Season Pass Preview Night and Dining Plan

Definitely a larger crowd than I was expecting. Magnum and dragster were not ready at open. The Lebron James foundation ert on Rougarou did not finish until 7:30. I came back later and waited 50 minutes. The dining plan was accepted at dragons inn.

I was very disappointed in preview night. Half the rides listed weren't running and it was alot busier than I expected. It took about 20 minutes just to get through the front gate. And Magnum broke down while I was almost at the station. They weren't even running the middle rows on Magnum, reducing capacity. I saw Sky Ride stopped with riders on board. if what I heard was true, MF wasn't even certified by the state last night. Unacceptable. The park did not look prepared at all for this event. At least they wished me a happy birthday when my pass scanned so they did something right. Now I'm glad I changed my mind about media day. I got several rides on Rougarou in that time. Not sure I'll go to any future preview events after the huge disappointment last night.

Agree with everyone here. It was a mess. We were not happy. Fortunately, I adjusted my attitude and still had a decent time and did get to ride Rougarou.

Glad to know that we weren't the only ones who were disappointed. We knew going in that the rides would be limited but didn't expect such a huge crowd. It didn't help that so many of the rides that were supposed to be up and running were down. I think they needed to have some backup rides ready as a contingency plan.

On the plus side, the sign in front of Raptor said 45 minutes around 9 pm but I think we only waited about 15.

Kind of sounds like people were expecting a dead park for pass holder preview night. The weather was perfect with highs in the 80's and a nice Lake breeze. Perfect recipe for a big crowd. If it's true that MF wasn't certified last night I'm not surprised. The maintenance crew was up working at the top of the lift Hill most of the day Friday while the other coasters were all running laps. I don't know how many trips up and down they did but it was several. You could assume MF didn't get its required testing in to open Friday night

I personally had a great time Friday starting with the media preview. Got some great rides in, talked some with both Rob Decker and Jason McClure and was interviewed couple times. Very grateful I got to attend.

Pass holder night was fun. Got a few good rides in then spent the evening walking around looking at the changes in the park then ended up at the new fire rings at Breakers.

Exactly! The fact that people didn't expect such a large crowd, is kind of ridiculous considering the weather and the amount of people who are passholders. Not to mention, Friday was a PREVIEW of the park. Anybody who has been to Cedar Point on opening day, knows that there are a lot of bugs to be worked out of rides. I was most excited for Rougarou, and CP added additional rides to the list as a plus.

I had no expectations of crowd levels, I was prepared for no crowds or heavy crowds alike.

I was also prepared for occasional ride downtime due to early season glitches, even though I hate that as an excuse.

Having said all that, I was still supremely disappointed. Many (most) advertised rides were down, employees were ill-prepared for just about everything (some had no idea what parent-swap was) and the park, in general, did not seem "ready". There's really no excuse for this. May 8-9 has been on the calendar for a long, long time. Magnum was running with six empty rows (chained off) despite quite a long line in the que. Why? Rougarou, around 8PM when we rode it, was running many empty seats per train because the attendant at the entrance to the station was not letting enough people in. Lame. They were also stacking all three trains. Overall, I've never seen the park ride ops so ill-prepared for opening, demonstrating a need more a LOT more training than whatever it is that they received.

Opening day might have been even worse. Early entry was a total waste, TTD did not open until 10:40 and even though there was a LOOONG line of us who had been there an hour already, there was no communication that the ride was down for mechanical, which it was. When it finally opened it was running three trains. The sixth train is not even on the transfer track this year. Two trains had some type of sensor issue.

You won't find me at another opening day in a long time, and that's if I even decide to renew our passes next year. And before the "entitlement police" jump all over me (yes, you know who you are), I do have certain expectations of quality of service and professionalism by employees which was NOT on display this weekend. I don't intend to go all crazy like some on here do, talking about it for months, but will agree with many other posters in this thread who were disappointed. If that continues, I'll vote with my wallet next year (and not with Pointbuzz complaining).

I'm not gonna ridicule you, but I expect you to read this with an open mind. I was/am a ride op with many years of experience. You can train your employees as much as you want to, but the efficiency is not going to get better until an employee has practice with real life situations and guests. During training week, crews are cycling rides EMPTY, because they have to cycle each and every ride unit for so many hours before opening to the public.

Not to mention, I guarantee about half of the ride ops who didn't know what parent swap was, just processed in yesterday, and only had an hour worth of training at their location this morning before the park opened. Once again, they need to experience real life situations in order to know what to expect.

