Halloweekends Kickoff Event 9/13/13

Copied from Coasterbuzz...

Headed to CP for the event this past Friday. Turned out to be an awesome event. The amount of free stuff was amazing. It was Holiday World-esque.

Got to the park at about 3:45pm. -1 for CP parking attendants parking cars in the bus parking spots. Those spots do not have near enough room on the sides to open your car doors! Very breezy fall day, was 92 degrees just a few days earlier. Headed to the guest services building where they were handing out lanyards and meal tickets. They then let us directly into the park from there. Note that admission was completely FREE for being a coaster club member.

GateKeeper and Millennium Force were open for ERT from 4-5pm. Both allowed re-rides if no one wanted your seat, otherwise the exit ramps were open. More people were riding MF than GK from what I could tell. We grabbed 4 GateKeeper rides, then headed over for 2 Millennium rides. Could have ridden either one about 10 times if desired.

Our meal tickets were from 5-6pm so we headed over to Midway Market which was closed to the public for the event. Dinner was FREE, and when inside an attendant asked if we wanted alcohol tickets. We declined, but yes there was FREE beer/drinks with dinner. While we were there some of the Peanuts characters came inside and milled about. Witch Lucy, Masked Snoopy, and Franken-Linus were all there.

During dinner, Tony Clark came in and introduced Jason McClure who is taking over as General Manager at Cedar Point. Jason was previously the GM at Dorney. Jason made his way around talking to folks and getting pictures, etc. At about 6pm, the Midway Market was getting pretty packed, with the new crowd of people coming to get dinner. Tony kindly asked those of us who were done to "get out". On the way out we saw John Hildebrandt eating with a large group. Seems like there was a lot of family/friends of staff around as well as enthusiasts.

Outside the Midway Market, they had FREE draw string souvenir bags for us. The bags contained a FREE Halloweekends hoodie, and a FREE Halloweekends winter hat.

We made a trip to the car to put on our new swag, then headed for our early entry to Zombie High School at 7pm, which is located right near the front of the park. I thought it was very well done. They had a ton of props from a school, including desks, globes, a full lunch service counter, lockers etc. The strobe-light locker room at the end which is filled with hanging jock straps that you can't avoid touching was hilarious.

We headed to the back of the park for a Maverick ride, which was a 45 minute wait. The capacity of this coaster just cannot keep up with its popularity. We were rewarded for out wait with the best Maverick ride I have ever had in 50+ rides. It was super smooth, big air time, great transitions. Still a fantastic ride. I vote for ERT on it for any future events.

Got in rides on Raptor, Magnum, and Dragster also. None was more than a 15 minute wait. Raptor and Magnum were running 2 trains, but might have switched to 3 as the crowds increased. Gemini, Mantis, Mine Ride, Wicked Twister, and Corkscrew were all not operating. We left at around 11pm after visiting a few of the outdoor scare zones.

A few stats:

GateKeeper: 4

Millennium Force: 2

Magnum, Raptor, Dragster, Maverick: 1

Indoor Haunts: 1

Outdoor Haunts: 4

Awkward moments with ACE-ers: 3

"Single Riders" spotted with clothing that misspelled "Millennium": 1

Overall a fantastic event put on by Cedar Point! The fact that it was basically FREE was unbelievable to me. I hope that the park considered it a huge success and does it again!

It was quite an event.

As Chuck Wagon said the freebies were amazing. They advertised school lunch. Well I never had that kind of school lunch. Carved beef, fish, and many items not usually found at the Midway Market. Also the beer or wine.

Many thanks to all of those responsible for the event. I was appreciated. Job well done.