CoasterMania and CoasterEXT '07

As copied from Coasterbuzz:

CoasterMania! Cedar Point June 15th

It just wouldn’t be CoasterMania unless hubby and I got there at the crack of dawn. Actually, it was even before dawn. Was classic watching the running of the bulls to MF and Maverick while we naturally headed for Raptor. We avoided the front seat for most of the morning due to an abundance of muffleheads. The ride all during morning ERT was pretty much a walk on, I managed 23 rides while my hubby had to sit out a few in between thanks to not eating breakfast. During Joe Cool we went back and rode 5 more times, shortly there after would be one of the longest lines of the day.

Donut Time.

People had started lining up for this long before even 8am. Although prepared, I was still floored when it was almost 14.00 for 2 muffins and 2 coffees. Having an awesome ERT and Joe Cool, we just enjoyed walking around the park for most of the morning, riding a ride or 2 here and there. I just love SkyHawk and had to be sure it was one of the ones we rode.

The park started to really begin to look crowded by noonish, I wasn’t worried though, noticed most of the crowd were kids coming in buses, from visits past know most of them would be leaving by 8pm.

We went to the Q&A to hear some interesting answers to some of the questions.

We made sure we bought 2 of the “Coaster Odyssey” shirts to be sure we would get ours. Pretty nice shirt I guess but really didn’t explain what it was about really. Had the 3 Ohio parks listed in the back and my ?? is when did Avatar at KI become a coaster???? They were only $15.00 each which was a nice surprise.

2 longest line of the day?

The Point Pavilion for lunch.
I had overheard someone say that “ACE” also stood for “all you can eat” which I thought was hilarious. My hubby said the brats were really good, I thought the chicken was pretty good (right Richie? ;)) I didn’t have any of the Italian looking stuff-looked too dry to me (I know Italian!) and hubby said it was too dry. We left shortly after lunch to sneak back to the hotel for a quick nap.

Back to the park around 8ish and saw tons of buses making their way down the causeway-there went most of the crowds. Hit up Raptor 9 more times - was totally shocked when the crew announced my 1200 ride. Hubby did make that ride with me, but he did have to sit out a couple more of them. Not sure why Raptor was kicking his butt so much this trip.
We headed over to Maverick before the park closed and he actually sat that ride out too. I was in one of the last trains for the night, got seat 2-1. Ride was awesome, no delay in tunnel and train was flying! Later on that evening I would find Maverick bruises in my usual spots on my arms. Maverick wounds!! Awesome!! :)

Once park was closed we headed to Maggie for ERT. Once 11pm rolled around and no one was riding we decided to call it a day. Riding Maggie during ERT has been my tradition for the past 9 years, so it didn’t seem right. Hubby reminded me we have some other CP coaster events coming later this season. Plenty of time for Maggie ERT then.

We went back to the hotel and crashed.

Wake up call for 8am seemed to come 10 minutes after we went to sleep!!

Off to Geauga Lake for CoasterEXT

CoasterEXT! Geauga Lake June 16th

We actually found the hotel without getting lost (gasp!!) We decided not to stay at the Geauga Lake Hotel this CoasterEXT only because frankly it was twice what it was at LaQuinta and wasn’t all that much nicer. Except of course for the breakfast buffet there vs. the continental breakfast at LaQuinta, but even as much as my hubby eats, it wouldn’t justify the difference in prices. Since it was just a place to shower and sleep LaQuinta was wonderful, it was very clean, very reasonable and only 15 minutes from the park.

We headed to the park (without getting lost again!!) OMG the parking lot was PACKED!! In previous trips we usually parked like in the 3 row or so, we were way back this time. Of course I really wondered how many of those cars were some fellow enthusiasts. I was excited for GL none the less. The sign about X-Flight, Steel Venom and Bellaire Express being gone in plain sight as soon as you got to the ticket booths. The parking lot looked naked without X-Flight. I actually found that part kind of depressing :(

My season pass worked, my hubby’s didn’t. His doesn’t work at KI either. There was a blue tag there who took both our passes and had us go thru the gates anyway. He offered help before we even had to. VERY nice guy who went way out of his way for us….I was impressed.

We arrived shortly before the luncheon began. People were looking at their watch and pacing--no lie!!!

There was actually a running of the bulls for the food once they opened the food lines. It was classic!! Same food as CP less the brats--hot dogs instead and I didn’t have to get any extra chicken (right Richie??)

The self serve pop station was open, kind of a Holiday World type of feel less Voyage, Raven and Legend of course ;)

Q&A with Bill Spehn was interesting. We weren’t told anything we all didn’t know already I would guess. Seems that GL is trying to get rid of all their expensive to maintain thrill rides and try to put the emphasis on WWK.

Hubby and I headed to WWK after lunch and again just adored it. We hung out at the wave pool mostly, skipped riding Liquid Lightning and just soaked up the sun, talked and ran into the water now and then to cool off. The wave pool is really nice. Even though WWK was packed it never felt crowded. It was spotless and the employees were all smiles. Seems that everyone was having a great time. One complaint/comment. $6.00 for a locker?? OMG!! Then the interesting thing about that was on our credit card statement it came out as “Six Flags World of Adventure” -- I thought that was rather funny. Granted you could open and reopen the locker as many times as you needed to but $6.00 still seemed kind of steep to me. My hubby just wasn’t comfortable with leaving our stuff under our lounge chairs. I’ve never had anyone steal anything from me at WWK and I had no reason to believe that day would be any different.

I hit up any of the gift shops I saw looking for X-Flight stuff. Found plenty too and bought what I could. My hubby loved X-Flight so he was all about the stuff. I got a couple of really cool shirts too.

