My friends and I took our annual spring trip to Cedar Point yesterday. We always like to go this time of year before after M&S week but before school is out. No early entry as not everyone in the group has a platinum pass. Arrived about 9:45 AM at the main gate so one member could upgrade a regular season pass to a platinum. There was already a huge crowd waiting to enter. Once the gates opened, it took 15-20 minutes just to enter the gate. IMHO, the new front gate is not equipped at all to handle the initial crowd.
Despite not being M&S week, there seemed to be a lot of high school students present, more than I've seen in the past at this time of year. Granted, this is by observation only and could be completely off base. The park definitely seemed more crowded than past years but it may have just seemed that way due to things I will discuss later. It probably didn't help that the weather was awesome (actually, a little too hot to me as the temperature topped out at 88F).
The main issue of the day was downed rides. This was a serious problem the entire day. Let me run through as best as I could tell (granted, I couldn't be everywhere in the park at the same time so things may have been opened when I was on the other side of the park). Skyhawk is still down. We didn't look closely but it seemed mostly assembled but did have a large lift/small crane sitting within the ride area. Maverick was down at least once but I believe it was down at least twice. We rode it twice with a 40 min wait time and a 60 min wait time (more on this later). MF was running only 2 trains for a significant part of the day (the blue train was not running). As a result, until the end of the day, we never saw the posted estimated wait time below 90 mins. Didn't get to ride it at all. At the end of the day, all trains were running. TTD went down around 3 or 4 ish and as far as I know, never re-opened. We did ride it first thing and had less than a 30 min wait (we made the mistake of not riding it again immediately and didn't get a ride on it again). We did ride Magnum once and it was nearly a walk on (it had been closed and we just happened by as they re-opened it). We didn't visit it again so not sure whether it stayed up or not. The drop side of Power Tower was only running a single tower (the only side our group cares for). Nearly everyone in FastLane wanted the drop side and they were taking 50/50 from FastLane and regular. Result was what should have been 15-20 mins took about 35 mins. Only a single ride there. We had stayed away from GateKeeper early in the day due to long lines. When we rode it in the afternoon, we were pleasantly surprised with a 45 min wait and a 50 min wait (rode it back to back). There did seem to be at least a slight glitch as we approached to ride the first time. A train was sitting very close to the bottom of the lift hill and just sat there for 5 - 10 mins. Not sure the issue. Also not sure if there were any other issues with it yesterday. Did come back around to it later in the day and the wait was 90 mins. MaxAir was down the majority of the day. I did get a single ride on it as I happened to be right there when it got re-opened later in the afternoon (couple others went to ride Wicked Twister - didn't see that go down any as far as I know). Since I was right there, I was on the first ride of the re-open. I noticed that after 1 or 2 more rides, it was back down again. Finally, we rode Raptor once with an hour wait. The Raptor line appeared to stay fairly long all day (we were used to about 15 min waits on it in the past). This may have been due to the issues with the other coasters. No wooden coasters nor Mantis for us so can't comment on them. WindSeeker was running earlier in the day but when we came back later in the afternoon it was down with the high winds sign. Winds on the ground were maybe 10-15 mph at that point.
Now, back to the 2 different wait times for Maverick. For both of these rides, we started at almost the exact same place in the queue (talking within a few feet) but ended up with one being 40 minutes and one 60 minutes. The difference? FastLane! The first ride, there were very few people coming through FastLane. Most of the time during that wait, the FastLane queue was completely empty (and just a handful coming through it at all). The second ride, the FastLane queue had people waiting on the steps the entire wait time. The end result was it added 50% more wait time. Many of the FastLane folks were getting off and then right back into line (I don't necessarily blame them). If they want to cut this down, they could merge FastLane into the regular queue at the bottom of the steps. So, overall, the 2 places we definitely saw FastLane making a significant difference was Power Tower and Maverick. Power Tower was a little bit of an anomaly as only one of the towers was running. There was a little impact on GateKeeper but not enough that I think it made anything more than a minimal difference. Can't really speak for MF since we didn't ride it. When we rode TTD first thing, we saw maybe a dozen people come through FastLane at that time (very early though).
I should also point out that I only ever saw a couple of water rides running during the day despite the high temps. I have no idea why this was (ride issues, staffing, etc).
Overall, it wasn't a great day for us. I'm not too upset as I have a platinum pass and will be back at least 3 or 4 more times this year (one of those being later this week). I believe I counted a total of 9 rides. We spent a lot of time walking. Several times, I would have rather rode multiple times in a row but the others didn't want to so the majority won out. I believe my philosophy would have gotten us more rides.
And as for GateKeeper. I enjoyed it and think it is a good ride but only put it into the middle of the pack at the point for me. The main issue for me was the straps of the vest digging into my shoulders. That takes it down a couple of notches. Our first ride was the second row and second was next to last row. Between these, to me at least, the back was significantly better. I still want to ride the front row but in the future it will be either the front row or very near the back.
Finally, I tried to use an app on my Android phone called Ride Hopper to check estimated wait times. Unfortunately, it appeared that I was about the only person entering times so it was completely useless (it relies on rides in the park entering wait times). It was easy to use as you could just check into a ride and then check out while letting it keep track of your wait time. Would be nice to either see more people use this or better yet for Cedar Point to build it into their own app (which I removed last year as I couldn't find any value to it).
Brian
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