May 26th - CROWDED

Coming into today, I had a bad feeling about the crowds - the weather looked great and of course the next day is Memorial Day, so it wasn't your average Sunday...

In the morning, it actually wasn't too bad. We rode MF twice for Joe Cool ERT, then hit Mantis with a near walk-on. After grabbing a FreeWay stamp for 1-2 MF, we went back and rode Mine Ride twice. We wanted to ride Mean Streak but it was down for the whole morning (and possibly the whole day?).

We skipped Gemini next because only the red side was running, took a quick look around Area 51 (nothing has changed at all), and then rode Magnum ejector seat with a 10 minute wait. I must say that Magnum has REALLY improved since Opening Day. :)

Next we went back to Gemini, where they were now running both sides (4 trains), and we actually had to wait 15 minutes or so. Not a good sign... although I gotta applaud the crew for doing a good job of racing the trains! We were in blue train, and red was beating us going into the final helix - the trims went on for red but stayed off for blue and we ended up winning.

Power Tower Space Shot was next, about a half hour wait (longest of the day at the time). Nothing special... we had some time to spare before our FreeWay on MF so we went up to WT in attempt to get a "Twist" FreeWay stamp, but apparently, even if they are different rides, you can't have two stamps at once. So we headed back to MF, and WOW - the line was all the way into the temporary queues! It felt very nice using the stamp and only waiting 7 minutes :) .

Came back to WT and got a stamp (that we never ended up using), then stopped in the arcade for some DDR action. After destroying my feet and sweating like crazy, it was off to Blue Streak. It was the afternoon by this time, so I figured that the front of the park would be a little cleared out, but it was just the opposite. We ended up waiting 40 minutes for Blue Streak! It was a GREAT ride, like it has always been this year, but I don't know if it was worth that wait. On the lift hill I looked over and saw that the Raptor queue was COMPLETELY filled, so after BS we went over to Oceana.

It wasn't any better. Wicked Twister also had a full queue, and the line for Disaster Transport was coming out of the building. Still, I decided to do DT first in hopes that the WT line would die down. At the entrance to the DT building, there was a ride op holding a sign that he made that said "Yes, the line really is 1 HOUR from here!" Heh, this scared away quite a few people. The funny thing is that we went through the entire queue and waited exactly 30 minutes. Hmmmm...

Went back to WT - the line had died down a bit, the sign said a 2 HOUR wait but I knew it was another overestimate. So we got in line anyways and ended up waiting a mere 50 minutes to get to the station. We waited an extra 10 for the back... such a sweet ride. I did notice the "clank" of the out-of-line LIM though.

After WT, it was over to Raptor for the final ride of the day. We really hoped that it had died down from before, but no... the queue was still COMPLETELY filled. The sign only said 1 hour wait though. Well, we gave it a shot. And I was shocked at how fast we moved through that line. The Raptor crew was AWESOME today. They were flying so fast, all the dispatch intervals were perfect, and they never let up. We went through the entire queue and sat down in our back row seats in exactly 45 minutes. :)

While we did a pretty good job of limiting wait times, it was tough to contend with the crowd at the front of the park later in the day. It seemed like a lot of people must have come late. The parking lot was nearly full at about 5.

And that's it!

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Break the scream barrier NOW!
Wicked twists: 4
Danger: Hgih Voltage!

Everyone is saying how great the Raptor Crew is this year, I believe it. 45 minutes with a full queue is insane, that's a heck of a lot of people moved through. The one day they were dispatching so fast there was about a 10 to 15 second time where we waited for the train on the brakes to get into the station. Bring on a 4th train!

How full was the WT Queue for your 50 minute wait? I think it was said the queue has a Max capacity of 3 hours, so if it's full it would be there but I don't believe it. We waited 35 minutes opening day and the first set was full (closest to the former webcam location) and so was part of the second set (behind the big empty space). So really I think the whole queue area next to the Stadium would be under an hour and the top of "L" would be even less then that, so 2 hours max. Also that sign is always way overstated. Maybe the crew doesn't know there own line moving ability?

*** This post was edited by Joe E. 5/27/2002 2:11:21 AM ***
*** This post was edited by Joe E. 5/28/2002 2:50:37 AM ***

There's no way that the WT queue has a max capacity of 3 hours... when we waited 50 minutes, both sets of queues next to the stadium were filled. And like you said, the "top of the L" has to be less than that... I was pretty surprised that we moved through WT quickly as well, because when we were in the station it seemed like they were doing a "recheck all harnesses" at least every other launch. Oh well, all this just goes to show why CP has the best capacity of any park!

