Cedar Point 2013

Ralph Wiggum said:
If the only spots left are in preferred parking, will people still have to pay extra to park there?

That's an interesting question. I would have to think that if the park were that full, they'd have no trouble filling the preferred parking lot.

If it were me, and I had the choice to park somewhere down the Causeway for free, or pay $20 to park a mile closer, I'd gladly fork over the $20.

Captain Hawkeye said:
Of course the demand for parking from Soak City patrons diminishes after SC closes for the season.

True, but in my experience, the park has no trouble filling both lots during HW Saturdays. A construction site up in the main lot would be substantially large, and would likely cover around 200-300 parking spaces (each row in the preferred/employee section holds about 80 vehicles). That's a lot of lost revenue, if those lost spaces equate to lost customers.

CPfan1976 said:
Look very closely...

Um, those are some nice... cars, I guess?

OK, double-or-nothing... you're talking about that white canopy thing, aren't you? :)

Well if it is like KI, you either pay for it or no access. They will let it sit empty even if park is full. The KI area is not huge so not a big loss if not full. But the CP ones seems bigger to me and agree they will lose some people if turned away from lot parking.

Still kind of curious as to when Space Spiral and DT will be removed..

The long white canopy has been there for quite some time. Bing maps puts it there before Windseeker so at least 2+ years. I didn't see anything worth noticing in those pics, either.

The long white canopy is where they store a lot of their Halloweekend props and floats for the Monster Midway Invasion Celebration Parade. Nothing interesting about it.

Maybe they wont offer Preferred Parking once the season goes to weekends only. Nothing says that they have to keep it during Halloweekends.

As for construction, my guess will be DT closing mid to late August with demo taking place in September/October. Vertical construction will then take place in November. Disaster Transport could be removed during Halloweekends just fine without impacting the Main Parking lot. I don't see the lot needing to be used until they start construction of the new coaster.

Is there enough space in DT's infield for all the necessary equipment? They couldn't even fit the HW parade canopy back there, and had to encroach onto the parking lot for it.

You can fit a crane anywhere :) But once they remove all the crap that they store back there, yes plenty of room. Not to mention the amount of the building that can be accessed from the beach too (which I would venture to guess could be upwards of 80% of the ride). The reason they moved the Perimeter Fence back for the float building is because it needed to be long and narrow because of how the floats drive (they don't have much of a turning radius).

Yeah, dj, I was talking about the white canopy and I'll tell you why. I don't know about the bingmaps thing as I have distinct photos (from cell phone pic) in my personal CP album, of that same area late last year (before closing) without it being there. If that's what its used for then (Halloweekends floats), my bad. The first impression I got when seeing the temporary queues in the new "preferred" parking section is that this entire area is where the new coasters footprint is going to be and CP is seeing that without most of the cars now currently parking there, can they still handle the parking in the other lots during peak times. Like I said on Sunday 6/10 if you came in from the main gate they were directing you all the way to the back of the park to fill up the Soak City lot first and go in through the Resort gate. Oh yeah, back in 1994 (first year of Raptor) I was one of the unfortunates that had to park on the grass way in the back (past the back of the lot) by the side entrance (where the beach houses are). They had trams back then to pick people up and old parking section signs like giant wheel, corkscrew, gemini, blue streak section, etc. Those signs are gone now. By the way, seeing how all the old rides are disappearing, (DT, SS, Paddlewheel, Dodgem 2 to make way for Dragster and duplicate Antique cars currently by Frontier town) I can eventually see the Cedar Point employee dorms by the marina being razed (put the employees in Sandcastle suites!) along with the ice skating theater and Cadillac cars (by Raptor), the perimeter road being relocated to the left, and the old Wildcat area being expanded to make more room in the park. It'll happen, believe me.

CPfan1976 said:
I don't know about the bingmaps thing as I have distinct photos (from cell phone pic) in my personal CP album, of that same area late last year (before closing) without it being there.

That building was in fact there last year. Has been since it was installed in 2007.

I don't know about Good Time Theater going anywhere, I think that's staying along with the Extreme Sports Stadium.

I'll take your words for that. Anyhow, forgot to touch on the fact that I do believe that the "triangular" area in front of the main gate along with the main gate flag area (where the big dinosaur currently is advertised and by handicapped parking) will be removed to make more parking spaces. There are also alot of currently unused parking spaces to the far left by the marina (a back main entrance overflow lot), also some spots to the left outside of Blue Streak. I agree with 99er's assessment about tearing down starting right after Labor Day, and vertical construction starting in November after park closes, this seems to be the case from past years.

I had this idea in my head while I was at Kings Dominion a couple days ago. I know Cedar Point is hanging on to Wild Cat's cars for future use. My idea is, does anyone think it's possible that one of these, might show up to replace Wild Cat? I was also thinking maybe they could re-use Wild Cat cars and put it on this type of roller coaster. That way they could bring back one family ride.

CPfan1976 said:
I'll take your words for that.

You should considering I use to access that building during Halloweekends last year. But like I said, in 2007 the park built one at the front and one at the back of the park for float storage. Here are some pictures from 2007 of the one in the back of the park.

Shawn Meyer said:I had this idea in my head while I was at Kings Dominion a couple days ago. I know Cedar Point is hanging on to Wild Cat's cars for future use. My idea is, does anyone think it's possible that one of these, might show up to replace Wild Cat? I was also thinking maybe they could re-use Wild Cat cars and put it on this type of roller coaster. That way they could bring back one family ride.

Is that ride like the one that used to be at Kentucky Kingdom (Road Runner Express?). Those had tilt cars and I wonder if the cars are being saved just for Halloween type props?

CPfan1976 said:
The first impression I got when seeing the temporary queues in the new "preferred" parking section is that this entire area is where the new coasters footprint is going to be and CP is seeing that without most of the cars now currently parking there, can they still handle the parking in the other lots during peak times.

I suspect CP already knows exactly how many cars are on property at any given time, and have done the math to figure out how many parking spaces they can remove before they need to expand elsewhere. The rails sectioning off preferred parking are probably temporary as they gauge guest interest in the perk.

And I would think that whatever is coming in 2013 wouldn't require the entire section of the lot, and would instead require only small sections for footers, similar to CW's Leviathan.

I would love to see a modern WildCat like Ricochet at Kings Dominion and Carowinds but I doubt the cars will be used, they're different manufacturers.

^ You sure? If you look at Wild Cat's cars and Ricochet's cars, they both have similar wheel set-ups.

No, I'm not sure, I'm just guessing :)

Completely different. Just looking at this of the track tells you that it is different.