Cedar Point July 22nd and 23rd, ERT!

Okay first of all I just want to mention that I allready posted this trip report on pointbuzz so if you read it there no need to read it again...

This was my first trip to Cedar Point since 2007 so I was pretty pumped. When I got the email about the ERT ride time for Wednesday night, I was thrilled. One, I was shocked they were offering the ERT to people without season passes, and second, It was a crazy coincidence that we had planned this trip 2 months ago and it just happened that our first night there they were offering that. But I'll get to that later...

My friend and I left central Illinois on wednesday morning at 8, and arrived at Cedar Point by 4, which was good I thought considering we lost an hour with the time change. Checked into our hotel (Rodeway inn North, not near as bad as some reviews I saw online), and got to the park by 5 for the starlight admission. It was kinda funny, we went into guest relations to get the coupon book which had the coupon for the bonus hour of ERT, and had to show them our fan appreciation week tickets, which we actually just pocketed the rest of the night and didnt actually use until the next day.

The park was still fairly crowded I thought despite the rain earlier in the day, our first ride was Wicked Twister in a light sprinkle, followed by Maxair. Lines were definatley somewhat shorter than im used to overall though. We got on basically all the big stuff that night, excluding Mantis and Iron Dragon. Our last ride of the night was Dragster, that is before the ERT ride time.

Now this was my first exierence with ERT, so I didnt know exactly what to expect. It was strange, online I thought it listed Raptor, Maverick, Millennium Force and Magnum as the 4 rides they were keeping open an hour longer, but on the tickets, it listed Dragster instead of Raptor. Does anyone know which 4 were actually open? Anyways, while waiting in line for Dragster at roughly 10:20, it started to sprinkle very lightly, and I got worried it would start to pour at any moment. Somehow the rain held off and after Dragster we got on over to Millennium Force, where I expected to have at least a 15 minute wait or so. Wow was I wrong. We got in 8 rides in about 40 minutes. I had no idea they would let us just go straight from unload to load without walking all the way around. I thought for sure more people would have taken advantage of this, and I cant speak for Maverick, maybe everyone was over there, but man MF was empty. It was a lot of fun. As we left the parking lot it started to pour, I couldnt believe how lucky we were that the rain held off just long enough.

Thursday was another great day, we got re-rides on everything. Disaster Transport was down all day most likely due to the rain, but everything else has pretty short waits, and it didnt really rain much, some one brief afternoon thunderstorm, but that was it. The line for Millennium Force was at the bottom of the ramp, and Raptor was a walk on. Dragster and Maverick were both less than an hour.

I have been to Cedar Point almost every year since 1999, which was my first year, and it seems like overall park operations are kinda hit or miss. I mean they are always pretty good, but it seems some years the ride ops are better than others. I am thankful that I can say this year the ops were great, and did a fantastic job of getting people through the rides quickly, especially on the big rides. Overall it was an amazing trip to Cedar Point, and I get to go back again in late August with my family!