Trip Report: Cedar Point

Sandusky, Ohio - 05/09-10/1999

"Nice to be home again!"

My cousin just graduated from college on Sunday, Cedar Point's opening day. Knowing that was going to happen, I figured I would be obligated to attend commencement, so I made arrangements to take the day off Monday since I couldn't make Opening Day. Then I found out that I was NOT expected to attend commencement..just the party that evening. So I COULD go to Opening Day, I just had to leave early. So that is exactly what I did.

For the first time all season, I got out of the house on time. I arrived at Cedar Point at about 8:45. The skies were clear and blue when I let home, but by the time I reached Attica (jct. OH-4 and US-224) dark clouds were threatening, and the CP parking lot was distinctly chilly. Not wanting to take chances, I left my computer in the trunk of the car and wore my jacket. As it turns out, both were poor choices. The clouds broke without dropping a single raindrop, and the temperature rose very nicely. As I approached the main gate, the The Ohio State University Spring Athletic band was assembled on the plaza at the end of the (now disused) tramway, playing a rousing rendition of "Linus and Lucy" while Linus and Lucy (and Snoopy and Charlie) danced along. There was a brief ceremony which ended with the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, and the main gate opened. As the anthem ended I watched for the Demon Drop car to climb the tower, but they didn't do that. In fact, as I hiked back to the Magnum, I noticed how little activity there was in the park. I don't think a single ride opened early on Sunday. Frequent Cedar Pointers know that traditionally they advertise rides starting one hour after the gates open, but in practice they usually have the rides open as soon as they are ready.

Magnum XL-200:
"It's good to be back home again," noted Scott Short as the crew finished up morning block checks. And he was right. There is something familiar and comfortable, strange as it may seem, about Cedar Point's gunite palace. Better still is to take a seat in the oversize Runaway Train. An unintelligible spiel, four knocks on the curved plastic control booth window, a mighty cheer from the train, and we were on our way.

Those of us who frequent Magnum immediately noticed that the black seat belts are now orange, but they still have the pushbutton buckles. I also noticed that the floor pan of at least the lead car of one train has lost its floor mats and the diamond-plate wheel-well covers in favor of a textured black sprayed-on coating that looked really good. And as usual, the padding on the lap bars and grab handles is all new, as are some of the seat backs, knee pads, and side rails. Apart from that, there is nothing special for the coaster's tenth season...no special graphics, for instance.

We climbed noisily up the lift. I noticed that the new Go-Kart tracks look a lot like the old track...but now it is two separate but intertwined tracks, and a mini track is off to the side for the kiddies. There is no water in the waterpark just yet, and construction vehicles are parked around Challenge Park. Off in the other direction, Breakers Tower looms over the parking lot, looking complete on the outside. The building is suprisingly ugly; I heard at least one person claim that it looks like a hospit--AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!

Yeah. This is what I remember. Flying down Magnum's first drop at speeds you can't even legally drive in this state. Feeling the train wheels crunch into the road rail at the bottom of the hill. Cruising up the second hill and floating all the way down. Cresting the third hill and realizing that we haven't encountered any brakes yet. Floating down the third hill in the same manner that Apollo's Chariot handles all of its hills, but with that added kick at the top of the hill to keep us out of our seats as well as weightless. Hearing...but not feeling...the trim brakes catch on the entrance to the turnaround. Then on the return run grabbing the lap bar in self-defense while being catapulted out of the seat. You know, I think the only other ride I've been on this season that did this was Thunder Run! Coming out of the last tunnel it was clear that while there are coasters out there that are taller, steeper, faster, loopier, wider, smoother, and longer, it's hard to believe anything could be much better.

But "better" is indeed possible. The crowd hadn't quite made it back to Magnum yet when I took my next four rides. With each successive ride, Magnum got faster and wilder. I also took a couple of rides in rows 4 and 16, and realized I had forgotten how much legroom there is in the front seats of those cars. If you find yourself crowded on Magnum, try rows 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16. To quantify it...in seat #3 my lap bar usually fits into the 2nd notch; in seat #4 the same position is the 4th notch! Magnum was getting better and better, but the line was getting longer and longer.

