First two Cedar Point Trips of the Year

So far this year, I've taken two trips to Cedar Point. One of which was on the 22nd of June, the other of which was on the 4th of July. On the 4th I also took a chanceWhile I know its nearing mid-season already, this TR is going to focus mainly on my thoughts of this new season in comparison to last year's. Overall I am very impressed.

Over the course of my last two visits, here is what I've gotten on (including some brief thoughts on it):

Raptor (incredible ride that is the perfect invert), Millennium Force (unique ride that has an incredible lift, looking out towards the lake, and first drop), Mean Streak (boring, but not as rough as many say), Magnum (still an excellent ride, and the trims seem to be on less this year than last allowing for more ejector air), Disaster Transport (decent ride not deserving of all the complaints it gets), Wicked Twister (underrated ride that is thrilling from start to finish), Maverick (wow, just wow), Wildcat (fun ride for the family, and smooth), Top Thrill Dragster (one of the most thrilling rides ever created)

Random notes / thoughts:

Pros:

- Last year I noticed that many of the misting fans were either no longer misting, fanning, rotating, or broken all together. This year I noticed that misting fans throughout the park seem to have been fixed. They now all mist, fan, and rotate, which is well appreciated on hot summer days.

- Top Thrill Dragster, in particular, seemed to have received quite a bit of love. The ride was much smoother than I can ever remember, and faster than ever, which really added to the overall thrill. Last year I noticed that the signs within the queue with dragster facts were all looking pretty bad. They were all incredibly faded, were peeling, etc. This year it appears they were all replaced and now look much better and add to the overall nice appearance of the queue. The fences in the queue also seem to have been painted and cleaned, as they all look much better. Landscaping in the queue and around the ride continues to grow and improve overall aesthetics. Last year the countdown lights on the ride tower seemed to have problems. Half the covers were missing, which was subsequently fixed mid season, and many seemed to be burnt out or delayed in coming on. This year they are all working, and all seem very bright! You can easily see the lights throughout the park despite the missing covers (which are all still gone but I think it was a wise decision). The staging sign by the launch track now has all of its lighting working (last year some of it seemed to be out). The audio by the launch track of the motor revving is audible this year! Last year it seemed to fade in and out, or not be on at all, quite often. The station lighting, and tower lighting, once again looks great. The track looks to have been cleaned, as the black residue has now vanished from the one section of launch track by the motor room. The speedometer, removed on my first visit, was back in place for the 4th of July visit. Although not on Friday, they are obviously working on some problem it had but it should be on once again quite soon.

- Disaster Transport was another ride that obviously received some touchup. The queue, while cheesy, cheap, and ugly, obviously received some dusting, and all the original effects seem to have been turned back on. The ride itself was also much improved! The lighting going up the lift hill and the overheating sign looked better, there was more lighting effects within the ride (including a strobe at one point), Alaska was lit, and space props were much more visible (and dusted). Overall I'd say the ride is somewhat cool, and even fun! I don't think its deserving of all the complaining, and definitely not worthy of being torn down. If they would spend some money to remove the cheap themeing in the queue, badly painted plywood to be specific, I may actually ride this ride more than twice a season! But overall, the ride was perfectly fine and I think it would be a mistake to remove it.

- The Planet Snoopy area looked really nice. It looked quite modern which should save it from looking dated in a year or two. It also seemed to be really popular. Bravo CP on a successful new area! There was also more themeing than I expected.

- Wicked Twister looked cleaned up. Yes concrete was added on the front launch area, which is unfortunate as the sand was sort of cool, but frankly you really only notice if you are looking for it, as the sand and concrete were very similar in color. There seemed to be excess warning labels on the trains last year, they looked to have been covered up by some sort of new support put on the back of the trains and thus a new label was put on. This year there was only one warning label per seat, and the trains themselves looked like they received a good cleaning.

- There seemed to be a renewed emphasis on shows. My family said, I didn't actually see it, that Signed, Sealed, Delivered was the best CP show to date and had Broadway level talent. It looked as if, again I haven't seen it, that CP invested a lot in the All Wheels Extreme conversion, and while standing in line for Wicked Twister I heard TONS of screaming and applause. As people were exiting the theater I heard quite a bit of praise, again saying it was one of the better CP shows in a while.