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Break the scream barrier NOW!
Wicked twists: 4
Danger: Hgih Voltage!

I was there yesterday, too. Even though I had a fun filled day, it was pretty crowded. If the Gemini has two full queues..You know the park is crowded.

I was there yesterday too. Did you notice the funny ride-op on Magnum including coasterbuzz in his spiel?

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Chris, I'm a little disappointed in you....you never gave me a shout out, and I did see you first thing in the morning on MF ;) Park really was packed, but the Raptor grew got the gold star of the day..they busted their butts! Way to go, guys!

-Mikey
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If you're like me and you think Cedar Point should get the B/M Flyer in 2004, give me a "Hell Yeah!"

Yes that's right, I did see Mikey in the MF station :)

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Break the scream barrier NOW!
Wicked twists: 4
Danger: Hgih Voltage!

No question about it... the Raptor crew is kicking ass and taking names this year. Makes me oh so proud to be a Point fan. :)

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Sunday, our first visit of the season and "crowded" is putting it mildly. Insane, is more like it, especially since it wasn't a particularly warm day. The sun was warm, but the wind was freezing. I wish I was one of the brave souls who withstood the cold at Soak City and had the whole place to themselves!

After driving for almost 4 hours, we got our Season Passes processed. That took about an hour. Finally, we were in the park at 10. We did Gemini, Mine Ride, Disaster Transport, Magnum, Wildcat, Iron Dragon, and a bunch of rides. By 6pm, we were tired, all we could do was just look at the lines for MF and Raptor and say, no way, too long of a wait! We didn't ride the WT, my daughter was too scared, so I'll have to try it out in June. We noticed that the Sky Ride was stuck, with passengers on board as we left.

This morning, we went back to the park, got in for early ride time, and rode MF and Raptor. It was a great feeling to walk on both without any wait. Judging by the size of the crowds coming in as we were leaving, today was probably even more crowded than yesterday!

Gemini on sunday was crazy. 6 trains were running, and the queue was still full with people overflowing onto the midway. I have NEVER seen it like that. Just to give you an idea of how crowded it was yesterday, at orientation and training today, Eileen told us that all 1400 rooms in the Cedar Point hotels were occupied. The park today was full, but was far from being over-crowded.

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Brent Haley
Gemini Crew '02
*** This post was edited by Brent02 5/27/2002 10:15:52 PM ***

Did Meanstreak ever come up on Sunday? Also, it sure didn't help CCMR broke down while I was on it.

I was also at the park on Sunday, and my group was also disappointed in the extremely large crowd and very looooong waiting lines! We went last year on the same day and experienced short lines (of course, the weather was crappy last year). We had a great time anyway, but I was sad that I didn't get to do the night-time ride on the MF. By that time, I was worn-out and the line was about an hour and a half- 2 hours, and I just couldn't take it!

The Mean Streak opened around 4 from what we were told. We did manage to make it back there and ride around 9. Our spin was from the very back seat and while it was not that bad, it was slow. The trims grabbed hard and it seemed like it struggled in places to keep going. PUS!

Indeed it was packed on this my 7th straight Memorial Sunday. I didn't expect this, seeing is how the 6 ones prior to this resulted in about half of the crowd. It may have been the weather, after all it's been lousy for the last several years.

We got 7 rides total for the 12 hours we were in the park. We probably would have had at least 3 more if I would have remembered the freeway stamp for WT and MF. Completely slipped my mind. Also, a little over an hour to get our season passes processed did not help either.

Overall, it was a fun day and can't wait to go back.

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I was super before Superstew was cool

I remember I got called over to Gemin that day to ride because they had to transfer a train onto the track and they were using all the queues for both sides and they were full whcih was the first time I saw it like that.

Ejector205, I was so proud when I heard the Coasterbuzz spiel. I told everyone I was with that I was a member there. Of course, they didn't hear the spiel (or care I was a member) but it was cool.

When I went to Mean Streak Sunday afternoon, it was an hour and a half. I didn't ride because I don't think it's worth that long of a wait

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Paul
Iron Dragon: We take you upside down not once, not twice, not at all!

I was there Sunday and MeanStreak did open up, me and my friend Carla waited about 45min for it and had the roughest ride of our life! Mean Streak is still a good ride..just not my favorite anymore.

~*kP