Trip Report: Cedar Point (#2)
Sandusky, Ohio - 05/21/2006

"Where the heck are those floss carts?"

I'm suffering quite a bit these days. Bad knees seem to run in the family, and I am accustomed to a little bit of pain in my knees, especially when going up and down stairs, or when climbing into a coaster car. But this is different. It started a couple of weeks ago, where now my left thigh is swollen a bit, and certain motions result in extreme pain, not in my knee, but in my thigh and in the upper part of my lower leg. I don't have a third-party diagnosis yet, but it seems that it is an injury consistent with a bruised quadricep, which my research suggest is often caused by a "direct blow to the thigh." Unfortunately, I think I know how it happened. I can stand up OK, I can sit OK, and walking isn't too bad so long as I don't go down any stairs. But shifting from sitting to standing, or from standing to sitting, or trying to get out of the car is a bit of a challenge. Putting on a pair of socks has become one of the most difficult things I do during the day. It's at its worst when I wake up in the morning, having been stretched out flat for a few hours, so getting out of bed takes a lot of sheer willpower. Yes, this contributed to my reluctance to go anywhere in the rain last week. And it contributed to my tardiness this morning. I didn't leave home until Noon, and I stopped for lunch in Bucyrus on my way to the park.

As I entered the parking lot, I noticed a sign on the tollbooth door: Millennium Force will be closed today. Great. I wonder what is wrong with it this time. As I drove around the peninsula, I got a strange look from a police officer when I honked the horn as I passed the gate he was securing adjacent to Millennium Force. I guess he doesn't know about the day the hoist rope broke on that ride and I nearly ran down the park general manager when he unexpectedly popped out from that gate without looking. Apparently my response tactic of sounding the horn as I pass those gates works...it got that guard's attention!

Work continues on the White Water Landing site, and a new fence has been erected along the midway. More about that later. As I passed Gemini I noticed that the line of would-be riders was spilling out of the queue and down to the midway, even as only one side of the ride was operating, with only two trains. As I noted a long time ago, the real shame of removing two trains from Gemini is not that it can no longer run with six trains, which is hardly ever necessary, but that now it can no longer run three, which would have been useful today. I parked in the usual place, and entered through the usual gate. When I walked past the usual coaster, though, I was prompted to keep right on walking because of the long line. As I walked past the queue entrance for Top Thrill Dragster I noticed a small crowd of people filing out. Uh, folks, the ride is the other way! So the park's two biggest coasters, Top Thrill Dragster and Millennium Force were both shut down. No wonder there was a long line of riders waiting for Magnum XL-200!

Since it was late, I went on down the main midway and started my visit with rides on Blue Streak and Raptor. I hate the trains on Blue Streak but I can't argue with the way the ride is running. Somehow, Cedar Point has figured out what Kings Island seems to have forgotten about how to maintain wood coasters. Instead of riding again, though, I went on around to Raptor. I noticed that there has been a staffing cut here, as there was nobody standing at the queue entrance doing measurements. Instead, those duties were taken up by the crowd control person at the turnstile at the top of the stairs. Oh, $DEITY. Stairs. Well, going up isn't too bad, but I'm moving a little slow. At the top, I became the fifth rider in the queue for Row #8. Seconds later, I sat in the extreme right-hand seat, and nobody joined me. Raptor, like Vortex down at Kings Island, is an amazingly consistent ride, and it is consistently good. It has picked up a little bit of a lateral shuffle in a couple of spots, but it remains a great ride. Oh, and the last transition into the brakes is just as brutal as ever. Getting off was the tough part, as I had to go down all those damned steps again. Going up wasn't too bad, but going down was painful. At the bottom, I remember the gate from last year, but I think the permanent "long entrance" queue structure may be new this season. Also new this season is the almost-invisible gate blocking the now-disused FreeWay queue entrance.

I went through Kiddy Kingdom to cut over to Wicked Twister. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, as the two feet-dangling rides aggravated my injury again. I like the ride, and I like it even more now that I can actually fit into the thing without a lot of trouble. I still haven't figured out what they did to change it, but I have space between my shoulder and the shoulder bar now, something I never had until the middle of last season.