We took a walk through Camp Snoopy. The area was open, though clearly not finished yet (in fact, on Monday its opening was delayed several hours to give crews a chance to work in daylight). Camp Snoopy is located behind (on te lagon side of) the Jr. Gemini, with one entrance behind the Dodgem near Paddlewheel, and the other across from Gemini where the Super Himalaya used to be. Starting near Magnum, the first thing you see is a large canoe containing Snoopy and Woodstock teetering over a waterfall. Beyond this is the Lolly Swing and a Samba Balloon ride. The Lolly Swing is a small Wave Swinger-like ride with two-place seats. The Samba Balloon is a ride on a similar center with four-passenger rigid tubs which can rotate around their support poles. An as-yet unmarked food joint anchors the back of the new midway, next to a Crazy Bus ride. Right at the end of the section is Woodstock's Express, an oversize Vekoma Roller Skater with train-themed cars.

Woodstock's Express:
The sign on this ride indicates that you must be under 54" tall or accompanied by a child to ride, but on Monday afternoon, us big people were welcomed aboard. So Woodstock's Express became my Coaster #124, immediately following Face/Off, Apollo's Chariot, and Great Bear. I'm pretty sure it is bigger than most Roller Skaters. This ride is darned near silent, thanks to its pinch drive lift, smoother than anything those Swiss geniuses have ever built, and while it doesn't have big drops, it does have twisting, steeply banked helixes that produce suprisingly strong lateral forces. No, Woodstock isn't going to show up on a bunch of coaster nuts' top-10 lists. But for a junior coaster, it's a really good ride...not a rib-cracker like a Herschell Dipper, not a completely non-threatening ride like Jr. Gemini, and completely approachable. It fills the void left in Cedar Point's coaster line-up when the words, "or accompanied by an adult" were removed from the Mine Ride height requirement notice. The ride is blocked for two trains, but with a 1:10 ride time and little kids riding it makes sense that Cedar Point has only one train. The ride isn't quite finished; there is no roof over the platform, and the height requirement, which like most of the height requirement signs at the park looks like a comic strip speech balloon, is up, but there is no character standing next to it. Hmmm...Woodstock is mute, and while Snoopy thinks he does not speak. I wonder what character this will be...

Speaking of characters, there is a little stage across from the coaster for Peanuts characters to perform on. We saw a bit of a show, and it was a bit odd in that we didn't immediately recognize the characters as Linus had slung his blanket over the fence, and Charlie was not wearing his distinctive shirt. Aaaugh! It's a park where the costumed characters wear costumes! 8-)

Between the stage and the Lolly Swing, a classic ride returns to Cedar Point in the form of a brightly painted Tilt-A-Whirl. Next to the coaster is another neoclassic ride, a Zamperla Speedway, which is really a themed kiddie Whip. Finally, anchoring the end of Camp Snoopy is the most suprising addition to Cedar Point, a giant Snoopy-shaped Bounce. You know, like a Moonwalk. Scariest ride in the industry, and Cedar Point installed one. Very neat.

Gemini:
On Sunday, Sean Flaharty was the only member of our little band who got a ride on Woodstock before it went down mechanical for a while, and we headed for Gemini. Only the red side was operating, and while we were waiting one of the station brake calipers started hissing. Something had gone terribly wrong with a brake supply line, and it knocked the coaster out of service for a while.

I never made it back to Gemini on Sunday, but on Monday it ran all day, two trains on the red side...completely BRAKELESS. Running with the mid-course trims off doesn't make that much of a difference on the straightaway that runs through the center of the ride. But when the train hits the helix and THAT brake is off, the difference is a wee bit extreme! Whee! Later in the day Monday they did turn the trims on. But the interesting thing is that the ride had warmed up enough by then that it was running faster, so the total ride time was a consistent 2:42 all day long.

The ongoing Asphalt Removal project has continued this season into Frontiertown. Last year, you may recall, the asphalt was removed from the end of the Frontier Trail all the way up to the lagoon bridge between the Antique Cars and the Mine Ride, and replaced with concrete...with pattern-stamped concrete on the bridge itself. This year, the rest of Frontiertown, from the Mean Streak rail crossing all the way over to the Gemini rail crossing and the bridge where they stopped last year has been re-done. I'm pretty sure that now, the only asphalt left in the whole park is the Frontier Trail and the Gemini midway. You Frequent Po!nters need to watch your step, though...at least once I darned near fell when I tripped over the step between the boardwalk and the midway pavement. Yeah, I'm talking about the step that isn't there anymore, as the midway has been brought up to match the boardwalk. I've got to tell you, that is really embarassing to mis-step on flat ground. I didn't realize I was that familiar with the terrain there!

