We did some preliminary shopping at the awesome Peanuts store across the way, which definitely got us thinking about souvenirs. We missed out on one at Kennywood and we didn't get much at Disney either, so I didn't feel as bad getting something at Cedar Point. All I had room for at the moment was a little baseball Snoopy from a Lego-ish knock-off company for Craig, and a set of five pins all featuring Snoopy playing a sport. They were trading pins (small round button-style) that were five for $6 and we couldn't resist - we got soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, and even lacrosse! They're adorable. Bigger things would wait for when we were walking to the car!
We ventured over to the Boardwalk after that. It's a brand new section that's been evolving in recent years but just got a full makeover. It is, appropriately, right up against the beach.
The area has definitely evolved over the years. I remember there being an old bobsled coaster (later enclosed with a futuristic theme) and the Space Spiral observation tower once upon a time, and then later they moved the ferris wheel there and added another coaster, which I never got to ride (that's okay, I've been on a similar one). That came down a couple years ago to make room for this whole new concept - a very old school midway of fun flat rides, the ferris wheel, and a wild mouse coaster. It's so happy and colorful and just beautifully done.
We wandered through to consider our options, also taking a detour into another Snoopy-themed kiddie section.
We decided to go on the ferris wheel so I could get some daytime pictures, and then we'd go eat some dinner, so back to the Boardwalk we went.
 |
| This is reminiscent of an old Cedar Point entrance sign that is still beloved. |
It was a bit of a hot wait, especially because it's a giant wheel and it takes forever to load all the cars, but the line moved consistently and the views from the ferris wheel were amazing.
 |
| GateKeeper is the one that goes over the front entrance. We were excited to ride it later! |
 |
| So much color! |
 |
| The view above the whole park never disappoints. Coasters and fun as far as the eye can see! |
The lake was gorgeous, too. I tried to take a video, although we weren't high enough to get the full effect:
We took a little walk around the new Grand Pavilion which has some fancy food options, and then walked back out to the main midway to find dinner food. We ended up having walking tacos because I had just told Carter about them not too long ago and he had been wanting one. It was a pretty perfect meal, actually--just filling enough. We walked to the back of the park to check on Maverick again, but discovered that the line for Steel Vengeance was shorter again. Still 30-45 minutes, but better than the 60-90 it had been most of the day. We definitely wanted another ride, so we hopped back in line! This time we were further back on the train, but it was still so much fun (getting pulled down the hill is so much faster!) and we were thrilled to get another ride. At that point we decided we had no choice but to hop in line for Maverick. It was one of our last couple big ones and we figured that even the full hour line would leave us plenty of time for late-night riding again like the previous night. The line seemed pretty endless, and most of it was within an open air wooden structure, which was just a little less comfortable in the COVID era than I would have liked. Carter already had a little cold that started sometime on Friday (he was a trooper), which I seemed to have acquired by Monday, but I was pretty sure his wasn't COVID because he didn't really go anywhere last week and he was more likely to have caught the sniffles that Jacob already had. It was definitely a little over an hour, but slowly but surely we made it up to the platform.
Maverick (the red coaster I had a picture of in my last post) is relatively newer. It's a launched coaster that's fast, twisty, and generally crazy. I had no idea what to expect, and while it was worth the wait, I feel like I probably need to ride it again in daylight. Night is tough when you can't see what's coming and brace yourself. It had a lot of direction changes that felt a bit whippy, but it sure was exciting! It launched up the lift hill quite quickly, and also had another launch near the end where the train came into an area under the station and unexpectedly shot back out. It was pretty crazy but Carter loved it. My sore legs from Magnum did not appreciate how the restraint was hitting me, so that was a little unpleasant, but I'm so happy we got to ride it. This was a view from near the end of the queue, looking toward Steel Vengeance.
 |
| See all those people in the bottom left? They had a solid hour wait ahead of them. |
We swung back around en route to the Boardwalk and got another walk-on ride on Gemini...and won this time! Carter was thrilled! Everything else we needed to ride was on the Boardwalk, so we headed toward Wild Mouse and GateKeeper to see which one was most feasible. We also wanted to ride WindSeeker, the high swings that are actually higher than Darien Lake's!
We got to ride GateKeeper pretty quickly, which was amazing. I've never been on a wing coaster before, where you sit to the side of the track, but it was so smooth and swoopy! I'm so glad we got to ride it because it was down for most of the day on Sunday--in fact, we only saw it running when we walked out of the park! We went over to Wild Mouse to knock that one off the list, but it was down so we went over to WindSeeker and rode that. What a gorgeous view! I had some fun playing around with my phone camera to capture some of the pretty lights in that area. WindSeeker looked so cool, as did the ferris wheel. These are just the stills, but I played around with long exposure and boomerang-type effects, which was sort of fun!
