DayByTheBay

A Day by the Bay Lake
Coasting above Lake Erie at Cedar Point
by Marc Ricketts

A

When I’m writing about destinations near the San Francisco Bay, they are usually places with which I’m familiar, and with our various parks, have years of visitation and even a bit of employment history. But we were recently able to spend time near another large body of water, Lake Erie. As a coaster guy, this naturally meant a couple of days at Cedar Point. So let’s take a chance and approach a place from the perspective of a noob. I should note that I travel light when coasters are involved, and didn’t have as many photo opportunities as may be desirable. I should probably also thank my wife for keeping track of my camera for the better part of these two days.

B

Breaker’s Express Motel:

Although there are several options for staying within walking distance of one of the park’s entrances, we opted for the Breaker’s Express which is about 10 minutes away. We were still able to park free and get an hour early entry (would have also qualified for those with our Cedar Fair Platinum Passes) and online reviews of their other properties were mixed. It looks like they are going through refurbishments, and the need for same seemed to be the chief complaint I encountered with the reviews. The Breaker’s Express provided a decent room for a “value”, although the 9PM pool area closing was a bit frustrating. Once the Breaker’s Hotel is fully refreshed, with its beachfront locale featuring a mere stroll to enter the park, it should regain its appeal.

C

The Beach

The hotel isn’t the only thing close to the beach, as we walked out one of the side gates and were on sand almost immediately. There are aquatic activities like Jet Ski rentals and para-sailing. While wading in Lake Erie where the water was less than knee deep, a strolling life guard informed us that we must be in the roped off area in front of this protector of the hydrological explorers. Well, maybe he wasn’t asleep.

D

It’s a BIG Park

A gondola similar to Disneyland’s old Skyway travels about a third of the way into the park after loading near the entrance. As the boy and I approached its terminus, I remarked that it already felt like we had walked as far as the distance from the gate’s to Storybookland in Anaheim. After consulting my map app, I quickly saw that we had walked even farther than that. It is, in fact, 1.2 miles from the Cedar Point main entrance to the Mean Streak coaster waaaaaaay in the back. Perhaps it should be obvious that a park with so many gigantic coasters will have to be large, so be prepared for a lot of walking. The water rides are also clustered in the back, so even when we got hot, we missed them due to the walk-a-thon that would have been required to reach them.

Coasters

Cedar Point’s collection of roller coasters, many past or present record holders, was the big draw for your humble narrator, and although I often walk a path apart from the masses, I must fully concur with the accolades that have been bestowed upon Millennium Force, and the boy rates it second only to X2. A half hour wait was the longest we encountered for it (or any other coaster on the last full week of operations), but I’m sure these empty queues weren’t constructed for their aesthetic qualities, and I would not be anxious to visit on a July Saturday.

E

The Force in this case is all speed, with the trains passing 90MPH on the 300 foot drop. And it never lets up until the brakes at the end. By a count in my head there was Six Seconds of air time while cresting one of the hills. If there is a flaw to Millennium Force, it eluded us.

I was also quiet taken with their latest record breaker, the wing coaster Gate Keeper, which twists through a pair of towers spanning (you guessed it) the main gate to the park. An imaginative track layout features several inversions and a bit of airtime, especially the hill prior to its signature tower pass throughs.

F

I also liked the restraints, which featured a snug, rubber vest-like harness within its metal frame. This made for a particularly comfortable ride, and would have benefitted our next contestant tremendously.

G

Maverick is a clever departure from the park’s trend towards ever higher steel. The initial vertical drop barely crests 100 feet, the trip is low, but most definitely not slow as it twists and curves until screeching to a near stop in a tunnel under the station, At this point the 12 person trains are launched at 70 miles per hour to skim the top of a small lake before it all comes to an end. It is, though, only the second coaster I can recall that advised the removal of earrings, the other being Magic Mountain’s Viper. Although Maverick is nowhere near as brutal as Viper, I found it best to really watch the track carefully and anticipate every turn and inversion to avoid smacking the harness.

H

The 420 tower of Top Thrill Dragster is visible from far away. Xcelerator’s big brother doubles the height of Knott’s Intamin impulse coaster while exceeding its 80MPH launch by 50%. And while the height difference is obvious, the launch intensity didn’t feel that different to me since TTD takes twice as long to hit 120MPH, but it’s a rush that cannot be denied-unless it is cold or windy.

