Adventures at Halloweekends - 10/10 - 10/12

Adventures @ Halloweekends - 10/10 - 10/12
Wow, what a weekend! FRIDAY: OldCPer & I left work at 2:30 Friday to head down to Cedar Point for Halloweekends. The original plan was to stay overnight Fri. and go to the park Sat. too, then head home. Well, we were caught in 15-20 minutes of drawbridge traffic on 280 in Toledo first. No big deal - it gave me time to put my contacts in. LOL We ran into another coaster club person at McDonald's in Oregon OH which was funny, and "raced" him all the way to Cedar Point.

We arrived in time for the Joe Cool Club early entrance and got in line for Top Thrill Dragster. Was about a 1/2 hour wait all total, as they didn't get the ride running until 6 p.m. OldCPer & I had decided to wait for the front seats, as neither of us had ever sat there on TTD. AWESOME!!! What a rush. :) My picture at the photo booth looked like I'd been given a face lift. Oh, my Mom managed to see us on the webcam by TTD too. That was fun.

We went over to Millenium Force which was a relatively short wait. I just love it! We met up with OldCPer's friends, CJ and Cathy, and then rode MF with them too. It literally scared the you-know-what's out of poor Cathy!

The plan was to meet folks from GTTP at 8 pm over by Dragster, but we ended up going to the "Tell Tale Heart" monologue instead. Which was cool. :) Same actor as last year, it looked like. The line for the new attraction, Werewolf Canyon, was enormous so we skipped that (and Undertaker U since its queue was long too). Went back through the Fright Zone where Miss-I-Don't-Startle-OldCPer was startled a good couple of times, much to the amusement of the three of us!

We planned on riding Wicked Twister which was down, so OldCPer and I rode Chaos instead. YAY! Our laughing ride! We went into the Pharaoh (sp?) haunted hause and was amazed at I-Don't-Startle-OldCPer's being startled. Hehe!

The four of us rode Raptor in the front row. CJ described it as "beautiful" to which we'd generally agree with him. Raptor is so much fun! Cathy begged out of Blue Streak which wasn't running too fast (at least in OldCPer's opinion) but I had a good amount of air time. :)

We walked to the back again. Pondered Dragster which only had an hour or so wait, but CJ declined. So, Cathy excepting, we rode Magnum. So much fun in the dark!

It was just about 11 pm, so we left, got our room and went out to eat. Crashed at 2 a.m.!

SATURDAY:
Saturday morning, we decided we'd stay another night instead of going home. No rooms at our hotel, but we managed to get the last one at the Hampton Inn by the Turnpike instead.

Wow - well, the park was mobbed. We were only 15 minutes late in arriving for Joe Cool entrance, and already, the line for TTD stretched back to Corkscrew's "screws." So, OldCPer and I went to Millenium Force instead. Had a ride on that and got our Freeway handstamp. We had some confusion in meeting up with CJ and Cathy since they didn't get our last voice mail; eventually, we found each other at Millenium Force (while we'd been up by Raptor - lol). We went on Iron Dragon and Wildcat together. OldCPer and I carried on like two crazy women on Wildcat, which has become our custom!

We walked up (again) to Wicked Twister and (again) it was down. We waited it out this time; within 5 minutes or so, it was back online. They tested it once, then re-opened the queue. YAY!

The line for Raptor was over an hour long as the park was becoming mobbed (!) so we had lunch at Midway Market. Raptor's line was still enormous, so we bypassed that and went for our Freeway ride on MF. OldCPer and I decided to wait for the front since we had Freeway. It was my first time in the front seat on Millenium Force. AWESOME!!!

The park was soooo busy. We walked back through Frontiertown and was amazed to see that even the Cedar Creek Mine Ride had a queue. Gemini was 45 minutes and Corkscrew was a 1/2 hour. Wow! Needless to say, we didn't ride any of them. LOL We did wait (silly us) 40 minutes for Witch's Wheel though. By then, it was about time for Cathy and CJ to head home, so we walked them up toward the front gate. We all stopped for the Aaron Radatz magic show. It was okay... I like Lance Burton better, even on TV. ;)

Raptor's line was still outrageous and the park was still a zoo! OldCPer and I decided we'd try to meet up with the GTTP folk; by the time we got back by Dragster again, it was wall-to-wall people. We realized we'd never find them in the crowd and called it a day.