We made one last stop at Wild Mouse on the way out as they were testing and it looked like it was going to reopen. Just as we got there, the entrance attendant got a call that they were reopening ONLY for the people who were already in line, the ones that stayed there during the entire down period. Boo. Well, I guess that confirmed we had to come back the next day! And at least we knew our first target, without a doubt.
We had a relatively uneventful night after that--other than that one alarm (fire door?) going off again right before we went to bed. I slept much better, though. We decided that we were going to skip the hotel breakfast in the morning because it wasn't that great and we did see a super fun looking Dunkin' en route--it had a giant moose on top!
It was connected to a gas station where they had a "Mickey Moose" mascot.
We got an absolutely picture-perfect donut (I literally took a picture but will spare you) and ate our breakfast on the way. We made our way right to the Wild Mouse. Once again, it was down. Ugh. It's notoriously bad with reliability, which is unfortunate for a brand new ride. For the record, I spent most of the weekend feeling a little like we were in a game of Roller Coaster Tycoon. With the park's app showing wait times and when coasters were down, it reminded me of the game. We even came across puke in one ride queue, which is something that always happens in the game and necessitates a handyman to clean it up. At one point on Sunday there were a ton of rides down and all I could picture was all the mechanics being dispatched and trying to fix everything! Luckily, just a few minutes after we got there, the ride reopened and we got in a very short line! We hit it perfectly.
Most of the cars are mice and one is the cheese they're chasing. We got to sit in the cheese car! The ride was pretty "wild" but it was a lot of fun. I probably prefer a similar spinning wild mouse at Seabreeze because it has bigger hills, but this was a great ride!
We once again found ourselves in this odd spot where all the lines were getting longer, and it was made worse by all the breakdowns I mentioned earlier. At one point, GateKeeper, Millennium Force, Wild Mouse, Snake River Falls, Raptor, and a few smaller rides were all down at the same time. It was incredibly frustrating because we wanted another ride on Millennium Force and would have loved another on GateKeeper, and Carter really wanted to ride Snake River Falls, but they just weren't opening. In the meantime, we did Cedar Downs again and then did the Cadillac Cars, where Carter was my chauffeur! The ride was cute because they had a bunch of old-style billboards for car stuff that made punny references to various rides, right down to their format or manufacturer name. For example, one that referenced Steel Vengeance mentioned that it didn't have a "Mean Streak", which was its former name, or the Valravn one mentions something about Immelman, which is the official name of a type of dive loop element of the coaster. It was really cute!
We were getting pretty frustrated by this point and started setting a deadline for when we needed to give up and leave. I decided we should ride the train back to the rear of the park to get us closer to Snake River Falls, the big drop water ride, in the event it reopened soon.
 |
| View of Maverick's drop from the train |
The train was a nice little ride and I sort of wished we would have done the full loop because one section has some funny skeleton scenery, but this was where we needed to be! Luckily, right around the time we happened to check Snake River Falls, the line was reopening! We changed into our suits quickly and got in line. I was actually wearing my new Disney "wet" sandals that day (my feet needed a sneaker break) and Carter changed into his, and it turned out they performed wonderfully as we both wore them for the last couple hours we were there! That was nice to test them out. I feel a lot better about that aspect of our Disney trip now, although I will say that the rest of the weekend was a stark reminder of what we're heading into, between the tired feet, battle against sunburn, the pain of my backpack straps, and the heat (which was only really bad on Sunday, but nowhere near Florida). I'm a little nervous but hopefully adrenaline gets us through again! Anyway, Snake River Falls got us SO wet. I didn't want to pay for yet another locker so I did what I could to keep our bag dry. I didn't actually succeed with the bag itself, but the stuff was only moderately damp, so it wasn't a complete fail. There was just a dump of water at the end that completely drenched us! We changed back out of our suits right away, and when we came out of the changing rooms, I checked my phone and by some miracle, Millennium Force had just reopened and the wait was only about a half hour! We booked it, though I did grab this pic along the way...how could I not?
Once again, I think the line was longer than advertised, but that was fine. It was the last thing we were doing and we knew it was worth it. It was a hot wait at times, as lines are usually only about half to two-thirds shaded, but it went quickly enough. I wanted to catch a couple pictures and some video while we were there in daylight to capture how close the train comes to the queue and how fast it is when it passes.
Sometimes it feels a little "blink and you missed it" so here's the photo.
It was a great ride to go out on. It's so neat in daylight to see the water and whole park from there. Since our photos after ride #1 were dark, we grabbed a new one.
It really felt like a miracle trip. We accomplished so much and had such a fantastic time. It would have been perfect, if only the Tuesday after didn't have to happen...
No comments:
Post a Comment