Thoughts about 2012

Since the season is about to end (only one weekend left) what are everyone's thoughts about the park this past year? Good or bad, share your experiences at the park and we'll see how they compare to previous years.

For me, I think the park was the best it has been for a while. Granted I'm only 16 so it's not like I've been going to the park for too long, but the whole atmosphere seemed much better that it has in the past. I think Ouimet has done a great job for his first year with Cedar Fair.

I wish I had gotten to watch Luminosity live and completely through, but I never got a chance to. But from what I've seen in pics and videos and heard about it, it seemed overall to have been a good addition. I really like all the lights along the main miday at night, but I would like them to be extended all the way to the front entrance. As you're leaving it's cool looking at it all and then it stops all of a sudden and you have to end the night walking down an ordinary midway again before leaving.

I also never went through Dinosaurs Alive but by pictures and hearing about it, it seemes to be a decent addition, especially for families with little kids. I'd still rather have Paddlewheel Excursions, though.

The landscaping looked a great as always. All the rides seemed to run really well throughout the year and I don't think any of the rides or coasters had major issues. And the music change throughout the park was a much needed improvement, IMO, so I enjoyed that switch.

The ride ops were all great. I've heard about some rude ones but I've pretty much only experienced nice, funny ones. Also attendance has appeared to have done great this year, which is good. (Except more people=longer lines.)

On the topic of lines, I have to add my two cents on Fast Lane. I personally love its addition! On an early June saturday trip in particular it allowed me and a group of friends to ride tons of rides and coasters, most of them walk ons or near walk ons. I know some people don't like FL but I think it's a great option to offer.

Overall, I think this has been an impressive year for the park, and it didn't disappoint. Now I can't wait for next year so I can ride GateKeeper, and next year's trips will be even better!

I agree with everything you said. I'm also 16 so I don't know what the park was like 10 year ago. All the improvements were great. It's amazing what one year can do. The park is much more exciting at night. The front of the park will look awesome and so much different next year.

I have no complaints about this season. We replaced WildCat with an awesome show that other companies such as Six Flags and Herschend are now copying. We replaced Disaster Transport and Space Spiral with a new and innovative design in roller coasters. I love all of this years improvements and can't wait to ride GateKeeper next year!

The Carly Rae Jepsen concert was the best day all summer. :)

Disaster Transport was torn down. That makes this past season one of the best in recent memory.

I'm 35.

:)

I have a bit more to share, but little time right now. Good thread.

I'm fifty and i swear that damn Rotor was over here somewhere.

What I liked about the park: the midway lights and the lights on giant wheel and windseeker are spectacular, they should like Ride on 17 said, have some closer to the front gate. I am sure they will add good ones once gatekeeper is there. I never went through Dinos alive, but if it was free, I would do it as a relaxing way to take a break from rides. I miss paddlewheel still. Luminosity I got to see once, and I loved it. I wonder what songs they will perform next year. The midway music is better this year, hearing new songs is always better than hearing radio hits from 2002 and that annoying instrumental music. Halloweekends was great, we went two weekends this year. The new haunts were great and actors did a good job scaring.

Disliked: Sorry to burst the Fast lane lovers' bubbles, but I actually did not like when FL people had to merge into the lines, as it really slowed down the regular line, a lot. I remember before FL, Maverick's line, even at full queue, moved pretty fast. With FL people, it took 20 minutes just to move down ONE queue line section! We waited about 3 hours. Without FL users, that line would have been one hour. This was on Sat, October 13th. I also think it is way over priced. You should not have to pay 50$ just to ride more rides faster.You pay almost 50 for a one-day ticket alone. $20 should be enough for fast lane.

Overall, the park and rides ran great, with the exception of TTD acting up occasionaly.

If it was $20, it would either sell out super fast, or everyone would buy it. Then the fast lane would become the regular line, defeating the purpose. Honestly, they could get away with raising it quite a bit.

"$20 should be enough for fast lane"???

So I guess they should change the pricing to $20 (since that is enough) and at the next quarterly conference call when they are recapping financial results, they can just say "Hey, we could have made a lot more money, but frankly, $20 is enough for fast lane".

Not to mention your two points are in conflict. If they drop the price to $20, they will sell a lot more of them, resulting in a greater impact to the wait time for non-FL users.