Mean Streak:
When I saw that CoasterMania '99 includes ERT on Mean Streak I wondered if CP was making big improvements to the ride, or if their marketing department had simply gone nuts. I mean, the overall opinion of the enthusiast community regarding this ride is well known, and it isn't good. Any ride with brakes...let alone TWO brakes...on the first drop is going to get crummy reviews. Especially when those are fin brake calipers which really cause a nasty fore-aft jerk when the train goes through. Well, I'm afraid I was mostly disappointed. Somehow, the seat seems a little wider this year, or perhaps I'm too accustomed to the seats of the Kings Island woodies. Not only has Cedar Point NOT put soft seat-backs on Mean Streak, they have also replaced the side padding with molded foam. Ouch! They have also replaced the seat belts with individual orange belts.

I rode in the lead seat both days, watching carefully for the distinctive wear patterns in the track steel that I noticed last season. Those patterns were not there...perhaps much of the track steel has been replaced? Also, I noticed foot-long dark stripes on the rails at about 3-foot intervals. My guess is that this is a graphite-based lubricant. Accordingly, the ride is not squealing the way it did last season. Unfortunately, those two trims are still in place at the top of the long drop. I've complained a lot about the drop trims on The Beast down at Kings Island, but at least those are skid brakes. Mean Streak has two fin calipers which violently grab each car and attempt to drag the train to a stop. The train is more persuaded by gravity, and lurches down the drop. The interaction is noisy, violent, unpleasant, and doesn't belong anywhere on any coaster. This action is absolutely shameful. Once it reaches the bottom of the drop, the train heads back up and into the second hill. From there, the ride is better than last year, but still not the way it was intended. The first half of the ride is merely okay, with very little in the way of forces (unless you count shuffle and wheel-hop) to make it interesting. At the mid-course, the train is nearly stopped. After the mid-course, though, Mean Streak does something I don't fully understand. Like both Vortex and Outer LIMits, the ride seems to be slightly faster this season than last, even though the braking is equal to or heavier than last season. On Vortex and Outer LIMits, I could tell the train was faster because I didn't get hung from the shoulder bars. On Mean Streak, there was actually a very slight hint of airtime (!) on the rise into what used to be the most interesting part of the ride, where the track circles the lift hill, then drops suddenly into the finale. These days the train is so slow through there that the lateral forces and the suddenness which previously existed here is simply gone. This ride needs help. Perhaps one of Mike Boodley's trains that can actually go around corners would help. Certainly some padding on the seat backs would quash most of the complaints (I've learned not to ever touch the seat-back on that ride) of the GP. But most of all, those brakes on the first drop have got to go. The only reason for building a 155-foot drop is to get the coaster moving at 66 mph at the bottom. If you don't want the ride to go that fast, the solution is to build a smaller drop, not to put brakes on it. Sure, Mean Streak has rideability problems at the very least, but there are better solutions.

Cedar Creek Mine Ride:
The Mine Ride is right across Frontiertown from the Mean Streak. It's a sentimental favorite of mine because it was my first coaster ride ever, back when anybody could ride, even three to a seat if you were skinny enough...and when I was about six years old, I was certainly skinny enough! Now, to ride, you must be four feet tall. Also, once again, they are only running two trains. This makes for interminable waits in the station, but fortunately the crowds were light. Oh, and they were running the ride brakeless, which makes for a fairly wild helix at the end of the ride, and causes the train to climb halfway up the second lift before it catches. The thing I really like about this ride is that the crew particularly seems to enjoy running it. It's not the most incredible coaster in the park, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun. Oh, incidentally, while the interior of the trains is upholstered in orange, the seat belts were still black. But I saw a bunch of orange belts hanging on the wall in the shop/transfer shed.

Once again this season, the Mine Ride's off-season maintenance included the replacement of several footers, lots of lumber, and a stairway on the second lift. Cedar Point is taking good care of this ride (apart from the 2-train operation) and I am glad to see it.

