Yesterday we’d scheduled a trip down to Cedar Point (nearby theme park well known for its coasters). Of course, fricking work demands meant I couldn’t go after all, so my husband went with his brother. Goddamn work. ANYWAY, they spend $35 each to get in (that’s with a discount), plus $6 parking. They spent the ENTIRE day at the park. How many rides did they get to go on? FOUR. No, I’m sorry, that’s THREE rides, but they rode one of them twice. ALL BECAUSE OF THE LINES. They said they never had seen anything like it. Lines snaking outside of the roped areas and in front of the concessions.
Admittedly, they could have boycotted the great coasters and instead gone on some fucking little teacup rides or something. But they planned to the trip to be able to ride on the coasters, Cedar Point brags about their coasters, and their high ticket prices are partially justified by their coasters. Thus, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to expect to be able to enjoy them. And it was a two-hour drive to get there, so I can understand why they couldn’t just to say skip it, let’s come back another day when it’s less busy.
So why oh why does Cedar Point let so many people into their goddamn park that you can’t even ride rides? Let 'em in, let 'em get hot, sell them overpriced drinks all day… is that the plan? Who cares if we can’t accommodate them on the rides.
It’s a damned good thing I didn’t go, because I am pretty sure I would have made a scene marching into some office and trying to strangle someone with his necktie.
Ah, good ol’ Cedar Point . . . not only was I a frequent visitor, I actually worked there one miserable summer, serving snow cones, soft drinks and cotton candy to the wretched, unable-to-read-or-count freaks who hung out on the midway.
Anyway, I’ve been in that situation, too, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everybody, or most people, are there to ride the coasters. They aren’t there to see the lame shows, or ride the Witch’s Wheel or the Ferris Wheel (and CP has one big-ass wheel) or, god forbid, the Spider. They’re there for the thrill rides. Those are what get the traffic, so people wait ungodly amounts of time in line for them.
I don’t know to what degree the size of each train or the safe amount of time that operators must wait to start a new train play into it, but it is annoying as hell to wait 90 minutes for a 2-minute ride. It really cuts into your ride time. Especially when they play that goddamned annoying techno music over the PA system.
Best suggestion for visiting CP and maximizing your ride time: Visit after the local schools have started back up, especially after 5:00 p.m. (which is when their discounted “Starlight Admission” rates kick in). Visitor count is a lot lower at that time. Also, they have “Bonus Weekends” into September, where the park is really empty.
It’s not just Cedar Point. The only time I heard of a theme park not letting more people in was once the parking lot was full. I didn’t go to Great Adventure for years, because I remembered waiting on line for 2 hours ( among other things)Some parks are going to be more crowded than others. Cedar Point for example, is widely known,even outside it’s area, for its coasters (I live in NYC and my son the coaster freak is dying to go to CP) probably because of all those Discovery Channel shows ( that’s where he heard about it). Great Adventure wasn’t crowded at all when I finally went last summer,but I think it’s more of a local park than CP
I made the mistake of going to Disney World on New Years Eve '94. There were so many people there, you honestly could not move much less ride anything. I was standing on Main Street which was so crowded, I couldn’t even lift my arms, and this big bitch from Australia LIFTED ME UP and moved me so she could sit her kid on top of the garbage can. Jesus it was horrible. Someone told me on New Years Eve last year they actually closed the park because there was no more room. I’ll bet they had Disney employees cramming people through the gates like they do with subway passengers in Hong Kong. (“push 'em Kevin, HARDER, come on just one more”)
I went there this summer. I had paid 28 bucks, with discounts and stuff. We chose a day when there were really big thunderheads in the area. Looked like the sky was going to explode. It didn’t. All day. And there were about 500 people at the whole park. I rode 7 coasters. The line for the Milennium Force, the biggest, meanest, SOB coaster was only 1 hour.
Btw, on the parking, I found a trick. They have a fee if you are only going to drop someone off. But they direct you to park like everyone else. You could just stay instead of leaving. Price you pay? .50$. Price you should have? 6$. I view it as evening the price scale.
I remember going near the end of June this year, and it didn’t seem that bad. I will admit though, I have been there when it was hard to even ride any of the rides. While my friends and I were there, though, we rode about seven or eight rides, including Millenium Force, Mantis and Raptor. It was a pretty fun day, actually.
