AmyUD06

What? Magnum's merge is well before the stairs. Filling the station would have no effect on the amount of FL people let in in relation to the general queue.

@Carrie If you're okay with hour+ waits, even with Fast Lane Plus, by all means come on a Saturday. Otherwise, I'd wait until 1) they're open 7 days a week and 2) they get their shit together.

@ZandYou probably caught the wrong guy at the wrong time, or didn't ask nicely enough haha. I was on it around the same time as you and nicely asked for "front or a non-wheel seat" and got sent to row 2, which was not empty. Millie and SV were not honoring requests for rows, but everywhere else I've had success, even Dragster. On a side note, even CCMR, the ride with 500 block sections, is staking on the breakrun.

Welcome to the park! If I were you I'd try to hit all of the non-FL coasters today while you do t have the pass. I've already gotten all of them at least once, except Valravn and Wicked Twister. Presently in line for CCMR after walking past the boat and finding a huge line again.

Generally reasonable. The app is showing 1-2 hours for the major coasters. FL waits have been between 11 minutes and an hour, generally in the 30 minute range. What isn't helping crowds is that they're letting anyone who showed up Friday in today even though reservations were already full. Thankfully, I'm one of them LOL.

The boat currently has a line out of the queue house,and isn't on Fast Lane. I'll let you know if I can get on it later. In other news, every coaster I've been on today has stacked at the furthest breakrun possible. I just watched a Magnum train sit on the 3rd set of brakes, right after the last tunnel, for literally 5 minutes. If there is one phrase to sum up the ride operations here, it is "no sense of urgency." They're all super friendly but my god man, speed it up.

It's not today.

Unlikely. Many parks from multiple chains have yet to announce their fall calendars.

Well, I'm back at the park, and hooray things are running! In the two hours I've been here, I've been on Millennium, Maverick, and SV. Let me tell you how much of a disaster SV is now. For one, the FL merge point is now way back, father back than on MF. After accessing the temporary lockers, the crowd just meshes together...it looks like one side *should* be for FL, but it isn't. The biggest kick is that this new locker system requires 5 more employees. In a park with such staffing woes, how is this possibly a smart use of resources? At least they're letting smokers exit and re-enter at the Magnum gate.

So, with Cedar Point seemingly down for the count this morning (they did end up opening up some, but not all of the major coasters), I decided to drive out to Waldameer earlier than I had planned for my first visit to the park. All in all, a great time. It has a quaint charm to it, not unlike Knoebels. They've even got a Larson drop tower, which is probably just as nutty as Stratosphere, but it wasn't running today, so I can't be sure. My first ride of the day was Wacky Shack, a classic mutli-level dark ride. Good enough, but some of the effects inside were obviously not working. It has this little downhill section...does that make it a credit? LOL, no. First coaster of the day was Ravine Flyer II. Nerd shot. So what did I think? HO. LY. SHIT. This was an incredible ride, both in the front and the back, but I'll put the front a little bit higher. As someone else said, you could easily mistake this for a GCI....I got a lot of Mystic Timbers and White Lightning vibes off of it. With Millennium Flyers, this would be a top 5 wooden coaster for me....even with the shitty two-bench PTC's it might end up in the top 10. Speed, twistys, airtime...this coaster has it all. This thing, though? Disappointing. I was expecting a classic junior woodie with some pops of air like the Woodstock Express clones in the back row, but nope...it just kinda meanders around the course, never really doing anything special. I expected better with the buzz-bar and no-seat-belt junior PTC trains, but...meh. One and done for me. That was it for me for rides here, two laps on RF2, one on Comet, and one on Wacky Shack. The Music Express and Paratrooper were running stupidly slow, so I skipped them. It is nice that they have a Chance Wipeout, but I recall them making me violently ill, so it was also skipped. I DID very much like that you could use your rides card points for food, which I thought was a smart move. As for the food, I had a burger (very good, especially for the sub-$5 price), and a pretzel, which was a little hard for my liking. They also had this "ACE Memorial Park" which I found hilarious for how little was in it. Note that you could not read whatever was once written on the two plaques. So long, Waldameer. I will definitely be stopping by on my next trip out to Cedar Point for some laps on Ravine Flyer II. Now get to work on those Millennium Flyers!

(Double Post)

There is a thread for that park, I believe. EDIT: Here it is. EDIT 2: Just got back to my Sandusky hotel from Waldameer. Looking at Queue Times, it looks like CP managed to get some coasters open, but between going a little too hard at Thirsty Pony last night and the "120 minutes" I saw for Corkscrew, yeah I'm gonna pass and instead get a good nights' sleep and early start on the day tomorrow.