Mantis: The Coaster Formerly Known as Banshee:
The Frontier Trail did not seem as shady this season, but at the same time it didn't look like there had been significant clearing, so I am hoping it is the combination of the early-season low-angle sunshine and the immature growth of leaves on the trees. Wandering past the shops, I noted again with some suprise that they did not choose to call the Berry Market, "Knott's Berry Market" as that is the shop where one can find the full line of Knott's berry products. At the end of the Frontier Trail, I am not sure whether the Giant Wheel was repainted this season, but it looked very nice. With about a 35-minute wait in the queue, I opted to ride Mantis: The Coaster Formerly Known as Banshee [Footnote 1].

This coaster was having problems. The stand-up coaster is a difficult one to load anyway, but Cedar Point has made theirs even more difficult by adding safety belts. A latch plate similar to those used on the inverted coasters is attached to the shoulder bar, and a strap is attached to the underside of the seat. The trouble is, it is rather difficult to reach the strap (an action which requires bending over a little) and still pull down on the shoulder bar. To make matters worse, these belts have those buckle components that are not self-aligning, so it takes some maneuvering to get the belt to attach to the latch plate. Also, the strap is short enough that I have to stretch the belt to its limit in order to get it to fasten. The result is to have the seat too high and the shoulder bar too low for me to be comfortable. If the seat were narrower or better still if the car floor pan were wider so that I could take a wider stance, I could get the seat up higher without it digging into my thighs. As it is, it's pretty hard for me to get comfortable on this coaster. Between the difficulty in getting the belts to fasten and the need to secure straps on empty seats, Mantis:TCFKAB was routinely stacking all three trains. Not because the crews were not trying to get the trains out on time, but because the park has made that operation very difficult. I predict that there will be changes within the next month or so to the new safety straps...self-aligning buckles and a stiffener to keep the strap from hanging straight down would make a big difference.

Once we were all secured in the train, we took off. I was si...er...standing in the last row of the train. What I noticed is that the ride gave a suprisingly bumpy ride. I also noticed the trim brakes on the first drop. From last season I recall that the brake is almost unnoticeable in the front row, but in the back row it was painfully obvious. I have heard conflicting stories about the purpose of the drop trim; one story says it was because of the reports of leg pain, and if that is the case, then I think a minor train redesign (adding some obstructions to the car floor to encourage people to keep their feet back) would have been a better solution. But I have also heard that there were structural problems in the first season. I have no idea whether that is true or not, but I still have to think that there could have been another solution...or at least that the brake could have been someplace other than the first drop.

That little problem aside, Mantis:TCFKAB is still, in my opinion, a more interesting ride than Chang, particularly with those two little S-curves before the mid-course brake. A word of warning...when the train stops suddenly on the safety brake at the end of the ride (due to train stacking outside the station), you get thrown around a bit and there is literally nothing to hold on to!

Wildcat:
Now a bit bow-legged and suffering from slightly sore thighs, I stumbled off of Mantis and wandered across the midway. Wildcat is just a whole lot of fun, with some fairly extreme forces. Lots of people walk right past it thinking that a mere 48' coaster can't possibly be worth riding. But in fact there is more to Wildcat than that. This zippy little ride is a marvel of constantly-changing forces...airtime at the top of the hill that turns into crushing downward forces to rival Raptor's helix at the pull-out. For this season, the seat belts have gone from black to orange, and the unloading station has been reprogrammed. In the past, the cars would quickly slow down in the unload station runway, then come to a sudden stop at the unloading position...just as a trigger next to the track pops the lap bars open. So right when you need to have the lap bar, it unexpectedly goes away. Well, this year, that's changed. The sudden stop is one car-length sooner, before the bars pop open. Certainly an improvement. I hope this ride sticks around for a very long time.

Iron Dragon:
The Iron Dragon is remaining a very predictable ride. It seems that it is running slightly better than usual, but I've been spoiled by Top Gun (Paramount's Kings Island) and Big Bad Wolf (Busch Gardens Williamsburg). I don't know what it is, but Iron Dragon and Big Bad Wolf both have a nasty rattle and shuffle that Top Gun doesn't have. I know that Arrow changed the wheel carrier design, but I don't understand how that would make such a significant difference in the way the ride runs. Anyway, one change to the Iron Dragon is that while the bad spot in the knot at the end of the ride is still there and the train still makes an awful racket when it hits, there is a significant improvement at that spot. It doesn't feel like the train is falling apart at that spot anymore like it did last season.

