Rides Down time?

Hey guys,
I will be making my first trip to Cedar Point next week (very excited!) and I've been doing a lot of reading on the park, especially this forum, and it's led me to a question. I seem to get the feeling from reading trip reports and just general posts that it's fairly common for the rides to be down a lot during the day. Not just one in particular, but a lot of them.... Millennium, TTD, Maverick, Maxair, Skyhawk, and others. I've been to a lot of theme parks in Florida and some other places where it seems like the usual is for the ride to be either just closed for the day (in which case you know ahead of time) or open all the time. Yes, most rides close during rain, but that's not what I mean. I just get the feeling from reading these posts that most rides just quit on you for no reason... down for ten minutes here, half an hour there. You're in line, it shuts down, then opens again. I understand it with Top Thrill but for the others it seems unusual to me.

So my question is, is that really what's going on? They just close and open on and off throughout the day for no reason? Or does it just rain that much? I guess my thought would be that normally if I saw a ride closed and it wasn't raining, I would assume it wouldn't be running all day, but seems like that's not the case at Cedar Point.

Any chance FloridaGirl you're from the Ft. Lauderdale area??

As for your question, I think Orlando closes things for the entire day because their parks are open every day and many people visit for multiple days, so closing down a ride the entire day is not viewed as too big of a deal.

But at CP they definitely want things running when they can, even if it's for just part of the day!!

I'm no expert, but I do go to CP a lot and visit many parks, but rain excluded (which you have a pretty good sense about anyway), some of CP's rides are just temperamental!! i.e. the Intamin coasters, Maverick, MF, TTD, WT, are just flaky because that's the nature of Intamin's! You'll notice non-Intamin things like Magnum, Raptor, Mantis, don't have that down time rep!

However, it's not because these rides are problematic, it's just the odd's...eventually running an Intamin or an overly mechanical ride like maXair or Skyhawk will just be suspectible to down time every so often. Maybe I am lucky, but I usually have pretty good success with rides being open during my trips! In addition, sometimes a ride will have a problem that will make it down for a few days (like MF recently), but CP is usually very quick with getting things re-opened!!

Also, if a ride does go down during the day, I usually always see it back open later on!! TTD operations have been really good this year from what I've seen too! So I think CP just has a rep that's not true, and you've read about more exceptions than the rule. But if a ride goes down while you're at CP, stay in line or not if you want, but my experience is that it usually will come back up if not fairly soon after first going down then later on that day. Good luck!!

They have a reason. Could be a mechanical issue, or it could be some moron undid their seatbelt or pulled out a camera. With some of the rides, it can take 10 minutes to stop the ride, deal with the offender and then send them on their way. I've never really noticed excessive downtime on any of my trips in the past.

^^Yeah, that's actually a good point! Stopping a ride on a lift for something like that or transfering on (or off) trains will add to a delay in a queue that may seem like a problem, when there's not one!

There have only been 3 coasters down since I've gone the past 3 years. LAst year, magnum was down for a day and this year MF was down opening weekend for a bit and TTD was having problems. Other than that, you can generally expect every ride to be up and running. Just call the park or check the site before you visit.

When you go to CP Floridagirl, I think you will have an excellent chance that all rides will be operating most of the day. If there is downtime due to mechanical reasons, CP is excellent at getting the ride back up that day.

The issue with Millennium Force was unusual and certainly not typical. I would not worry about downtime, just enjoy yourself and expect to be able to ride everything you want. Things are a little blown out of proportion on the forum here at times.

A few years ago, a Cedar Point official noted that across all the rides in the park, they had experienced 93% uptime for the entire season. That includes all closures for repairs, weather, and ...uh... "clean-up". 70 rides, 180 operating days, roughly 12 hours per day, that's a total of 151,200 ride operating hours. 7% of that is 10,584 non-operational hours, which means that each ride is entitled to 50 minutes and 24 seconds of downtime each day. 8-)

When you consider that a two-hour rain delay can account for two days' worth of downtime, and Millennium Force alone was already down for almost a week, your odds of finding most of the rides up and running gets better and better...

Cedar Point's operating philosophy is that the rides are their primary product, so they do a pretty darned good job of keeping everything up and running, and running generally at pretty good capacity.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

HI...new guy here and my first time at CP was last summer so thought I'd jump in and tell you...spent a week at CP last August and the only ride that had any significant down time was Wicked Twister. It was down most of one afternoon but they got it running again in late afternoon. Not sure what the problem was.

Millie never had any significant issues, was my first 3 rides of every day and ended every night on it.

TTD had minor issues for maybe an hour two days but nothing to ruin your day.

Maverick ran like a charm.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I'm leaving Thursday with a buddy to go for a week...can't wait.