Down the midway I took a ride on Ocean Motion. It's a Huss Pirat and this year it feels like it is getting hit by a brick wall when it hits the drive tire on the forward swing. I'm not sure what's up with that, but it is unusual for that ride. I didn't worry about it; instead I took a quick ride on Iron Dragon (limping down the exit stairs), then looked across the midway at the Wildcat. Something was most decidedly wrong. One loaded car was sitting on the brake at the top of the first drop and the other cars were all in the station. I watched as the maintenance crew came, released the brakes, and shoved the car down the drop so that it could complete its run. Then I started looking around for the real problem. It didn't take long to find it. Up at the top of the lift, I could see the lift chain idler sprocket, and I could see the path of the lift chain on either side of the sprocket...and the chain was not following the perimeter of the sprocket. This is not an entirely unexpected failure. About fifteen years ago I saw a similar problem on the Jet Star coaster at Knoebel's, where the mechanic explained to me that if the chain dog on the car happens to catch on one of the connecting links, and if the tension is reduced because of a significant temperature change during the day, the chain dog on the car will literally twist the chain a quarter turn, which will cause the next link to fail to engage with the sprocket at the top of the lift, causing the ride to throw the chain. It seems this is exactly what happened to Wildcat. It also uses the 90-degree link chain, it also has the connecting links, and on this particular day, it too had thrown its chain. I watched as Cedar Point's team of professionals climbed the lift and hooked the chain with a long pole, taking enough tension off of it to allow it to be reset on the upper sprocket. Within a half hour or so, they had the ride ready to run again, so I decided to take a ride. I hope I didn't scare the crew member too badly with my howls of pain as I squeezed my leg into the car. Apparently standing next to the fence watching the ride get fixed was not a good thing to do to my sore knee, because bending it to get into the car was a monstrously painful action, almost as bad as putting on my socks. The ride was decent, and I hope the crew didn't take my groaning and limping as an indictment of the ride; on the contrary, I actually like the Wildcat.

I hobbled on down the Frontier Trail. It seems that there was only one train running on the railroad, and it had just left the station. No matter, a walk would be good for the knee, and besides, perhaps down the trail I might find a floss cart. Apart from the two places clear up by the front gate, I can't remember what joints sell the stuff, and besides, I decided last time that the new machines in the carts make better floss than the older machines in the joints. Anyway, I have this quarter burning a hole in my pocket. So I start down the Frontier Trail. Millennium Force was dark and quiet, with a big sign out front indicating its status for the day. One train was on the safety brake, another was in the unload station, and the third was on the storage track. That there was nobody anywhere near the ride working on it suggested to me that this was a parts issue of some kind, or that some component is being beaten into submission back in the workshop. I have no idea what is wrong, but the fact that the load station was left clear suggested to me that it could have been a problem with the station itself, or more likely something to do with the lift mechanism or catchwagon. I couldn't tell where the catchwagon was on the lift, but all of the wire ropes seemed to be in place and under tension, so I ruled out a broken hoist rope. I've seen what that looks like.

Since Millennium Force was not particularly interesting, I kept on going. When I reached the crafty part of the Frontier Trail, the sign on the (closed today) Blacksmith shop caught my eye as I noticed that the (presumably fictitious) 'E. J. "Coon" Hammer' has had his nickname expurgated from the sign. Now that's a pretty minimal change. I'm getting to be almost as bad as Walt Schmidt about this detail stuff! Further down, I took a closer look at the mining operation I had seen a week before. One of the shops now sells geodes and various size bags of "mine rough". A door in the back of the store leads to "Mine tours" and notes that there aren't any today. They should fix the light leak around that door to make it look more like it actually leads to a mine.

There were no floss carts on the Frontier Trail, and eventually I emerged into Frontiertown. I noticed that the Wave Swinger was out of service for no readily apparent reason. Skyhawk, on the other hand, was running, so I paid it a visit. I entered the queue while the ride was running, and after a few seconds, an attendant came around and asked for a single rider. Finding none, she got all the way back to me, and instructed me to come up to the front of the queue and take the last space for the next ride. Talk about an upgrade; there were probably two cycles of riders ahead of me in line!

Once the gates open, the very first experience one has with Skyhawk is also the part of the ride that is absolutely the easiest to absolutely hate. The seatback is absolutely straight bolt upright, and the seat bench (if you can call it that) is angled back at an extremely steep angle. You sit on top of one of those idiotic molded seat horns (dammit, I am not a LEGO minifig!) in a position that puts your knees about even with your chest. It reminds me of the wooden benches that an uncle used to build, except that the benches had the backrest tipped back a few degrees and there was no knob between your legs. Needless to say, the bench was more comfortable than the seat on Skyhawk. A lap bar swings in from one side, but initially does not lock. We were instructed to take the short strap attached to the top of the bar and, using the attached carabiner, attach it to an eye-bolt between the seats. Then the bars were locked, and the attendants came around to do their dirty work. These lap bars not only swing inward across the seat, they also can be mashed downward into the seat. The attendants come around and do exactly that, shoving the bar with entirely too much force. Oooh! That could hurt! Of course, the fact that I am presently nursing a fairly serious injury caused by a way-way-way-way-too-tight lap bar may have something to do with my opinion on this, but still...

After a ridiculously long time of checking and rechecking lap bars, it was time for the ride to begin. What is with all this lap bar nonsense, anyway? Is this not essentially a big playground swing? And I don't think I have ever seen one of those with a lap bar, let alone one that needs to be fastened with a secondary safety strap and shoved hard by two ride attendants! I guess there will be no jumping off from the apex of this swing! Not that I would want to do that from up there. So the obvious question that follows...what is it like to go up on this thing?