Coasters Midway Grill:
I had seen the front of Coasters when I headed back to Magnum. But that was before the place was open for the day. This time, I was approaching from the side, where there is a patio set up with a whole bunch of picnic tables with aqua Fiberglas umbrellas. When I saw the side of the building, my first reaction was that I hadn't seen so much teal since my last visit to Americana! The building looks like a diner, complete with a hot rod parked in the parking lot out front. Interesting...as you ought to be aware by now, Cedar Point is gradually eliminating asphalt from the midways. In fact, surrounding Coasters the seating area is supposed to look like a parking lot, complete with white stripes. But instead of laying asphalt, they tinted the concrete black.

I did visit Coasters for lunch on Monday. I had the "Coaster Classic" which is a deluxe hamburger with double cheese and some strange kind of sauce for $5.99 (sandwich only!). I also made the mistake of getting the Boardwalk Fries. The fries had not been cooked quite as long as I like (as it typical for gourmet fries, it seems) and through no fault of Cedar Point, they were cold and limp by the time I started in on them. Someone could make a mint by figuring out a cheap way to keep fries hot on burger platters. The burger was good, though. For Coasters, you enter through the center door and place your order at a register, the order is passed on to the kitchen. You then proceed to a long counter (where the stools would be if this were a classic diner) to receive your food. I spotted several milkshake mixers behind the counter, but it looked to me like the shakes were all being pulled from soft-serve shake machines. There are several booths in the building, each with a mini jukebox console. The music is entirely too loud for comfort, though, and given the nice weather, I chose to eat outside. Coasters is a nice place; it looks really good, the food is decent (though a bit expensive), and by following the fast-food model, Coasters rounds out the park's food offerings by being nicer than the grab-joints on the midways but faster than the sit-down restaurants. Consider this as well...normally at lunch time, there is a line extending well down the midway from Macaroni's; on Sunday, Macaroni's was almost no waiting while Coasters was the place with a line out the front door.

Macaroni's:
Speaking of restaurants...on Sunday a bunch of us ate at Macaroni's. That's the restaurant either in or adjacent to (I'm not sure which) the Pavilion, along the path leading from the main midway back to Ocean Motion and the high-dive stadium. It's the first time I've ever eaten there...the last time I had been in there, it was still the Swiss Chalet. And that was a long time ago! The food and service were both good, but again pricey. I had the piled-high sausage sandwich, which was good, though a little bland. But bland is something I have come to expect of Northern Ohio cuisine.

Corkscrew:
There have been some minor changes to the Corkscrew this season. Most noticeably, the queue rails in the station have been moved back about four feet and a new yellow line has been painted on the platform. That's so far back from the train, they should really consider painting guide lines on the floor from the rails to the edge of the track to encourage people to sit in the proper seats. Also, as on Vortex, a new bracket has been attached to the last axle on each train. It looks like this bracket is not quite the same as the one on Vortex, though...the form of attachment is slightly different. Interesting.

Disaster Transport:
It looks like they've done some sprucing up on this ride (no, they haven't surrounded it with evergreens...). The first room of the queue is a little brighter, and the "warehouse" between the second and third rooms is lit up once again. But the steel walls are still in place in the second room. Clearly they have incompletely given up on the queue theming for this ride. On the ride itself, the fog machines on the lift were operating, and the red tracers on the lift hill were working. I noticed that the tracer flash rate exactly matched the clicking from the anti-rollback dog on the car. From the top of the lift to the first brake is completely dark, which makes it seem faster. The exploding meteor is still gone, but the props are more brightly lit than before. And all of the in-flight narration is working, such as it is. No, Disaster Transport is not a great ride. But I think it is better than many people give it credit for. I think people are predisposed to hate it because the theming is so awful, and because it is surrounded by a dozen other coasters that are mostly better than it.

