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"I can't open back up until I get some power!"
It was another of those lazy Sunday visits to Cedar Point. I figured it would be my last visit up there for a couple of weeks, I wasn't planning to go with or to meet up with anybody, and it was hot enough that I could probably try out the two rides I'd never ridden before. Heck, I might even go see the new ice show. I slept in a little bit, then got to the park around 11:00am.
Every time I sit in a traffic jam on the Cedar Point Causeway I am reminded of how much simpler, easier, and faster it was back when parking was only $5. I have a parking pass, so my $8 is pre-paid, I guess, but for the rest of these people, trying to come up with $8 for parking really stalls traffic. It's bad enough that parking charges have gotten so far out of hand, particularly given the lack of such amenities as tram service. Ah, well, I guess the $30,000 per day of easy money is more than the park is willing to pass up.
It looked again like a typical Sunday crowd, or perhaps a little lighter than usual in the main parking lot. The telling bit was when I got back to the back of the park and couldn't park in my customary spot. There was a larger than usual crowd in the back, suggesting a good size crowd in the waterpark. I entered through the back gate as usual, and headed for Magnum, which, at this point, was a "Sandusky walk-on" with the queue exending to barely past the foot of the stairs.
I think Magnum must like the heat. Its brakes were on, but it was flying, proving to the world why it's a great coaster. Lots of complaints about sore thighs today but I like it when Magnum runs like this. Still, Cedar Point has lots of coasters and I was planning to ride most of them. I proceeded to Gemini.
Gemini was running only four trains, and that was with two cars on each
roped off to try and keep things moving. I watched an amazing number of people
fumble with the seat belt and I am convinced that the square buckle is a lousy
design. They should get some nail polish or auto paint and mark a large arrow
on the top of each buckle to indicate which end the latchplate is supposed to
slide into. That alone would save them some time and effort on the platform.
Not that they aren't quick enough as it is...! Anyway, I was most impressed
by the operator who was running the blue side when I rode, as he was bringing
the trains into the station faster and more smoothly than I've seen on that
ride in a long time. This is how Gemini is supposed to operate...well,
apart from the fact that it is supposed to operate with six trains. As it works
now, Gemini is a little quirky, and each operator puts his own signature
on the operation. But the ride has class and style, and though I know eventually
the march of technology will prompt Cedar Point to update the controls, I can't
help hoping
that never happens to this ride.
Mean Streak was next and it was squeaking like crazy. It was also significantly better than last time I rode it. I think they were just scared about rolling it back again. Digging the train out of that first drop has got to be a royal pain in the neck. It's still running slowly enough to be pretty boring.
A trip on Mine Ride, a trip on Millennium Force...ah, apparently
this is the point during the summer where I get just slightly smaller, so that
when I pull the lap bar down until it touches ...er...me...there is still a
gap between the bar and my stomach and between the bar and my lap. Seeing this,
and not knowing that the vertical support arm on the lap bar was already touching
the zipper flap of my shorts, the platform attendant gave the bar a hard shove.
I yelped as certain body parts got pinched between the lap bar and the seat,
but it was too late...the train started up the lift. Pity, the ride was running
great, but I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it. This has happened to me before, but
it's the first time this season; I thought this issue was taken care of a long,
long time ago. My next stop was the Customer Service booth at the front of the
park to report the incident. That, of course, took me up to the front of the
park. There I learned that Raptor has been added to the park's "Freeway"
queue management program. The sign on the booth indicated that Freeway stamps
were
being given for 8:00pm, some four hours hence. I passed on the stamp, preferring
to wait roughly four minutes in the queue rather than four hours in the virtual
queue. Once again, a queue management system proves to be a solution in search
of a problem.
I took the train back to Frontiertown and took a ride on White Water Landing.
