How many days per park?

ApolloAndy said:

Could you plan on a "flex" day between the Atlantic parks and a flex day between the Ohio parks and see which park you feel deserves the extra day after you've tried them?

My son and I started planning a Cedar Fair road trip. We were including the same thing in our plans. For example, we were starting and ending at Carowinds (our home park). After being there for the day, we'd drive about halfway to KD. The next morning, we'd wake up and make our way to KD, giving us at least half day. We'd spend the night nearby and have as much time that day as we wanted, knowing our lodging that night was halfway between KD and the next park.

The only exception was Cedar Point, where we gave ourselves two full days plus the half-day beforehand.

We won't be taking the trip until 2022 at the earliest, and we might extend it to include other parks, but we also wanted to keep it affordable and doable in two weeks or so.

Trackmaster, I'm not sure what is the definition of a coaster enthusiast within the coaster community, don't recall calling myself one, or care to be labelled as anything, for me riding a rollercoaster just because is a rollercoaster doesn't make any sense, I want to only ride the best possible rides and repeat them as much as time permits.

We just came back from Florida, we went to Universal Studios, Island of Adventure, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, we didn't watch a single show in any of those parks, some families just don't care about shows.

We had a two days visit to Busch Gardens Tampa, we tried their top 5 rollercoasters, weren't impress with 3 of them and only repeated Tigris and Cheetah Hunt as much as we could. Sheikra was good but we feel we have a better version of that ride at our local park.

If a ride in the park we are visiting, is not as good as Leviathan or Behemoth we don't really care to waste our precious vacation time on it, to each its own I guess.

How will you know if a ride is good (or better than those two) if you don’t ride it?

I think you’re going about this all wrong.

if you’re getting Fastlane at the parks, you’d have no problem riding everything and getting re-rides, and in that case I’d say only CP needs two days.

You don’t need to be an enthusiast, but you’re really short changing yourself with the belief of only 2-4 coasters in 4 parks, 3 of which, by the way, are in the top ten for most coasters in a park, is stupid. Go during the week and ride everything once then ride re-rides.

Thanks guys for all of your helpful replies, while trying to reply to some of your messages, I ended up answered my own question. The bottom line is that we want to try to visit these parks during weekdays, while trying to avoid Saturdays at all cost, we know for sure that for Cedar Point we want to visit for two days, on the last week of August, probably Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26, by this time the local kids should be back in school.

So for this to happen, because of the long distances between some of the parks, we will need to visit Carowinds for two days Thus 20 and Frid 21 (If is open during weekdays), so then we could drive to Kings Island on Sat 22, then we will need to visit Kings Island for another two days, so we could visit the park on a Monday with less people (Only if it open that day of course). I was told that there is a chance that these 3 parks may be open only during weekends at this time. That will really screwed up our plans, now we just need to wait for the parks to upload their 2020 calendar.

Thanks Tekwardo for your reply, we have ride everything in our local Cedar Fair park, we were trying the small/medium rides at first, and we found them uncomfortable, boring or both. When we finally got the courage and tried Yukon Striker, we realize what an smooth rollercoaster should feels like. Then we tried Leviathan and Behemoth and this confirmed our experience within our park. Then we started watching a lot of youtube reviews, about rides and reading reviews online and posting questions on forums about the experience with each rides at the parks we were planing to visit this past December in Florida, and from all that info the same pattern started to emerged, confirming our early finding. Most small/medium or wooden and old rollercoaster are rough or boring, specially from some particular manufacturer. El toro we heard is an exception an is on a league of its own.

Btw I never said 2-4 coasters in 4 parks, we already have the list of what we are going to try in each one of those parks.

Even some of the top rollercoaster in Florida, with great reviews we found them, no intense enough or a bit uncomfortable like:

Montu (a bit uncomfortable, as the head bang against the sides)

Kumba (No intense enough and my head bang once or twice)

Rip Ride Rocket (Intense but Rough)

Kraken (better than Kumba but no fast/intense enough either)

slinky dog dash (boring)

Now in the other hand:

Cheetah Hunt (smooth/fast/long/fun)

Tigris (short but fast and smooth)

Manta (Smooth/Fun)

Hagrid Motorbike (fast/smooth/fun/unpredictable)

Hulk (smooth/Intense/fun)

I guess we are not the regular rollercoaster family :)

Man, that sounds fun. I'm trying to find a way to do the first three on your list myself. But I'm juggling that with having to take the kids to FL and IOA this Spring.

Winston there is always time, we are doing this many parks because we paid for platinum season pass and platinum dining plan, otherwise we would have done only cedar point and Kings island based on their proximity, and then do the others, one at a time maybe in different trips

If you are going to Florida try SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Tampa, Iron Gwazi should be open by then, and Mako and Manta at SeaWorld are amazing, btw bought a 3 days any Florida SeaWorld park tickets, with dining every hour included, with a Florida third party called visit Orlando, at a very reasonable price.

