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CEDAR POINT
Sandusky, Ohio (Abbreviation: CP)
Cedar Fair Entertainment
 Park News - (6/17/09) Cedar Point has put their Chaos ride up for sale on the ItalIntl.com website. I was kind of surprised the park still had one, as I guess I had just assumed that they removed their Chaos back when so many other parks removed their Chaos rides earlier this decade.
(6/8/09) The Point Online went to the CoasterMania event at Cedar Point over the weekend and posted a video featuring a presentation from Ron Toomer, the former coaster design from Arrow Dynamics. Check out Part 1 embedded below. You wont see Ron Toomer however until Part 4, so you’ll have to jump ahead if that is all you want to see.
(6/5/09) Good deals ahead for those planning a trip to Cedar Point this week as the park is now offering a discounted “mid-week saver ticket” good on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for just $29.99. These tickets must be used by Thursday, June 11th however, so this is a very limited time offer.
(6/2/09) I told you yesterday it wouldn’t take too much longer for The Point to get Millennium Force back up and running and the latest reports from the park do confirm that the ride did reopen last evening.
(6/1/09) I’ve been sent several reports lately talking about how Millennium Force has been having some trouble lately and was apparently down entirely over the weekend. Actually, in a lot of trip reports from the park it seems that they’ve been having a bad gremlin problem with many of the park rides on and off for some reason. The Millennium Force downtime issue was even confirmed on the OnPoint official CP Blog here. If your wondering what the problem is with MF now, then take a look at this update on KIExtreme which shows off a couple of detailed photos showing that the lift-cable apparently snapped. On the good news side of thing, we’ve heard that they may have had a spare cable on hand for just such a problem, so it could be up and working again sooner than you think. Oh... CP is now also on Twitter. A good trip report with some photos (big MF was working then) can be found at Theme Park Review.
(5/27/09) For the third time in history, Top Thrill Dragster has somehow launched a train to the very top of the spire, only to have it become perfectly stuck at the top. No malfunction... no jammed wheels here... just the train somehow (likely with a little assist from the wind) has become perfectly balanced at the top of the spike. A picture of it was posted to the official On Point Blog along with a shot of the lucky riders once they were back on solid ground. Just in case you were wondering how they get it down... a maintenance guy rides to the top and simply gives the train a little shove and gravity does the rest.
(5/25/09) A fun photo trip report from Cedar Point can be found on Negative-G.
(5/18/09) Check out the photo trip report from Cedar Point’s opening weekend at PointPics.
(2/25/09) One of our readers who attended the ACE S.O.A.R. event at Kings Island last weekend gave us the lowdown on what changes we can expect from Cedar Point this season. This will include some new signs that are sure to impress around the park, including a LED Screen going in at the causeway. A new ride sign for Magnum XL-200 will go up to promote the fact that this will be the ride’s 20th Anniversary. The old fountain near Raptor on the midway will also be removed to make way for a new interactive water sprayground area.
2009 - Starlight Experience - (5/27/09) Pictures and a review of the new Starlight Experience has been posted to The Point Online.
(4/8/09) Cedar Point has announced an interesting new addition to the park this season, something they are calling the Starlight Experience. This will be a transformation of the park’s Frontier Trail which will be “filled with light and music” for the summer. Each night the pathway will be “transformed into a brilliant canopy of lights and colors that will be themed to the changing of the seasons. Similar to the climate in the Midwest, each display will gently segue into a different season.” The Starlight Experience will run from the bridge across from Snake River Falls to the tunnel under Millennium Force. They will also use several themed “floats” depicting each season, and you can count on Snoopy and friends to be involved as well. The Starlight Experience is scheduled to begin daily at twilight and will be in operation until the Maverick and Millennium Force roller coasters close for the evening. (The Frontier Trail will close 30 minutes for show setup.)
2010 - New Attractions - Speculation - (11/10/08) A reader tells us that the latest edition of Ace News mentions that Cedar Point, “still hasn’t made it official, but expect an epic flume ride from Intamin which will surely boast world records of some kind.” While I haven’t heard a peep myself lately and the Intamin connection is almost surprising since Knott’s is said to be considering removing Perilous Plunge (Intamin), this does make sense. Back in late 2005 when White Water Landing was removed the park did mention that they were looking into some new flume ride designs for a future project.
(5/13/08) With the opening of Cedar Point comes the opening of the rumor floodgate, about not only what could be coming next year, but what attractions could be leaving the park in the near future. Of course after spending over $20 million on Maverick last year and touching base with the kiddies with Planet Snoopy this year The Point could go in just about any direction for 2009. So rather that start off with a bunch of crazy rumors about what the park may be considering building over the next couple of years, I’m going to focus today on just what may be on the endangered list.
Of course, at the top of the list is everyone’s favorite pick for ride most likely to be demolished each year for the past decade… Disaster Transport. There have been rumors that DT is on the chopping block almost every year that I’ve been doing Screamscape, so you’ve got to take this one with a brick of salt when you hear it. However, there is logic to the concept at this point as Disaster Transport first opened as Avalanch back in 1985 and was transformed into the current DT theme in 1990, so the ride is a respective 23 years old and one of only 3 such rides left in the country (La Vibora at Six Flags over Texas and Alpine Bobsled at The Great Escape).
While age alone isn’t enough to kill the ride, since it’s indoor setting does help a great deal with the preservation of the ride more than it’s outdoor cousins, you’ve also got to consider the ride’s location in what has got to be one of the deader spots in Cedar Point. The park attempted to revitalize this area somewhat earlier this decade with the addition of Wicked Twister, maXair and moving the Giant Wheel and Troika in from other areas of the park. I believe they’ve even renovated the nearby midway games and even this year’s Planet Snoopy is another renovation to the general area.
Another popular dead area that has been the subject of numerous rumors over the years has been the nearby Aquatic Stadium fell out of favor after Cedar Fair dropped their long running dolphin shows in the late ‘90s. The stadium has been used for a few Dive shows over the years and will become home to the new All Wheels Extreme stunt show this summer in an attempt to take advantage of the new foot traffic from the nearby Planet Snoopy. While the stadium has seen better days, I just don’t think it’s going anywhere just yet.
Looking to the other end of the Twister Boardwalk past the lonely Space Spiral and a quick walk around the midway to the main gate you come across Demon Drop. Unlike Disaster Transport, Demon Drop has been on the chopping block for a number of years now, ever since Cedar Point publicly put the ride up for sale. Unable to find a buyer, they decided to keep it until they could come up with a better use for the site or until it just became time for the ride to be retired. Looking to their rivals for inspiration, we know that Six Flags’ new profit minded management quickly deemed that all of their 1st Gen Intamin Freefall rides were a complete waste of resources and too expensive to maintain. There is no market out there to even buy these rides any longer and simply put, the rides are more valuable when sold as scrap metal than as a functioning ride these days. So Six
Flags demolished their remaining four models over the last 16 months, even going so far as to hold a big media event where they imploded the lower structure of the one in Texas (see the video) so that it would fall over and make a big media spectacle. Currently Demon Drop is the last ride of it’s kind in North America, and one of only a handful left in the entire world (1 in Brazil and the rest I believe are all in Japan).
With all this in mind, one kind of has to wonder just what could replace Demon Drop and Disaster Transport (aerial image) all in one fell swoop, possibly taking up a little of that parking lot to connect the two sites. While I “wood” would never want to assume anything at this point, one has only to look over the plans Cedar Fair has for ’Californias Great America in 2009 and start to ponder about just what could be. |
