Zand

The park ended up granting me reservations for Sunday after I emailed them. Hoping to not buy Fastlane but if I do it would be Monday. Why the hell isn't the park open till 10pm on a holiday weekend?

So now that my aforementioned trip got kinda flip-flopped, what shoulf I expect crowd wise on the Tuesday and Wednesday after Memorial Day? Hoping not to have to buy Fastlane now if crowds are projected to be light enough. Bummed to be missing 10 pm closings for night rides. Also, probably going to the Wednesday Reds game instead. Also a day game. Lol

You can still buy day tickets for next Sunday but no more season pass reservations. Talk about giving your core customers the middle finger. I'm just gonna go to bed before I discover more things that set me off.

I never had any other reservations since they never opened them up for Tuesday/Wednesday (since they knew they were going to do this last week). So this is the first time I tried to make reservations. When I first went in, Sunday and Monday were open. I clicked Sunday, after entering my info it gave me an error message so I refreshed and then Sunday was gone. But it let me get Monday.

So I figured now that I'm forced to go on Sunday and Monday next week, I should get my reservations in. I signed on and clicked Sunday and tried to make the reservation but it gave me an error message. I refreshed and went back in and suddenly Sunday is sold out. I got Monday but now I have nowhere to go Sunday unless I go to Michigan's Adventure? Not sure how far that is from DTW...wasn't looking to drive all over the Great Lakes region though. I am absolutely LIVID at this park right now.

To me, it's not even so much that they changed the schedule. It happens, whatever. But I called Hotel Breakers literally 8 days ago because the website said there were no rooms available and said to call for further information. So I called and they said they were full for the dates I was looking for. They didn't use the words "sold out" but I assumed that's what they meant. That same day I booked the flights and car, and later on ended up booking a room off site since Breakers was "full". I also bought a Platinum Pass for both myself and my wife mainly so we could get early entry. Probably would've been cheaper to get a couple 2 day passes and pay for parking, but I figured it would be supportive of the park to purchase their premier product and it would also be an excuse to take a ride to KD this year. Then the rumor popped up here yesterday (as well as in the comments on the park's social media pages) about the June closings. So I joined in and asked the park the question by email as well as on Facebook and Twitter, all of which were ignored despite the park answering questions about every other subject. Naturally, they decided to take the Friday Afternoon news dump route, and buried the announcement underneath the whole $20 an hour announcement. All of this a mere 10 days before the first affected date. Piss poor communication at its finest. This isn't some rinky dink regional park where 99% of the patrons are there on day trips from within an hour or two drive. Outside of Disney and Universal, this is one of the top destination parks in the country and I know I'm far from the only one who booked something one of the weeks in June. Some people will probably just do what I'm gonna do and go to their sister park 3 hours to the south. But I'm sure there's also a lot of people who don't have a season pass and booked at a non-resort hotel who are pretty much left in the dark since this happened so last minute, and for some airlines, car companies, and hotels are past refund points. I strongly disagree with the assertion that booking this was a gamble. If I booked it 6 months ago or even 3 months ago, sure. But I feel that it was almost the opposite of a gamble to book last week. We're at the point where things are opening up quickly AND many people who haven't traveled in 15 months are all booking vacations now. Every industry is trying like crazy for people to take their first vacation with them to try to make up the money they lost last year. There's going to be staffing shortages everywhere and people need to be patient when they visit other places. But literally every other industry (and seemingly every other park in this industry) is doing what they can to bring in as many people as they can. If they have to limit attendance to their respective businesses so that theyre not overrun, they do it. Cedar Point knew before today that this could potentially happen. If theyre that short staffed on employees, they wouldve known that by now AND they know they're not going to be able to hire hundreds or thousands more employees overnight. Two weeks ago, they lied and stated they have adequate enough staffing to be ready to go. Instead, they got caught with their pants down and didn't bother informing anyone until the absolute last minute when millions of people are finally travelling. Sorry for the long rant, it just really pisses me off how poorly this was handled and communicated. I'm lucky to have a backup plan (and I believe my room in Sandusky is refundable still). Others arent going to be so lucky and the park's attitude was basically "oh well. BUT LOOK TWENTY DOLLARS PER HOUR!!!"

It takes talent to become worse than Six Flags at customer satisfaction and general operations, but Cedar Point has blown the doors off that conversation this year. Edit: They put a post up on Twitter and shut off replies

My backup plan is to do the trip in reverse...CP Sunday/Monday and KI Tuesday/Wednesday. Didnt want to do it that way but that's what it's looking like. CP will be a sh*tshow of epic proportions on Memorial Day weekend and Fastlane is like $40 more than at KI (plus by all accounts, will still have massive lines). Plus one of the bonuses of being at KI on the holiday weekend was 10PM closings and night rides. Won't get that on Tue/Wed. Funny part is on CP's Twitter, other people have caught on that they're totally ignoring questions about the June calendar. And Tony Clark's latest post has all replies blocked. I dont understand why they need to hide this apparent plan for June. Just announce it and get it over with.