Sheesh. All this talk about FL is getting old. It's here to stay, folks, and why shouldn't it be? They will charge what the market will bear, as they should. They are a for-profit organization, not a charity. And who knows, maybe if they *weren't* making all this extra money, they wouldn't be able to add cool new things like Gatekeeper, Luminosity, and the Dinosaurs that you mentioned.

What I'm getting at is, you can't have it both ways. And empty park is fun for one day, but if it's always empty then there's a problem and you're not going to have new things added each year. So pick you poison: busy, profitable park with new things added all the time, or walk-on rides with nothing new ever added?

I only made it twice from down here in Oklahoma, but have to say this is the first year in awhile I feel like there was positive changes to the overall experience.

Lots of excitement with the first new coaster in 5 years, lots of excitement with Disaster Transport and Space Spirals removal.

I think Fast Lane was a good improvement, but didn't ever take advantage of it on my two trips.

Overall I am glad to see traffic and posting up overall on this site.

Fastlane should be doubled or tripled in price. If someone wants to pay $100-$150 to cut in line so be it. If not, join the rest of us in the regular line. As it is right now, it's priced way too cheap.

I really enjoyed my past visit this year. I'm only 17 and probably haven't visited the park as much as everyone else has. However, the park operations were impressive. Every ride I rode had a quick moving line, never waiting more than 30 min for anything. The park was clean (all those trash cans). Luminosity had a full(ish) crown for the Children's show, which is a good thing. Never got to see the Dino's, I was to busy re-riding Gemini & Magnum (Gemini was a walk on and Maggie was only 15min max). Overall, I really enjoyed this season. The park is finally paying attention to things that are non-ride related. Mr. O must know that the guest experience is what keeps them coming back, not just coasters. Disney is a perfect example of that.

However, I was a bit upset that SRF was completely down the first half of the season :(. I love that over-sized super-soaker. And the pricing is just crazy. One of my friends got "Scammed" buying two 16-oz sodas (1/3 was ice) for $8.00+ That's insane! I could buy a 24-pack of soda for less than that. :/

And now, Fast Lane.
I never used fast lane, and never had a problem with it. When I was queuing for dragster, I watched DOZENS of FL users cruise on by. And my wait was still less than 30min for 2nd row. And the Que was 1/4 full. The FL users at-most added an additional 1-2 train wait on most coasters(from what I observed). I can see how this might become a problem for the longer lines. If MF has a line thats 3hr long. With FL, that wait could turn into 3hr 30min. Which really isn't THAT bad.

Liked: Park looked great all over, from the entrance to the back. Landscaping well done, love the new lights especially on Giant Wheel and Windseeker. Didn't mind FastLane. Used it once myself, but didn't bother me when we didn't have it. Maybe just the days I was there, but we noticed very little down time for rides. Can't wait for next year.

Disliked: Two big things stand out. I really wish the park would do something about people smoking outside of the smoking areas. This really bothers me, and it seems like it was abused this year more than any I can remember. As a parent of a teen with asthma and also an infant, I should be able to walk down the midway without someone lighting up right beside us. The other thing I didn't like was the music selection in the frontier town area. I seriously could do without the sappy country, but I know that's being picky.

^You do realize that FrontierTown has a western theme?

^Yes. It's not country music I mind. I'm just not a fan of the songs they choose to play. Frankly, I really don't go to Cedar Point to listen to depressing songs.

I used to hate country, but have grown to like it lately especially living in OK. They really don't play that many depressing songs at Cedar Point. Listen to the 90s country station on SiriusXM and you'll realize the depressing stuff is really depressing.

I used to listen primarily to country, untill Taylor Swift came around with all of her songs about guy troubles she sings about.

I only went to Cedar Point 4 times this year (live in California now) and I gained a lot of appreciation for how well the park really is ran in comparison to Magic Mountain.

GOOD:

*Fast Lane-I'm not going to Sandusky 20+ times as I'm accustomed to. It's well worth the $50 extra for me to have a great day there. I used the Fast Lane in June and this past weekend and it really is a bargain. Saturday night I got to the park at 6 and only rode 10 rides. On Sunday I got the Fast Lane and road 47 rides including 10 on Millennium Force (got stuck 1/2 way up). If I still lived in Ohio I probably wouldn't use it because I'd just go on the lower traffic days of the year, but now it pretty much guarantees a good ride total even on a busy day.

