Saturday, October 19. BONUS TRIP!!
At any rate, Kathey's sis in Fairlawn (which I later discover is really just Northwest Akron) popped out a crumb cruncher back in May, and the new aunt hadn't seen the little critter yet.
Considering the relative promiximity of Northwest Akron to Sandusky, we unanimously (yep, both of us) decided to spend one day of what would be a four-day weekend hoppin' around the peninsula to see what all the fuss was about that there Hollerweekend thang.
After bouncing back and forth on dates, I "randomly" chose the weekend that the Steelers were playing Monday night vs. the Colts (yeah, yeah, Steelers suck... we love the Browns, etc. etc. I've heard it all before). The plan was in place. Day 1, travel. Day 2, CP. Day 3, Fairlawn, Day 4 Pittsburgh.
Since my bro lives close enough to the 'Burgh to be considered halfway to CP, we camped out there Friday night. Spent some quality time introducing myself to Michelob Ultra, their new "low-carb" beer. Don't bother. I'm not even sure why he bought it, but it sucks. Sleep.
6:00 AM is wakeup time, and after the necessary showers, shaves and sh**s (what? I'm talking about SHIRTS), we were Westward Ho! Pulled into the CP parking lot just before 11:00 and made a beeline for the Breakers. Raptor and MF were going through their warmups as we drove by.
Got to the guard shack, and for the first time that I can remember, was asked for my name. They checked me off on their list, ascertaining that I was really a hotel guest, and not merely some idiot poster from a website who heard about some track in the parking lot.
Checked in, and the room was ready. I wasn't real surprised since I figured most hotel guests would stay for two nights. If there was a one-night stay scheduled for Saturday, it probably meant that the room was sad, lonely and empty on Friday night.
Room 2107 in (where else?) Bon Air. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash. My favorite hotel view in the world, a 200-foot lift hill. I got out my handy-dandy pocket gizmo, the Sidekick (http://www.guidetothepoint.com/cpplace.aspx?mode=thread&TopicID=9221) and took a few snapshots, e-mailed them to folks who would certainly be jealous, and unpacked.
By 11:40, we were in the park, using the oh-so-ingenious early-entry (do I use more dashes or parentheses in these trip reports?). Since I tend to make Kathey play follow-the-leader during our June trips, I told her that she could call all the shots today. Her first choice? Power Tower, since we had somehow missed that this year.
I acquiesced, with the proviso that we took the Space Shot rather than the Turbo Drop. The temperature was in the 40's down here at sea level, and I did not relish the thought of sitting in whatever wind chill the gusts up there at 250 feet would provide.
It was on Power Tower that I came to the conclusion that I carry too much stuff. As I buckled in, on the white tray sat: My Oakleys, my cell phone, my Sidekick, my 35mm camera and my digital video camera. As I sat there admiring my collection of toys, suddenly I was looking out over the Bay and into Sandusky. And man, it WAS cold up there, even for the few seconds that we spent!
Off of Power Tower, and it was still before noon. It only made sense that we hit Millennium Force before the general populace was allowed into the park. So across the Coasters patio we went, completely ignoring all Halloween decorations until a bit later.
On the way onto MF, we spotted the Fastway booth handing out stamps. I hadn't used this previously, so what the heck? We got stamped for 4-5, then proceeded into line.
MF was a 15-minute wait, with only one queue section filled. Another picture, another set of e-mails. I was close to spamming my friends that day with so much CP e-mail. There were four seats to choose from when we hit the platform, and I lucked out as Kathey chose 5-2.
As the ascent began to the apex of the blue monster, I suddenly remembered my reasoning for not wanting to experience the Turbo Drop. Man, it was windy up there! Even moreso on the way down, as I calculated a 50 degree day with 93MPH winds to provide a windchill factor of 29 degrees! Nevertheless, it was "hands-up" the whole way until it came time to pose for the on-ride photo.
I rarely buy these photos, but this one was particularly good (and Kathey agreed to carry it for the day) so I shelled out the nine bucks and preserved the memory for posterity.
Off MF, and a left down the Frontier Trail. Of course, I had to briefly stop and fondly remember Father's Day as I stood outside the Garter. I could still see the band, taste the beer, hear Pete singing. That's what snapped me out of it! Get me out of here!
We stopped at the table outside CJ's Provisions, where Kathey got a hot cider, and I picked up the bargain of the day, Mud pie for 85 cents. OK, so it's just chocolate pudding with some cookie crumbs and a gummy worm or two, but I was looking for a quick snack, and the price was right. Off to the trail.