Now that the waterfall is gone, I ride that thing a lot more
than I used to. I noticed they were using only the left-hand down chute, probably
as a result of the minor incident they had a week earlier. At the end of the
ride, it was odd to not get bumped by the next boat before exiting onto the
turntable. After I got off, I decided to go and do something I had never done
before. I exited the park and traded my shorts for swim trunks. I returned to
the park, taking a quick spin on the Mine Ride, then entering a queue
I have successfully avoided for the past ten seasons. A few minutes later I
was seated in the back row of a large boat, behind a very tall lap bar. This
lap bar was closer to what I was thinking for looping coasters ten years ago
than what Premier came up with, but the idea is the same: keep riders from leaning
forward and smashing their teeth on the handrail. We were dragged up a long,
slow incline, into the building at the top of the tower. At the top we were
deposited gently into a wide flume trough which carried us around to a second
conveyor. This one gently lifted our boat over the edge of a steep drop. We
rocketed down the hill and crashed into the deep water at the bottom as if into
a cinder block wall. A wave of water plumed upward from the front of the boat,
completely obscuring my view in all directions. Then, the rain started. That
wave of water came down in a gentle but torrential shower, completely innundating
the boat and its contents (meaning us). We slowly floated around the curve and
into the station. I exited Snake River Falls, crossing the bridge before
the next boat came down the chute.
I hiked across the midway and into the queue that I have successfully avoided for the past sixteen years. Moments later I walked across a turntable and took a seat in a round 12-passenger boat. Thunder Canyon provided less of a gratuitous soaking than Snake River Falls had, but it was a more interesting ride. I did get the attention of the people I was riding with because I was wearing my Michigan's Adventure shirt, and they all hailed from Muskegon. Sorry, guys, no, I am not your neighbor. They got gratuitously soaked; I just got splashed a little. The bit I didn't quite have figured out was on the ride's exit path, where there is a group of little sprayers at ankle-height to rinse the lake water off of your feet. I actually did the two rides in reverse order; I should have done Thunder Canyon, with its untreated lake water, first, then followed it up with a rinse of treated and filtered water found in Snake River Falls. In any case, I have done both now.
In the hot afternoon it didn't take long to get dried off. I continued riding,
and found out that the crowd that wasn't in line for most of the coasters was
all in the Disaster Transport building. Even Wicked Twister had
a short wait, but I had to skip it as my eyeglass cord was out in the car. I
remembered that I had been thinking of taking in the new ice skating show, but
I arrived at the theater mere minutes after the last show of the day had started.
Oh, well...maybe next time. 0Instead I opted for a ride on the Giant Wheel.
During the ride cycle, I thought I saw lightning beyond the Magnum turnaround.
Then I thought sure I saw empty trains cycling on Magnum, indicating
an orderly evacuation of the ride. When my ride ended I was happy to be off
the wheel. I learned that Magnum had indeed shut down, but Millennium
Force had not just yet. Thinking rain might be imminent, I visited Paddlewheel.
Midway through the ride, Bucky gnawed through his tree and it fell down right
on cue, but when we went past the lighthouse (which the Captain assured us is
in fact quite heavy) it was dark, Delbert opted not to pedal his flying machine
down the ramp, and the little squirt was missing from the fishing boat. Apparently
the park had lost power.
Being the curious sort, I opted to investigate. The power
outage began at the midway crossroads between the Sky Ride station and
the Matterhorn, and extended all the way down past Power Tower
and Corkscrew to just past the Paddlewheel dock. It was odd to
not hear
any music along that midway. I was wondering what THOR [Footnote
1] had to say about the lightning filling the skies. I got to talking
ith the Himalaya operator (he had nothing better to do; in fact he couldn't
even take his hourly turnstile reading thanks to the darkness!) when his phone
rang. From the part of the conversation I could hear, it sounded almost like
the Ops office was giving him the go-ahead to re-open, which he couldn't do
as he had no power with which to run the ride!
Finally I decided I'd had enough. With no power, a big chunk of the park was simply "dark", and the persistent lightning would keep the rest of the place down. I was leaving the park when I heard fireworks going off. A security guard at the gate explained that once the shells had been set in their mortars for the Summer Spectacular it wasn't practical or safe to unload them; they basically had to shoot them off even though the show wasn't going to happen.
Fortunately for the park, the lightning storm (never did see any rain...) prompted evacuation from all the rides before the power went out. So for the most part the power outage was pretty much a non-event. It was interesting, though, as it gives a whole different perspective on the park to see it dark and quiet. In all, it was a kind of a relaxing day at the park...a perfect prelude for next weekend's trip...!
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: THOR is a lightning prediction system used to analyze the probability of a localized lightning strike. http://www.thorguard.com I'm pretty certain Cedar Point has one. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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