I started my day about an hour later than usual since I knew the cars crossing the border for nascar would be leaving the same time as I would typically be leaving. I missed most the traffic leaving that hour later and only spent about 25 minutes waiting in line at US customs. I got to the park around 11am and knew right away it was going to be a busy day when I saw the line going through the queue of blue streak as I was driving back to the Breakers lot. Luckily my plan for the day included nothing but a day of relaxation on the mainstream river.
I got into soak city around 11:30ish, found an empty lounge chair in Tadpole Town and went to get a locker to store my valuables (keys, money, watch, etc.) I notice some people leaving all this stuff lying out in the open at the tables and their lounge chairs when they're not around. I'm glad they're that trusting, but I don't want to take the chance that it'll get stolen! So I get to the locker rental and I notice their old signs had the price covered up and a new sign posted with higher prices. I'm fairly certain the price was $5 or $6 fee with a $10 deposit. They've now raised the price to $8 fee! But, what can you do, right? They raise prices where people have no choice but to pay for them, which I think is wrong, but there's nothing I could do about it, unless I choose to leave everything out in the open for someone to take when I'm not looking.
Also, I assumed that since almost everyone that had a table or chair in Tadpole Town had a cooler bag filled with food and drinks that they were permitted at Soak City. I thought it odd, seeing as you can't bring that stuff into Cedar Point, but found it nice since food is so expensive, especially with a family. When I got back last night I was looking at the website and noticed under the policies and restrictions page that food/drink/picnic baskets/coolers are not permitted. So, although it's not permitted, it's obvious that the people at the entrance gates didn't care and the lifeguards who saw people eating didn't care either.... which benefits us because we don't have to pay for food! But, it's kind of sad at the same time for people who would have brought stuff if they knew that policy wouldn't be enforced and instead had to buy expensive CP food for their entire family.
I spent about 4 hours floating around the river with 1 break to eat some boardwalk fries with cheese. Sometime after my lunch I fell asleep floating around for so long that when I woke up one of the lifeguards was like "Well, look who finally woke up!" when I floated past him. By this point the river was so packed that it was just a maze of people/tubes and kids pushing their way to get through quicker so I decided it was a good time to go check in to my room. I had a room on the 2nd floor of the rotunda. It had a great view, overlooked the pool and the lake. The only weird thing was the sunroom area that sits on top of Beaches 'N Cream was to the very right of my window. So I walk into the room, the curtains are wide open and there's people looking in to see what I'm doing.
Before dinner I felt like taking a walk through the park to see what the lines were like. I headed to the front and was going to take a ride on blue streak. As I was walking to the entrance, the train on it's way up stopped about 3/4 of the way up. I sat and watched for about 10 minutes and it was still stuck and the 2nd train was stopped where you first end the ride before moving into the station. Both had full trains of people. I left, decided to ride the train back, watched Maverick for about 5 minutes and then headed back to my car to go get my Chet & Matt's pizza that I get every trip. As I was driving down perimeter road I saw they were walking the people from the Blue Streak train down the hill. This was 5:50... when the train first got stuck it was just after 5pm, so the people were stuck sitting on the hill for 45 minutes! I would imagine after 15 minutes they would take people off, not make them wait that long! They'd better have gotten some kind of special treatment after that (ie a walk on to TTD, Maverick or Millenium).
I ate my pizza, went and sat on the beach with my beaches 'n cream ice cream for dessert and then tried to go for a walk along the beach but it was infested with bugs, so I just went back to my room after a little hotel exploring. I'd never been to the "east" wing of breakers and wanted to see what was down there. Discovered a little deli and a lobby, but that's about it.
Day 2 started off with ERT on Maverick, which was great as always. I then waited in line for dragster to open, missed the only rollback I saw in my 2 days there by 2 trains. I jumped on Magnum which was an awesome trimless ride, the train just flew through bunny hills and had amazing air time. They also weren't filling cars 4 & 5 when I rode, just the first three and the last car. Took a ride on Gemini, which was horrible. Worst ride I think I've ever experienced. Only red side was running, and it was running slow. I kind of felt like I was on Iron Dragon, which I usually describe as a nice, relaxing ride through the trees. I felt like the train wasn't going to make it up any of the hills.
After that, I hung out at soak city again, floating around mainstream river for the day. Kind of boring, not much to talk about. Before I left for the day I got 2 rides in on Blue Streak. I don't know why, but I love this little coaster. The ride was flying and I felt like I wasn't strapped in so I had tons of airtime. I'm pretty small so I have a good few inches between my legs and where the lap bar stops at, and the retractable seatbelts I notice don't lock in, so when you lift from the seat on the hills the belts pull out more instead of just holding you down. I had 2 amazing rides and decided to leave after that.
One thing I did notice was a lot of people at both soak city and CP wearing bright green or pink wristbands. I never had the chance to see if anything was written on them and didn't feel like asking someone what they were for, so I'm just wondering if anyone knew what they were? When I first saw 2 people wearing them I assumed it was something unrelated to CP, but I probably saw at least 20 groups of people wearing them, from adults to teenagers. Anyone know?
Overall, it was a good trip. Hot and crowded, but I had 2 relaxing days which was all I went for.
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