- There seems to have been a renewed emphasis on employee friendliness and helpfulness. All the employees I saw, with the exception of one employee over the course of two visits, were smiling and enthusiastic. Station spiels were once again very personable and borderline enjoyable / humorous to listen to at some points. We stopped to ask one employee on the 4th of July what time the fireworks were. Instead of simply replying 10pm and walking away, she was very informative and replied with the time, where they were being fired from, what time "the other great night show - Hot Summer Lights" was being done, etc. All with a smile. We also encountered a suit and tie employee who was very gracious, enthusiastic, and went above and beyond when answering a question. This was pretty uniform throughout the park, and was very noticeable.

- On the 4th, when the park was packed (45 minute line for Wicked Twister for example), there were groupers at all the popular rides who were efficient in their job and helped things move faster. Very few empty seats going out.

- There was smoke in Magnum's final tunnel on BOTH visits!

- Security was very noticeable throughout the park. On my first visit, there was a large group within the old WWL station part of Maverick's queue. Two members of that group obviously just got in line, and went past everyone to join up with the group (the switchbacks by the entrance were not full, and the group had just entered the covered queue, so it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds). 5 minutes later, a security guard comes and talks to the two members asking them to leave. They refuse and deny their cutting. The security guard leaves, and comes back a minute later with two others. They dealt with the situation very well and efficiently, and removed not just the two cutters, but other members of the group who started making a scene and raising their voices. On my 4th of July visit, I see, while in line, a girl and her father leave the line. I presumed they just didn't want to wait that long or something, as it was moving somewhat slow, but maybe 5-7 minutes later they reenter the queue and go back up to their original spot which was now halfway through the covered part of the queue. Again, 5 minutes later, I see security show up and escort the two out of the line.

- The smoking rule is actually being enforced! Over the course of my two visits, I encountered no people smoking in the queues, and only one or two groups smoking on the midway which were promptly told to put out their cigarettes by nearby employees. This makes for a much more pleasant day at the park and I was impressed with how strictly they were enforcing it (because last year was, well, a joke).

- There are a lot of people out there who criticize Cedar Fair parks in terms of their appearance (too many garbage cans, no landscaping, too much concrete, etc, etc). Well I'm sorry, but Cedar Point looks great to me! Sure the Wildcat / Hot Summer Lights midway is a bit bare in the aesthetics department but thats really it. In every other area of the park there is lots of nice landscaping, plenty of trees, beaches, water, artistic signs and buildings, etc. It is really a great looking park, especially considering how little they have to work with in Ohio. And as to the garbage cans... I guess people would rather trash thrown about on the midways?

- New ice cream shop looks very nice and seems to be popular.

Cons:

- Power Tower's lighting is still looking bad, and getting worse.

- Millennium could use some paint badly (even if it were just the area of the track near the midway and queue).

- I'm sorry to be complaining, and I realize it was a busy day on 4th of July, but the parking lot is a disaster. We got to the car at 11:20pm, and it took a full 45 minutes just to move from our parking space! It took another 15 minutes to get out of the lot and onto a main road. There are plenty of other parks out there, Busch Gardens, Disney, Universal, etc, which have larger crowds than CP and yet do not have such a mess. The parking lot was just plain gridlock, and it was really a bit ridiculous. They need a new system desperately. On the causeway at night, why do they need two lanes of incoming traffic to the park? Couldn't they cut that down to one and allow three lanes of outgoing traffic? I'm no traffic expert but something needs to be done, because as I could see from the faces of other motorists' faces, this end of the night mess quickly turned an otherwise good day pretty sour...

- Soak City continues to age, and continues to be outdated. CP please, could we spend some money over here? I don't know how they expect to keep marketing this as a stand alone water park. Still, nice considering its free with a platinum pass.

Overall I was very impressed with my two visits to CP. There seems to be a great attention to detail once again which is really nice. And as you can see, parking lot mess aside, the pros outweigh the cons by a landslide. Overall it was a great day at Cedar Point (the 4th), and it was nice to see the park so crowded.

