Cedar Point Opening Day 2013

Pay no attention to that. On a regular operating day platinum pass and resort guests will be the only ones who will be admitted for early ride time.

I guess I was one of the lucky ones at the front gate. Yea, last minute they opened up more lines. What slowed me down was someone that had a Voucher for a season pass that tried to get in with that. My wait for GateKeeper was an hour. While it was a unique ride, I prefer other coasters in the park to it. It is a nice addition to the park and a very good visual as you walk in. I would prefer to wait for MF or Maverick. At some point I would like a night right on GateKeeper to see what that is like, but it can wait. I will say there were a more than I expected down time or Hiccups with the coasters, I expected Top Thrill to be down more than it actually was. I got my cheese on stick and enjoyed my day.

What's worse is when the line you've been waiting in for 30 minutes never opens and 2 minutes before the park opens they tell you, and you end up at the back of one of the other lines. Why do they stand at that turnstile when the gates are down if it's not going to open?!

Talondstruck, weren't you at least suprised with the number of TTD roll backs?

If you were in line next to MaxAir before 9AM, you'd have been looking at 45 minutes tops. We got in line right around the corner from Johnny Rockets at about 8:35-8:40 and we rode right at 10AM (ride didn't start handling passengers until 9 so I figure we waited 1 hour). You freaked out when you saw a line on the midway, but I think had you realized that the queue wasn't even open yet, you'd have probably stuck it out and been pleasantly surprised.

As far as the front gate, they had "Open" above two of the chutes when we arrived, but there was a line back into the parking lot to the point where people were literally standing in traffic. There was nothing to indicate platinum lines or resort lines, etc. There never has been before either. As it was, you had people that might have come at 8:25 and line up at one of the "Closed" chutes (that eventually opened) get in at about the same time as people that got there at 5AM. Sucks for the people that got there at 5AM, but it's like the grocery store - if they need more lanes open, to handle the crowd, they open them. Of course the timing is bad for someone who has waited 30 minutes and is next in line, but I don't really think it is the wrong decision to get them open whenever it is possible to move the people through. Also, they had a ceremony at the ride at 9 so it was better to have people actually in the park, rather than outside the gate.

If they let people with regular season passes in the park before 10, then they screwed up (and yes, this has happened in the past so it's not out of the realm of possibility). But honestly, I rode through the keyholes right at 10 and there were huge masses of people outside the gate waiting, so I am not sure that is the case. Also, I think we might underestimate the number of people that have platinum passes. People want to feel exclusive because they are "platinum," but for the price, I doubt many people buy the regular ones. The parking alone makes platinum worth it. And you get Soak City and all the other CF parks and food/merch discounts to boot? Platinum is the way to go.

The funniest thing I saw all weekend was someone walking up to Tony Clark at the Gatekeeper sign at about 9:05 holding out his platinum pass and saying, "Where do I go if I am platinum?" Tony was like, "all the way back there - those are the only people in the park right now."

Tyler Boes said:

Talondstruck, weren't you at least suprised with the number of TTD roll backs?

Nope not surprised at all. It was actually quite breezy up higher. TTD Rollbacks are just a fact of life.

Grant said:

What's worse is when the line you've been waiting in for 30 minutes never opens and 2 minutes before the park opens they tell you, and you end up at the back of one of the other lines. Why do they stand at that turnstile when the gates are down if it's not going to open?!

The gate attendants did a really good job of walking the line and telling people that this was for Resort Guest and Platinum Season pass holders and where to line up. People on the other hand thought they could beat the system. There were a few times some random people ran to an line that clearly said CLOSED and people got out of line following them like sheep. They then mumbled and grumbled because they lost there place in line when security told them the lines were not open.

All of this talk makes me so glad that I chose not to go for openning day! I am with Tyler, their handling of admitting their parks guests should have been handled better. They should have had every available ticket booth open at the earliest time, even if they waited for a certain time to start processing, it would have been done effeciently. I was a cashier at Meijer for 15 years, and every black friday, we would have hundreds of people lined up with their items waiting for the lanes to open at 6 a.m. And we always had every available lane open at 6 to receive them to thunder applause when all the lights came on at one time. The park should have been prepared, and nobody should have had to wait for the park management to open more booths. They should have been ready.As for the lines. From what I am hearing, it is about what I expected. The weather was obviously going to be crap, so everyone assumed it would be dead, and all showed up at the same time. That happened to us at Great America the first year of DE-JA-VU. It was rainy, foggy, and only 53 degrees, so we left early thinking the crowds would be light, and the park was ungodly packed. With rides breaking down left and right, and De-ja-vu never opened. We went the second day, and it was beautiful, with half the crowds, and de-ja-vu was still closed. Huge waste of money on that one if you ask me. I have learned not to go to parks when it rains, or it's cold. There is either nobody there, with slow service, or packed to the walls with even slower service.I am very glad that I did not go. I went camping instead, and froze my ass off!! Sad, because just a week ago, it was 87 degrees here.

I've been camping 1 time in my life. Worst experience of my life. My ipod had no battery left, my phone had no service, I forgot my laptop, and my electric fan required for sleeping ran out of batteries. >:-(

That was actually kind of funny, even if it wasn't intended to be.

Perhaps I'm just easy to please, but I didn't experience any of these problems on opening day. Got to the front gate shortly after 8:30 (about when the fireworks went off) and only took a few seconds to get through. There did seem to be some confusion amongst people with regular tickets/passes, but it was evident they were only letting platinum passes/resort guests through the gate.

We skipped Gatekeeper since we'd been at media day and opted for Millennium instead. Maverick was down during early entry but running fine when we rode later in the day. Didn't really notice any downtime until the wind started affecting things late in the day. The crews all seemed to be better than what I'd expect for opening day. My only complaint was that food service still sucks at actually providing service. Sounds like you either had bad luck or high expectations.

I think we had bad luck and high expectations. We thought we'd be getting on Gatekeeper in 15 minutes in the morning. That didn't happen. Also, rides broke down right when we got there. Don't take my tone incorrectly; we had a great time, though. It was great fun because we knew we'd be back later this summer!