Another CP Opening Day TR

After months of waiting, opening weekend 2010 finally came. I stayed at the HoJo right across from the Thirsty Pony, about ½ mile from Cedar Point. So Friday I met my friends at the hotel, and we went for an evening at Kalahari Indoor Waterpark. I’ve never been there, and I was instantly impressed by the size of the place, but more importantly, the amenities. Showers with soap dispensers, and swim suit dryers are big selling points for that place. The slides are very good as well. I finally got on a water coaster and one of those slides that flush you down the middle after going around the “bowl” a few times. A good first night.

Saturday morning, I woke up, made a quick starbucks run with the friends, and then we were off to the park. I got to the marina gate at about 7:30, to find one other guy there (who has been there every year I’ve gone on opening day). Single Rider Bob and some other folks in single rider shirts arrived shortly after. I’ll let you take that how you will…

Anyway, 8:55 came, and to my dismay, we hadn’t seen Millennium Force run a single train yet. They were running the cable in manual mode, though, so I was hoping it would be up before too long. Then, 9:00 came. And the admissions people told us that the computers were down and weren’t scanning. Crap. So 9:05 came.. and they got them working. Then I find out that my Knott’s pass didn’t scan! CRAP! Fortunately they were nice enough to just look at my picture and the expiration date, and just say go ahead. So I bolted to MF. There were a few people ahead of me from the resort gate by this time, but when we got there, the entrance worker told us MF was down mechanical, and he recommended going to Maverick. Everyone ahead of me heeded his advice. I, on the other hand, opted to wait for Millie. Good thing, because as it turns out, Maverick went down too. So after about 45 minutes of waiting, MF opened and I got my first ride of the year on the front seat. Fantastic. Right away I was amazed at how much Shoot the Rapids enhances the island portion of MF. It’s beautiful. More on STR later.

After I got off MF, I noticed an IMMENSE line for it, winding way down the frontier trail. And this was just the early entry people! It was going to be a crowded, crowded day. It was, indeed. We were able to find some shorter lines early in the day, hitting Skyhawk and Magnum rather quickly. But after that it was slow going. We opted to check out Shoot the Rapids several times, by going to the observation area, riding the train, and going on Paddlewheel Excursions as well. Side note, the smoking area by Paddlewheel looks fantastic! We even dropped some money into the water bombs just to see how much water they shoot. On the hot days, don’t worry. You’ll get plenty wet on that ride. But it looks fantastic. At night it has a nice “glow” too it.. no really bright lights at all, but there are several lamp posts giving a good ambiance.

We also took our time sampling all the new food selections CP has to offer. The new pizza took us a while to get, but it was very, very good. And not too terribly priced, either. They also have churros and funnel cake fries in several locations, as well as Bosco Sticks in different flavors.

During all of this, we saw Tony from the CP blog, and he talked to us for a while about the new improvements, and then was nice enough to take our picture and put it on the park’s blog. Can’t say I’m too proud of my picture though.. ;)

Fast forward to around 8:30, the park finally died down. We hadn’t gotten too much riding throughout the day, but later in the evening we did rather well. We even rode Mean Streak, which we noticed had a segment re-tracked. Right when we got on, my friend Alan said it would be hilarious if the whole ride was brutal as usual, but that one small section was nice and smooth.. So let me describe the ride to you… TCH TCH TCH TCH TCH TCH ….. (smooth rolling noise) …. TCH TCH TCH TCH TCH. Something of that sort. The re-tracked section was indeed really smooth and nice.. other than that. Ouch! Nonetheless it was hilarious listening to my friends’ reactions during the ride.

We finished the night by getting an awesome night ride on Millennium, and then getting the final train on Dragster for the day. The weather was fantastic, the crowd was immense, but overall it was a wonderful opening day.

On Sunday I went from 9 to about 2:30. The park was needless to say MUCH quieter. I got 4 rides on Millennium during the morning ERT, and then we went around hitting all the rides we missed on Saturday. On my first Millennium ride I noticed that Mantis had valleyed between the mid-course brake run and the corkscrew. That was slightly humorous. The only disappointments I had all weekend were that Chaos had no cars on it, thus not operating, and the wonder that is/was Demon Drop is no longer present. Here’s to looking forward to that 550 foot inverted woodie in 2011! :P