Last, guests don't know (and I don't expect them to) the new training program that got implemented mid last year that all ride hosts must follow. It's called IROC, and it has really killed interval for MANY, if not all, rides. So the stacking that you may see at certain locations doesn't necessarily mean the crew isn't "ready". However, the amount of times Rougarou stacked yesterday was awful, I will agree.

Basically what I'm saying is, if by any chance you find yourself at opening day at Cedar Point ever again, don't expect occasional downtime at rides. Expect MAJOR downtime at each ride for many reasons. Especially considering these machines have sat all winter long.

We anticipated a pretty good turn out last night given the weather and did not expect the park to be empty by any means. We also knew that there would be problems because they can occur any day of the season. We also are aware that they had quite a bit on their plate this year.

If it is "ridiculous" for guests not to have anticipated a massive crowd then I think it is fair to say that it is equally ridiculous for the park not to be prepared to receive said crowd. Actually, considering that the park has the advantage of knowing the true number of pass holders then it must be even more ridiculous. This wasn't their first rodeo.

Don't get me wrong, I still love going to Cedar Point and we will return throughout the season. We managed to have a good time last night and today even with all of the limitations but from now on we'll skip opening weekend.

IMO, yes, it is ridiculous if anyone thought crowds would be light. As Platinum passholders, this isn't our first rodeo either my friend. There hasn't been 1 opening weekend where things went smooth from what I can remember, and you need to stop blaming the park.

Sometimes I wonder if you even read the posts you are replying to.

The crowds were large for preview night and opening day. When we left around 230 the lot was full to about 15-20 rows from the back. There were numerous ride breakdowns, rides didn't open that were supposed to be open, rides broke down after being open for short periods of time, computers weren't working, network problems all around, re-fillable mugs weren't scanning, people didn't know how to ring up all season dining plans... and it was hot, record breaking type hot.

All that being said, we got to ride rides for the first time in 6 months, eventually we were served our meals and they were good, the pop/lemonade/ and water were cold and refreshing. The new lobby at Breakers is air conditioned to escape that record breaking heat, and the beer at Fridays and the new Lounge was ice cold and refreshing. My son and daughter had big smiles on their faces from rides such as the Kite Eating Tree to Gatekeeper, they smile all the time but the on ride/post ride smiles are different...

CP/CF did a great job this off season with all of their projects and I think that place has a very bright future with the current management. There were some rough spots during both preview, and opening day... but all that aside it was the first time in 6 months I was able to travel to CP (and have it be open), and it was well worth it!

Scottyf said:
Sometimes I wonder if you even read the posts you are replying to.

I sometimes wonder if you're ever going to contribute to the topic instead of adding nonsense :)

Exactly JUnderhill. It's nice to see a bit of optimism here.

I learned a long time ago not to go to CP in May, much less opening weekend. Too many mechanical issues, too many rides not running all trains or even all rows of seats, too many school buses and the weather being even more unpredictable than the rest of the season.

I would much rather go when the park has more people in it but the rides are proven out, the operators and restaurant employees have had more experience and my chances of having nice weather are better.

Even with now having my first Platinum pass, I most likely will refuse to visit the park until school is out. I will let everyone else helps the park work the bugs out.

Maverick
Dragster
Magnum
Wicked Twister
Gemini
Millennium
Mean Streak

All of those were down for significant intervals today, including pretty much the entire morning for all of them, and the rest of the day for half. Hell, even the antique cars shut down and we had to vacate the line. Antique cars shut down. That's a sentence I didn't even know existed. If the park isn't responsible for this situation, I'm curious as to who is.

I've been to a lot of opening days, and while they always have some glitches, I wouldn't characterize them the way it's being described on Facebook today. Unpracticed crews are one thing, but rides not even ready for operation is pretty strange.

I got on all of the major coasters this weekend, and I even left the park early. The only thing that truly broke my heart was seeing my baby's train (Wicked Twister of course), in pieces and not on the track yet.

I didn't bother with the preview night because I really didn't feel like driving an hour each way to spend 3 hours in a half open park. I also figured it would be a horrible time to go through the pass center which we need to do this year because we upgraded the kids to platinum. I'm glad I skipped it. If it wasn't for a badly timed soccer game we would have been there today, kind of glad we weren't now. Last year we went on Mothers' Day and it worked out great, I'm hoping for the same this year. It looks like we might get wet and I'm assuming there will be a long line at the pass center. It's been a long winter and whatever happens tomorrow it will probably be better than a day at work. Work has been crappy lately. I need to ride something.

Here's hoping that Cedar Point adds touchscreen interactive kiosks like the ones found at Kings Island in the near future.

I really don't see a lot of value in that. It seems like it would be more effective to post wait times online, with a responsive site at the very least, or an app.