Associate Family and Friends Day

Cedar Point hosted Associate Friends and Family Day on Saturday. Weather was pretty miserable with cool temps and on/off light rain, but was still great to get some rides in and see what was new in the park. Here are some pics I took walking around. Cant wait for opening day!

thanks for sharing your pictures DSShives. The patio overlooking Magnum looks great! I look forward to trying it.

Oh I forgot Corkscrew was open, only coaster I didn't ride. Definitely was a cold experience which I didn't mind but the light rain was not pleasant. I was still thrilled to be on coasters again.

Yeah BackBeatQue seating area looks really nice, I still wish it had an indoor option but it's going to still be an enjoyable place to sit back and dine.

Which rides were open for the event this year?

Question, what is Associate Family and Friends day?

its a soft opening day for the park employees to invite family & friends to get employees used to train with actual guests and not just water dummies.

Using family and friends on a non-operating day gives no expectations to the 'guests" since they understand its not regular business day.

They used to also have soft openings for friends and family to eat dinners free at the parks sit-down restaurants for training purposes as well, but I haven't seen that in awhile.

TwistedWicker77 said:
Which rides were open for the event this year?

Raptor, Gatekeeper, Valravn, Troika, Maxair and Sky Ride were the first set open 1-4. Then Magnum, SteVe, Mav, Skyhawk, Antique Cars and Camp Snoopy were the second set starting at 3p.

SteVe and Mav opened closer to 4p. They cut the SteVe line just after 5 as they were doing a hard close at 6p.

Was SV running all 3 trains, or does this years outlook look like even slower dispatches with 2 trains + pouches?

It was 2 trains but it was wet too, no coaster was running 3 trains.

I don't see metal detectors slowing it down but the pouches very well could. Every second of the 60 second interval will be needed if they can do it in time.

Never gonna happen with pouches.

There’s gonna be the inevitable guests that get off the ride and left there phone/keys in the pouch and leave the station, just to have to be let back on the platform to retrieve their items.

XS NightClub said:

Using family and friends on a non-operating day gives no expectations to the 'guests" since they understand its not regular business day.

And you are very wrong on that statement. People still go to Guest Services and complain things were not open and want to be compensated.

Never underestimate the human race when it comes to free stuff.

We can all be glad that that sort of mentality doesn't exist around this forum. ;)

Now if they’d just invite Alumni Associates...

For a day as a guest? Or a day as a worker again?

As a guest is what I intended. I had seriously considered going back to work after retirement, but, I ended up retiring in a tourist area and have my own small business here now.