One thing that I hadn't considered when I decided to let Kathey run the show is that the shopaholic in here would certainly come to the fore. We spent time at the Woodcarver's Shop. We (ok, she) spent time in the Sr. Citizen's Craft Bazaar. I talked to a pretty cool older gentleman who was taking a break on the rocking chair. Create-a-Friend, Leather shop, etc. etc. etc. Much looking, but fortunately (at least to this point) no buying.
When we got to the glass shop, we saw the sign for the Telltale Heart show later that evening. Up until this point, I thought Halloweekends was a few decorations and riding in the cold and damp. I made a mental note to see this show tonight.
Next, the haunted house garnered our attention, so we headed over for a look. Standard rules. Don't touch the monsters, they won't touch you. They will merely invade your private space. A good rule for avoiding surprises in any haunted house is to follow closely the couple in front of you. Oddly, they receive all the attention. Worked like a charm! Not scary, but highly amusing.
We wandered somewhat aimlessly to the rear of Frontier Town, and when we took a right turn beyond Lusty Lil's (sue me), I said "So, Mean Streak, right?" Apparently, she wasn't paying real close attention to where we were going because she gave me a quizzical look like "Why would you say that?". I pointed out that there was really nothing else other than MS where we were headed, so we headed.
We walked directly to the stairs and were on in less than 10 minutes. On all of my other trips to CP, I am with a group of 4, 6, 32 people, all of whom are looking to ride together. This means countless futile efforts at letting others ahead so that we can ride the same train. Today, WE were the ones filling those spaces so magnanimously for others. (OK, so even I'M not buying it).
After Mean Streak, we (go figure) shopped some more, first at the Emporium, then over at Cedar Creek Trading Company. In Kathey's defense, we had promised my daughter that we'd buy her a CP sweatshirt, since we never have the foresight in June to realize that occasionally the temperatures drop a bit in the winter; hence summertime purchases are always T-shirts and tank tops. We were on a mission to find just the right sweatshirt. No luck in Frontier Town, so we headed to the other side of the tracks to Gemini.
There were a lot of people getting into the Gemini line at this point (2:30-ish), but there apparently were very few already on the platform because we walked on. Red car, winner! Gemini is always a winner in my book.
Stopped in Joe Cool's Corner Store for a quick look. A few decent sweatshirts, but all in kids' sizes. Lexi is now 13 (some of you have watched her grow up on this board) and wanted an adult medium. Actually, she wanted a large, I negotiated it down to a medium. Isn't the whole baggy sweatshirt thing "out"?
It was getting time to be hungry for more than pudding, so I asked Kathey if she wanted to snack our way around the park, or have something more substantial. She asked, "Like Midway Market, maybe?" I think she could make a living reading minds if I would agree to be a paying customer. She actually preferred to munch and nibble, but when we didn't find anything that sounded like it would hit the spot on the main midway -- AND when we realized that the MM price was 10 bucks, that sealed the deal.
By the way, somewhere in the walk up to that end of the park, we hit the Pagoda Gift shop but somehow missed Snoopy Boutique. Might have been by design, since we never find anything in there we like anyway. We also stopped at Park Plaza, the Valhalla of all clothing CP. It was here that we settled on the Wicked Twister sweatshirt for Lexi. We had seen it previously, but this was the only place that had a size smaller than really really big.
Midway Market was a hit (see previous link) as usual. Not as much fare as your standard mid-season menu, but plenty of comfort foods to fill up on. The chicken was average, the potatos were great, the mac and cheese was so-so, the seasoned chicken on the Mexican table was excellent. I had seconds of everything before hitting the ice cream station for a scoop of chocolate swirl topped in caramel sauce. That was the regular dessert. The ending dessert was banana cake. I found two small slices on the shelf and immediately absconded them both. Kathey didn't particularly care for a piece, so in the interest of making sure good food didn't go to waste, it went to waist.
During dinner, I took a look at the MF photo we had purchased. At every photo booth, they reserve the right to refuse to display or sell any photos that might be offensive, blah blah blah. Well, it turns out that the kid behind us had fired off a couple of one-finger salutes. After deciding that this wasn't the sort of thing that we wanted sitting on the piano back home, we would ask for an exchange after the Fastway ride.
Raptor had a line that was 90 minutes, and we knew we couldn't hit that and make our MF time, so we headed to Blue Streak instead. Surprisingly the line for Blue Streak was a half-hour. I'm guessing that the locals surmised that it wasn't going to rain anymore today (it had this morning) and hitting the park wasn't such a bad idea after all.
We just had time to get to MF before 5:00. One of my favorite things (and yours too -- admit it) is to listen to the comments of the peons standing in the "commoner" line as you go waltzing by all of them with your Fastway stamp. "Mommy, why don't they have to wait in line" and "That's not fair" are two of my favorites.
