Issues at Cedar Point 5/14 anyone know a mechanic?

Just letting everyone know many closed rides right now. The lake is calm light breeze... MANY upset guests. Rides closed after 2 laps around park are Gatekeeper, Magnum, Gemini, windseeker, Raptor, mine ride, means streak iron dragon, top thrill, sky hawk... And more I've only seen gatekeeper run once since 9am. The ferris wheel is running though and all the kiddie rides right now?
I should add that Mforce (blue train still not put back on yet) and Maverick are running great right now... Almost opposite of the weekend.

Cedar Point has been blowing it this year.

What a bunch of idiots. At least the Math & Science kids that pack the park won't get to ride anything.

I'm hearing 35 MPH winds. That's hardly a light breeze.

Maybe it's time to visit that dome idea again. ;-)

I guess that's why Space Mountain is indoors. 35 mph winds would disrupt the ride because they're faster than the ride itself.

With that many rides closed it could be an employee problem, and not a mechanical problem. I noticed it once at MA, during the first years of Cedar Fair, where they would close rides at random, and you would see workers who were running a ride that closed, openning a different ride that was closed, and move those employees around to different rides all day long.

I asked about that, and an employee told me it was to cover breaks and lunches, and they did not have enough ride operators in the park to keep them all open, so they moved employees around to fill in the gaps. But, they kept the coasters running, and only closed the midway rides.

That employee also told me that it would not be a problem during peak season, as there would be more employees in the park. Since they hire mostly college kids, you can bet they won't have a fully staffed park until mid June. This is the same person that told me about the food service being limited at certain times of the year.

I would bet that they are simply not prepared for the season.

As for the wind, that was the excuse they used for closed Cable Cars, Wicked Twister, and Top Thrill Dragster, when there was no wind at all. By mid day, all the rides were open. No change in the wind. More likely a shift change.

I just got home....On the ground it was a light breeze. There were no white caps on the lake..nor any waves for that matter. The parking lot had a good wind (since it's so open of course). On top of MForce it didn't seem any more windy than normal (and yes, usually I can get a reasonable idea of winds up high since I have go up there so much). It's even more strange that usually the Ferris Wheel is down as well during high winds (and it was up and running all morning....I thought sure High Winds happen...but why would that stop Mine Ride, Skyhawk, or Raptor? I haven't seen them go down in high winds (though Skyhawk goes down A LOT)

From the midway you could see each ride appeared fully staffed, and each team member was polishing those seats, faithfully, like they always do when the ride is not running.

I have been up there on MANY high wind days with certain rides down due to wind. Today though, I couldn't believe the amount of rides down due to either wind or some other reason? I don't know if CP is worried about how many rides went down on Sunday, perhaps, and is REALLY siding on the error of caution?

They valleyed a bunch of rides and you wonder why they might be a little more cautious?

I wonder for a few reasons:

MForce, Maverick, and Woodstock were all running...I would think that would be there 3 main concerns...with the exception of Gatekeeper. I SURE would have hoped they planned for high winds on that ride, with it being right at the front, gate, next to the lake and parking lot winds. But it appears something got the best of it today. Usually Gemini does valley. I have seen Mean Streak once....

But to have 3 rides all in one day valley? I don't know the last time that has happened in 30 years at ANY park. Winds felt MUCH higher on Sunday.

I'm sure CP had it's reason's for not running them. But from the ground and blending in with the (Physics/College) Peeps it wasn't a happy day at the Point..kind of felt like Roller Coaster Tycoon and ride broke down and there's no mechanic in site ;)

I was at the park yesterday, and it seemed that they were very slow in opening the rides. Morning ERT was a letdown especially with Gatekeeper being closed, the only ride that was running was Ocean Motion and Maverick. However in the parks defense they did try to open MF and they did try to test Dragster but were unable to get it over the hill once. At one point Gemini, Magnum, Corkscrew, Dragster, Mine Ride were all closed. Eventually they were able to open almost everything except for Gemini, Dragster, and Millennium which went down around 1ish and didn't open back up. We left around 5:30 and were able to get 4 runs on Gatekepper with about a 20 min wait for each.

AT this point I think most of the issues are related to weather.

Has anyone seen Gemini run this year and any ideas as to what the issue is with Skyhawk. Waiting on a part?

I have never seen a coaster at Cedar Point valley, though I have seen plenty of rollbacks on Top Thrill Dragster, and Magnum with a train stopped on the lift hill. But, Mean Streak does not suprise me, as it is pretty much crap.

