Winter Chill Out Lottery is Live

I just assumed not many PointBuzz people won the lottery or didn’t want to go as they’ve done it before.

On the bathroom situation… maybe it will scare some people away and I’ll have a chance at the lottery next year.

On an unrelated note, bring back the 2011/2012 PointBuzz tours. It’s crazy to think what those tours have turned in to today, both in scale and popularity with WCO.

Yesterday was my first WCO since the Pointbuzz event I went to, which Facebook reminded me was 12 years ago today.The wind was bitterly cold but fortuately it wasn't bad in the park. I was there at 10:00 with the Skyhawk group. There were very little instructions given when I arrived. Actually there were none. I got my landyard and just followed people.

10:00 Our tour guide then spoke up and gathered the Skyhawk group and we headed to our first stop, the engine house. Very cool to see. The employees were great and so knowledgeable. The biggest highlight for me was speaking to the various employees in their departments and hearing about what they do. Hats off to them.

Next we walked down the tracks to the Millennium Force tunnels. We went in the second tunnel and then back through the first tunnel to end up under the lifthill. Very cool to see. We walked from there to the barnyard where Churro and friends were visiting for the day. From there we walked towards Frontier Town and were going to take our restroom break but the line up was quite long so we went to Farmhouse for coffee/hot chocolate and cookies and muffins. Then back to take a restroom break.

11:00 The restrooms that were open were the two inside the Frontier Town first aid station. Funnelling +/- 1000 bundled up people through two restroomes takes a long time, an hour and a half or so for our group. Maybe some portapotties would help in the future? Or more information on where we would have been heading and when restroom opportunities would occur. Not sure how they handled this in past years but it was really my only complaint about the event yesterday.

Next we went to the sign shop. It was very cool to see all of the old signs scattered about. It was quite full in there so it was hard to see everything. From there we headed to TT2 garage (former hydraulic building) but we arrived to another long line so we opted to go for lunch instead.

1:30 Lunch was good. Various salads, mac n cheese, broccoli cheddar carrerole, meatballs, boneless wings, chili, and a spread of parfaits and cookies. Restrooms were available at this time.

From there we went to laundry services. Very cool operation. It's impressive the amount of laundry that goes through that facility. Then landscaping. It was awesome hearing what goes into planning the large flowerbeds and sourcing the plants and maintaining throughout the season. Then ride maintenance. One of my favourite stops. Same as laundry and landscaping and the rest of the park, it is so impressive hearing about the amount of work that goes into getting ready for the season and then maintaining everything once the park is open. Hats off to all park employees. Also, the TT2 wheels are big.

3:00 back to TT2 garage. No line this time. We were greeted at the door by Tony Clark, who was handing out raffle tickets to each person as they entered. They had the front car of silver and blue train set up to sit in and have our photos taken in them. Then Tony did a mini Q&A session. Not a whole lot of information there. Oh except this building will be used for the winter overhauls of the Zamperla ride cars. More info on TT2 to come. Then time for the draw, and guess whose number was drawn, mine! The prize was exit boaring passes to TT2! Thanks Tony!

From there we went to the Colosseum Arcade for free play on the games. At this point it was almost 3:30 and we were supposed to be done at 3:00 so I had to head home. I asked Isaac, our tour guide what was after the arcade and he said costume shop and Point Plaza and Starbucks were open. I was okay missing that so I headed out. I stopped quick inside Point Plaza and looked around and grabbed a coffee for the drive home.

My Cedar Point hayday was 2003-2012. I've only been intermittently since then. The only special events I've been to since then were CoasterMania 2022 and now Winter ChillOut 2024. I am very appreciative that the park offers these events but in my opinion both of these events weren't planned in a very organized way, Coastermania especially. Maybe it's because I'm older and notice more now or maybe the planning just isn't there. Either way I enjoyed WCO this year. The long wait for the restroom wasn't ideal but it didn't ruin my day. I was happy with everything we saw. Thanks to the park for putting it on and I look forward to attending one again in the future.

TL;DR
Engine house
Millennium tunnels
Barnyard with Churro and friends
Farmhouse for coffee and snacks
Long bathroom line, didn't ruin my day
Sign Shop
Lunch
Laundry
Landscaping
Ride Maintenance
TT2 garage
Arcade for free play
Costume shop
Point Plaza open
Cold day but the sun was great

On the bathroom situation, typically they have a bathroom open at the front before the tour starts. It’s been a few years since I went, but they used to tell you that bathroom was the only one until lunch. I wonder if people showed up expecting a bathroom at the front, then had to wait until frontiertown to find two stalls in first aid. Seems like a planning oversight.

