Trip Report: Cedar Point (#5)
Sandusky, Ohio - 06/20/2004

"They're real all right; one of them just turned his head."

It was the usual story. Well, not quite. Originally I was planning to go to Kennywood with my parents, then they decided they had other plans. Then on Sunday morning I slept in a bit, and ultimately decided to go to Cedar Point. I figured it would be a good day for it, as it was the first day of Coaster Con, and I might meet up with some coaster-riding friends that I haven't seen in a while. I could tell that I was late getting to the park when I couldn't get a parking space in the usual lot and had to park across the road, behind the Skycoaster.

The park was as crowded as I have seen it this season, and this time without any big yellow busses in the parking lot. The peak season has begun at Cedar Point, and it made for a packed platform for my early Magnum rides.

It wasn't long before I actually met up with several coaster nuts who had entered the park early for Coaster Con. A couple of them had never been to Cedar Point before, and that impacted my schedule for most of the rest of the day. We started with a ride on Top Thrill Dragster.

Uh-oh, here we go again.

Just when we thought the silly nonsense with the seat belts was set for the season, they made changes again. On Top Thrill Dragster, the seat belt routing has changed. Now instead of running between the seat support tube and the seat pan as has always been the case on Top Thrill Dragster, the belt now runs outboard of the seat support tube, which lengthens the belt path by about an inch. It's worth noting that Dragster's test seat has always used this belt routing, but the ride never has. It's also worth noting that this new belt routing is the same as Millennium Force has always used. Anyway, Dragster's test seat is now sitting out in front of the queue entrance rather than off to the side, and in fact the line of people entering the Dragster queue is often delayed by the line of people trying the test seat. The more serious problem is that because the buckle end of the seat belt is now hanging in space outboard of the seat tube, the buckle is no longer restrained and can no longer lay flat against the side of the seat. This makes it terribly difficult to actually fasten the belt even for those of us who find that it is long enough. Getting everything twisted to exactly the right angle is extremely difficult because none of it is actually visible. Will this Intamin nonsense ever end? The good news is that the belt routing is now the same as the test seat, so instead of being rejected by the test seat and then accepted by the ride, people rejected by the test seat will now be rejected by the ride. I still think Intamin is barking up the wrong tree with these short seat belts. Hmmmmm...

Anyhow, we got our Dragster ride. I sat in the back row, and it occurs to me that I have never ridden in that row of the train before. The last time I took a back seat ride on Top Thrill Dragster, I remember noticing how easily a rider in the back seat could fiddle with the decorative engine on the back of the train. Of course, a year ago, that decorative engine disappeared, replaced with the row of seats I was sitting in today. Fortunately, the engine was only decorative, otherwise I would have been required to pedal or something to make up for its absence. 8-) As usual, it was up, over, and down, a neat ride, but not my favorite. It sure is popular, though!

We rode Magnum, which was not quite as well-received by the Cedar Point neophytes, then we took off for Millennium Force. It was a longer wait than it should have been, but the dispatch times are improving, and the crowd wasn't terribly large, so the wait was almost reasonable. What got our attention while waiting was the pair of shithawks [Footnote 1] sitting on top of a support column on Mantis:TCFKAB. The reason they got our attention was that they were standing only inches from the track, and didn't move at all when the train went by. I suppose you could call them, "unruffled."

The other thing that got our attention was the by-now-well-known-fact that there are some crew people on Millennium Force this season who can be charitably described as "jerks". One such person was manning the entrance. It's a shame, too, because the whole ride is getting a bad reputation because of a few people on an otherwise decent crew. Certainly the unreasonable working conditions brought on by working an early-model Intamin hypercoaster don't help, but there is no reason to take it out on the customers, even if many of those customers are mindless jerks. That is, after all, the Golden Rule of Customer Service, is it not? "Thou shalt not mistreat thy Customer, though he may be deserving of such mistreatment, for he is thy Customer." Once up on the platform, though, we suffered no indignities, and in fact the person in our group who was rudely told that she didn't fit the test seat and therefore should not bother to wait in line rather enjoyed her first ride on Millennium Force [Footnote 2].

We continued to enjoy the park, riding the rides up in the front of the park, until it was time for the Coaster Con attendees to go to their opening reception. On my own, I rode a couple of the flat rides, and returned to Magnum for late rides, prepared to make an early evening of it.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. As 10:00 approached, I started to encounter friendly coaster nuts and got into a series of conversations with friends, many of whom I hadn't seen in months. It was well after park closing before I managed to return to my car for the drive home. I was thankful that a burger joint on US-250 at Strub Rd. really is open late for the summer, as I hadn't eaten all day and I needed something before the trip home.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: Seagulls. Also known as the "Sandusky Air Force". Also known as "a damned nuisance in the parking lot". [Return to text]

Footnote 2: She did, in fact, fit in the test seat, but the attendant there got distracted and didn't believe that she had fastened the seat belt unassisted. [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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