I'll be there this Tuesday and can provide an update as well.

Cedar Point thus far is a bust today too; no rain but 35mph wind gusts that don't look like they're going to die down anytime soon. Ride op outside Raptor said they need to drop below 20mph. Feel bad for those lined up for the major coasters. Keep the hope alive LOL. I'm off to Waldameer now, and will try swinging back to CP later on.

Yeah I'm not holding my breath on tomorrow. Sucks for those who bought daily tickets and/or daily FLs.

After my non-trip to CP today, my last coaster was the Schwarzkopf Wildcat at Adventure Park USA in Maryland on May 16.

Indeed it has. There now. The place is SLAMMED. Bowling alley, bar, restaurant, everywhere. Ohio is definitely back open for business.

I'm not that worried. So long as I can get a few rides on Maverick, Millie, Raptor, and hopefully Dragster this long weekend, I'll be satisfied. All-season FL+ helps haha. If tomorrow gets rained out that'll just be more time at Waldameer, which is showing clear weather all tomorrow afternoon. My hotel just lost power again. Fun times, and time for a nap since I've been up since 2 AM.

@jagnycMaybe I missed something, but what are you doing on Sunday? Kennywood on a Monday should be calm enough. I'd also recommend stopping at Idlewild on the way. To avoid rough times on the coasters, try for non-wheel seats....that is the middle row on the three-row cars. On Phantom, that would be the back row of a car. Typically the further towards the front of the train you are, the less rough it is.

Thankfully I've got tomorrow (which will likely also get at least partially rained out), Sunday, and Monday here. If I have to sacrifice a day at Cedar Point Shores so be it. EDIT: The park's website is now indicating that they are closed for the day. Not surprising. The water next to the causeway road was about 6 inches short of flooding the road.

Guest Relations says it is extremely unlikely that major rides reopen, even if the weather clears (which it won't). I saw many employees walking towards the front of the park, presumably to go home for the day, while I was walking to Melt. Words cannot adequately describe the weather, so here's some videos. VID_20210528_125225930.mp4 VID_20210528_130319813.mp4 VID_20210528_125225930.mp4

Oh yeah is it rainy and windy. Just got here. Like 40+ mph gusts. Nuts. So far the only things I saw open were the carousel, Cedar Downs, and some of the circular rides in Kiddy Kingdom. So I just went to Melt to hang out until I can check in to my hotel.

Thanks! I think a lot of the waiting had to do with new employees, but don't get me wrong, the place was packed. I know we all like to joke about the hike to nowhere for the ride, but in all seriousness, I started the clock when I entered the start of the queue from the midway, then walked for about 2-3 minutes before hitting people, which was before the second (from the station) cut-out where the exit path meets up. The lift is also exceedingly slow and possibly 2+ minutes on its own LOL.

@Mikxy, I would say yes, a Saturday trip with FTU would be worth it. FTU doesn't help much, but it does help out substantially on Great Bear, Fahrenheit, and to a lesser extent SkyRush. Note that you absolutely should not try to visit the water park, because that will ruin your day with waits (hour+ for the lazy river, 1.5 hours for a slide, 30-45 minutes for the wave pool, etc.). That said, out of everything you listed, I'd probably try to do Dorney/Knoebels on the Saturday if possible. In the other thread, someone mentioned going to Knoebels first then just skipping Dorney, but I'd do it the other way around. Dorney does have some worthwhile coasters (Talon, Steel Force, Thunderhawk - even with that stupid brake on the last bunny hills), and some unique flats that are tough to find (Enterprise, Apollo). It's definitely worth a 2-hour stop in, especially if you don't have to pay for it. Remember that with your Hershey ticket, you also get in to the park for the last 2 hours on the day before the actual day of your visit - they call it "preview." If I was doing all three parks in one trip, I'd get a hotel near Hersheypark, drive out to Dorney on day 1 morning to be there at opening, knock out that parks above described rides, then head to Knoebels, and if you get bored there (not likely but possible), head to Hershey for the preview night. Day 2, spend all day at Hershey, then continue on your trip. Luckily I live close enough that all three are within a reasonable day-trip distance from where I live. I'll send you a PM with how I would do the trip that you're planning.