I

Apparently those are conditions that can prevent the trains from topping the hill. One person we encountered told us of a friend that had failed to make it over twenty times. During our two days, it was down on both, and sometimes they weren’t filling the trains when it was running, so one ride was our lot.

Looks like we were among the last to ride the Stand Up coaster Mantis, as it will be converted to a floorless coaster and renamed Rougarou. It wasn’t a bad stand up, but the conversion should be an improvement.

J

Cedar Point’s woodies don’t have great reputations, and we were non-plussed by them all; Blue Streak was probably the best. The other coasters in the park were mostly good for what they were, although Magnum XL200 felt like an off-road coaster experience. I really wanted to like it more, and it featured some nice views beyond the park’s borders, but it was simply too bumpy.

Iron Dragon was a bit of a surprise. No extreme elements but I enjoyed gliding across the top of the tree canopy, knowing that one of them couldn’t fall on the track from below us. It reminded me of flying into Cleveland’s airport, which is forested right up to the edge of the runway (that was a fascinating perspective that got increasingly unnerving as we descended).

K

Other Rides

We didn’t much stray beyond the rails, but did enjoy the bumper cars which lacked that awful center island that has infected the whole of California. The Cedar Downs Racing Derby carousel was an interesting twist on the old standby with the horses in each row changing leads during the ride, and Skyhawk was a nice variation of the smaller Screamin’ Swing at Knott’s (particularly since it lacks the upcharge to ride). And it was hard to beat the views from the WindSeeker with its beachside location and a perplexing mix of epic theme songs from films like ET and Superman.

L

Surprises

Cedar Point makes no claim of being anything but an amusement park, but the Frontier Town area did have that rustic western feel, as well as some welcome shade.

M

Halloween décor was just beginning to appear, including a steampunk swan boat seen by a collection of 19th century cabins moved here from nearby locations.

N

O

Another pleasant and completely unexpected surprise was the LE&CF RR.

P

Along the track after the station in the back of the park is an assortment of scenes inhabited by a population of hillbilly skeletons. It was cool to have a bit of a themed experience, and even better to learn that it wasn’t just for Halloween, but is an all year element.

Q

R

Operations

With area schools in session during our visit, there was a real fear that the dreaded single train operation encountered far too often at Magic Mountain would rear its ugly, deformed, hideous, offensive, vulgar head. Not only were these fears unrealized, but most coasters were running three, sometimes four trains. Maverick was running six. They understand coaster efficiency here. The park was also clean and looked fresh. Even in this random photo of the concrete sprawl shows many trash cans within easy reach.

S

It is easy to see why this area has been a vacation destination for the Midwest for many decades. There certainly isn’t the wide range of activities of Walt Disney World, but it would be easy to spend 3-4 days here with time in the park supplemented with a visit to their adjacent water park and some lake activities. It’s never as scary as it looks, right?

T

U

While you’re in the area!

Another objective for us in the Cleveland area was another lakeside attraction, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Along with some video presentations and interactive exhibits, the collection includes an impressive array of historical artifacts from the earliest roots of the music to a special display of costumes worn by Beyonce. I was finding it a challenge to get a good photograph of some of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia guitar display due to a curving glass front, but then it occurred to me that I already had about a thousand pictures I’d taken of Jerry playing that very guitar (and had actually witnessed its public debut), so I settled for a close-up.

01-Rosebud

Some other highlights for me were John Lennon’s Sgt Pepper suit, The teacher from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Janis Joplin’s Porsche, Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout shirt, a Roger Daltry stage mike displayed with the soundboard used to record The Who’s Quadrophenia (my personal all time favorite album), and a Beyonce outfit that is unlikely to ever be reproduced for sale in the Bibbiti Bobbiti Boutique.

02-Sgt-John

03-TheWall

04-Janis-Porsche

05-CubScout

06-TheWho

07-Beyonce

Marc Ricketts
Marc Ricketts is a writer/photographer who has not yet outgrown roller coasters, and provides news and information about San Francisco Bay Area destinations. Mark's columns can frequently be found on MiceChat in our Weekend Updates.