Halloweekend 10/29-10/31

Closing weekend. Friday was your typical HW Friday. Very good at first, but got busier as the night went on. The campground was not full which was a good sign compared to the past four weekends. Naturally, MF was not ready on time for early entry and I expected this, so I hit up Maverick for 3 rides before heading over there, while wearing my single rider shirt. Thanks wifey.

MF was dead for the first few rides but the d-bag ride op refused to open the transfer gate despite my asking politely. Oh well. I rode three times before the wait got to 10-15 mins which is my threshold so I left. On to Magnum and a bunch of flats. Lots of Skyhawk riding near closing.

Saturday was busy but quite like the past several saturdays. The parking lot was full but the overflow was not. We did lots of family stuff and saw some shows. The Red Garter Saloon show was great. Watching the 400lb 50 year old guy scream along to Def Leopard was hysterical. Good times. The "magic" show at Aldrich theater was also decent. My 3-year old girl got to go on stage towards the end, super exciting for her. Great CP memories being formed at an early age. Saturday night stayed busy but the back of the park had some dead areas like Skyhawk which I rode a bunch, again.

Sunday I expected to be one of the greatest days of the year on account of it being Halloween day, but I was wrong, sadly. It started off OK but by the time I left at 2:30 the parking lot was out to row 30 or so. MF had about a 20-25 minute line and Maverick was 30-40 mins I'd guess. Magnum was walk-on, they had a few rows closed near the back. Wearing a single rider shirt again, I politely asked if i could sit in a closed row and remain on the ride. They said yes. So I stayed on for 8 cycles before I started to get a headache.

All told it was a great HW trip, probably equal to the one we had Sep 23 weekend in terms of crowd levels, but it was much colder.

Hmm, I had a much different experience yesterday. Everything seemed to be a walk on. Transfer gate for MF was open Sunday morning, and we got on it four times. Later in the day may have been SLIGHTLY more busy, but it really cleared out in the last afternoon. I'm guessing a lot of people went home for Trick or Treat.

I'm happy to say I got the second-to-last train on Raptor that night, in the front row of course. Was hoping for the very last train, but we can't have everything in life. :)

After Kings Island on Saturday and their crowds we treked to CP on Sunday.

21 total rides in 6 hours. 17 different rides. It was not even close to busy. Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster had about a 10 minute wait. Longer if you wanted to ride shotgun.

Maverick looked about 30 minutes. However, the inner queues were closed. So while it was on the bridge, the wait for shotgun was 20 minutes or 10-15 for anywhere else on the train.

My list in order:
Top Thrill Dragster
Maverick
Skyhawk
Mine Ride
Gemini
Magnum
-Break-
Corkscrew
Power Tower
Blue Streak
Raptor
Disaster Transport
Maxx Air
Ocean Motion (goodbye)
-break-
Mantis
Iron Dragon
Wildcat
Millennium Force
CP&LE RR back to front
Top Thrill Dragster
Power Tower
Millennium Force

Kings Island was busy and only got 7 rides in. 5 of them different.

Awesome weekend.

MagnumFan said:
MF was dead for the first few rides but the d-bag ride op refused to open the transfer gate despite my asking politely. Oh well.

I was there as well for early entry and I don't think it's fair to call the ride op a d-bag just because they wouldn't open the gate. The line was always at least a bit out of the station and that's where I've seen them cut off the gate before. I think it is a little out of line to call them a 'd-bag' just because they would not let you cut in front of other people coming up the line.

Otherwise though Friday was really fun with little to no lines. Being able to ride every attraction (besides the closed ones obviously) was nice, and getting to power ride Magnum later at night was a perfect ending to the season!

Can't wait for next year!

Where is this gate? Is it the one between the exit and entrance of Millennium's station?

It is in the exit station, next to where the ride op control stand is, before you go down the ramp.

I didn't see those crowds either on Sunday. Maverick was about 10 minutes around 1pm and got a bit longer after we exited. While riding Mantis around 3 or 4 I could see the line for Dragster was only about halfway down the two station ramps. Millennium was about 10 minutes around that time. Crowds only shrunk after that. Raptor was less than 10 minutes after 5pm, with two train operation.

I witnessed a MF train with guests on it at 5:10 on Friday, so if it did open late, I wouldn't consider <10 minutes to be worth complaining about.

Ralph, a lot of times what happens is the first train is ready, but the second two trains still have dummies in them. So the first train goes off close to on time, but then the whole operation stops while they unload the other two trains, causing >10 minutes of dead time.

That will always happen though, as they can't simply unload all three trains of the dummies before guests arrive, because that would mean they would have to send one or two of the trains empty in order to move the other trains into the unload station and unload them, which would seem to defeat the purpose of water dummies in the first place.

So it seems that they have to wait for the guests to load the first train in order for them to send that one forward and then bring the one that was waiting behind to come into the station where they unload to take the dummies out. So no matter what they did that first train is going to have to wait for them to unload the dummies.

Now I do agree that they should have the first two trains already ready to go by the time 9am or 11am comes around (depending on the time in the season), and sometimes they are just starting to take the dummies out of the second train when we are waiting in the station, which is kind of disappointing.