Cedar Point is further from my house than Kings Island, both in actual distance (105 miles vs. 88 miles) and in driving time (135 minutes vs. 90 minutes). So why does it feel like a shorter trip? I suspect that driving through Lewis Center, Delaware, Waldo, Kirkpatrick, Bucyrus, Chatfield, Carrothers, Caroline, Siam, Attica, Reedtown and Sandusky gives a sense of progress on the trip that simply isn't there when you drive through unbroken farmland from Columbus to Mason. The Cedar Point drive has a certain familiarity to it where I know instinctively where to disengage the cruise control to get the speed down to the in-town limit without touching the brakes. And of course, I noticed that the "Visit Historic Bellvue" billboard suddenly became an ad for an attraction in Put-In-Bay.
Cedar Point opened at 9:30. As I predicted as we left Columbus, we started down the Causeway at 9:45. I failed to account for the traffic jam at the toll booths, so it was 10:00 before I got the car parked in the main lot. I parked there instead of around back because I had John and Carrie with me, and they both still needed to process their season passes.
I'll save my Cedar Point Season Pass rant for another day, but suffice to say that the park's procedure for processing season passes is a model of inefficiency that reminds me of the trouble I went through when I bought a hat in Soviet Russia back in '87. The first line extended out from the season pass office windows (the Group Sales windows) back to the edge of the parking lot, then wrapped around the far edge of the flower bed (what was once a tram circle) and extended all the way back to the main ticket booths. The second line, for people to get their photos taken, extended out the back of the Season Pass building and wrapped around enough that if extended it would reach the Marina. Knowing that John and Carrie would have to stand in both of those lines, I bade them farewell and proceeded into the park.
I took my first walk down the midway of the season. Knowing it would be a bit of a zoo, I headed immediately for Top Thrill Dragster. Well, not really. In fact I was heading directly for Magnum, but to get there I had to walk right past Top Thrill Dragster so that I could see what kind of a zoo it was. I don't know if the queue had been opened yet, but the line extended all the way back on the midway side of the ride to past the uptrack end of the loading station, where a ride host was standing on the midway with a yellow candy-cane in his hand telling people that there would be about a five hour wait for Dragster. Yikes! I headed on down to Magnum, where I walked right up to the platform and waited for my customary seat.
It felt good to be back. I've ridden a fair number of coasters this season already, but none of them comes close to Magnum. Okay, Dragster is a lot taller, a lot faster, and a lot wilder, but that hardly counts as that ride is in a class by itself; it really isn't fair to compare it to Magnum. But Magnum is a more conventional coaster, doing what coasters do best, and doing it remarkably well. Due to high winds, the brakes were off, and the ride was still a little slow on the back side. But the crew had their act well together, and even though I saw 'Magnum Jerry' getting off of the ride, most of the seats were actually open. The day was still new, but Magnum was in far better shape than it was in last year on Opening Day.
After a few Magnum rides, the queue began to build, so I bailed out and headed down towards Gemini. Gemini had not awakened yet, and when I got to the back of the park, neither had Mean Streak. That left me to the Cedar Creek Mine Ride, a long-time sentimental favorite. I noticed a lot of new lumber in the queue, and in the station the entire platform floor has been replaced (in fact there wasn't even a yellow line to stand behind!) and mechanical boarding gates have been installed. Either this year or next year, Ohio's amusement ride regulations are changing from "Thou shalt follow the Manufacturer's Specifications" to "Thou shalt comply with ASTM guidelines." It's not a radical change, as most of the ASTM guidelines boil down to, "Follow the Manufacturer's Specifications" but there are some places where it represents a change, notably in the fencing standard. There is nothing in the ASTM specifications that explicitly requires boarding and exit gates, but there are ways of reading the code that make a pretty strong case for using them. This year, Mine Ride got a set of these mechanical monstrosities in the station.
The train rolled in, the gates opened, and I sat down in the train. Immediately I noticed that something was wrong. The seat cushion and seat back cushion have both been removed and replaced with a 2" thick black square foam block that is about as resilient as concrete. Worst of all, it raises riders up about 2" and forces riders to sit forward in the seat in a not-at-all comfortable fashion. Suddenly, on a ride I have never had problems fitting into, I could barely get the lap bar down. And for a change I was happy to have that bar there because the new seating position is not so much a seat as a perch which feels like I'm about to fall off the front edge. What were they thinking when they came up with this? Oh, wait...I KNOW what they were thinking. They were thinking that the urethane foam cushion will last longer and be more durable than the vinyl-over-sponge cushion it replaced. Their operating costs will be reduced. But, I have to wonder if the bean-counters who decide things like this ever actually ride the rides. I'm guessing "probably not" because anybody who rides with the new seat should recognize pretty quickly that it would be more comfortable to sit on the bare Gelcoat seat with no cushion at all. This is a real disapointment!
