opening day 2011.

I will do my trip report in 3 parts today.

We are at the park now, and there are a LOT of closed rides. The park just does not look ready for opening day. We walked from the north dkyride station over to maverick, and the only ride that was up and running were himalaya and witches wheel. Over on the windseeker midway, the only rides open this moorning are wicked twister, giant wheel and troika. Maxair, disaster, and windseeker were all closed.

Pinks and ocean motion were also closed when I was over there. Ocean motion does not look like its going to open for another week, but the scenery looks good.

More to come.

Dropped in for four hours today (I live close by) and as expected several of the rides refused to get up this morning, either late (Raptor, Maverick) or at all (as of 130, Dragster, MaxAir, others.) Windseeker won't open until maybe Memorial Day. Two trains on Millennium, Mean Streak (as usual) and Magnum: no gripes there in view of the ominous radar and the dense fog. Fog was really neat, at times you could not see any rides from the parking lot! Windseeker was only visible from the bottom up to about 20-30 feet.

After not fitting in the Dragster test seat I decided to have a healthy lunch at home. I might go back if the rain doesn't materialize.

Most of the rides, including Dragster, were up later in the day. MaXair looks like it is still undergoing rehab and was down all day. Pink's is great and the Pink family seem like the nicest people. The midway around Pink's and Windseeker looks really nice.

Today was the first time I saw Windseeker with the seats on and I have to say it looks very strong, secure and substantial. I'll probably ride it when it opens. You wouldn't get me on a Funtime lawn chair attached with chains if you paid me, but Windseeker looks good.

Overall a cold opening day but the rain held off for most of the day.

Any word on Shoot the Rapids today?

Yes, actually Shoot the Rapids seems fixed. All rows were being loaded in the boats. I didn't ride it, but looking at the splash down on the last drop, the boats seem like the were planeing like they should and not digging the bow in. It least I didn't see that wall of water come in the boat over the bow as happened a lot last year. I'm not sure how the boats were changed, but it must have been the hull design. The boats also seemed more stable on their beam, not listing nearly as much.

Ensign I did a little summary of Rapids in the "new for 2011" topic in the general forums. It seems to be doing much better this year.

Gemini was running only the red side because the blue train valleyed at the bottom of the first drop.

Thanks, pointperson. It sounds like a huge improvement. Can't wait to check it out in a week or so.

Was there from 10:30am to 5pm(when rain started). Didn't do any rides because of sore back and walked the park 2 times. Kept a string of Opening Day attended going,now at 16. Fog was unusual with the high rides going up into the fog. The randomness of rides running/not running was unusual for a point opening day.

Good day. We covered over 10 miles of track with 3 Millennium Force, 1 Maverick, 2 Magnum, 1 Raptor, 1 Gemini, 1 Blue Streak, 1 Iron Dragon, 1 Mean Streak for a total of 52,957 feet of track.

Also got 1 Power Tower in and 1 Paddle Wheel. Paddle Wheel was awesome/ The guy telling jokes did nothing but rip on Cedar Point. High Prices, broken rides were all part of his jokes.

Only 1 tower on Power Tower was working and that was a drop side. When I asked if it was because of short staff, the ride op said no and pointed to the water dummies. He said the those 3 towers needed to be calibrated. He added the ride needs to weigh the car before launching/lifting and the computer showed each car with dummies weighed 0lbs. Obviously not a good thing.

Blue Gemini had valleyed (sic) at the bottom of the first hill.

Mean Streak in my opinion is not better. The turn after the drop was better, but that's where "better" stopped. After that, hitting the bottom of each hill turned into a washboard. It was not leisurely in any sense.

The fog was amazing. You couldn't see the top of anything that was over 175'. It was disappointing only when driving up the causeway because you couldn't see anything. Other than that, once inside it was surreal. I had to go stand under Windseeker (hereafter referred to as Seats on a Pole) to see it in person for the first time. The fog broke around 4pm.

Lots of down rides, including Maverick at the end of the night. Rides would go up and then down periodically.

Good day and probably the lightest opening day crowd I have seen in 22 years of opening days. All said and done 7 out of 10 for Cedar Point opening day 2011.

A light rain shut down everything at one point. It was a very light and spotty drizzle. I hope this isn't a new policy.

Pinks has reasonable prices. However I held onto my money and bought nothing.

I found out from a ride op the reason some rides were down was because they had not received their safety seal from the state and could not be operated legally. I thought the highlight of the day was Pink's great food and lower prices than other food places. I just think they waited too long to start testing rides because they did not want to pay employees to come in early.

The weather definitely kept the crowds pretty light. The low hanging fog that was present much of the day already has me looking forward to Halloweekends.

I will post some pictures this afternoon.

Mattp77 said:
I found out from a ride op the reason some rides were down was because they had not received their safety seal from the state and could not be operated legally.

I am guessing Matterhorn fell into this category. They cycled it over and over on Sunday. Kids were a bit bummed as they like that one.

Yea, park was not near ready to open for the season. Funny thing is, they opend a week later this year.

Pictures....

http://coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Thread/58803.aspx

aww...I'm bummed we missed Paddlewheel excursions. I was planning on it this trip. We walked past once on the way to find a working coaster and I had planned to backtrack...but we never quite made it there again. i had to throw out all our plans so we weren't quite as organized as we usually are. (I like to plan out our whole day so we do everything we want to do and we don't come home saying, "oh we forgot to ride this and this or "we ran out of time to do such and such"). Plus I feel so much more efficient with a plan and with our family having to split up as dh and ds don't do thrill rides, pre-planning is MUCH easier.

Shades said:

Mattp77 said:
I found out from a ride op the reason some rides were down was because they had not received their safety seal from the state and could not be operated legally.

I am guessing Matterhorn fell into this category. They cycled it over and over on Sunday. Kids were a bit bummed as they like that one.

I'm pretty sure I saw this operating on Sunday afternoon. Unless I saw it without people in it? We didn't end up going up close as DS chickened out.

CP was much more on top of things than KI was two weeks ago. They weren't perfect, but it could have been worse.

How so?

I was at kings island for opening weekend and everything but windseeker and the 4D theater were up and running.

It's not so much that KI didn't have rides ready to open, but that they couldn't keep them open throughout the day. I think Racer was the only ride I encountered that didn't go down at least once during my wait. Add to that dreadfully slow crews (consistently stacking 3 trains on Beast is completely unacceptable) and the day was just not very enjoyable.

Other than the rides that weren't ready, the only downtime I encountered at CP was finding Magnum to be broken down before I got in line.

elainesj said:
(I like to plan out our whole day so we do everything we want to do and we don't come home saying, "oh we forgot to ride this and this or "we ran out of time to do such and such"). Plus I feel so much more efficient with a plan and with our family having to split up as dh and ds don't do thrill rides, pre-planning is MUCH easier.

I do the same exact thing for the same reason! I only get to CP few times a season, if that..so I don't want to miss out on anything. I've realized though by planning everything it actually makes it less fun for everyone around me. lol. So I've tried to be more laid back on it and just decided what to do as we are doing it.