Raptor:
Contrary to rumor, Cedar Point has not re-tracked the third and fourth inversions on Raptor (the cobra roll), nor have they added any additional braking to the ride. Raptor was down mechanical most of the day Sunday, but I managed to get a ride on Monday afternoon. Someone was telling me on Sunday that it was being braked more heavily on the mid-course, but I am not sure that is really the case. Now when the train reaches the block brake, it gets caught by both calipers instead of only the first set. But what I noticed is that neither brake hits very hard, with the result that if the ride is losing more speed than before, it is doing so in a longer distance...so, as with Magnum's trims the brakes are more heard than felt. In any case, the ending half of he ride is still fast and disorienting; if anything, the excessive down-force in the helix may be reduced slightly. I still clocked a ride time of 1:58 to the runway brake and 2:36 floor-down to floor-up, which is actually six seconds faster than what I clocked last year. Unlike Mantis, Raptor was turning in really smooth rides, and the crew was moving so fast that they were generally not ever stacking ANY trains on the runway. These guys were moving as they would on a Saturday in August. I was told that Raptor had been slowed down, but that's not the ride I got.

Blue Streak:
Raptor, of course, overshadows the Blue Streak. New this season are the individual orange seat belts as found on Mean Streak. I also noticed that, as on Mean Streak, it was easier for me to get into the seat. But it still has those awful foam seats, the lap bars still aren't adjusted right, and there are still no grab handles. In short, they still need to rip the trains apart and put them back the way they are supposed to be on that ride. But once that poor train leaves the station, things get really interesting. Blue Streak is a wood coaster, running on flat steel rails attached to many layers of lumber laminated together to form the roadbed. Believe me. I sat in the front seat and looked to be sure. I mention this because the way it was running, you could easily mistake it (based on ride alone) for something like Gemini. Blue Streak was running incredibly smooth and extremely fast. Blue Streak was giving the best rides it has given in years. And it looks like they have a pretty good crew this season as well.

Other stuff:
Just some random loose ends before I close this report out...I rode the Calypso twice. That thing is having problems (in fact that is why I rode it twice) in that one of the pods sometimes won't rotate on the platform. I was sitting on that pod for my first ride; that ride stunk. For my next ride...in the next cycle...I rode in a tub on one of the other pods and all of the pods...including the one I had been on for my previous ride...were spinning just fine. Very strange. I also rode the Turnpike Cars, I think for the first time since Raptor was built and the ride was reconfigured. I found out pretty quickly that my legs are too long for me to use the GO pedal, so I reached out and steered the car with my right hand while operating the attendant's handle on the outside of the car with my left. I was in one of the newer cars, and I was suprised at how well its steering worked. Back along what used to be called the Oceana midway, the Aquarium has been turned into an arcade, but it was closed when I went by. Schwabinchen has had a minor modification; the loose-hanging electrical connectors under the disc have been eliminated so that they don't bang against the underside of the disc as the ride starts to come down. The Witches Wheel has received some significant modifications to the tubs...the door release handle is now located on the top of the tub (instead of over the rider's left shoulder) and the door is now safetied by an orange belt with a dog-clip that attaches to an eye-bolt on the back of the tub, out of the rider's reach. I guess they don't want self-loading and unloading on this one anymore. The Super Himalaya has been moved from its old home across from Gemini to its new home between Corkscrew and Power Tower; I didn't ride it, but it looks good there. None of the flower beds has been planted yet, but what do you expect this early in the season? Now that the dolphin tank is a high-dive pool, its interior walls have been painted a deep blue, and the windows overlooking the midway have been restored. This will be the nicest high-dive show facility in the country, I think. Back on the Frontier Trail, it looks like the Thunder Canyon tubs have been equipped with heavier ropes than in the past; I can't imagine why...!

All in all, Cedar Point has gotten its season off to an impressive start. Every ride in the park operated on Opening Day, which is itself quite an achievement. Of course they have an incredibly long off-season to prepare for it. But the combination of major changes to the park...new concrete in two midways, a whole new area of the park, construction of a new hotel, a new restaurant, a new marina, renovation of the Bear Country areas...It really isn't suprising that there is still work to be done in Camp Snoopy. There are a few things yet to be done to make the park ready for the bulk of the season, and most of the live shows don't start until the first weekend in June. But the season started on Sunday, and it looks to me like Cedar Point was mostly ready.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: For the unenlightened: When Cedar Point announced their stand-up coaster at the end of the 1995 season, they announced that it would be called, "Banshee." A short time later, they mysteriously announced that it would NOT, in fact, be "Banshee," but they also did not announce the new name until mid-winter. And thus the ride became "The Coaster Formerly Known as Banshee." [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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