So, I had intended to write up a full report of my public-opening Saturday trip to Kings Island, but life kinda got in the way and put a stop to that. So, instead, here's a brief report with some pictures. I had arrived to the park for a 11:00 opening at around 9:30 and found literally over a hundred cars in front of me behind the locked gates. Lovely. Made my way to the front gate; it was good to be back! As has been discussed, no temperature tent, just a security guard asking the COVID questions. Got inside and grabbed my FL+ wristband, and then made my way over to Flight of Fear, knowing that it was the only coaster with limited capacity still and that the line would get insane later in the day. Passing by, all of the seats have been returned to Wave Swinger. Flight of Fear still wasn't letting anyone into the queue, so I took some pictures of Orion's line 6 minutes prior to opening. Yeesh. So they once again re-routed FoF's FL line - you still enter from the exit side, but instead of heading straight up to the inside of the UFO, you now enter into the warehouse with the general queue and then head up into the space ship where they merge. As you can see, social distancing is a thing of the past. After FOF, I went to Racer (red side, retracked parts were awesome, as I mentioned earlier), then Adventure Express (all effects in tunnel, even the lava-tip, were working). Most ride attendants were super-enthusiastic, interacting with the crowd to a level I haven't seen in...ever, probably. Grabbed some pretzel bites from the bar near Adventure Express, which were delicious. ...and then made my way over to Bat, which was good as always. Does anyone know what these footers to the left of the station were for? After Bat, hopped on Banshee...getting a little bit of that B&M rattle in the back row but still awesome. Rounded back around the front of the park for Diamondback, then Mystic Timbers (snake and "Cars" ending). Definitely flying once again with a full train, I forgot how fast this was despite getting on it a dozen times last year. Here was the queue at 2:00 PM: After that, hopped on Beast, then had my longest wait of the day: 43 minutes for a Classic and Grilled Cheese Donut at Tom+Chee. After that, I left the park to go back to the hotel for a bit, and took a drive around the lot to see how packed it was at 4:30 I've kinda drew it on this map, pretty much everything within the red box was full. Got back to the park and jumped on Orion. Pretty much same as last year, a lot of groups self-imposed distancing on the train so I didn't get to experience it with a truly full train. Then I hopped on Windseeker, and made a lap around the park, hitting Woodstock Express and made my way back to Banshee to find it down. Two maintenance guys on the bottom of the lift, both on cell phones, is never a good sign: Then it was back to Racer, to try for the blue side, but it was closed due to "fireworks setup," so I got another ride on the red side. Back to Mystic Timbers (bat and "Can't Take my Eyes Off of You" ending), and made my way to back to my #1 coaster here, Beast, to round out the night. Once they stopped running for the fireworks, like half of the FL line in front of me exited, telling everyone "the rides closed until 10:30" and the rest of us were like "yeah, no shit." Was able to capture some good video of the fireworks, which have to look awesome from Windseeker. VID_20210515_220035433.mp4 After the awesome Beast night ride (front row of course), I made my way out of the park and back to my hotel. Got a good night's sleep, went back to the park in the morning for a Grilled Mac & Cheese from Tom+Chee for breakfast, then started my drive home. All in all, a great trip....but FL+ really saved me. Without it, I would've had a lot less fun. Most major rides were posting 1-2+ hour waits throughout the day, and the food lines were all around insane. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Cedar Fair needs to offer a Fast Lane pass for food service. I'd easily drop $100-200 for that. Ride waits, with FL+ (times are from when I enter the queue to getting off the ride): -Flight of Fear, 26 minutes from opening at 11:00, row 6. -Racer, red, 25 minutes, front row -Adventure Express, 16 minutes, front row -Bat, 36 minutes, back row -Banshee, 17 minutes, back row left -Diamondback, 7 minutes, row 2 (outer wing of the front car) -Mystic Timbers, 12 minutes, back row -Cup of water from a Refill Station, 11 minutes -Beast, 27 minutes, front row -Food from Tom+Chee, 43 minutes -Orion, 13 minutes, front row -Windseeker, 15 minutes -Woodstock Express, 32 minutes, back row -Racer, red, 13 minutes, row 5 -Mystic, 17 minutes, front row -Beast, 1 hour 16 minutes (including fireworks shutdown), front row But wait, there's more! On my trip home from KI, I always pass by Adventure Park USA, a small FEC with some rides in Monrovia, MD. They're always closed whenever I happen to pass by. But not this time! I saw the Wildcat running, and made a quick detour in. Notably, there was only one car on the track, and no others were to be seen. Here's some photos of this survivor. Their other adult coaster, a Zamperla Windstorm, wasn't ready for the season yet, ...so I still need to come back here and grab that credit, but the Wildcat was a very nice bonus. Fun Fact: This Wildcat started its life at Busch Gardens Williamsburg way back in 1976, and made its way around including a brief stint at Steel Pier in Atlantic City in the late 90s, before I got into coasters. Anyway, that's all for this report...tomorrow I leave for a rain-filled Memorial Day Weekend at Cedar Point, with another stop back at KI, mostly for their water park, on Tuesday.