May 14, 15, 16 2008

My trips to Cedar Point have been very limited for the past year or so. I visited a couple times in May last year, and spent a week in Sandusky in June. Since then, I haven't really felt like going to the park. There's a bunch of different reasons, and most of them not really related to the park. I went for fall freak out last fall and didn't very much enjoy myself. Needless to say, I was somewhat looking forward to this trip. I had taken the 3 days off about a month and a half ago, and because of the Storm Chasing I did in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi earlier this month, I ended up working 80 hours in the 9 days prior to heading down. I was exhausted on Tuesday when I left work around 5 pm.

Of course, I had done 0 planning, and didn't have a single thing packed. I needed to change my oil, pack everything and still managed to help keep SevereStudios updated with content on Tuesday night. I didn't make it to bed until pretty late, and thus when my alarm went off on Wednesday morning at 7 am I wasn't moving very fast. I eventually left the house around 8:15 and was on the road by 8:30. I tested out streaming video all the way down, and surprisingly only had a couple dropouts of cell data coverage the entire way down, mostly right after I crossed into Ohio.

I got to the park around 11:30 and got my pass processed. It was pouring rain, so I opted to go to Ruby Tuesdays for lunch and meet up with an old friend I haven't seen much of in the past year. My Radar program (GRLevel3) showed the rain ending, so by the time we ate, it had stopped raining. Went back to the park, and I rode Magnum first thing. I missed Magnum a lot. I also noticed the noise in the first tunnel is gone completely.

Rode Maverick and Skyhawk, then visited the petting zoo area. Ended up watching the Garter show at 4. After the Garter show, it was pouring rain out, so we ride Power Tower then I decided I had enough. Not much was running anyway, and I didn't feel like getting soaked miserably. I had dinner at Chet and Matts then went and got a fancy suite at the Microtel in Huron for myself. It was a pretty nice room for just around $130 for the 2 nights. I stayed up in my fancy man suite watching the Red Wings game on my Laptop (Apparently suckeye cable doesn't carry versus - Jerks) and then fell asleep around 11. I woke up around 1030am feeling very lazy. I guess it was the lack of sleep catching up to me, but I felt really good when I finally got up.

Made it to the park before noon (Somewhere around 11:30 I think) and rode Magnum for quite awhile (8-10 rides?) then headed up towards Gemini. The line for Gemini was kind of long, and I didn't feel like waiting so I went and rode Mean Streak. Count me in on the crowd that would like to see the Mean Streak tore down - It sucked. The seatbelts suck, the ride sucks and it was a waste of time. 50% of the trains were roped off, and it was rougher than its ever been for me in the front seat of gold train.

I ended up eating Chickfil-a for lunch. Kind of expensive, but the chicken sandwich was delicious. Waited in line for Maverick. Ended up waiting approximately an hour, then headed down towards Millennium Force. Waited about 30 minutes for that. It was an ok ride, but it still doesn't really thrill me after the first drop. Run me through some brakes and take me back to the station after that drop! I'll take the thrill of seeing a tornado any day over Millennium Force

After Millennium Force we went to Raptor via Sky Ride. Waited in like about 20-30 minutes, then got up on the platform. Unfortunately I'm apparently too much of a fatty to fit, so I had to make my first walk of shame. That kinda sucked, but gives me incentive to work some fat off. The harness was hitting my shoulders, which seemed weird. I'm not sure what the deal was, but it was about an inch from buckling. Next visit I will make Raptor. I've been in a rut of eating fast food every meal, so that'll be stopping.

After that, I believe I walked back to Magnum and rode that, then rode Gemini. The Gemini seatbelt didn't fit either, so I had to go sit by myself in another row. I realize I'm fat, but those things were tiny, especially considering I could pull more slack on TTD and MF this trip!

After Gemini, it was like 6:30 and Magnum was down, so I just decided to leave the park. We went to Applebees and then I went back to my hotel room where I worked on a few things SevereStudios related. I ended up falling asleep around 11 and woke up somewhere around 8:15. Got my shower in, cleaned up, checked out and made it to the park by 9:30.

