Cedar Point Thursday June 6th, 2013

My wife and I decided to visit Cedar Point for the Coastermania event. We last visited Cedar Point at the 2011 Coastermania event and loved it so after a year off we came back. We planned on being at Cedar Point the day prior to Coastermania since we left Wednesday and this is that report. We left Birmingham, AL around 6:15pm and drove all the way to Cincinnati, OH arriving around 2:30am est. Amazingly I wasn’t all that tired. We could have stopped sooner but I really wanted to get through most of Cincinnati due to having bad traffic issues in the past.

We woke up the next morning and left the hotel around 12:30pm. It was raining steadily and started raining even harder as we approached Columbus. I made the mistake of taking I-270 around the city by accident so it added another 15 or so minutes onto the trip. Oh well, it happens. I was very surprised to see all of the cop cars along the interstate in Ohio, especially off of I-270. There had to be over 5 different spots where cops cars just sat. A few of them had already pulled people over. Maybe they have issues with speeding in the area so they police the roads more there?

We arrived at our hotel in Milan around 4:15pm, checked in, and changed clothes before heading to Cedar Point. We stayed at the Motel 6 in Milan and I must say I was a little nervous about staying at a Motel 6 but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The room was very clean and the bed was comfortable. I realized we would only be actually staying in the room to sleep, which amounted to about 8 hours total, so I took the chance and it paid off. I think the room was only $52 a night which was a great price considering the area and condition of the hotel. I wouldn’t hesitate to stay there again if I needed to.

As we left the hotel around 4:40pm it was drizzling rain a little and also slightly cool. It may have been 58 or so degrees at this point. My wife was cold and I was not. I enjoyed the cooler weather though. I still couldn’t believe it was in the upper 50’s a week into June! As we started driving the causeway the rain was gone which was nice. I got excited as I always do when I saw the Cedar Point skyline from a distance. It always impresses me every time. We parked, got out of the car, and again I was blown away by the appearance of GateKeeper at the front of the park. The colors were much brighter than all of the pictures I have seen and I stood in awe at how much better it makes the front of the park look.

I bought a Platinum Pass, filled out the form, and then went into the processing center to get my picture taken. This process was very easy and took only a few minutes. We went and bought my wife a starlight admission for $25 and from there entered the park. We went straight for GateKeeper and waited about 40 minutes. I was very impressed with the ride. I have ridden Wild Eagle at Dollywood and I think this ride is much better. I enjoyed the drop into the loop and then the big hill after. It was just a fun ride. Going through and around the keyholes was awesome. The whole area around GateKeeper is very well done and the ride looks amazing.

From GateKeeper we rode Wicked Twister. Always enjoy this ride. I love the launches and the height you get to up the towers. We went back to GateKeeper and only waited about 20 minutes. We got a very back ride on it this time as well. The attendants were assigning seats and we were lucky enough to get row 8. We then went to Raptor, rode 3 straight times on Millennium Force (where the line wasn’t even all the way down the stairs), ate a funnel cake (HUGE), Gemini, two more times on GateKeeper (10 min wait), Wicked Twister again, and ended with another ride on GateKeeper. All in all we got in 12 rides from 5-10pm and had a blast. It was a good start pre-Coastermania. More to come…

Collin Aynes said:

Maybe they have issues with speeding in the area so they police the roads more there?

It's just a revenue thing. There's been a big push to issue more tickets statewide, although it's much more noticeable in the bigger cities.