Though I've been a long time Cedar Point fan, this is my first year with season passes. I didn't originally plan to go opening day, but about a week ago I all of a sudden got the urge and the date worked out!
Me and my two kids (7 & 9) left suburban Cleveland around 7:30AM and arrived at exactly 8:30AM. I was a little worried about using my season pass with parking 'included' in the bar code because there is no way to tell for sure the parking is included by just looking at the pass. However, there was no problem at all.
We parked in the Soak City lot and got a front row parking spot right by RipCord. We didn't have early entry so we had 1-1/2 hours to soak up the atmosphere. We walked around Soak City (The entry line was huge at this point, probably a couple hundred people), walked the 'running path' from Breakers down to Sandcastle Suites and then checked out the LHP Cottages (where we'll be staying a few nights in June).
At 10:00AM we headed back to the Magnum entrance. There were only about 10 people in line at this point and we sailed right in with our virgin season passes.
We'd been watching TTD do rollbacks during early entry it continued a bit into opening. Everyone was loving it.
I started things off with a walk on ride on Corkscrew with my 7 year old daughter. I hadn't been on Corkscrew since I was a kid and forgot how much fun it was. My daughter was a bit shaken up by it, but was asking to ride it again a couple hours later.
We spent a lot of time walking around looking at things after that and didn't ride too many things. The rest of the morning went like this
- Walk on ride on Super Himalaya
- Wildcat (about a 20 minute wait)
- Midway Dodgem (about a 20 minute wait)
Then we broke for lunch - headed back to the car and had a tailgate party with packed sandwiches while we watched RipCord.
After lunch I noticed the park was getting REALLY crowed. As crowded as I remember it being on Summer Saturdays. The waits were starting to get really long and it was getting difficult to walk without bumping into people.
We rode Paddlewheel Excursions, a bunch of rides in Camp Snoopy, then headed over to Wave Swinger, Mine Ride (VERY long wait) and the rode a full loop on the CP & LE Railroad.
Headed home a bit early, with the concept of returning tomorrow!
Stats: Total round trip miles: 114; appx gas cost: $24; Round trip driving time: 110 minutes; money spent on food: $16.50; money spent on games: $4.00; money spent on souveniers: $14.50
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