Thanks Vince for your writeup. Glad you enjoyed it. One of the videos I watched mentioned that they did not allow live streaming at all this year.

Wonder if in the future they could re-form the groups after the bathrooms so people who didn't need them could get on with the tour without having to wait for everyone.

Did anyone get a peek behind the picnic area and see if the old dragster trains were still there?

The two years where it was a self guided tour were the absolute best. Folks had free reign to walk the park and each tour stop was an open house. The first year of this format I was able to spend a solid 45-60 minutes in the sign shop enjoying everything from the past they had on display at my own pace.

The other plus for this format was that Melt was open as the coffee/hot cocoa/water/restroom station. Since it wasn't large groups funneling in, there bathrooms were available with minimum to no line any time you needed it. I also believe the Frontiertown First Aid restroom was available as well in the back of the park.

I'm not sure what happened after those two years for the park to go back to the guided tour format, but boy do I miss those self guided Winter Chill Outs.

Im sure the self guided tours ended when some idiots did something idiotic. Climbing on, above or around something they shouldn’t have.

Here's another update with a lot of great pics:

https://www.themeparkarchive.com/updates/cedar-point-winter-chill-out-2024

a few things that stood out to me that I hadn't seen mentioned before:

Celebration Stage is getting updated with new scenic design.
VIP lounge has been dug up. He suspects a more permanent structure will be put up.
More alpacas at the barnyard.
No plans for a summer show at Lusty Lil's.
Some effort is being made to try and open Gatekeeper for the Eclipse event.
New shows:
Celebration Stage (Top Thrill 2 inspired)
Jack Aldrich Theater (90's theme)
Red Garter Saloon (music based).
Swell Tones and Bands of Residence will return.
new Boardwalk Nights event this summer.

GL2CP:

Im sure the self guided tours ended when some idiots did something idiotic.

Apparently a small group of folks were escorted out of the maintenance building by a policeman yesterday. This was observed from the 8:00 AM group. Never underestimate peoples' capacity for idiocy.

The blue skies and brilliant sun is so nice to see in the pics. Sounds like the bathroom issue was the biggest snag for folks.

Congrats, Vince!

Hearing nothing but great things about the TT2 seats.

My first time at this event (or any post-season event) so I cannot compare to other similar events. I was in the Raptor group with a 9am ticket. They told us to gather at 150 anniversary sign with our group when we entered. Our group started off on the tour a couple minutes after we arrived. Headed first to the laundry. Agree it was interesting to see the operations. Never thought much about how much laundry needs to be done at the park and resorts. And that they would be doing laundry there now (for the indoor water park/hotel). Staff was very friendly and willing to share info about what they did and answer questions (and that was true everywhere we stopped). Seeing the computer controlled chemicals used for cleaning, automatic towel/sheet folding machines and the large dryer that tilted for ease of emptying it (seeing that tilt reminding me of Gus' laundry in Breaking Bad).

We next went to landscaping. We talked in at the end of our group so didn't get to hear everything the staff was talking about. But agree it was interesting to hear/see all the planning that goes into making the parks look like they do in mid-season form. And any time I visit early in the year (before flowers have been planted) its always something of a shock to see how the park looks before its fully decorated if you will. Having rides taken apart or shrink wrapped makes that even more so.

Group headed to maintenance. Was fun to see trains from various rides taken apart. And to see wheel comparisons for various trains. Chain dog from Millennium Force on the floor. They also had a little interactive display with magnetic brakes.

Top Thrill area seemed to be the big bottleneck (plus bathrooms--always is a little odd to me that adults are looking for bathrooms 1-2 hrs into an event or can't wait an hour or two to go--but see it enough that its no unexpected). There was some confusion with park of our group heading to find bathrooms while the rest of us waited. I think we were the third or fourth group to go in from when we started waiting. Trains for Top Thrill 2 look great and seats are very comfortable. Getting a pic with my wife and me in the front row was fun because there is no way in the world my wife will ever ride the actual ride. They had some mechanical issue with the silver car so they had to only use the blue car (at least while we were there). Tony and Mike did a little Q&A session while group was waiting for rest of our group to finish taking pics in the car. Tony did say no seatbelts without any qualifier (like he did in the streamed Q&A session earlier in the week). We didn't win the exit pass for the ride.