Enjoy your visit....Cedar Point is an AMAZING park! I wish I lived closer to CP than to Six Flags

When Wicked Twister is down for mechanical reasons it is usually because the light wall was broken and the train E-Stopped, this is usually an easy fix and the ride is reset and is up within an hour or sooner.

When a ride goes down. it can be for any reason, mechanical, loss of power for a few mins, some one lost there lunch and its being cleaned up. The times I've been there don't think any ride has been down the hole day, except Top Thrill Dragster.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Tigellinus, I am from Tampa. :) I think you made an interesting point about the Intamin coasters... maybe they just do suffer more downtime. I think most of the major coasters in Florida are B&M and I haven't ever really seen them down... very reliable, I think. Anyway, it seems like Cedar Point puts an emphasis on making sure downtime is minimal... I just hope it doesn't rain too much while we're there.

EDIT: Oh, also the issue of the park being open for so much less of the year may have something to do with it.... I'm wondering if they usually just have the rides sit there during winter or if they get run occasionally during the offseason?

^^Awwww...it was a one in a million chance, but if your name was Jaime (spelled like that) and you called dogs "doogies", then I was immediately heading to CP!!

Anyway, you definitely seem to know your stuff!! My younger sister would be like "B& what???" But yeah, I think it's more Intamin, and if a ride goes down then it mostly definitely should come back up. Plus, won't you be there for like two days anyway? My CP luck is really good, so hopefully you'll be fine!

The weather is a good point too since it has been damn rainy in the Midwest recently (as has Florida), but that hopefully should be turning soon. I've seen CP still run things in lighter rain, and it's not as crazy as it was in 08 or definitely 07 when things would close at the first drop.

Also, in the winter all the rides get thoroughly rehabbed, and the trains definitely don't sit out, though obviously the track does and sometimes the horses on the carousel!

Not true Tig. The trains do sit out all winter. Where would you propose they put them? However, once they have gone through maintenance, they are shrinkwrapped before being put back outside.

As far as running in the off-season, nope. Trains are off and being worked on, and its just too cold for a train to be able to make it all the way through the circuit, not to mention snow on the tracks and whatnot.

^^The thing about the trains, based on the chronology from the CP blog it seemed the amount of time for the trains' rehab and rebuild was fairly extensive!?

Usually takes quite a bit of time considering that every car of every train of every coaster has to be checked up and down for any wear and tear so it can be fixed and parts ordered before the beginning of the season. CP doesn't want a Steel Dragon 2000 incident on them now, do they? :)

MF was down for about 2 hours today. Non weather related.

I know that I was there today and there seem to be alot of down time on rides! I know the weather was playing a part of it, but not all of it! I was glad I got to ride Millie this morning! She was rideing really fast!

I have strongly noticed the downtime on Intamin AG coasters. Top Thrill& Millenium-problems in begining of season, Maverick-somtimes down sometimes up. Other parks: Hershey Farenheight& Stormrunner- problems durning early season, Six flags great adventure Kingda ka some wierd problem. Also I have observed that alot of thier rides are delayed on opening day. Millenium, Top Thrill, Maverick, Stormrunner, Kingdaka just to name a few. I personaly like B&M, S&S, and the bankrupt Arrow dynamics. For Wood i prefer GCI& Gravity Group. :)

Awww, I'm sorry to hear about the recent downtime. Sounds like itreally is related to the difference in coaster manufacturers (at leastin part). Maybe it's because I've been on a lot more of them, but itseems to me like B&Ms are much more reliable but less varied. Seems like most feel pretty similar to me, even among the different types. Iwill say, it seems weird to me that there would be such a differencebetween companies on the reliability issue.... I can't imagine howfrustrating it must be to run a ride that opens and closes frequentlythroughout the day... aw well, we'll see how it goes when I am there onTuesday!

tigellinus said:

Anyway, you definitely seem to know your stuff!! My younger sister would be like "B& what???" But yeah, I think it's more Intamin, and if a ride goes down then it mostly definitely should come back up. Plus, won't you be there for like two days anyway? My CP luck is really good, so hopefully you'll be fine!

Thanks! I am pretty much obsessed with roller coasters, although I'm no expert... Technical specs and the engineering part would probably fly over my head, but I try to keep informed about the different manufacturers/types of coasters.

^^There are many other Intamin's with issues this year too like Xcelerator at Knott's and Superman at SFAmerica...I like Intamin more than B&M, but the reliability sucks! PB webmaster Jeff has claimed before that Intamin's are overly-designed (while ironically B&M's are overly-engineered!!)

But the good news for you, FLgirl, is the early weather reports for next week are looking good!!

Also, technical specs mostly fly over my head too, but there's not a lot of girls who are so knowledgeable about coasters! My girlfriend spent over half of Coastermania weekend sleeping in the hotel room, and still can't tell the difference between a B&M and Intamin, despite being on many!!

I hope your CP trip goes well and you have very great fortune!