Zand

Few more points from the rest of today, where I got to experience the best and worst of the CP 2021 experience. After lunch I hit Raptor while I was there, grabbed front row after a quick FP line (regular line looked pretty short anyway). Skyride was closed today so walked up and randomly walked into Matterhorn as it was loading while I walked by. Definitely not a ride I expected to hit today, but what the hell! Waited about 15 minutes to do some Iron Draggin'. Always gotta hit it once even if it's kind of a lousy ride. Followed that up with another MF front row ride as there were only 2 groups lined up for it. Headed back to Frontier Town for a walk on ride on the excellent Skyhawk followed by a not so excellent walk on of the Mine Train. Those restraints are brutal and the ride isn't anything to write home about. Might add it to the list with Rougarou and Corkscrew of coasters that I wouldn't be sad if I missed each trip. Here comes the "worst of CP" I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Got to Steel Vengeance at around 6:45. Wife didn't want to ride so she sat outside and waited. I went into the FP line to find that the standby line was also empty. Put my stuff in the lockers, then was directed to the line on the right. They were doing such an awful job at pulsing the line that two guys that were in front of me in the tunnel got sent to the left side and got on the ride FIVE trains before I did. I had to bite my tongue to not ask the girl working the top of the stairs if she knows how to count. But, I did ask her if I could get in line for the back (since, you know, that and the front have dedicated lines built for that reason) and she coldly said "actually, you can go to row 3". While I was waiting for row 3, she let the people behind me line up for the front. I kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the ride, but good god lady. Finally got off at 7:40 (yes, it took 45 f*cking minutes to get on the ride from the lockers because someone can't count) and saw the line was already closed and some guy with a pony tail and tye dye Kings Island shirt was SCREAMING at the guy working the entrance. My wife said they closed the line at 7:20 and had turned away a few hundred people. She also noted people who got in the regular line 20 minutes after I got in the FP line got off before me, and I was like yup. While most of the rest of the park seems to be back in typical CP shape (which is generally good), Steel Vengeance is still a clusterf*ck of epic proportions. Got on the train to head through Boneville to the front of the park (unfortunately with the tye dye douchebag right behind us) and saw the MF line was still open as we pulled up. I made it in at 7:57 and they kept it open till 8:05. Against all odds, the grouper let me get in line for the back, and then upon return they popped open the magic gate and told everyone to go ride again so they could let the front row line finish up without moving them to other parts of the train. I can't believe I was still in the same park as I was at Steel Vengeance. Total ineptitude at one end, and thankfully ending on a great note at the other. Simply put, that left side line at Steel Vengeance after the lockers needs to be FP only. And if you're going to use both sides as the regular line, for the love of god put someone up there that can count to f*cking twelve. And let people line up for the front and back like every other coaster in the park. Maybe just move Millennium's crew over there for a day and show them how it's done. Other than Steel Vengeance it was a great day. Rode everything I wanted to, multiple times for most. Still a bit of stacking going on but things seem to be smoothing out. Hell, I think TTD ran nonstop in the combined 14 hours I spent in the park. After a rocky start, I'd say CP is finally getting it together. Now just need to get those old hours back. Heading down to KI tomorrow and Wednesday. Wed looks like a washout, but maybe it'll stay light and I can have the place to myself. Will take what comes with the weather, but will be sure to ride what I can tomorrow in case I'm shut out Wednesday.

Doing pretty good with FL+ today. MF and Steel Vengeance have merge points pretty far back but didnt wait more than 20 mins (other than deciding to wait for the front on MF and getting caught in a 20 min breakdown). Valravn had a super long Fastlane line this morning (onto the midway) and just came back and rode it with a 30 min wait. Hit Maverick twice, TTD twice, and Gemini as well. Grabbing some crabfries right now then probably back to Frontier Town.

Didn't end up riding much today but had a nice afternoon. After Magnum I tried to ride the smooth Arrow next door, but it went down so I moved along. Got over to Frontier Town and Maverick and Steel Vengeance were also down, not that I would've waited in a long line today anyway. We ended up buying some tickets for Frontier Festival and had some different beers. Hung around over there for a couple hours enjoying the atmosphere. Always loved Frontier Town and the added entertainment was nice. I did try to hit Maverick when it reopened but the whole queue house was still full so decided not to bother. Finally at 6 we started walking up Frontier Trail towards the front. MF had a good line still. Rougarou probably had no line but it blows so I kept walking. Lots of people waiting to drag iron so walked past that. Finally ended up over on the Twister midway and that was deserted. Rode the CP Windseeker for the first time, which against all odds was operating in a slight breeze. Nice ride, kinda disgusting view of all the dead fish on the beach from the storm. Could smell them from the line. Wicked Twister was a one train wait and rode in back. I love this stupid thing. It never has a line, the launches are fun, it's smooth and the weightless feeling on the spikes is pretty cool. I know it's totally overshadowed by almost everything else in the park but I'd be sad to not have it to fall back to on busy days. Gatekeeper next...maybe 10 minute wait and rode right side near the back. Never been much of a fan of this, but always worth stopping by if the line is short. The bouncing kinda makes me nauseous and I never have that happen to me on any other coaster. Went to hit Raptor, but it was down so went over to Blue Streak. 4 train wait or so (and kinda slow ops) but always a solid ride with decent airtime. Best ridden after a few beers at Chickies and Petes! Better news that that Raptor reopened while I was in line and it was 7:45, so that's where I finished up the night. Front row ride and the bugs were coming out. Raptor just has a batsh*t pace start to finish and IMO is the best B&M invert (disclaimer: I havent ridden Montu). I know Alpie has an awesome half, but for the total package Raptor has it all the way to the brake run. Glad to get the front of the park taken care of tonight, so I can use FP+ to focus on Steel Vengeance, MF, TTD, and Maverick tomorrow. Does anyone know if Steel Vengeance will be open at early entry tomorrow? I know its a Monday but not sure if the holiday makes a difference. If not I'd rather just stay up front and hit Valravn a few times.

Are they doing seat assignment garbage on every ride or did I just catch Magnum at the wrong time. I've never seen them do it here before except on Steel Vengeance (which I understand). SFNE was still "social distancing" last time I was there but was still filling the station on Superman, Riddler, and the other usuals so I don't want to see any Covid excuses. On the other hand, crews seem be moving quick after reading your post earlier. Good to see.

Got here around 3:00. Definitely not as insane as I expected it to be, especially considering it's in the 60s and sunny. Have FP+ tomorrow so kinda walking around hitting stuff with shorter lines. First ride was Magnum...no seat choice for absolutely no reason (that station is huge...totally unnecessary not to allow people to line up in there). Got stuck in a wheel seat and have a splitting headache. Guess I'll try to drink it off lol.

When the best operating coaster isn't even a coaster... Bought FP+ for Monday. $116 each but it'll be worth it.

To hell?

You just scared the sh*t out of me lol. This is a better alternative than the one their neighbors to the north settled on.

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.