Wednesday, May 16

I took my friend Hui-Ting (pronounced like "waiting") to Cedar Point. She's from Taiwan and will be returning to Taiwan soon, and really wanted to go. The original plan was to go on Thursday, but when I found out it was physics day, we made a change in our schedule.

Now, I have taken other Taiwanese people to the park before, and it always goes the same way. Because the parks that they have in Taiwan are small and have only one or two roller coasters, the people that go to CP are shocked to see such a collection. Then, they must deal with the fact that they are used to coasters that are 50 or 60 feet high, and then all of a sudden there are 400 foot coasters that I'm asking them to go on. Most of them chicken out and don't ride anything. This was not the case with Hui-Ting. She was a real champ today.

We started small with Iron Dragon. She loved it. No seatbelts on ID, at least not yet. The ride was running smooth and fast (for what it is), and it was a decent ride.

After ID, we went back to get on Skyhawk. I told her that this was a big jump from ID, but she was more than willing. She really liked this ride, but was not too fond of being able to look down and see the ground below her. The wait for this was about 15 minutes, but it was extended because some jackass thought he should get a camera out to take pictures. The ride did an E-stop, and they took the camera and started it up again.

We then went and got Hui-Ting her very first elephant ear. This was almost the longest wait of the day. They had two people working the elephant ear place, one running the cash register and putting the sugar on them, and one person flattening the dough and frying it. Not good operations. With the new 3 point shootout thing drawing people in, they've got to get more people working here. I wasn't very impressed.

It then began to rain rather hard, so we went to the car to eat lunch since it was raining. After lunch, we came in and got Hui-Ting a sweatshirt and then rode Magnum. She loved the ride and thought it was really fun, but said that she hated the drop. Maggie is getting rougher and rougher, and the wind was cold. Overall, a decent ride in the ejector seat (I didn't mention it to her that we were sitting there).

After Magnum, we walked up to ride Wicked Twister, but it started to rain again. We waited under the aquatic stadium for it to slow down, and then we went and rode Blue Streak really quickly, and then got in line for Raptor. The ride was beginning to cycle after being down because of weather, and we were toward the front of the line. I knew that as soon as we left the line, it would open up, so we stayed in line. It cycled empty for about 20 minutes while it wasn't raining, and for the life of me I can't figure out why it needed to cycle that long, but whatever. The camera setup is nice, and I think it's a really neat idea. I'm not going to buy one, though.

From Raptor, it was time for us to go ride something tall. I told Hui-Ting that Millennium Force was much scarier than Dragster, so if she could handle that, she could handle anything. The MF line was short (on the ramp), so that was awesome. Now, this was a great moment for me. Last year, I rode MF many times, and struggled many times with those damn seatbelts. I struggled many times to pull a half an inch of slack, sitting on the right side of the train. I always sat on the right side of the train because I had more arm strength to pull on the belt to get the half inch of slack. Hui-Ting did not want to sit on the lake side, so I sat there. Since last August, I've been doing the South Beach diet and have lost around 60 pounds, so I figured I'd have no trouble, but this was just the first time to see how much I'd accomplished. I sat down, buckled the belt, and proceeded to pull 3 and a half inches of slack (estimate) easily. :) What a great feeling. Hui-Ting loved the ride and said she was ready for the big one.

After MF, we proceeded to Top Thrill Dragster. The line was moving slowly on TTD because of the fact that they were only loading trains half full because of the wind. No rollbacks, but slow lines anyway. Eventually I'm going to get a rollback. It'll happen. Anyway, a great Dragster ride after about 40 minutes of waiting. Hui-Ting decided that Dragster was her favorite ride of the day.

She then wanted to go ride Corkscrew. Funniest moment of the day, though, because she rode it and said "That's it?!" ;) Remember this was right after riding Dragster.

We then rode Gemini and walked around the park looking for some souvenirs for her. She ended up buying a magnet from the Pagoda Gift Shop. I asked her if she could read the Chinese writing on the side of the Pagoda, and she said yes, she could read it, but it didn't make any sense at all. Basically, she said that they just used characters that looked interesting and put them next to each other. You learn something new everyday.

We left the park about 7:00 and drove the hour and a half home. She was exhausted, but really glad that she came to Cedar Point to ride all the "roasters." Her English isn't great, and she had problems saying "roller coaster." Overall, a great day at the park, minus the cold weather and rainy conditions.

Great report. I was there as well, and I was actually on the platform while Raptor was down due to the weather.

After it stopped raining, they cycled the trains through and wiped them down with rags every time. They were on the fourth cycle (10 empty trains had been sent overall) when it began to sprinkle again, someone asked if they would have to repeat everything. The answer was "yes," so I left to go ride Blue Streak.

Is there some reason Raptor needs to send that many empty trains after a light shower? It almost seemed like there needed to be not a single drop of water left on the seats before they would load it again.

Jeff Young said:

She then wanted to go ride Corkscrew. Funniest moment of the day, though, because she rode it and said "That's it?!" ;) Remember this was right after riding Dragster.

I did the same thing last year when we went. Corkscrew is like a ride on a golf cart compared to TTD ;).