I was at Cedar Point once though, where they only had one side of Gemini running, with a train sitting in the helix just before the brake run, on the side that was closed. Apparently didn't make it into the brake run. And, it was not windy that day, though the park wasn't that busy either. Corkscrew, Iron Dragon, Blue Streak, and Mean Streak were all walk on rides. Though I think everyone in the park was waiting for M-Force, Mantis, and Raptor. Which all had over an hour wait, with M-Force being over 4 hours.

The wait for Gemini was 45 minutes, due to one side being closed. The waits went down later in the day though, and was able to get on M-force in an hour and 45 minutes. Raptor was down to 15 minutes by 9, so rode it multiple times before going home.

I think Cedar Point should just close its doors.

Sucks.

Oh noes, is Cedar Point the next SFA?

Timber-Rider said:

I have never seen a coaster at Cedar Point valley

I was at Cedar Point once though, where they only had one side of Gemini running, with a train sitting in the helix just before the brake run, on the side that was closed. Apparently didn't make it into the brake run.

Sounds like you've seen a ride valley if I'm reading right.

And some of you guys have an epic ability to speculate with even the sketchiest of anecdotal details. I salute you.

Vater said:

Oh noes, is Cedar Point the next SFA?

Well...they did have the largest arcade in all of theme park land closed down today. So I wasn't able to play my Pinball games so yes that puts it on par with SFA ;)

...But I wonder what will happen to all those people when it rains...that's the largest shelter on the Point...now that Disaster Transport is gone LOL

Went today with my brother...GateKeeper was down the whole time we were there, I think it finally went up sometime after 5.

We actually got on a lot though. Went straight to Millennium and Maverick and were on and off both in less than an hour, even after walking from the front entrance.

We lucked out again later, as Dragster got going just after we got off Magnum and waited less than 10 minutes for it. Gemini was down to start, the red trains were running later but the line seemed to long and slow for us, so we skipped it. Also got on Mean Streak, Mantis, Blue Streak, Power Tower, and Magnum twice more with hardly any waits. I think Raptor got running eventually but didn't go on.

Word on Pointbuzz is that Skyhawk is waiting on a part. Really bummed that was down too.

This is my first year living here and with a pass...I know now to avoid the first weekends and the dreaded M&S week. I despise teenagers and basketballs at the moment.

If there is one lesson I have learned from visiting the Point year after year, it's that the park does anything and everything it can do to open every ride for every guest, even if there is little time left on the clock.

And what is so bad about M & S week?

I waited 30 minutes...30 whole minutes yesterday for a front row seat on Gatekeeper. What a terrible racket!

I actually find the smart kids from the local high schools pretty tolerable. Amazing how when the average IQ in the park goes north, problems due to "little rascals" and "teenage ner-do-wells" go south.

I do share the bummed out vibe from SkyHawk though. I missed my favorite flat the past few days.

Mforcebob said:

Has anyone seen Gemini run this year?

I rode it on Saturday. Other than the crew not really making much of an effort to race the two sides properly, it was running fine.

Since the park opened on Saturday, we've had some of the worst May weather I can recall. Ohio weather usually sucks, but this has been especially bad. Keep in mind these last few days have not only been windy, but also abnormally cold. The cold is as bad if not worse than the wind when it comes to getting rides up and running. The good news is, the forecast looks like things are back to normal starting today. The fact that it's currently 70 degrees at 3:30 AM even puts it well beyond normal.

So being a person that knows about theme park budgets, I may have an idea what's going on here. When a new ride is built, much of a parks attention and money goes into it. Because of this there tends to be several proxy errors with other rides around a park when a new coaster opens. The parks tend to not invest as much money into the upkeep and replacements of things such as locking cylinders and upgraded systems on trains and it will tend to cause a lot of errors. It happens. (Another possible flaw could be that with the bad weather a lot of their rides didn't get to cycle properly prior to the beginning of the operating systems)

Don't worry CP fans. They will figure it out. Winds of 35mph aren't high enough to warrant the closing of any rides in that park except for the cables, TTD, Ferris Wheel, Windseeker, and possibly Gatekeeper (I am not sure on the weather procedures for wingriders). With this, I am confident that they were dealing with mechanical issues (never throw out the thought of small power outages that can cause mass problems with rides and can be caused by high winds)

Hopefully they figure out things soon or else people will start getting very angry. Let's wait until after the winds die down to know for sure though.