Opening Day Maintenance Issues

Sounds like many of the issues that were happening over the weekend are continuing. Skyhawk, Maverick, and Chaos sound like the real problem children right now. I have heard of numerous people who had their Chaos ride stop in the air and need to be lowered manually (myself included). Skyhawk seems to be having some real restraint issues, and I have no idea whats going on with Maverick, but it is looking much worse than it did last year. Hopefully the kinks will be worked out soon.

Here is my trip report from yesterday, noting all the rides that went down, and were down. Seemed really ridiculous to start...

This isn't like Cedar Point, but who knows. Hopefully all the kinks are worked out relatively soon.

Chaos always has problems, it is a poorly designed ride, which is why most parks have dumped it. It gives a great ride, when it works, but it never works. Counting yesterday, I have attempted to ride that thing no less then 10 times over the course of (now) two seasons and I have yet to ride it, the ride has always broken down, before I get in line, while Im in line, when Im buckling in, or right after the ride has lifted to begin the ride sequence.

I've never had a problem with it. When I've tried to ride it, it is working. I just wish they still had the automatic release from the control panel rather than the stupid manual system they have now. That's my only complaint about it.

I visited yesterday as well and was a bit surprised by the amount of major rides that were simultaneously down. I'm very sure the word "budget" has something to do with this issue. "Budget" being a word I got very tired of hearing from management as justification for doing or not doing something when I used to work at CP. Perhaps if the majority of the so-called "budget" wasn't lining the pockets of Cedar Fair execs all the time instead of going where it is very much needed, such as areas like ride maintenance, then downtime of the kind experienced yesterday could have been avoided.

Oh please. You're talking out of your ass. The execs aren't getting raises at the expense of maintenance budgets. They dial back on everything when there are budget cuts. Dick's salary is barely a blip on the billion dollars of revenue ($3,242,698 according to Reuters, while Falfas gets $1,402,648 and Crage gets $947,359).

If you're a bitter ex-employee with an ax to grind, fine, but don't make stuff up. You can't attribute any of the down time to budget issues.

^ - no, but you can attribute it to a shorter off-season with less time running the rides with people on them. I remember just a few years ago on the Cleveland cam, rides were running right around the second week of April. It seemed a lot later this year before things got up and moving.

We were at the park late on opening day through early Monday.

One ride on Maverick the entire time; closed all day Monday and most of Sunday. While I am a realist about downtime, etc., it simply looks very bad when your new coaster, which for all intent and purposes should have its kinks worked out by now, is down for the majority of opening weekend.

I heard more than one customer (including us) saying; "well, I guess I'll go ride MF again...its the only thing to do".

It really did seem like an unusual number of rides were not operating properly or efficiently.

So anyone who was at the park Wed-Fri, how were operations? Any better?