I'd rather sleep in.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Early Entry is near the top of the list of perks for either 1) staying on property of a park that offers it, or 2) purchasing a certain pass that offers it as a perk. In this case, people are paying significantly more than previous years for a Platinum or Prestige Pass to Cedar Point. The park certainly has historically pushed early entry as one of the big perks of upgrading or staying "On Point".

I'll just leave this here:

I would find it hard to believe this will be the limit of early entry rides for the year, but if so it is extremely disappointing. We often use early entry to knock out Valraven and Millenium Force. No more.

It certainly dilutes the value of the higher level passes. Plus the Gold Pass peeps are snickering into their sleeves right now.

If I remember right, didn’t the amount of rides available increase once summer started?

Early entry at any theme park is useless to me. There is no reason to be inside a theme park riding rides at 8am…..

I actually enjoy it. In the summer there is a coolness in the air even on the hottest of days and excitement is in the air. But CP ain’t open at 8am, it’s open for EE at 9. Only places I’ve been that open at 8 am is WDW, Universal Orlando and DLR. Dawn at MK, DL, and AK are near magical (almost as good as nighttime) Early am Safaris rock too. The animals are far more active, ever see those Lions and Cheetahs pacing? I have quite a few times, even seen them roar.

Hanging n' Banging:

There is no reason to be inside a theme park riding rides at 8am…..

I’m reminded of the time I rode Zinga in 40° temps on a Saturday in 2003.

And now I’m reminded that we’re just over a month away from that solemn night’s 20th anniversary.

Hanging n' Banging:

There is no reason to be inside a theme park riding rides at 8am…..

Speak for yourself. I've had some awesome times walking onto major rides during early entry/event ERT in the 8am hour.

Touchdown:
Early am Safaris rock too. The animals are far more active, ever see those Lions and Cheetahs pacing? I have quite a few times, even seen them roar.

As much as I hated the 5-something AM alarms I would have to set when I had an opening shift on a morning Extra Magic Hours day, I have awesome memories of driving safaris in the 8am hour for this exact reason.

While a nice perk, CP was never obligated to offer early entry on any rides. I can remember when the park opened an hour early for years, but the rides didn't open until the scheduled opening time. Back then it was more like get in an hour early to be the first in line for your favorite ride.

Hell, I can remember when the park opened on Memorial Day and closed for the season on Labor Day!

Hanging n' Banging:

Early entry at any theme park is useless to me. There is no reason to be inside a theme park riding rides at 8am…..

I respectfully disagree. Early entry at Disney is so worth it. We hit all the marquee attractions in June with minimal waits that would have been much longer any time after opening. At DCA we hit up Webslingers, Guardians, and got in line for Luigi's Roadsters before the park opened (Radiator Springs was closed). At Disneyland we did Space Mountain and a fantasyland ride before joining the super short line for Rise of the Resistance.

Even at Cedar Point I do remember hitting up early entry at Cedar Point and marathoning Millennium four times before the park opened. I don't mind getting to a park at the crack of dawn since we are up anyway.

More power to the people that want to take advantage of early access. I prefer rolling up at noon after most of the front gate lines have receded, then fast pass onto everything. It just seems more worth it to me since there’s no rush to get there early, or beat crowds, or take advantage of early access like this. I like sleeping in on my days off.

jkpark:

While a nice perk, CP was never obligated to offer early entry on any rides.

They were once they started selling it as part of their passes and perks of resort stays. If they never mentioned it of course they wouldn't be obligated, but these "back in my day" ideas don't matter in 2023.

Perhaps this is just the early not-so-busy early season lineup. That actually makes financial sense with a workforce that is still growing and crowds that are typically light.

But if this is all that remains of early-entry for 2023, they just took away a significant perk of staying on property.

Early entry when staying at Breakers or Lighthouse Point is like having morning ERT. And this isn't crack of dawn we're talking about; it's more like 9 AM or 10 AM. Seeing as how we all get up in our house around 6:30 AM every day, we're still sleeping in if we're at Lighthouse Point.