At any rate, in 10 minutes, we were doing our second MF lap of the day. The photo was as good as the first, and they allowed me to exchange it with a receipt. This one is OK to sit on the piano.
Before heading back to the Breakers, we stopped at the shops where we had seen the souvenirs we wanted, and bought them now -- rather than carry them with us. Good plan.
[We interrupt this trip report for a one-hour break back at the Breakers. Grabbed a beverage, tied up some loose work ends and failed miserably at getting my wireless modem to pick up an adequate signal to get online. OK, back to the TR]
By 7:00, we had made the decision that we were pretty much done riding and were going to experience the Halloween-y stuff at the park. First was America Rocks. We arrived at the Garter 10 minutes late, and the house was full. A great show! Elvis had me in stitches. Props to the Live E crew on this one. The Father's Day posse will be disappointed to learn that I did not imbibe during the show. Sorry.
It was then off to the front of the park for the 8:00 Aaron Radatz magic show. Maybe I'm a harsh critic. Maybe it's because I was in Vegas six weeks ago. Maybe I didn't like his haircut. Whatever the reason, I came away duly unimpressed with this show. It seemed to be an elaborate staging of simple sleight-of-hand tricks. Others in the audience seemed to like it, so maybe it was just me.
I knew we wouldn't make it across the park for the 9:00 Telltale Heart, so we took our time ambling around and taking pictures of the props. Stopped to watch some not-so-scary monsters dancing on the midway (the invisible man costume was the coolest!) At around 9:00, we headed down the Frontier Trail on our way to the Glass shop.
I didn't know exactly what to expect on the Trail, but I knew that they had something spooky going on. After refueling with a couple of hot ciders and watching the legless guy long enough to figure out the trick, we headed into the dark dense fog that was.
OK, it was crowded. OK, it was dark. OK, every kid from Sandusky High who didn't get a part in the spring production of Oklahoma! was running around wearing a mask and yelling "boo"! Factor in all of that, and my take on it was that it could have been done so much better. It was so foggy that by the time somebody yelled "boo" at you, you weren't sure if it was a character, or if the person in front of you had merely stopped so that you bumped into them.
Even going through as slowly as we could to take it all in, we still were outside of the glass shop at 9:15 for a 10:00 show. After a 20 minute stroll through Frontier Town, we headed back to get into line.
This show was well worth the wait. If you know the story, there is a neat little twist that CP has added. If you don't know the story, you'll enjoy it as well. Very well acted (especially by the "patient") and something that I'll label a "can't miss".
By now, it was close to 11:00. Our original plan was to catch a ride on Magnum before close, but we had been up and going full throttle for 17 hours now. Tomorrow would be another long and busy day visiting relatives, and we would certainly need all the strength we could muster for that.
The next morning, we packed and instead of bidding adieu to the park for the season, elected to have breakfast at the Boathouse. Kathey had raved about the omelet that she had back in June (this would be the Monday AFTER the Garter -- when I was in no mood nor condition to wake up for breakfast) and wanted me to try it. Alas, due to the light crowds, they had only a buffet. It wasn't bad, but I'm still jonesing now for one of those omelets. One more thing on my list for next year I guess.
The sidekick updates sound like a fun way to keep yourself occupied while waiting in line. Also a fun way to prove your addicted to GTTP ;)
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Tommy Penner - Variable X
Cedar Point FanBoy since 2001
"When will the patch come out to fix all the stupid people in this world?"
Too bad you missed the "Magical House on Boo Hill"...This is where CP has put all the old props from the Upside Down Funhouse to work again...
Until next season....
Your Red Garter Friend
OTT
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http://www.aaronradatz.com
http://www.cedarpoint.com
"What happened to Integrity, I don't see it on MTV, all I see is chereography. And I'll never be a dancer."- John Feldman - Goldfinger
http://www.goldfingermusic.com
But since you asked, the couple that I remember off the top of my head go something like this:
Aaron takes cell phone from man in audience. Palms phone while replacing it with pumpkin seeds before hanging the wrapped package (allegedly containing the "phone") in the air. Phone actually goes up coat sleeve. When the phone "reappears", it's in the newly cut pumpkin which (surprise!) Aaron's coat sleeve has just gone into to "pull out the seeds".
Another is where the lovely young assistant comes out onto the stage wearing a sweatsuit of some sort and does a quick change several times into more and more revealing costumes. Each costume is obviously a tear-away that can easily be removed in half of the 5-6 seconds that she is behind the changing curtain.
Enjoy what you like at the park, but don't get all bent if everyone doesn't agree with you, OK?
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