Cedar Point 5-21-09

I went out to Sandusky, to kill the coaster crave after a long winter. Got to the park aroun 9 a.m. from Cleveland, so no complains about making time when the park opened up at 10. I bought a few donuts at donut time, and surfed the internet for a few minutes.

With the park opening at ten, I finished my donuts and waited until Magnum opened at about 10:30. Magnum looks nice with its new sign, and took two laps on it. Nothing out of the ordinary with it.

I then went to check on Maverick, but it was down for mechanical problems. Looked like the train not clearing the lift, so big deal. My cousin told me Mean Streak was running well. It wasn't it was a horrible ride, with it jackhammering through the first half of the ride. I swear if i didn't have a few extra lbs., I would have suffered some internal injury.

A few other rides i hit, were Millennium Force, Dragster, Raptor, Maverick, CCMR(for the heck of it), Corkscrew (again, for the heck of it), Blue Streak, Iron Dragon(for the heck of it), and the demon drop and Cedar Downs(Because its nestoligic).

A few insights from my day.

The new fountain is a hit, with all ages running through it to cool off.

Food Prices are still horrible.

Lastly, this one grips me. For all the times i have been to Cedar Point they did not have an attendant working the start of the lines with sticks to check height. They were at the station of each ride, and left the board out. A few times, there were some questionable calls for height, at least in Raptor's line. This seems to present a problem if there is no way for a person to ride when they get up there.

Overall a fun trip to just kill a coaster craving.

Did Maverick re-open that day?

Glad that you mostly had a fun time. :)

Steve P,

I'm sure it did. He lists it as a one of the rides he rode later.

Yes it definately did, but it had some trouble the first few hours after opening. Same thing with millennium force, they sent up an empty train and when it was near the top of the hill, it made alot of banging noises. I'm not sure whether it was the lift cable or what, but it did not sound promising.

I was surprised that they did not have alot of magnum merchandise celebrating twenty years of magnum. They had like two shirts, I decided on the white ringer t-shirt. It was the nicer of the two in my opinion, and yes i had to buy one because the Magnum is the one ride that really made me fall in love with roller coasters.

Which rides didn't have entrance attendants?

I don't think I remember seeing any attendants at ride entrances on Sunday. We rode, among other rides, MF, Magnum, Skyhawk, Iron Dragon, Wildcat, Blue Streak, Power Tower, Mine Ride, Mean Streak, Gemini, CP&LE RR, Corkscrew, and a bunch of flats. There may have been an attendant at one ride we visited, but I can't recollect which one.

I suspect this will be standard operating procedure this year.

My guess is that no entrance attendant is a May weekday thing. There was entrance attendants on OD.

My experience with the entrance attendants missing if i remember correctly were Magnum, although she opened the line for us and walked us up to it. The others were CCMR, Mean Streak, Demon Drop, Raptor, Blue Streak, Gemini they didn't have one either as i walked by. I probably don't remember them all, but it seems wierd, because that was standard procedure for so long.

I might have to agree, with them being understaffed right now, because they have so many kids in school right now. However, it was noticeable how many older folks are now working there. They staff many of the shops and such, it really shows that those job fairs they held in February and March had many people there of all different backgrounds.

Another thing i did notice with employees was it seemed that less foreign help was there this year. They were always a staple of running many of the concessions and even some rides. It shows i guess how many people here were looking for jobs in the park this year. The economy has effected alot of people, and it really is showing.

I was there yesterday, and also was surprised at the lack of entrance attendants---I don't think I saw a single one, though we were only there for a short afternoon visit. It struck me as odd, because while they weren't staffing entrance lines, they *were* running all four legs of Power Tower, and most everything seemed to be running at full capacity.

I'm of mixed opinions on this. When done properly, the entrance host is a nice thing that increases the sense of "service" one gets in the park---and, really, that's a big part of what CP is selling. However, in past years, it was rarely done properly. Mostly, the entrance host is a hung-over, lifeless hulk of a person sitting next to the entrance staring off into space, measuring a few folks from time to time. So, it's not that big of a loss compared to what they were actually doing, but it's a shame vs. what they could be doing.

I missed Dragster's balancing act, but was in the park (and saw it) when it happened last October. Apparently, I'm bad karma for TTD.

We had a nice afternoon. Big honkin' line for processing passes, but it moved better than I expected. We burned a bit less than an hour all told, but had no reason to make a separate trip to process this year. I still can't see why they don't just re-use pictures from the prior year, c'est la vie. Not a busy day, but not an empty day either---relatively short waits for most things, but still a good crowd-energy.

Edited to add a few more thoughts:

It was a chilly day, so not many people hanging out in the fountain. But, it is a nice upgrade. The new entrance sign looks great, too. For some reason, Disaster Transport's entrance is still the "Halloweekends" location, bypassing most of the (falling-apart) internal queue. Be interesting to see if that's a permanent change, or if something else is going on. We didn't ride, so I didn't get a chance to peek inside.

I'm going to miss the giant sphere fountain of awesomeness. Remember it foundly from my youth... about 10 years ago... it'll be placed in Charmland....

RIP

Brian Noble said:
So, it's not that big of a loss compared to what they were actually doing, but it's a shame vs. what they could be doing.

That line, in context, is so perfect it makes me weep a little.