The station is going up!

I'm more interested in where the entrance will be exactly and how it'll work under the station. Also, could you share whether those wing things we sat on the front gate webcam is the entrance sign? :)

Dollywood got it right when they built their station, the riders wait under the station in a single queue. At the rear of the room are the stairs that finally splits the line into two and riders go directly up them to their respective sides, with the gates being right there. A ride op is present on the stairs to direct riders and keep the flow even from one side to another. If I had a request for a particular side they were happy to oblige.
So often riders waiting for a ride with a left side / right side configuration are inconvenienced by the queue. Either the split is way too early causing the line to slow down, or it's designed so that one side has a longer path to travel than the other. Mr Freeze and X Flight at Geauga were examples of this, respectively. When Geauga's ride was moved to KI they solved a similar situation by stationing a ride op out there in the queue to direct an even number of guests to each side. Or, more often, they just close one side all together.
I have to say I find this guess-y game on here to be a little strange, but however things turnout I hope Cedar Point has planned a speedy, efficient, and equal way for all of us to get to our seats.

You will enter in front of the station and will walk to the beach where you'll queue there. From there you will go under the track and the queue will split into 2 lines right before you go under the station. You won't be spending a lot of time under the station. I don't want to go into real specifics, but that's how it's generally going to function.

jo linn said:
If you watch the time lapse, there is alot more going on there than a simple planter.

How so? It's a "built in" planter. That is, the sides are constructed of concrete poured into forms. There may have made accommodations for a statue or something, but beyond that, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I wonder if anyone knows why they piled up sand and made a perfect wall along the shoreway? I hope they flatten it out, it would be an odd sight to look at while waiting in line by the beach.

My guess (and it is only a guess) is that is a barrier to block the lake so they can pour the concrete for the queue for Gatekeeper that is on the lake side of the ride. It can't be permanent because the lake will erode it over time if they don't remove it when they are done. I can't image it would last the season if they just left it there.

My guess is that it was all that sand that was in the parking lot. They'll probably grate it in due time.

Lake Erie's lake level does not change that fast so it is not for protection. I think it's sand that was dug up for the footers and Cedar Point is placing it on the beach. Cedar Point will probably get a D-9 or D-10 dozer to flatten it and make the beach longer. As for erosion, this is Lake Erie we're talking about, not an ocean. Believe me I live in Rockaway Beach, NY and my town was just devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Erosion is not a problem for Cedar Point. BTW, WE HAVE A NEW POPE!!!

Steps on the station stairway are up

Miss_Maverick07 said:
I wonder if anyone knows why they piled up sand and made a perfect wall along the shoreway? I hope they flatten it out, it would be an odd sight to look at while waiting in line by the beach.

It may just be a place to keep the sand until the cement for the queue is complete (I am just guessing). It looks the area has just been flattened for cement. Does any one know how far along the lift hill and how close to the lake that the queue is actually going to go?

Sorry to hear you had to endure Sandy. You must not be aware of the damage that Sandy did to the beaches and coastal areas around Sandusky.

Lake Erie doesn't have tides like the ocean, but it does have large waves and storm surge. Maybe you have never seen the white caps on the lake side. The highest recorded wave on Great Lakes is over 45 Feet tall. Erie is known to have the roughest water of all the Great Lakes. 5-10 foot waves are common during storms. 15-20 foot waves are an annual event on the lake. Ships sink and people die due to the height of the waves on Lake Erie. Here is a video taken on a 8 foot barrier wall near Cleveland with 10 foot waves crashing over it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3ecjVUDng

Here is a news report of the major beach erosion at Cedar Point and around Sandusky due to Hurricane Sandy:

http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/267956/23/Sandy-causes-Northeast-O...ch-erosion

If you watched them put the barrier in place, they worked on making it as tall as it is. It wasn't randomly placed where it is. They used heavy equipment to form and build it. If you were just moving some sand it wouldn't look like that. Out of the entire length of that beach they just randomly picked that area to form a tall mound of sand at the waters edge running the length of Gatekeeper? That is no random pile of sand.

They are setting that up to protect the concrete pour they are about to do on the lake side of Gatekeeper.

Guess we will find out on Saturday.

