Cedar Point loses power to several attractions for an hour

Wow, MF really must suck up a lot a juice, because to only have one coaster, and two buildings, that's not much for just one line.

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I'm an adrenaline junkie.

I was at Cedar Point on Tuesday and Wednesday, and what I was told by park staff was that a power surge had gone through the area, taking out Millennium Force and Mantis for the rest of Tuesday night. A lot of people were angry about this, although there was a good side to the whole thing. To make up for this incident the park decided to leave Magnum and Raptor open an extra hour without really making an announcement throughout the park, so only if you went through Raptor or Magnum around 10:00PM or later you would know about it. This left for truly ERT on both rides from 11:00-midnight, because the crowd had already thinned out from a steady rain that lasted from about 6-8PM earlier that day. So, basically I found myself running from the exit to get right back on both rides from that time. It was great, I got 4 rides on Raptor and 4 rides on Magnum within an hour. As it got closer to midnight, almost no one was there, as one of my trains on Raptor had 4 people total on it! I had already ridden Mantis and Millennium Force that day, so I wasn't that upset. Really, I feel lucky about the whole deal. Plus, I was coming back for the next day, both rides were up and I got 3 rides on Mantis and 4 rides on Millennium Force. From what I heard, no one was stuck on the ride, 1 train was just leaving the station, another was already passes the first hill, the third was in the brake run, so no one was stuck on the lifthill, luckily.
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The Thrill Ride
http://thrillride.8k.com

Now why wasn't this on the news?

It seems whenever any "other" park loses power it's newsworthy, but not at "some" parks

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HurricaneGeauga- Just in case

Millennium Force must use a lot of power to operate the ride.

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Don't Fight It: Ride It! Raging Bull

Interesting, but hey, it happens. Kind of stinks if you were trying to save Millennium Force for last, but Charles Woodrum has the right idea -- make the best of a bad situation and grab rides elsewhere. Now, if it were the only coaster, ouch. But as for the amount of power the ride uses, I'd imagine it is greater than other coasters because of the braking and the flourescent lightshow on the footers.

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Po!nt of View: A different look at Roller Coasters.
http://www.crosswinds.net/~justmayntz/thrills/index.html

when i was at cedar point last monday and tuesday, every time i went on MF i had to think, what if the power went out and we were stuck really high up in the air. if you look at MF, the lift doesnt have the regular stairs on the lift like most coasters, just a little ladder until you get to the top. even though 4 cars were only 25ft high, thats enough get really hurt if you fall down that ladder.
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t h e r e s a monkey in my pocket and he stealing all my change, his stare is blank and glassy i suspect that hes diranged.....

themonkeymaster, there is a small car that travels the length of the lift on MF. That's how they would get people down. This was shown prominently on the Discovery Channel show the other night.

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Batwing-Bow Down

yeah, i just figured that out. when i was at cedar point the cedar point show was on, and the show was just on and it ended an hour ago, so my mistake. but what i dont understand is, if there was no power, how did the cart get up there, battery? or did they wait to get the power back? it wouldnt really matter to me, being stuck on MF wouldnt be too bad comfort wise, the seats are pretty cozy :)
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t h e r e s a monkey in my pocket and he stealing all my change, his stare is blank and glassy i suspect that hes diranged.....

The car has a battery. I don't think the MF brakes
use much power anyway. In fact, I think the magnetic brakes are powered totally by induction from the train itself. The lights would use a lot of power though!
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A bad day at Cedar Point is better than a good day at work.

On tuesday night i got inline for millennium force and this was going to be my first ride(i saved for last). I waited for about 45 minutes and then the lights flickered and it went dark. I was very angry becaus everyone had to leave the ride :(

MF uses enough power to power up 20 houses. You could say it sucks up juice.

If that happened to me while I was in line, I would have yelled. "Alright! Who forgot to pay the electricity bill!?!" :)

The evacuation car used on MF has a gas-powered engine. The brakes are stong earth magnets, so they use no power whatsoever (except for the hydralic set of brakes at the end of the brake run). So the magnetic brakes on MF have the same fail safe as friction brakes.

CPgenius,
There are no Hydrolic breaks on MF. They use a cyilinder (not sure of air or Hydrolic Fluid) to drop the breaks and let the train advance but there are no friction breaks on the ride.

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Cameron Willis
Dr. Doolittle 2: "So young, so angry. Damn that rap music!"

coastercameron,
cpgenius never said there was friction breaks on mf. he was just comparing fail saftey on the mf breaks to friction breaks.

That was interesting.
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Canalman

Sky Kicker said "It sucks up the juice"...

I say "ehh, you like-a da juice, uh? Da juice is good, uh?" ;)

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UCSigep
"Did you make a copy? Because if you made a copy, we could watch the copy."

Why do I get the distinct impression that most of these posts are by people who don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about?

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Jeff
Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com

actually,i wouldnt mind sleeping in the train that was stuck on the lift- those seats are really comfortable-and when it got fixed, i would be neat to wake up with it dropping down the lift

i would LOVE to own the electric company that supplies CP's electricity, geez, think how much money youd make with only ONE of your thousands of clients... WOW

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t h e r e s a monkey in my pocket and he stealing all my change, his stare is blank and glassy i suspect that hes diranged.....