11 days out and the calendar still shows this... Between flight, car, hotels, and passes I paid almost $1400 for my wife and I for this trip. And yet here we are 9 days away from leaving and 11 days away from the CP portion of the trip totally sitting in the dark. And the park won't answer ANY questions about June. I get that they're short staffed and it's early season, I really do. I would understand it if I got there and half the rides were closed and like 2 restaurants were open in the whole park. But this is WAY too late for them to pull the plug on entire days that they still have showing as open on the calendar. If theyre really planning on doing this, then stop hiding it so that people who planned on being there can change things up before it's too late for hotel refunds and stuff.

You have to be sh*tting me. I just booked flights, a car, and hotel last week for May 31st-June 3rd.

That's cool...no one did that while I was at the ride and I got my pick anyway. Always appreciate when parks let you wait for rows these days...should be allowed everywhere but some places flat out don't. A few other notes that I forgot to talk about... When I went by Thunderbolt I noticed they put up some temporary barriers to extend the line. The line was as long as it always is when I walked by, but with a half full train 25-30 minutes turns into 50-60 minutes. Not sure if this was the case all night but I believe Scream was only running the Hellevator tower all night. App said the line was 35 minutes, so with the amount of times I see it being a walk on, it was an easy skip. I wanted to ride Harley Quinn but it was 9:00 when I got to it and I didn't want to wait any longer to get to Superman. The queue was almost full, so not sure what the wait time was. The seats looked more full than I expected, so maybe it wouldn't have been too bad. After reading the Cedar Point TRs from opening day, I'm even happier with the state of the park right now. The CP TRs almost sound like old school Six Flags...lots of rides not even ready to open, lots of 1 train ops. And this is a park that was open last year. Meanwhile, SFNE's first day in over 16 months felt almost totally normal. All but 1 ride running (and according to Queue Times, Blizzard River is open today, so the park is 100% minus the green lawn ornament which may or may not be closed forever), and all trains running on each coaster with multiple trains. A few small kinks and I assume a ton of new employees that are still figuring things out, but kudos to Six Flags for being totally ready to go. Noticed a lot of coaster shirts in the park (including myself with a Maverick shirt with Snoopy on it if anyone noticed). Saw other CP shirts, Great Adventure shirts, and even a Waldameer shirt. Side note: If you get in line for Superman and the line is in the logo section, be careful as those bushes definitely have poison ivy in them (and I don't mean the character lol). I was kinda surprised to see that!

Just got back in myself...due to work and Springfield traffic I didn't get into the park until 6:40. Decent amount of cars in the lot upon arrival. Be aware that the tram is closed, so be ready to walk. They also currently have two big tents set up for temp checks and security. Can't wait to go to Ohio and not deal with this crap. Everything was quick and was in the park in no time. Headed to the North End first and started at Wicked Cyclone. Two trains with every other row closed. Line at that point was under the crossover which was about 20 minutes. Lucked out with the back seat. You could pick your row but they were only letting 12 people in at a time so you still need to be one of the first into the station to pick what you want. This thing still never fails to amaze me with how much steam it loses by the end of the ride. It's a great coaster, but just so weird compared to other RMCs which tend to go batsh*t right to the end. Good to be back! Hopped on Skyscreamer which was a walk on and had a great ride. We had a nice San Diego afternoon with temps in the 70s, so a pleasant breeze 400 feet up. On the way out, Pandemonium had a 30 minute line, so headed past to Flashback. Skipping every other row but it doesn't matter because no one rides Flashback anyway. Goliath looks to be going the way of the Dinosaurs. They fed this dino the "Temporarily Closed" sign for Goliath. Must be getting a more permanent one. Wandered up to Tomahawk which was also a walk on. It's laughable how little it swings these days, but they make up for it by having it spin in "Gravitron Mode" for 2 straight minutes. Anyone miss the old concrete path with the horseshoes carved in? More boring pavement at New England's Blacktop Capital. They could've really gone all out on the New England theme by littering this area with potholes. Headed towards Gotham where I found Harley Quinn and Batman both down temporarily. Got in line for Riddler and despite running at full capacity, the dispatches were a bit atrociois due to only having 1 ride attendant (yet half full Cyclone and Superman had 4). Ended up being about 30 minutes. A little bit of jackhammering but fun ride. Batman was back up so hopped in line for that. Would've been like a 10 minute line but it had another (rather short) breakdown which turned it into 25 minutes or so. Also hit Joker which only had a 5 minute line. Crazy as usual. Love how close Harley Quinn gets to Joker. By then it was already pushing 9, so I made my way to DC. App said Superman had a 10 minute line, and with that said I had a heart attack when I walked down the stairs and saw the line back to the Superman logo near the locker building. Turns out they weren't using any switchbacks but it still ended up being almost 40 minutes. Every other row closed but they were filling the station and letting you pick what you wanted. Went for the back and enjoyed the OG Intamin Masterpiece. LightSabre The Ride Ended up calling it a night after that as it was pushing 10. They still had the line open, so kudos to them for keeping it going till closing which wasn't always the case in the past. Gotta say things went pretty well tonight. Good sized crowd and the park was strict about masks and social distancing, and people were more observant of that here than I've seen at any other park. Looking forward to "normal" park days in Ohio though. All major rides open except Blizzard River I believe. Overall was impressed with the staffing level, although the one area they struggled was on the food side of things. Lots of stands closed and the open ones had huge lines. All applicable coasters running two trains and they're doing their best keeping capacity up with the restrictions in place. Something new to look forward to in the next week! Goodnight SFNE. Good to be back at the ol' home park.

