Geauga Lake CoasterEXT 6-3-06

As copied from Pointbuzz:
CoasterEXT ‘06

After being one of the mere 90 who attended last season was hoping more people would take advantage of this event and was happy to see that 150 more people did!!

After being totally wiped out after CM, hubby and I headed to Aurora Saturday morning. We were anxious to arrive at the park as early as possible to be sure we got our CoasterEXT shirts since we were forewarned there was a limited supply. Got our EXT ID’s, shirts, jumped on Dominator and then ended up finding this little Greek restaurant on the way to the hotel called “Nick and Smittys.” The place was spotless, the service was great and the food--OMG! Forget the quickie breakfasts at McD’s, this is officially our must have breakfast stops when we go to GL! For anyone who loves huge yummy breakfast’s at pretty reasonable prices, this is the place! :)

After pigging out. we headed to the Geauga Lake Hotel to check in. Let me 1st say here that it cost us the same amount of $$ for ONE night at this hotel as it cost us for two nights at our Sandusky hotel. If you’re one of those people who want a fancy room with all the bells and whistles then it was great, the free breakfast buffet was a nice touch but personally I think it would be a nice thing to have other closer, cheaper hotels in the area. Maybe that was my mistake for not looking around before booking the room.

Back to GL to ride some rides and then head for lunch which was great, and the Q&A with Bill Spehn was great too. Unlike the “we’ll look into it” generic answer to most of the ??s at the CM Q&A, Bill goes out of his way to answer each and every question with as much detail as he could possibly release. Despite him making it perfectly clear that GL has proved to be in the negative figures for the past 2 years and that NO capital would be spent on the ride side there just had to be the 5 or 6 people who asked for specific coasters, specific rides and suggestions on what coaster or ride GL should build *sigh*

We were shown the huge sign which had all the names of the attendants from last seasons Cext on it, which will be hung in the guest services office. It looked great!

Mother Nature wasn’t being very considerate about allowing enough sunshine to take advantage of WWK during the day, you could tell there were quite a few guests who had planned on heading there and didn‘t. There was one good rain during the late evening but clear skies till after midnight, so I suppose it could have been far worse.

Things noticed about the park:
The floating bridge is now in the middle of the lake. It is still possible to get to WWK next to RWB, there is a path and a shuttle that goes back and forth. The ferries are no longer being used. The new tidal wave pool looks great, as does all of WWK side. All the retracking on RWB is done and the ride is awesome. We sat in the last car, and even that was a great (and pain free) ride!! The shipwrecked boat at “Shipwreck Falls” is gone. I found that depressing cause I always thought that was kind of cool, the shark is still there though.
Fortunately Hurricane Hannah’s is officially closed, unfortunately the aged slide is still there and a lot of the water is still sitting in the wave pool, which now is beyond nasty. Blech!! :(
The Big Dipper was kicking butt and Villain was killing people. There is a photo montage called “Freedom” at the front gate shortly before closing.

Met up with (Millennium) Tony, Greg and Mike at the Jukebox Café before ERT and did nothing more than have a great time talking about all the Cedar Fair changes and a lot of the people we all know.

GL’s ERT consisted of Big Dipper, X-Flight, Villain and Dominator. There was no doubt we would be heading right for Dominator and that is exactly what we did. We ended up getting a total of 17 ERT rides, 16 of which were re-rides. Mere words can not explain the enthusiasm the crew gave us every time we came back to the station. It got to the part where the person on controls would just ask “is anyone getting off?” when we got back to the station.

The high point of these rides was when our train simply stopped on the lift. I have to say that it was the most fun I had all day. If it had been a train full of GP you know people would have been freaking out. Instead we were all saying some of the funniest stuff! The first person to say something was Tony who was like 4 or 5 rows behind me saying “what did you do Jo?” and then went on to say that his Intamin was better than B&M which in turn caused many slams back to him about his beloved Intamin, and not just from me. I can honestly say that was the most fun I have EVER had being stuck! We later found out that someone on the other train had lost something and they had to get it? That sounded odd to me since on Raptor we would have to stack to retrieve something, but who cares, it was still so much fun!! Despite being frozen to death, we were all cracking up! :)

ERT ended and the entire event ended way too soon for all I am sure.
Despite a VERY long day for the ride crew they did a wonderful job keeping us pumped. My thanks to them and all the employees, to Lexi, Bill and the rest of the staff for making CoasterEXT such a great time for all! Thanks to the fellow Dominator riders who made all the rides so much fun! :)

Can’t wait till the GOCC Fall Freak Out and CoasterEXT ‘07! :)

Btw-I don’t suppose the coaster going in at CP could possibly be a B&M floorless could it?

Don’t I wish!! :)

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 1113 :)

Hey guys, Im glad you guys enjoyed EXT, I was one of the people that was there the night of EXT, and let me tell you that was probably the greatest fun I've had in awhile (Even though my job is fun ;)). I had a BLAST that night.

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crombiedude11 said:
Hey guys, Im glad you guys enjoyed EXT, I was one of the people that was there the night of EXT, and let me tell you that was probably the greatest fun I've had in awhile (Even though my job is fun ). I had a BLAST that night.

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Be sure you thank the whole crew for all the hard work that night....you are the reason ERT was so much freaking fun for all of us!! Thank you!! :)

Jo

I was also there but I didn't stay for ERT because the park was so empty that we had ERT all day. Is the park always that empty? I don't know how that park makes any money to be that empty on a Saturday in June. If all the EXT attendees left the park would have been completely empty. They have an excellent coaster line up except Xflight that coaster sucks, B&M flyers are so much better. I ended up going to Pittsburgh to watch the Pirates play San Diego that night.

Will do! :) Thanks.

I also attended Coaster EXT and was very happy with how it went. The Q&A was ran extremely well and I was thoroughly impressed with how Mr. Spehn handled everything. He wants us as enthusiasts to spread the word about how good the park is and how far it has come. As a very loyal guest to GL, I would like to do anything I can for this park. The waterpark is arguably one of the nicest seasonal waterparks in the nation. Although Villain is running a bit rough this season, it was fun to stay on for rerides during the ERT and I even made a few new friends. Thanks Geauga Lake! You hosted a wonderful event. Very nice write-up, LuvRaptor.