there was just not enough parking available for the waterpark. The solution was to leverage the main parking lot, but doing that requires providing a path to get back to Cedar Point Shores from the main lot. At the time, the beach path extended only from the resort, along the beach to...just past Windseeker, by the rental shack. There was no path beyond that point; that's why you seldom saw people strolling on the beach behind Wicked Twister and GateKeeper. In fact, in the Oceana days I think access to that part of the beach was somewhat restricted to preserve the stadium sight lines.

Anyway, to provide access from the main parking lot to Cedar Point Shores, the new path was constructed from the parking lot back to the existing path behind Windseeker. That path wasn't really built with beach access in mind, but rather for providing pedestrian access from the main parking lot to the resort.

Pedestrians are generally not permitted on the Perimiter Road. I learned that the hard way once; you know how people occasionally get into trouble and get thrown out of the park? Well there was this one day when a few of us got caught by the Cedar Point Police and thrown into the park for walking along the Perimeter Road...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Dennis Urban said:

It's not unusual..

Literally, the first thing that popped into my head was Alfonso Ribiero doing the Carlton…

Thrown into the park?

That sounds interesting, must have been quite the conversation!

Oh, the irony of a bunch of coaster nuts being escorted into the park by security was not lost on any of us.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.