I agree that there is a renewed emphasis on the shows. So far this year, I've seen Country Unleashed, Misadventures of Molly and Maverick and Signed, Sealed, Delivered. I enjoy each of those shows. There is a lot of talent this year.

^^ I agree about the parking disaster. I parked in the soak city lot and didn't get out until almost 1:30am. The place was jam packed and I expected it to take a while to get out but the whole lot sat there until about 1:00.I got out to the car around 10:30 and it didn't move an inch. It seems like with perimiter rd heading directly to the causeway it would at least slowly funnel out.

Isn't the 4th of July considered to be one of the busiest days of the year in terms of attendance? With everyone waiting to leave until after the fireworks, I would assume the parking lot would be a madhouse.

I understand your frustration though. I just don't think they can do much else to make the traffic outflow work since CP is so far away from any other major roads in town and one can only go so far before running into another traffic light. The City can't adjust the road layout in Sandusky to increase the ease of leaving a park that only operates 140 days a year (of which about 30 of those days are truly "crazy busy") unless CP agrees to pay for most of it which I highly doubt.

Even though I wasn't there on the 4th I understand how bad the parking situiation is. It took a full 30 minutes to move 20ft when the whole parking lot was being emptied due to a huge storm. Otherwise nice job on the pros and cons of your trips.

Parking was ridiculous. We also parked in the Soak City lot and not really by choice, yet it took us nearly 2 and a half hours just to get out of the lot. Why not temporarily make Perimeter Road two lanes of one direction until the Gemini, Breakers, and SC lots are at least somewhat manageable to travel?

I'm a patient person and I was nice to the parking lot attendants and Cedar Point police who I'm sure had to work overtime AND put up with irrational people taking out their frustrations on them, but this was ridiculous. It was a good thing we had our DVD player in the van and a few DVDs. To put it this way, we watched all of Toy Story 1 and most of Toy Story 2 before we even got out of the lot! Heck, had we gone out to Kings Island (3 hours away from us), left the park at their posted closing time (because I can guarantee that you would leave the lot within 20 minutes) we would have still been home sooner than coming home from CP. What could possibly take 2 and a half hours to clear out a parking lot unless you either A. didn't have the infrastructure or B. weren't using the infrastructure to your advantage, is all beyond me.

The fireworks and Hot Summer Light shows were still amazing.

~Rob Willi

It's all infrastructure. The road system in and out of the park is not designed to handle the crowds the park sees on July 4th. I agree with the earlier poster that it would be nice if the park could switch lane directions on Perimeter Rd or on the Causeway, but due to the intersection at Cleveland Rd, this would not work.

There are 2 exits to the park, and several bottlenecks in between the SC lot and one of those exits... it's unavoidable without a multi-million dollar overhaul of the entire parking/transportation situation.

And as the prior poster also noted... with the number of days that CP is that busy... I don't think we will see that happen.

Speaking of Millennium getting a paintjob! There's something I've noticed since about the 3rd trip in regards to that that I didnt really feel was a big deal to bring up.....but might as well now since it was mentioned.
I may just be imagining this but has anyone else noticed that a large amount of supports (non lift) have been sandblasted and or primed? Now I remember how bad the supports looked last year, but the way they look this year has drastically changed since 07. One of the supports on the brake run looks like it has been entirely primed and the vast majority of them (even the island supports) seemed to have been blasted or primed in spots.

Again, I may just be imagining it but they defiantly look.....noticeably different this year.

^ Now that you mention it I think you are right! I saw that too. I didn't really think much about it at the time and just assumed it had continued to wear poorly, but now that you say that it looked like (the supports around the brake run especially) had been sandblasted / primed. I didn't really notice the supports around the island, but all the ones surrounding the queue looked like as you described.

I agree with the Soak City comment...outside of having a pass, it is nowhere near worth the 30 dollars plus parking to get in. In comparison to every single other water park out there, and with the available technology, CP needs to get this place updated. At least if they want to keep raising the admission price for a less than favorable "waterpark" option.

Edit: I believe MF is the next ride up for re-painting, though I may be wrong. I don't doubt they're already prepping the supports for the offseason paint job.

I agree with you that DT is a pretty good ride. But it is too short. And the building and theming is just plain ugly. lol. Glad to hear you had fun though! :)