Got a refundable reservation through Hertz for $400. That will probably be the lowest I can find. Also booked the flight this morning...dirt cheap to Detroit on JetBlue for some reason. Can't complain about that. See you in 16 days, Orion!

499 days later, it's finally time to open SFNE! Be there at 6. Expectations set reasonably low for tonight but just glad to be able to go again.

Haha probably not going with the fully ambitious plan. Like I said, if I get to any it'll be Cincy. I'm in Cleveland/CP almost annually so I can go to the Indians (or after this year, the Cleveland Politically Correct Baseball Team) and Football HOF on one of those trips. Went to the Rock Hall a couple years ago which was pretty cool, but not something I really need to go back to. And then Detroit/Comerica Park I honestly don't care as much about. Always heard good things about Great American Ballpark and I don't get to Cincy nearly as often, so that's the priority game of the three. Will try to get to Skyline Chili while I'm in town too. I've done a Knoebels/CP/Kennywood/Hershey trip 4 times now and have always planned it around the Pirates being at home. I've been to PNC more times than Fenway in the last 10 years. Even stopped in Altoona two of those times for a Curve game, which is also a really nice AA park. Now to figure out how to get a 4 day car rental for less than $400...

Planning an Ohio trip the Sunday-Wednesday surrounding Memorial Day. The bare bones plan is to fly into Detroit Sunday morning (it's way cheaper than Cleveland or Cincy), spend the rest of Sunday and all of Monday at KI, then Tuesday and Wednesday at CP. The absolutely insane plan is to potentially add in a Tigers game Sunday, Reds game Monday, Indians game Tuesday, and Football HOF visit Tuesday or Wednesday. Feel like I won't end up doing most of that, but the final result will hopefully include at least the Reds game. Enough baseball... My biggest question is how insane does KI get on Memorial Day weekend? Should I budget for FP+? I like to reride things to a point, but dont necessarily need 10 laps on everything. I would have the patience to wait about an hour a couple times for things like Orion, DB, MT, and Banshee but if the lines are likely to be much longer then I would want to get FP+. I'll have a half day on Sunday and a good chunk of Monday (minus 5 hours if I leave to go to the Reds game, which is at 1:00) so should have a combined 12 hours for the park. Been trying to sift through the beer and food recommendations from the last few pages and pretty excited to check out all these choices. Can anyone sum up a couple must-haves for food and beer? Sounds like Ohio is pretty much restriction-free now. Are all the rides back to full capacity? SFNE looks to be stuck in the stone ages of July 2020 with 1/2 full trains so the biggest reason for planning this trip is that hopefully no painfully slow lines will be present. Super pumped to hopefully get back to KI. Last time I was there was 14 years ago, when the only things to look forward to were Beast and maybe Flight of Fear and otherwise got to experience meh stuff like Vortex, Son of Beast (wasn't THAT bad post loop), Invertigo, and Firehawk. This place has some so far since I've been there and I've seen multiple people declare it to be a more fun park than CP.

The Dippin Dots guy told me that skip the line passes will be handed out at Switlik Mansion this weekend. Hope that helps.

Yeah that's the one. And that might not be a bad idea!

Suppose I could get one of the 4 packs of wristbands for $170. Not sure I'd use them all but buying tickets for one night would probably be almost as expensive.

I love the location because you can ride it and then air dry on the Skyri... Oh.

Am I just blind while checking the site or is Morey's seriously not selling wristbands again this year?

Looks like the calendar has been updated through September. 7 day ops don't start until June 14th (2 weeks later than usual) and end on August 28th (1 week earlier than normal). Also the park will close at 8 Monday-Thursday during midsummer. Hopefully that's just for this year. Calendar stops short of Fright Fest, although with the state's full reopening date of August 1, I expect Fright Fest to be fairly back to normal and hopefully also HITP.

Hmm...thats weird that they had 4:00 available for reservations, but that's better as I wont be there from work till at least 6 (which is what I reserved). Glad I'll have more time.

Going by the available reservations when I was on the app an hour ago, 4-9. But who knows if that's official.

Made a reservation for preview night. Should be able to get over there for a couple hours. Never been on a Friday in May without hundreds of school busses dropping kids off, so might actually be decent!