Trip Report: Cedar Point (#4)
Sandusky, Ohio - 06/06/2004

"Where is everybody?"

On Sunday morning I couldn't decide where I wanted to go, and ultimately inertia directed me up to Cedar Point yet again. This weekend should be the beginning of the peak season. Accordingly, as I drove around the perimeter of the park, I noticed that "George R." was heating up at the engine house, suggesting that the railroad would be running two trains. The weather was warm, though cloudy and humid, and I figured there would be a fairly large crowd.

On Saturday night, I had read on PointBuzz and CoasterBuzz that Something Bad™ had happened to Top Thrill Dragster, and I expected it might not be operating. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was sitting in my usual seat on Magnum indicating to the platform attendant that yes, I had heard about Dragster's latest troubles, and an empty Dragster train wooshed up the tower. That's Cedar Point for you. 97% total ride up-time.

So far the crowd was light. But Magnum was running all three trains and the crew was trying hard to fill every seat. See, Magnum operates on a 72-second interval. At the other end of the park is another ride that also runs with a 72-second interval. The difference is that Magnum has a 6-car train with 6 riders per car, while the other ride has an 8-car train with four passengers per car. By my calculation, theoretical capacity based on dispatch interval, Magnum wins hands up at 1800 pph while the other ride can only move 1600 pph. But Cedar Point doesn't use that formula. They use actual turnstile counts, which means it is more often a dead heat...and in the morning, Raptor gets the better numbers because there are more riders in the front of the park. Clearly, the Magnum crew was trying to correct that situation. You know, they could move people a little faster if they would have people approach through the Freeway entrance until that part of the queue gets backed up........ 8-)

Well, I had accidentally made a tactical error. Somehow, the neck cord I normally carry in my ****** bag wasn't there, which meant that unless I bought yet another to add to my collection, I couldn't ride Dragster. Small loss for the day, as every time I saw the ride it was either not running, or it had a long wait. So I walked past it and took a right at Coasters, crossed the tracks, and entered the Millennium Force queue. Less than an hour ago, I had driven past and the third queue block was full. This time, when I arrived at the ride, the queue barely reached to the bottom of the ramp. Had the ride just come up from down-time? Or did everybody abandon Millennium Force when Dragster came up? It didn't matter. What mattered was that I had a fairly short wait for Millennium Force. The ride was running much more efficiently than it was running a couple of weeks ago, but it was still stacking trains with appalling regularity. I ended up riding right over the hoisting dog. In the station, the normal seat belt and lap-bar checking process went on, then two attendants, one on each side, both veteran crew members, each with a specially calibrated digit, practically ran from front to back checking the dead ends of the seat belts. I'm pleased to report that I didn't get the same mistreatment I got the last time with an attendant shoving my lap bar with his entire weight (did you know that the new ASTM standard specifies a maximum closing force for self-closing lap bars? Or that the force specified is less than 20 pounds at the end of the bar?). That's a good thing™. A repeat of my opening weekend experience would probably have put Millennium Force in the same category as Mantis:TCFKAB [Footnote 1] for me for the rest of this season. And that would be terrible, because while it isn't my favorite, I really do like Millennium Force. The thing still feels just a touch slow, but MUCH better than it was on opening weekend.

My day was filled wih much of the usual milling about and assorted riding that is typical for a Cedar Point visit. I was a bit surprised at how small the crowd was on what should have been one of the first busy weekends of the season. But even though the CP & LE Railroad was running two trains, it seemed that the park expected the small crowd, as many food joints were closed, including the Engine House custard stand. One stand that was open was the little Mexican joint in Frontiertown. That place, Los Gatos, has an entirely new menu this season. I tried the "Nachos Supreme" offering. It was OK, but quite frankly, I liked the Macho Nachos, which included sour cream, better. And I still can't help but wonder why the place is called, "The Cats". With a name like that...well, at least it isn't a Chinese restaurant [Footnote 2]. As I finished my nachos, a brief rainstorm blew through. There was no thunder, and it was only light rain. I ducked into the Town Hall museum for a few minutes, then the storm passed.

I rode lots of rides, including several that I often skip. One such ride was the Cadillac Cars, the antique-style cars on the main midway. What I noticed about them is that the ride has all-new "42 & 4" fencing around it. Frontiertown's Antique Cars still have the old fence, and it occurs to me that when that fence gets updated, it is going to cause problems for a whole flock of geese who now live in the ride's infield.

It's strange how sometimes we are moved in illogical ways. With the size crowd the park was hosting, I should have taken advantage of the short lines and ridden everything several dozen times. I didn't, though. I did plenty of riding, of course, but I also went on a bit of a photo safari. I went out to the beach and walked along the lake, then I observed a very poorly designed bit of sidewalk plumbing. Okay, that's not entirely fair. The design is really quite clever, it is the user interface that needs some work. At each of the points where the sidewalk meets the beach, there is a post, about 7' tall. At the top there is a shower head, and at the bottom there is another shower head. On the side of the post are two identical, unmarked pushbuttons located side by side. One pushbutton causes water to flow from the upper shower head so that people who have been bathing in the lake can rinse the walleye out of their hair. The other pushbutton causes water to flow from the lower shower head so that people who have been walking on the beach can rinse the sand out of their toes. Very nice. The challenge is to figure out which button controls which nozzle. A poor choice here could be embarrassing at least. I wonder why the buttons were not stacked on top of each other, so that the top button operated the top nozzle and the bottom button operated the bottom nozzle.

Having rinsed the sand off my feet (and NOT got myself sprayed in the face in the process) I walked down the path behind Soak City, along the lake side, behind Magnum XL-200. I have an old video that I shot before Soak City was expanded, and a lot of the shots I got for that video are simply not possible anymore, although the new service area under Magnum's turnaround has opened driveway access to the bay side of the turnaround. It isn't possible to get past the turnaround and under the third hill, as that's in the gated storage area, but you can get almost right under the turnaround, which is a great photo-op. While I was back there, I walked around the back side of the Sandcastle Suites hotel, and noticed not only that they have a nice lakeside pool and restaurant, there were a lot of hotel guests back there taking advantage of it. Returning to the park took me through the Camper Village, where I noticed that Magnum XL-200 is really a very quiet coaster except for the trim brakes at the bottom of the fourth hill. Well, that, and up front there is the noisiest steel coaster lift hill safety ratchet on the planet and that ridiculous recording that is only audible from the parking lot (the one that says something like, "You are ascend.......nside the car at........epared for any sudd......num XL-200!" as you go up the lift).

Back inside the park, I took a bunch of rides, perhaps making up for the time I spent wandering around the resort. I made it a point to visit the Oceana midway, which hasn't received much attention from me this season. In fact, it was my first trip of the year on Cedar Point's Troika.

My day ultimately ended in the usual way, with two or three rides on Magnum XL-200. It was a kind of an unusual visit to Cedar Point for me, but it was a good setup in preparation for my upcoming trip to the EduComm conference and InfoComm trade show, and the park visits I'll make on my trip home next weekend.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: In other words, I choose not to ride it anymore. [Return to text]

Footnote 2: Spare me the hate mail. If it offends you, you're taking it too seriously. (author returns to his plate of "General Tso's Kitten") [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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