Nothing was running except MF and Dragster. What the hell, I hadn't ridden Dragster in almost 2 years, so I went for a ride. No line practically, and once I got up to the station they called for a Single rider. I jumped in on the train. They're apparently taking the first train, rolling it out, launching it and then moving the second train now? It seems ridiculous but whatever. I'm sure it's in the name of safety?

We launch, and up we go. I knew pretty much right away we weren't going to make it - and we didn't. The rollback was nice. First time since 2004 I've had a rollback. We launched again, and we barely made it the second time, but it was a decent Dragster ride. I'm sure I'm all dragstered out for awhile. (another 2 years perhaps?)

After that, I got a good 10-15 rides in on Magnum until the bulk of the 'cattle' showed up. I walked back afterwards and realized Maverick was still down, Gemini had a line outside of the queue and I was Cedar Pointed out. I ended up heading to Panera for lunch, and then decided to head home. I made pretty good time home, and arrived back here in Lansing around 4:15 PM.

All in all, a good trip. It felt good to be back. I spent a few more bucks than I was planning on, but in the end it was worth getting the hotel room. (I was originally planning on camping - in the rain and cold - yuck) The rollback this morning was a good touch on a ride I otherwise don't like much.

The Magnum crew is especially doing a pretty good job. I noticed Craig (Gomez) had his clear up before the previous train had gotten to the top of the lift most of the time.

Crowds sucked honestly for opening week. Today busses were all the way to 33A in the main lot. WTF? Tons of schools there. I guess that's good, but it was also pretty annoying.

bholcomb said:
I stayed up in my fancy man suite watching the Red Wings game on my Laptop (Apparently suckeye cable doesn't carry versus - Jerks)

The games are on CBC though which I think is channel 17 on suckeye cable. I had to watch the multi-colored suits of Don Cherry during a Pittsburgh / Philly game. That man has some style, I'm just not sure if it's good or not.

Yeah, they had some weird Canadian TV on. No hockey. :( It was on TSN, not CBC.

Yeah, I think only 1 of the Western CF games is on CBC. Leave it to Bettman to eliminate as many people from being able to watch hockey as possible. I keep hoping to wake up and find out that he's been fired or died, but I haven't had any luck.

Don Cherry is the best hockey analyst out there. No one can top him.

Bettman is an idiot... but Canadians not watching hockey? Blasphemy!

If you don't get TSN you can't. Of course, TSN is the Canadian ESPN, not the Canadian VS. So 90% of the country has access to it, as opposed to 30% of the country.

So whats up, you live in Lansing...chase storms in tornado alley, and "kind of like Cedar Point"?

^ Maybe someone who chases tornadoes might not think that the coasters at CP are as thrilling as something like that. lol. I know that if I even hear a tornado siren I'm about to pee my pants. You've got guts man!

I still like Cedar Point. It's just more exciting to drive a couple thousand miles in a day or two and chase storms.

Roller Coasters are still a good time, don't get me wrong.

And storm chasing isn't really all that dangerous if you know what you're doing. Statistically, you're a lot more likely to hydroplane or be hit by another car than by a tornado.

I needed to change my oil, pack everything and still managed to help keep SevereStudios updated with content on Tuesday night.

Yeah I didnt know you live in Lansing. I saw the video on the news and didnt even know it was you.

Yeah, Rob Dale used my video that Saturday after they used a bit from Reed Timmer. It would have aired at 11 on Friday but they couldn't get my DVD Quality rendered mpeg to work - go figure :)

You got a mention from the guy who I consider to be the #1 television meteorologist in the business.

That's really great! A lot of TV Meteorologists have picked up on the site. The NWS is one of our biggest visitors with well over 60k pageviews this month from the Central Region (CRH) alone.

I had a monster wedge on cam today from Pratt, KS and visited Greensburg, KS earlier in the morning. Thursday and Friday we had a couple of our streamers with gigantic tornadoes. One of them even filmed another chaser sliding off into the ditch. Pretty neat stuff.