Millenium Force Fiberglass Trains

Not to be flippant, but the empirical evidence of Opening Day suggests that is not 100% accurate :)

Sigh..

If you know how to run it or to get it right and correct, why are you not hired and running Cedar Fair/Cedar Point? If it's so simple to you, go do it.

Now'd be the time for that emoticon of the little smiley guy smashing his head into a brick wall.

Why do you think the Smiler is my profile picture :)

redsfan said:
...Only question I have is if people who visit those parks whine and cry about it as much as people do on this site? Is this a problem consistent with all coaster enthusiasts or just this one given site?

I suggest that the level of complaining about it on this site may indicate how unusual it is for the park to open with key rides in such a state of unreadyreadyness.

We are accustomed to Cedar Point having all rides operating at full capacity from opening day to closing day. There are parks out there where it is common practice to have trains and even whole major rides in disarray well into the season, let alone Opening Day. That we notice that Cedar Point is having trouble goes to show us how unusual that circumstance is for this park.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Captain Hawkeye said:

(BTW, have we decided if TTD & Magnum had all of their trains ready for Opening Day?)

Magnum's trains were ready to go. Not so sure about the control system or the crew though. Waited 30 minutes in the queue on Friday night only to get up to the station and find out they had the middle three cars chained off. Allegedly it was due to staffing, but it looked like they had full staffing - including a load side position to check only empty seats. Went back and rode Sunday and they did not have any rows chained off when they arguably could have had a car or two closed and it wouldn't have created a line, so they might have gotten a talking to. Or there was some other reason they were doing that on Friday that I just can't conceive of. The ride itself seemed to have tons of problems opening weekend though - down many times. They do appear to have sped up the parking of trains in the station which was much needed as it was terrible last year. I didn't hang around enough or ask anyone what seemed to me giving so much grief opening weekend. Hopefully they get it figured out.

TTD had five trains running when I rode Sunday. I did not notice if they had the sixth on the storage track or not.

RideMan said:
I suggest that the level of complaining about it on this site may indicate how unusual it is for the park to open with key rides in such a state of unreadyreadyness.

This. Some of you act as if this expectation is unreasonable or something. I might be an outlier, but I considered flying in for the weekend, and I'm glad that I didn't. I would have been sorely disappointed. I love the park and the people who work there dearly, but I don't get the apologist angle at all.

• I made the observation a while back that the park was employing fewer ride mechanics & technicians than they did back in the 1970's. I came to this conclusion with information from a contact that I had at the time in the dept and comparing to what I knew to be true from my time there. Now granted there is fewer flat rides than back then, and because they a lot of the coaster there have similar components, the park has been able to handle the workload. Perhaps they have encountered a perfect storm situation where they became overwhelmed, and there was no provisions for either hiring more help or farming work out. I'm not making excuses for the park, but maybe they need to step back and take a look at what the maintenance staffing should be now.

I think there is some overreaction and drama going on here too, which makes it sound worse than it was. The only thing really out of the ordinary was a missing MF train and Wicked Twister down for the count on opening day. Random ride downtime and weather downtime later in the day is not a sign of the park being unprepared. To me the large crowd was much more annoying than any operational problems on the rides. I am not trying to be apologetic for the park, I really didn't think it was a big deal and had a good time regardless.

Pete, I don't recall anyone overreacting at all. In fact, I remember it being mostly people objectively stating facts about what was and was not working, and asking questions to try and understand why it was the way it was.

If anyone was overreacting, it was people overreacting in their apathy to what went on, not unlike how you just did right there. You again wrote "The only thing really out of the ordinary was..." and "random ride downtime." You are once again glossing over the fact that 50% of the major coasters were down either a significant part of, or the entire opening day. I don't see how anyone can look at that and say "meh, it happens."

Sometimes, it does happen.

That so much happened on opening day certainly wasn't the intention of the park.

I'm pretty certain nobody here thinks the park intended for this to happen.

You can see on the webcam, Millennium Force has only the blue train running. The red train is on the storage tracks, can't till if the yellow train is there or not.

I've noticed that on light rain days most coasters only run one train, presumably to make collisions impossible. Better than shutting the ride down completely.

I thought everyone was getting tired of this conversation and was ready to move on? :)

I'm always receptive to reading everyone's opinions / thoughts but I think at this point if you've already made your position clear (in some cases multiple across various threads) then there really is no need to keep fueling the fire.

Now about them trains...earlier today it looked like both blue and red were running. If what Daniel says above is correct then I hope they manage to get red back in action. This morning it looked like they had a pretty decent crowd despite the soggy start to the day and now the sun is shining. I haven't seen Raptor running today but Rougarou, Gatekeeper, and Maverick were all up earlier.

Jeff said:
... I might be an outlier, but I considered flying in for the weekend, and I'm glad that I didn't. I would have been sorely disappointed. I love the park and the people who work there dearly, but I don't get the apologist angle at all.

YOU might be an outlier?! 8-)

It has long been my opinion that everything that happens in the month of May at Cedar Point is mostly a dress rehearsal. If I had to identify a date when the season *really* starts, when you can honestly expect that all the rides will be running in their best form, all the shows will be running, all the shops will be open and all the food offerings will be available, I'd say wait for the first weekend in June. CoasterMania has nothing to do with it, but that's when the season really starts, and if you're paying full price and/or flying a thousand miles to visit, that's the time to go.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

^ I go that first weekend in June every year for my first visit of every season and it seems to be operating smoothly. But I do understand everyone's views on here with things not being ready to rock and roll, seems like things could be a lot better on opening day.

Once again all is right in the universe, the yellow train has returned and is in the transfer track.

With the blue train's old front end.

We got our first ride in the fiberglass train this weekend. Red was making the same rattling that the metal trains used to make. If reducing rattling was a reason for making the change I do not think it worked.

Other than noise, was there anything wrong with the sheet metal? I don't remember any big dents or other appearance issues. Any theories on why the change?