PM ERT wasn’t starting until 10:30 so we snuck back to the hotel for a quick nap. We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (blech-horrid menu - food wasn’t that great and the prices were way too much) then went to McD’s for a sundae before heading back to GL.

We jumped on Villain to find despite sitting in the 2 row it still sucks.
Then headed for Double Loop. That ride reminds me so much of Vortex-it’s like it’s baby brother or something. Looks like Vortex and sounds exactly like Vortex. We waited in front of Dominator for ERT and off we went. We ended up riding 15x straight (yes, rerides were welcomed) before deciding to try Thunderhawk.

I think there was a total of maybe 10 people riding it.. I had forgotten what a head banger the ride was but had also forgotten despite the head banging it was really a lot of fun. The noises of pain being made by my hubby and fellow riders had me in tears I was laughing so hard.

The funniest thing is when you complain and ache when you get back to the station then say “let’s ride again!!!” :)
I think we rode 5 or 6x then called it a night.

We left GL shortly before midnight.

We both had an awesome time at CP and at GL. We plan on visiting GL again real soon cause we really do like WWK (and Dominator of course) :)

We opted to ditch the CON at KI only because it was so expensive. We can go to KI anytime we want and it just seemed silly of us to spend so much for a week.

My thanks to all my friends who said hi and a special thanks to CP and GL for making the ‘07 CoasterMania and CoasterEXT such fun!!!

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 1207 :)

nice!! i wish i could have gone

Im glad you had a good time at CP and GL

Congrats on reaching 1200 rides! :)

LuvRaptor said:
As copied from Coasterbuzz:

My season pass worked, my hubby’s didn’t. His doesn’t work at KI either. There was a blue tag there who took both our passes and had us go thru the gates anyway. He offered help before we even had to. VERY nice guy who went way out of his way for us….I was impressed.

STR8FXXXINEDGE said...
I hope this quote thing works. I think this is the first time that I've tried to use it.

Anyways... When I went to KI for opening day, we just went up to the window just to the right of the turn styles and flashed our pass to the lady sitting there and she came out and opened the gate and let us in.
Wouldn't you think they would at least want to write it down that 2 people with CP season passes came in the park?
I would imagine that would mess up the whole keeping track of park attendance thing.

If I remember correctly, anytime that I've gone to Michigan's Adventure, Dorney, Geauga Lake, or Worlds of Fun... we had to go to Guest Services to show our passes and then they would give you an actual ticket for the park. This way they can actually track their attendance.

SORRY EVERYONE! I didn't know how to make the "quote" feature work. *** Edited 6/20/2007 3:29:28 PM UTC by STR8FXXXINEDGE***

^I think the CP/GL/KI passes are supposed to all scan at any of those three parks if you have the Maxx Pass, but clearly there are some bugs in the system. I am surprised they apparently don't record any info at KI considering how CF has a tendency to want to keep track of everything.

I'm surprised the 2 muffins and 2 coffees at Donut Time was so expensive. I've always found them to be one of the more reasonably prices places in the park, with 2 donuts and a milk being under $4 (if I remember correctly).

Ralph Wiggum said:
^I think the CP/GL/KI passes are supposed to all scan at any of those three parks if you have the Maxx Pass, but clearly there are some bugs in the system. I am surprised they apparently don't record any info at KI considering how CF has a tendency to want to keep track of everything.

My OP on my Maxx Pass scans at CP, doesn't work at KI. Last time we went the woman wanted to argue with me that it was a CP pass and I can't park for free there. A blue tag came over, looked at the pass and said I was fine. No, they didn't write anything down.
At GL it was the same "wth" routine with the OP Maxx-they wrote down the pass#, then handed me a parking ticket. I know they do that to keep track but my thing is if I decided to go out of the park 2x does that mean I would have to pay for parking the 3rd time?

My Maxx Pass gets me into CP, GL and KI no problem. For my hubby his Maxx only scans at CP. Neither KI nor GL write down anything when he gets in.

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STR8FXXXINEDGE said:
If I remember correctly, anytime that I've gone to Michigan's Adventure, Dorney, Geauga Lake, or Worlds of Fun... we had to go to Guest Services to show our passes and then they would give you an actual ticket for the park.

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I know in Q&As past people have asked about having their CF pass work at all the CF parks. Something about was a "hassle" (?) it is to get a ticket. The comments have always been that for CF to do a complete overhaul of all their admissions for that purpose would not be cost effective. I would tend to agree with that. I can't imagine that many CF pass holders go to the different (out of state) parks to justify a complete overhaul.

At CP they make the CF pass holders fill out a form AT the turnstyles (what a brillant idea that was :()

I will say that KI's admission scanners are way nicer than CPs. Besides being bigger, the op has to put the whole pass under the scanner, then the picture on the ID comes up real big on their screen. Your KI Maxx pass has no pic on it, but your picture still comes up on the screen.
Seems to me that would keep anyone from even thinking about using someone elses pass.

I can count on my hands how many times in the past 10 years someone even bothered to look at the picture on my (or my hubby's or my kids) CP pass.

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 1207 :)

my family was at GL on 6/17, CP on 6/18-6/20 and KI from 6/21-6/22, all 3 parks were great!, my 9 year old rode all coasters in all 3 parks (also loves raptor, rode it several times before the 10am rush), also loved WWK, so much nicer than dorney park (lives in philly area). even stayed at hotel breakers so my wife and 7 year old son can sleep in. Hit the beach in afternoon, went back at night, was worth the 1200+drive, will do it again!!!!