I stopped in at the Town Hall Museum as I often do, and noted nothing new, except that someone should take the lid off of the trophy case and set the trophies upright again. I challenged a so-called coaster nut to spot the serious error in the otherwise nearly perfect model of the pre-1994 Blue Streak. The error is easy to spot if you are at all familiar with the ride's configuration: One train is starting down the first drop while the other train has not yet cleared the block brake [Footnote 1].
I was a little bit hungry by this time, so I stopped at the Engine House custard stand and had a caramel apple. Cedar Point's approach to the caramel apple is an unusual one they slice a green apple into a bowl and cover it with hot caramel sauce. It's even better to get it with frozen custard, but it was a little cold for that. I set off down the Frontier Trail.
Given Dragster's low capacity (still running three reduced-length trains) I wasn't surprised that Millennium Force had about an hour's wait, longer than I really wanted to spend. Instead I continued down the midway and noticed the new paint on the Wildcat. Not that it's possible to miss; the structure is now a bright yelowish green, and the track is a deep purple. There are the colors of Chang after its re-paint job. I'm very happy Cedar Point went with this color scheme and not with the reverse (purple structure with yellow track) as that would be too close to the Wildcat I didn't care for at Martin's Fantasy Island, a park I was not too pleased with. This Wildcat looks great, although they did one thing I'm not so sure about. Across the front of the station roof is painted yellow with a light green geometric design, and the ride name is painted in purple. That much looks great, but the addition of the purple paw prints across the front of the ride reminds me of Scooby Doo and looks a little out of place. I guess I'm not quite used to it yet.
Across the main midway is another of Cedar Point's new attracions for 2003, a brand-new rest room building between the Matterhorn and the Scrambler. This one is notable not just because it is all-new this year, but because it features both air conditioning and (get this!) WARM WATER for hand-washing. Warm water in a Cedar Point restroom. Who would have ever expected that? It also has those noisy 120-mph "Xcelerator" hand dryers that debuted last season at the front of the park.
Wicked Twister is sporting some new supports this season above the tops of the A-frame towers. That's the indifferent news. The bad news is that the train isn't making it to the tops of the towers anymore. For now I'll chalk that up to opening-weekend jitters. I should also note that the 18 pounds I lost over the winter didn't make it any easier to fit into the seat. What did make it easier to get in and out was the resilient mat on the station floor, about 2" thick, similar to the one that appeared on the floor of Rugrats Runaway Reptar Roller Coaster down at Kings Island last year. Something else I noticed, on Wicked Twister, Millennium Force and Top Thrill dragster is that there are now clear signs near the ride entrance that spell out the basic ride requirements, in addition to the gigantic boilerplate legal signs that nobody in his right mind would bother to read. So now there is a second sign for people to ignore which gives the basic requirements. I guess that makes sense. To keep the attorneys happy there is the gigantic, "Whereas this is a dynamic and thrilling ride, in an effort to insure safe passage thou shalt remain seated in an upright position throughout the ride keeping all thy body parts within the confines of the designated vehicle as directed by thy ride attendant" sign, and for everybody else there is now a "sit down, strap in, shut up and hold on" version as well.
I failed to ride either Chaos or Troika in their new locations. Chaos has taken the place of the Schwabinchen, and features a plain back fence color-coordinated to the Chaos. I also noticed that those big concrete fence posts that went up two years ago have finally been put to use, closing off the walkway between the Gazebo food joint and the Coliseum. Troika, meanwhile, has a new paint scheme, and sits in front of the Disaster Transport lift hill. The installation is pretty involved as a new concrete platform had to be poured to match the angle of the steel deck plates that the ride would have if it were not at Cedar Point. The ride's logo has been retained, but the 1970's yard sign has not; instead the ride logo is mounted on a wooden archway over the ride's entrance.
In Kiddy Kingdom, virtually all of the rides got new fences this season to comply with ASTM requirements. The new fences are bright red or green, and actually look better than the aluminum railings they replaced. Apparently this was not the year the park had to be in full compliance with the fence rules, as the Gemini kiddie rides still have the old fences, but they are making progress.