I stand corrected!!! I had heard that the Western side of lake erie was known for big waves and I guess you can count Cedar Point in that vicinity. I also realize that Cedar Point isn't your average barrier island/peninsula. It isn't as high as those on the Eastern seaboard. If Cedar Point was on the Eastern Seaboard it would not survive because it is not very high. Also there is no walls really for protection except small rock walls along the outside of the park. I've never seen the water get close to the actual park (rides and things). I've always seen it at its "normal place" about 200ish feet from the park in the longest part. I've noticed that the Cedar Point beach has been getting consistently larger.
Has the park ever flooded from a big storm?

In the few short weeks that it'll take to pour the concrete and for it to cure, I don't think they're expecting a hurricane or the water level to rise more than 5 feet. Plus, being sand, it'll just end up blowing towards the freshly poured concrete. AND, that wall will do nothing to stop the water for going around the barrier.

I think you might be over thinking this. :)

What would Cedar Point do if the lake level rose too much? Oh, and I guess I need to spend more time in Sandusky :D Anyway, It doesn't matter its a wall... Let's focus on more important things like the "too be" world's best winged coaster!

There are quite a few areas in the park that flood in big storms. The two I can think of off the top of my head are in front of the Dragster gift shop (I once gave a hand getting stuff away from the doors as water was coming into the shop) and the wicked twister plaza.

Sandy was really bad on the east coast, but to give you an idea of how insane that storm was, it actually still had enough strength that it did quite a bit of damage in Cleveland Ohio too. Although nothing as extreme as wiping neighborhoods off the map there were parts of Cleveland without power for days. It ripped a hole in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.

Check out these pics. http://localtvkdvr.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/huge-swells-pour-out....jpg?w=600
http://por-img.cimcontent.net/api/assets/bin-201211/c7bcc8d45b72041...2b95c6.jpg
http://media.cleveland.com/weather/blog_impact/photo/11778918-large.jpg

Cedar Point floods just about every year, and it doesn't take a major storm to do it.

The last minute of this video shows the parking lots flooded in July of 2012 and it has some great music to go with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdyRY-owh9Q

This is the midway being flooded in 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO_5HAraeW8

I agree, they will bulldoze that sand, as soon as the concrete sets.

I'm sure you guys are right - they just randomly choose to move a bunch of sand and to not just dump it, but to form a nice cute continuous mound of dirt, uniform in height and the exact length of the pour area right at the waters edge. They even drove the front loader into the water to do it. It was probably just to clean the front loader, you know how dirty those things get.

Now I see. I never in my life thought it flooded like that annually. Can anyone find a picture of what the beach looks like when this happens. I have to say the staff do a good job to try to stop some of the water based on other videos I just watched. Wow, I'm seriously learning a lot!

^^ Love the trash can in the second vid lol I visited in August 2011 and it flooded really bad in the parking lot. Water was about 1/2 way up the tires and poured in our car when we got in. Not fun

^^^I'm sorry to keep this going but I'm just failing to see your logic here. How exactly is a lengthy mound of sand, that's at least 50 feet away from the ride, suppose to "protect" the concrete from the lake? I'm genuinely curious as to what is it at risk of happening? The lake is not going to raise that much, if at all(it's still winter ya know). And I just can't see it acting as some kind of wind barrier being that far away. If they wanted to protect the concrete, wouldn't it have made more sense to make the barrier a lot closer to the ride......or use sand bags instead?

I watched the time lapse and it looked like they were excavating along the new retaining wall and were, simply, moving the dirt parallel with where they dug. I'm no excavator operator, but perhaps they dumped the sand in that manner to make the refilling of the trench (or whatever they dug) a little easier. I'm only saying that because I've seen them do this kind of thing on various construction sites as apposed to making one big mound of material (which they DO do in cases of digging in one spot).

But to say that the only reason they put it there was to protect the concrete just makes no sense to me. Because if that's the case, why didn't they build a mound of sand when they were pouring the footers?

So either I'm making no sense, or I'm missing something here.:)

Sorry to say people.But i live in Sandusy, Ohio about 1/8 mile from the lake. Lake Erie doesn't rise that much. Those U Tube videos are recorded after a really heavy rain fall. Believe me if the lake rose that much my house would be flooded!