Group then headed to lunch. We initially were waiting in line for Melt. Line was long and slow moving. After a few minutes, they took our group to Lakeside Dining room to eat. Lunch was good. Not gourmet but not expected. I overheard 2 young guys talking about how the event wasn't worth the price (forgetting apparently, charity). I thought about going over to them and introducing myself as gobucks89 from this site guessing that they were both posters on this site. LOL Reaction to lunch reminded me a little of skiing as a kid: local ski area food was fine but it tasted better because it was hot and you were cold. But for an event like this, I thought the food was good. Restrooms were available at lunch. Was interesting to see some ride vehicles under covered picnic areas outside Lakeside.

Next went back to Signs. Was fun seeing so many signs from the past. And several Sky Ride cars. I like the new paint jobs. Think its a more sophisticated look. Looking forward to seeing them up in the skies over the park. By the time we got back to Frontier Town, coffee/hot chocolate and muffins had closed so we missed out on that. Was surprised to see Churro and company there. Keeper said they made the trip up Friday and basically travel in a pen on wheels and don't mind the ride at all. After that we walked the Millennium Force infield. Was fun to get perspectives of the ride I had never seen before. We only went into the second tunnel (not through and then through the first tunnel but knowing the ride, I knew we could have done that).

Next was the engine house. Was great to see the engines up close. Staff here said they wished the park did events like this more often. They seemed to enjoy talking with people and explaining what they do (in my experience, most people (not just in the park) like to do that actually).

Spent time in the arcade. Played a few games. Then we moved on to costumes. Was the only place we were asked not to take pictures. They said they just purchased a lot of fabrics from a NYC trip. Also said they buy some things locally. And make about 50-50 versus purchasing off the rack (or at least pre-made) in terms of costumes. Was interesting to look at all of the boxes of shoes. Makes sense thinking about it but never really thought about that before. Would be interesting to see that area mid season when the racks are all filled with costumes.

From there we hit the gift shop. They had some TT2 merchandise all together in one display. Said only the cutout and model of TT2 was available though.

We were done about 2:30pm. Was interesting to see the rides that they take apart for the winter and those they basically shrink wrap. Was great to get pictures from angles that are not available during the season. Under the Millennium lift hill and in its tunnel. Weather (from a visible perspective) was great. Deep blue skies better than you sometimes see during the season. Was cold without question but I snow ski so I dressed for it. Wind was tough early in the day but by the time we left, was pretty much calmed down. There were locations that were protected from the wind (in addition to those being inside buildings). Today is much the same in terms of the skies with another 10 degrees or so of temp. Fingers crossed for April 8th.

Glad I went. Nice the park puts on an event like this. Raised $100,000 for kids charity. Some organizational issues but still a good time.

It sounds like they no longer do the presentation in the event room on the second floor of Lakeside. In the Jason McClure days those presentations were a fantastic mix of photos/renderings of future projects, giveaways and a whole lot of dad jokes with Jason and Tony. I always enjoyed that portion of the day.

When someone referred to the "TT2 garage," is that the former hydraulic building? I assume they pulled all that out and leveled the floor.

Correct. They had pics of the hydraulics on the wall showing what the room looked like for Top Thrill Dragster. Its just open space at this point. Like a garage. Said they will use for maintenance on Zamperla trains. Seems like they could use it for other maintenance as well if they needed to.

It will be used as an off season maintenance area for the TT2 trains as well as Wild Mouse cars. During the season Tony mentioned that it will be a maintenance area where ride mechanics will be stationed.

One fascinating thing I learned while on our tour, is that Millennium Force has a counter for how many times the lightning rod on the lift hill has been struck by lightning. The counter is somewhat worn out so it's hard to see the exact number, but since 2000, it's in the 70's.

Theme Park Archive captured a photo of Dave next to a screen that was labeled "Disaster Transport Pre-Show." They were kind enough to post a second photo of a guy in a space ship. Did anyone get a chance to see this video? As terrible as the ride was, I really loved Disaster Transport and always rode it whenever I visited the park. Would love to know what was in that pre-show.