*Gatekeeper-I understand that Cedar Fair has a lot of other mouths to feed with the Paramount parks in the lineup, but it was time for them to add another coaster at the flagship and they made the right choice. Gatekeeper looks better than Wild Eagle and X Flight and both have garnered positive reviews. I also like the location at the front of the park. It's like they now have "anchor stores" as a mall would with their big 4 coasters. Another huge benefit of Gatekeepers addition is it will cut the lines for Millennium, Maverick and Top Thrill. I was terrified they might add a Zac Spin (Green Lantern sucks) due to the space constraints of the park. I haven't ridden a wing rider yet, but X2 is a tremendous experience when it's smooth. I actually think the non-rotating wings will be a better ride. There are times where X2 just rag doll beats you in your seat.

*Little line jumping-People cut in line like crazy mad in California. It might explain our immigration problems. I rarely see much line cutting at Cedar Point.

MAL:

*Wild Cat-I dig that every ride will be replaced at some point, but Wild Cat kind of came out of no where and I never got that for well closure ride. Not as bummed as when Paddlewheel was removed though.

*Coca-Cola-Not that it's a major deal breaker for me, but I prefer Pepsi. Is it possible that Kinzel was just a Pepsi fan? TGI Friday's serves Coke products everywhere but the Cedar Fair locations.

*Windseeker-Love the ride and Cedar Points gives a terrific view. All of them are grounded. Funtime sabotage?

Corkscrew Follies said:
I used to listen primarily to country, untill Taylor Swift came around with all of her songs about guy troubles she sings about.

That's one reason why I don't like her! That's all she sings about!

Have you heard Ronan? It is about a guy, but not what you may think.

I thought this year was great. The crews were really solid at just about every ride and I really had fun with the crew at my ride. In regards to musin, I'm a metal guy and I don't listen to much outside that genre but I loved that they changed the selection throughout the park. Of course that's with the exception of Frontier Town. I get why they chose country, but I can't listen to ANY country (or rap for that matter) without wanting to slit my wrists or blow my eardrums out......but that's just me. I didn't mind Carly Rae until that annoying song was EVERYWHERE....then I grew sick of her. But, regardless, it was a smart move on CP's part to do that show with her.

Dinos Alive seemed to have slow attendance whenever I looked but I hear it was successful. I'm sure it was enjoyed by many families regardless of what we think. I DO miss Terror Island but Cut Throat Cove is a decent substitute.

On that note, I enjoyed Halloweekends for the most part. I still say they should have left Fright Zone alone and done Screamworks somewhere else (or not at all). I think Fear Fare is slipping and should/could be replaced with, perhaps, another maze built into the pavilions. It just feels so meh to me when I go through it and I never get anything out of it. I thought Eden Musee was a pretty good addition but I also think it has plenty of room for improvement. Eternity Infirmary was pretty strong this year (actually getting better every year imo) and Erie Estates was great as usual.

Regarding rides, I will say that I think this was Dragsters best year so far. I was literally shocked at how often Millennium was down for extended periods of time while Dragster powered on. Or at least that was the case for the times I was there. Of course there will always be those pesky bits of downtime with the blocking system, but my gawd do those mechanics kick butt when it comes to getting that ride back up in super quick time. There were times I thought the wait would be hours when it ended up being resolved in less than an hour. So hats off to them and ALL of CP's maintenance for being just amazing at what they do.

I will say that I don't really care for Fast Lane but I've come to terms with it since it seems to be successful for the park. I have noticed a huge slow down in Mavericks and Millenniums line but saw little change in Dragsters pacing. I was a tad peeved when some fastlaners took the first train of the season on Dragster from me on Opening Day. But I did eventually get over it when a good friend of mine was able to fit on for the first time after being laid off and unable to make it to the park for the past couple years.

Looking into next year, I know Gatekeeper will be a winner in every sense. It will definitely be the most striking coaster there and a FANTASTIC addition to the line up. I'm a little bummed about the park having to switch to Coke (as I'm a pepsi guy.......no thanks to my family) but I'm not going to cry about it. As long as it's Coke from a fountain, I can drink it (though I really should just cut both for my health). Other than that, it's just going to be a great year.