That is quite a long way from Lighthouse Point to the front of the park. Unless you are dying for a minimal wait on the new mouse ride it doesn't seem like much of a plus.

I gotta ask though, is it that much more labor intensive to open up a few more of the bigger rides one hour earlier than park opening? The cost per ride can't be that astronomical.

My experience with Cedar Point Early Entry are that the park rarely, if ever, actually has everything (or sometimes anything) actually ready at 9am. These days they seem to barely have what they need ready for the 10am full opening.

It seems they may be admitting defeat on a perk they never were able to deliver on as advertised.

Ya know, we've all heard this a lot; that the rides are rarely ready, but I must be an absolute freak (insert Beavis and Butthead reference here) when it comes to our own experiences. For context, we live just under 2 hours away and usually visit in late May/early June for an extended stay, a couple random days in the summer, and then later at Halloweekends. I also take a college class to the park every October, and we 100% rely on early-entry for what we do.

I honestly can't remember a single visit in the past 13 years (when we moved to our current home in NE Ohio) when we said..."damnit nothing is open!#@!". Were there times when one of the rides were down? Of course...but everything else was fine.

And as far as that college class visit goes, I can tell you that in 13 years the early-entry has never failed and we have historically relied on that to do our thing.

I'm not saying early-entry tragedy hasn't struck. I'm sure it has. I just haven't ever experienced it.

Mulfinator:

I gotta ask though, is it that much more labor intensive to open up a few more of the bigger rides one hour earlier than park opening? The cost per ride can't be that astronomical.

Labor plus it’s also 7 less hours of runtime per week saved on maintenance too. Over a few months, I’d imagine that adds up. Especially on the larger rides.

I’ve been hearing whispers from folks about some absurd levels of cost cutting cutting going on lately. Hearing that plus the number of things the parked mentioned a few weeks ago would not be opening this year, just leads me to believe the lineup is just yet another cost cutting measure.

Seems a bit like the ever more bloated corporate staff in Charlotte are trying to justify their existence by cutting corners on the guest experience out that the parks. :(

OhioStater:

I honestly can't remember a single visit in the past 13 years (when we moved to our current home in NE Ohio) when we said..."damnit nothing is open!#@!". Were there times when one of the rides were down? Of course...but everything else was fine.

Same here. Millennium Force was usually pretty reliable, as was Raptor. I don’t really remember a time where we went in early and totally struck out.

It’s happened to me, and there’s nothing worse than making the trip all the way back to Maverick just to find out it’s down for an undetermined length of time. Then one time I had 3 roll-backs on Maverick and between that, the resets, and the eventual walk-down the entire ERT was used up. Another time the ride went down while we were on the final brake run and we sat there for probably a half hour while 6 maintenance employees did their thing. And once again, ERT was spoiled for me. One can only do so many consolation rides on Skyhawk…
Something about that pesky Maverick, though, right? I finally stopped bothering just to deal with a long line later in the day. Or not- it was never my favorite anyway. I guess those worries are eliminated for us in ‘23.
And there’s nothing like doing an entire lap of the park before they even open. Again, not one of my favorite activities…

I am a bit surprised to see not even Raptor is included for early entry, given it's proximity to the other rides available. But that lineup for sure isn't great for what it is.

Not sure if it's just me, but as a whole the park vibe/operations/whatever just doesn't grab me like it used to. I only live an hour from the place but have skipped out on passes the past few years and no real plans to pick it up anytime soon. We go, walk around, ride a few things and head out and don't feel to need to go back again in a season. The handful of last visits we did do early entry, many rides were down or the rides in general at the place during the day were a complete disaster with upkeep. Nothing like CP of the past in which you never even had to question if a ride would be up, reliable, etc...

Maybe as the season goes on they will adjust the early entry list once they figure out staffing, or something.