Days 14 & 15 - Cedar Point
Now, Cedar Point is massive! It is located on the shores of one of the Great Lakes, has its own beach and holiday resort and, yes, there is even a theme park. We managed two days at this mecca of the coaster world, and 4 ERSs. I shall not differentiate between the two days here, as everyone obviously would have done different things.
Entering the park just before 8am for the ERSs means that it is totally devoid of people - I'm sure this must be a sight not many people are treated to! Another peculiar sight (for us) was seeing all the employees in the park stopping and standing for the national anthem which is played at 9am when the park opens! The walkway leading from the entrance is lined with shops and arcades and soon you arrive at Raptor. This is a B&M inverted coaster built in 1994, their first "big" one.
The Group were honoured to have an hour's ERS on Raptor, during which I managed 14 rides. Apart from the front seats, I found my favourite to be in the middle on the right.
After leaving the top of the lift hill, the train performs a swooping left hand dive (with airtime in the front seats) and hits a vertical loop. Following that, the Zero-G Roll (pictured left and below) which I found to be much more impressive than Batman's version, although it is exactly the same element!
After coming down from that, the train follows a straight section of track at ground level and, just before hitting a group of trees, it rises and performs a Cobra-Roll - the first time I'd experienced this on an inverted coaster, and believe me, it's very disorientating!
It then rises into a corner and into a set of trim brakes, although they did not slow the train much. Another swooping dive follows, at which point you feel a lot of Gs, and then through a relatively long and straight section of track containing two corkscrews along its length.
Then the most disorientating section - a helix taken at high speed just before entering the station. If in the front seat, all you can see are dozens of track supports flying past and it's very easy to become really dizzy.
All in all, Raptor is a great ride, but to my tastes a little too tame. Unlike Batman and Nemesis, it seems very large and sprawling with plenty of space between the elements, and perhaps that's why it lacks the intensity of those two coasters.
The Cedar Creek Mine Ride is a fairly typical and gentle Arrow mine train, well-themed and quite long. Another Arrow offering was the Corkscrew, featuring a vertical loop and double corkscrew, noteable mainly for the bunny-hop just before the loop which launches you out of your seat in the front.
Gemini is a steel racer, once again from Arrow, and is lots of fun.
It was a bit disappointing when only one side was run, and even when the second train was released, the timing was all wrong so they hardly raced. However, we managed (eventually) an unofficial take-over where we all joined the queue at the same time. Infiltrate! The ride was awash with yellow T-shirts!
Disaster Transport has a reputation of being a bit of a joke, however I loved it. It is an Intamin bobsled, the type with one very large car instead of a long train of smaller cars. As with all bobsleds, the 'track' is actually more like an oversized gutter, and the car is free-running within it. However, this one is completely enclosed and dark, although you could just make out some scenery and the twisted track ahead. Great fun, lots of G's, and impossibly tight corners.
Mantis is a B&M standup coaster, almost an indentical mirror image to Kentucky Kingdom's Chang, but with a helix towards the end in place of the second corkscrew.
It was a smoother ride than Chang, although I believe the drop isn't quite as high. There were trim brakes at the bottom of the first drop (sacrilege!) however it had the unexpected benefit of slowing it down in the vertical and diving loops providing some weird weightlessness in the middle of the train.
Blue Streak is a small and very typical wooden out-and-back coaster, nothing outstanding, but quite fun. Wildcat is a Schwarzkopf Wildcat (Galaxi-lookalike) and is amazingly smooth. Possibly the smoothest coaster of the trip, yes even beating those B&Ms! Iron Dragon is an Arrow suspended swing-coaster, however it suffered badly from energy loss and general lack of speed. You could feel the speed dropping off even after the first corner.
Now we come to two rides that are not roller coasters (in my book) but deserve a special mention. Demon Drop is an Intamin first-generation freefall, and it's surprising that considering there are not many left in existence, we managed to encounter two of them on this trip! A fun and thrilling ride, showing its age, but still makes the heart beat a lot faster
Power Tower is a structure consisting of 4 S&S towers, 2 of which are Space Shots and the other 2 are Turbo Drops. You join a single queue and just before boarding the ride you have the choice of whether you want to be shot up or blasted down!
We were treated to an hour's ERS on this first thing in the morning (!) and I found I preferred the Drop side more. However,, the length of the drop is not as great as the Intamin drop towers, as the car slows down and reverses direction about three-quarters of the way down.
The picture below shows just how international the RCCGB is! A Scotsman, German, Englishman, and a Canadian. None of whom looked apprehensive at all!
Next up is Mean Streak. This is an absolutely gigantic wooden coaster, probably the most spectacular sight of the whole trip. This ride is just enormous. It seems to go on for ever. However, it has one big drawback. It is very rough. Bone-jarringly, spine-dislocatingly rough. I rode it once in the daylight and only 3 times during our 11pm night ERS. although the ride looked magnificent at night all lit-up, I couldn't ride it any more.
Last, but definitely not least, is Arrow's Magnum. 10 years old this year, it was the first hypercoaster - the first to feature a drop of 200 feet. It is also the ride Blackpool's Big One was modelled on.
The first drop is just glorious. Then you rise up and over the top, just before plunging into the lake below, the train tilts alarmingly to the left and down into a tunnel. Coming out of the tunnel, you encounter a large, sweeping parabolic hill that gives a sublime amount of airtime. The comment was made that it feels like the train has left the track and is just floating, 6 seconds later it lands on the other side of the hill. Then it negotiates a pretzel-shaped turnaround that, during our midnight ERS, was pitch black and the track was completely invisible. During the run back to the station, there are a series of bunny-hops that provde ejector seat airtime. This I found to be very uncomfortable. You are thrown upwards and you get severe bruising from the very hard lap bars!
Apart from the roller coasters, Cedar Point has a magnificent collection of spin 'n spew rides, a river rapids, a 'big splash' ride, and a very peaceful wooded section towards the rear of the park which is themed like an old Western settlement.
Further reading:
- The Official Cedar Point web site.
- My 2004 visit to the park.
- My 2001 visit to the park.