Thanks for the reply ApolloAndy,

We already paid for the park entrance and food, so if we are in the area, we are going into the park, no questions ask. I think for us is not a matter of saving time. The issues are the hotels, we usually try to stay in decent hotels, and I noticed that by staying 3 nights per park, is starting to add extra cost to the trip, we just came back from an expensive Florida vacation, and this was going to be a little summer road trip, that is turning into a monster lol.

But it is what it is, we have two weeks to do it, and we definitely can't move the days for Cedar Point, that is the only one of these parks that is open the last week of August for sure. Plus we can't change the order either, it has to start with Kings Dominion and end at Cedar Point

Oh, I will be renting a car to get to BG when there. That is certain. Funny you brought up the platinum pass because I have been looking for a reason to buy one. Have to budget wisely now because I'm doing it.

Glad you found us here at CoasterBuzz. We are a unique place in that we're definitely a bunch of coaster dorks (so I think most of us count credits and geek out over new rides and technologies) but we tend to be a little bit more realistic about the business side of things and try to allow lots of non-coaster stuff into the conversation and our lives.

I personally try to ride almost every coaster in every park, especially if it's far away. I'll occasionally skip boomerangs, SLC's, and Volares, but I have been very pleasantly surprised by some coasters that I expected to just be garbage. That said, way more often than not, my bottom of the barrel expectations have been accurate, but you never know until you try.

Thanks ApolloAndy, and thanks to every one that was so kind by replying to my questions, I'm glad I found this forum as well.

I guess we all have our approach when it comes to rollercoasters, if enough reviewers from different sources (youtube/forums/articles) agree upon the uncomfortability and the boringness of a particular rollercoaster, I'll take my chances based on probabilities and skip the ride, we personally like intense, smooth, fast and long rollercoasters, so pretty much every medium or small one is out. Usually rollercoasters with those attributes that we are looking for, are in multiples people top list.

qbacreative said:

Thanks Tekwardo for your reply, we have ride everything in our local Cedar Fair park, we were trying the small/medium rides at first, and we found them uncomfortable, boring or both. When we finally got the courage and tried Yukon Striker, we realize what an smooth rollercoaster should feels like. Then we tried Leviathan and Behemoth and this confirmed our experience within our park. Then we started watching a lot of youtube reviews, about rides and reading reviews online and posting questions on forums about the experience with each rides at the parks we were planing to visit this past December in Florida, and from all that info the same pattern started to emerged, confirming our early finding. Most small/medium or wooden and old rollercoaster are rough or boring, specially from some particular manufacturer. El toro we heard is an exception an is on a league of its own.

Btw I never said 2-4 coasters in 4 parks, we already have the list of what we are going to try in each one of those parks.

Even some of the top rollercoaster in Florida, with great reviews we found them, no intense enough or a bit uncomfortable like:

Montu (a bit uncomfortable, as the head bang against the sides)

Kumba (No intense enough and my head bang once or twice)

Rip Ride Rocket (Intense but Rough)

Kraken (better than Kumba but no fast/intense enough either)

slinky dog dash (boring)

Now in the other hand:

Cheetah Hunt (smooth/fast/long/fun)

Tigris (short but fast and smooth)

Manta (Smooth/Fun)

Hagrid Motorbike (fast/smooth/fun/unpredictable)

Hulk (smooth/Intense/fun)

I guess we are not the regular rollercoaster family :)

I mean Florida just simply isn't about the coasters. The parks here are more about the $100M dark rides and major IPs. And, they tend to be an experience in themselves and give a resort atmosphere. The parks up north just don't have the budget to do what they do in Florida so they don't really try to compete with them at all.

If I may plug something, I assume that you are going to CP and KI back to back. I typically do that trip from Wisconsin 1-2 times a year. I generally will travel to CP (.5 day in the park) then spend an entire day at CP, and then the following morning do EE and stay at CP until noonish. I then make the 4 hourish drive to Mason and end up closing out the night at KI (doing MF and the Beast in the same day=awesome) followed by a full day at KI. I’m a park enthusiast though.

However I fully suggest the duel day at CP and KI if you can swing it, that day on my trip is usually Saturday so I skip the most crowded part of the most crowded week by traveling in the afternoon.

If I can make a suggestion, do Kings Island first. This may not be as true with Orion opening, but I always felt KI felt a bit underwhelming immediately following CP. KI is an awesome park but CP is The Land of the Giants.

The calendar for KI came out this weekend, daily operation ends August 16th. Operations are weekend only after that, and only Saturday/Sunday. No Friday nights until Haunt starting September 25th. Just an FYI.

Sounds like an awesome trip. We plan to hit the same parks this year, but spaced out over the summer.