Also making progress were the three maintenence men gathered around the base of the Space Spiral. I didn't catch the nature of the problem, but they didn't seem too happy about it, and the ride wasn't carrying riders. Disaster Transport was operating, though, much as last season. I believe the projection on the large screen inside the ride is new this season, but "Eddie" [Footnote 2] is still gone. Come on, now, before last season's makeover, "Eddie"'s audio was the only theming on the ride that still worked. I fear, though, that if Scott Short's hypothesis is true, then Disaster Transport is not long for this world: the overhead basket conveyor in the "Repair Bay" of the queue was STOPPED.
Out on the Main Midway, the hedges around the flower beds in front of the Coliseum have been hacked down to a uniform height of about 6". I will reserve judgement on this until I see what happens to the hedges through this season. It reminds me of the severe hacking that the trees back by Magnum got a couple of years ago, and those filled in very nicely, vey quickly, so maybe the grounds people do know what they're doing with these.
By this time, Raptor had its customary late-afternoon fifteen-minute wait, so I took advantage of it. Not much to report here except that Raptor got a set of boarding gates this season, and thanks to the high winds, the mid-course brake was off. On around the corner, Blue Streak was running great, and good for a couple of walk-on rides.
I wondered if John and Carrie had managed to get their season passes. I checked the still-really-long lines for pass redemption and pass photos and didn't find them, which I assumed to be a good sign, then I went out to the car to collect my sweatshirt as the day had simply failed to get warm. I was surprised to find that John and Carrie were at the car having a quick meal, having spent most of the day getting their passes processed. By mutual agreement we opted to move the car back around to the back of the park, which worked fine for me, as I wanted to hit the coasters in the back.
When we got back to Soak City, I saw an interesting sight. A group of park employees, some ride operators, some maintenence men, were piling into the lead cars of a Gemini train at the base of the lift hill. Once they were all aboard, the lift was started and they crept to the top. For some reason, the train idled up the lift hill. Then it crept around the course, not looking like it was going to make it. I've seen Gemini go slow; I don't think I have ever seen it this slow before! The train made it, and was followed by an empty train (I don't know if it had weights in it or not) that went considerably faster. When another train started out I was surprised to see that while only the left-hand (red) track was running, it was running three trains...which is almost unheard of before CoasterMania. They needed to do that late last season!
In hindsight, I determined that what I had just seen was the addition of the ride's third train, probably to compensate for the right-hand (blue) track's failure to come out and play for Opening Day. By the time I entered the park and returned to Gemini, the queue had re-opened and the ride already had a significant wait, using extended queues for both entrances. I skipped it, figuring that with three trains the ride would catch up later, and headed back to Mean Streak.
Mean Streak was running, but for some reason it had a line extending beyond the end of the brake run tunnel. I didn't want to wait that long for a ride that might disappoint. I'll have plenty of opportunities for that this season. Instead, I went for a quick ride on Woodstock Express, then watched Dragster for a bit, refining my understanding of its operation. It looks like there is a magnetic brake on the launch sled itself, which would explain how the cable is able to slam to a stop so quickly. It's also interesting to stand next to the roll-up door on the tower side of the motor house when the train launches, as, for some reason, a blast of air slams against the door from the inside.
I watched Dragster for a bit, studying it in minute detail, then I went on to ride Iron Dragon and Wildcat, both of which are pretty much the same as ever. By this time I'd ridden most of the operating coasters. A ride on the train took me back to Frontiertown for a ride on Gemini. A visit to the front of the park put me on Blue Streak and Raptor, but Mean Streak and Millennium Force both had longer waits than I wanted to bother with. Finally it was back to Magnum to finish up the evening with a bunch of rides in my favorite seat of my favorite coaster.
Wow. Opening day came and went. I did a lot, rode a lot, and still missed five major coasters. Where else but Cedar Point could you fail to ride five roller coasters and still have a great day in the park? But for Cedar Point that isn't at all unusual. It's been a long, cold, annoying winter, and now it's good to be back at Cedar Point again.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: Encoded for the benefit of those of you playing along at home; use your mouse as a Secret Decoder to decode. [Return to text]
Footnote 2: I don't know if the "on-board computer" on Disaster Transport ever had a name or not, but I've taken to calling him "Eddie" after the ship-board computer on the Heart of Gold, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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