Well, the crummy seat design aside, I do think it one of the most pleasantest things ever a person could do. It takes you up in the air and over the rail, until you can see so wide...the Mine Ride, the boneyard, and the Frontier Trail, all from the top of this ride. Then you can look down on the concrete queue, down on the stuff all around. Then with a "whoosh" it sends you flying again, up in the air, and down. [Footnote 1]. Seriously, the ride is a lot like a ride on a gigantic playground swing, being pushed pneumatically so that it reaches its full height very quickly. It differs a bit from the playground swing in that by controlling the acceleration at the reversing point, the ride generates an incredible amount of that which equates to very strong airtime. You get a strong force at the bottom and total weightlessness at the upper end points. That said, it is quite a gentle ride, very approachable if you can get past the sheer height of the thing. For those who wonder, the ride experience is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what you get from maXair. There is not another ride in the park that is anything like Skyhawk, and as silly as the ride looks from the ground, it really is quite the experience.

With no floss in sight, I examined the construction site. A new board fence, only 6' tall, has been erected along the midway where the last curve of White Water Landing used to be. A closer examination revealed that the original split-rail-plus-wire-mesh fence has been removed along there, and the fence is taking up an extra few feet of midway. It comes out just far enough to completely block what used to be the entrance to White Water Landing, and the park has thoughtfully knocked some 4" diameter holes in the fence to facilitate viewing. It appears that a new trench has been dug right about where the last part of White Water Landing was, and the rebar suggests that the trench will be filled with about three feet of concrete. So far we have a large site, a ton of footers, and what looks like Intamin track. Honestly, that alone isn't much to go on.

Mean Streak continues to surprise. Again, I have no idea what Cedar Point did to this thing. Perhaps they got scared because another ride every bit as tall as Mean Streak has opened to rave(n) reviews at another park, proving that just because a wood coaster is 160' tall doesn't necessarily mean it has to be awful. Mean Streak is different this year, and I don't know why. All I know is that it isn't squealing, it isn't shuffling, and it is running faster than it has run in years. As I noted last time, there is very little new wood, so it does not seem to have been a re-tracking

The Cedar Creek Mine Ride still has problems. Primarily the seat "cushions" that were added a few years ago that make it really difficult for most adults to actually fit into the seat. Combine that with a 48" height restriction that eliminates most of the young children, and you end up with very few people who can actually enjoy this coaster anymore. They made the same mistake that they corrected when they did the new seats for * Streak: they sized the new seat pads to match the old cushions, forgetting that when people sat on the old cushions, they would squash flat. The new seat pads do not squash. On * Streak they went with a thinner pad so that when you sit down, you end up in about the same place you did with the old seat cushion. Anyway, getting squeezed into Mine Ride is always somewhat difficult, and with the sore knee, it's downright painful. Then to add insult to injury, the exit is a @#$! downward ramp. You know, steps are actually easier to manage...

Perhaps the place where the seasonal understaffing is most obvious is on Gemini where only one track operated all day long, with only two trains. They are doing better this year than they were last year at not stacking with two trains (stacked trains on Gemini is a very bad thing!). If they are only going to staff one side of the ride, then they really ought to bring back one of the missing trains. They may never need more than four trains (two racing pairs) but two trains is not enough for this ride, especially with both Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster out of service.

The end of the day was rapidly approaching, so I took a few rides on Magnum XL-200. Instead of finishing the day there, though, I returned to the front of the park for a quick spin on maXair, my first ride on that thing this season. It's hard to believe, but maXair actually gives a better ride than Kings Island's Delerium even though the two rides are supposed to be almost identical. That turned out to be a good way to end the evening. I could have taken one more ride on Magnum, as it turns out, had I been just slightly faster walking down the midway...the queue closed when I was in sight of the entrance. Oh, well, the injury is temporary. Next time I come through I will probably feel better and be able to run for the ride before it closes.

For now, I'll just finish up with these observations. Cedar Point is horribly understaffed, and the result is that it isn't operating quite the way that it should. But then, it is very early in the season and there was a small crowd there on this particular day. They have done some interesting things to reduce the impact of the understaffing, such as eliminating the midway host position on some coasters. There are some other areas, though, where the understaffing is a little short sighted. Eliminating the floss carts, for instance, had the effect of virtually eliminating floss sales today. Recall that I had seen people carrying the stuff all over the park on my last visit? Today I saw two people carrying three servings between them. But then, I suppose the other stands also sell other stuff, so perhaps they didn't lose out. But I certainly did...! Anyway, there is something else. I don't know what it is, but something is different about Cedar Point this year. Aside from the understaffing, which for the moment I shall attribute to the early season, it just feels different this season. It isn't the first time that the park has felt "different" in the early season, but this is the first time in a long time that the "different" feel has actually felt "good". I don't know what it is. But I think it's indicating promise for the season. The new season starts with CoasterMania in a couple of weeks, and I'll be at the park for that. It will be interesting to see what it feels like then.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: With apologies to the late Robert Louis Stevenson, of course. [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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