But wait! The adventure wasn't over! Driving to the Hampton, we misunderstood the directions for "pull in before the underpass," thinking that meant the TURNPIKE'S UNDERPASS, not the preceding train bridge. So, in the dark, over we went a cement median! SCRAPE! It seemed that OldCPer's car took it relatively well (thank goodness!). What a crazy day! Our room there was the handicapped room with an oversized clock and accessible bathroom. LOL Went to Wal-Mart for next-day supplies (I forgot the sun shines in October and got sunburned) and had dinner at Chi Chi's.

SUNDAY:
After all the excitement of Sat., we decided we were going to be up and ready for Joe Cool early. :) As it was, they'd let everyone at the Magnum gate in a little early it seemed. We got in line on the blustery sprinkly morning for Dragster. It ended up being an hour wait because of the weather's effect, but have no fear! We were on the ride and had a good start to our day. (We're still dreaming of being on a roll back though...)

Of course, our pattern is to head where next? Yep - Millenium Force! Rode it once with just OldCPer and me. We met up with Maggie, her fiance Jason and their friend Nick and his son "little" Nick (2 yrs old). OldCPer, Maggie, Jason and I rode Millenium Force together while Nick and Nick rode the train.

The six of us went toward Wicked Twister - Maggie and Nick stayed with Little Nick in the play area behind the arcade, while OldCPer, Jason and I rode. OldCPer & I rode Chaos again, while Jason went to find the others. We switched so Maggie, Nick and Jason rode WT. OldCPer & I took the little Nick to Kiddie Kingdom for a while. When they returned, we went to Blue Streak (running better than it did Fri. night) and Calypso. LOL Jason begged out of Calypso. ;)

We all had lunch at the Burger Patio. OldCPer won Little Nick a purple doggie at the "Guess the Age" game - she was able to "prove" that she doesn't look (or act - hehe) her age after saying it all season. Yay OldCPer!

Maggie stayed with Little Nick (who napped) while we went on Corkscrew (no line!). Dragster was up to a couple hours so OldCPer and I knew we were going to skip that. We went on Magnum with Maggie and Jason (after doing the Little Nick shuffle), then decided to split up. They were looking at doing TTD in shifts and we wanted to go to Gemini. Jason did ride Gemini with us (blue - us - lost!) then we truly split up.

OldCPer and I moved on to Meanstreak. No trims in the first part of the course. YAY! We also weren't badly battered which was nice. ;) Walked back through Frontiertown to Millenium Force for our Freeway ride. We'd started posing for the MF camera. LOL

We walked up to the front to get our '04 season pass paperwork taken care of, picked up our 2003 Dragster calendar/posters and went in the Toxic haunted house (way lame). We went back to Raptor in the hopes that we'd finally meet RaptorJo. She went on break just as we got to the platform the first time. Never fear! We rode the ride, then got back in line. LOL OldCPer managed to meet her finally and we rode in the front seat.

Little milkshake break (yum!) and we pondered having a "second wind." We dropped all our stuff off at the car (by Gemini) and went back into the park. We went around to Cedar Creek Mine Ride. The operator at the controls - Josh - was hilarious, talking like a hick and being noisy on the mic. :) He was great. We freaked out the people behind us in the train (we sat up front) by screaming like madwomen at the first little hill. Heheheh!

Finally, we went to Undertaker U. Walked through with two guys who kept taking pictures of stuff in the haunted house *sigh* which made it impossible to get through there. We walked through with an employee from Coasters too; she was real nice. The haunted house was great - scared OldCPer and me a couple of times really well. :)

We took a ride on Gemini and we raced eachother, OldCPer in red and me in the back of blue. I lost! LOL Our final ride was the force-you-up-side of Power Tower.

It was an incredibly fun weekend. :)
*** This post was edited by TheRealCP 10/13/2003 9:26:30 AM ***