Might I direct your attention to this website? www.rollercoaster.com They have a message board there too. (Click on “Forums.”) You can commisserate with fellow theme-park fans and read the latest news and rumors about upcoming rides.
Never having been to Sandusky, I’m afraid I have no advice besides what’s been suggested about evenings in September, etc. Parks at night are cool, although the annoying-teen factor multiples exponentially.
But this is for Doreen and any other Dopers in the NYC area: have you ever been to Rye Playland? OK, so it doesn’t have the big-ass steel behemoth rollercoasters that the others do, but it’s a great trip. It’s the only publically owned amusement park in America, I think, and it’s been largely restored and preserved as it was in the 20’s and 30’s, with the Art Deco decor, fountains, and buildings. Its Derby Racer (sort of a high-speed merry-go-round and :eek: a real rush) is one of only three left in the world. Its main coaster is from 1927 and called the Dragon Coaster, a fine old wooden specimen. The truly monstrous Airplane was knocked down in the 60’s. My folks and I went there in May and we went to the old piers where they would come up in the 50’s on school excursions, 900 Catholic school kids packed into old steamboats (think the Morro Castle) up from the Battery. At prime time this park gets crowded, too, but they do stop selling tickets at a certain point so I’ve only had to wait about 1/2 hour for the Coaster. It’s smallish, not that flashy, and a genuinely interesting piece of history. Fine beach, boardwalk, and lake too. (If you ever saw “Big”, this is the park wherein Tom Hanks visited the Fortuneteller.)
BTW, I was in Coney Island last month and there are few more interesting ruins than ancient, falling apart wooden coasters. The old Hurricane, companion to the still-flourishing Cyclone, is right next to the old Parachute Jump, but unlike the latter, nobody’s painting it.
Carolyn,
I’ve been to Rye Playland a couple of times.It was okay, but I categorize it as a “after the beach for a few hours” park, (like Rockaway Playland was)rather than an all day trip (and if I remember right, it was tickets per ride when I last went, not a one price plan)
Yes, it’s not the sort of place you could spend all day at with kids because it is kinda small. But I agree that having to constantly buy tickets for the attractions is annoying; however, it does mean that people like my grandma could come along and not be charged thirty bucks just to sit on a bench and watch us go on the rides. And their Kiddyland is classic.
Glad you’ve been there and everybody, if you want to see a nice charming vintage little amusement park and ride some landmark rides that don’t have corporate superheros and pulsating neon plastered all over them, check it out. Rye, NY, right on the sound.
Whoops, this is the Pit. Uhm…
Goddam Coney Island and the goddam Wonder Wheel operators! We wait in line for fifteen minutes and watch the fucking thing go around and around and around and then we get on and you give us TWO whole revolutions!! Well, shit, thanks a whole lot! Do you only go off to smoke weed every other trip or what??
Ahhhh, Cedar Point, “America’s Roller Coast.” What a GREAT place! I used to go there every summer with my church group, and the last time I went was 3 years ago. We would always go on a weekday, like Tuesday. Every year I’d get to ride every ride, and still have time to sample the smaller stuff, like two, or three times. There was one year that I hit all 13 coasters in one day. (Mantis, and Millennium Force were not yet built)
Like Phil said, if you go at the right time, the crowds are much smaller, and truly enjoying all that CP has to offer is much easier. I think the so-called “expensive” tickets are WELL worth the price.
Ah Cedar Profit.
It brings back old memories. I too put in my time serving cotton candy and sno-cones. Entirely too much time per day as I recall. I did meet my wife there so it was certainly not all bad. Actually we had a lot of fun.
Phil D has offered good advice. Use the greed of Ceder Fair LTD to your advantage. They will keep that place open until they have wrung the last copper from the public. During bonus weekends the park is mostly empty.
But I think the best time to go is in late May. There are not so many people and the workers haven’t been disillusioned yet by their experience so they are actually friendly.
FWIW, I don’t know if this was a fluke or if it’s a phenomenon associated with some holidays. I went to Astroworld a few years ago on Labor Day. Astroworld is normally quite crowded and is expensive to enter. But on this particular Labor Day there were maybe 50 visitors in the whole place. No lines at all.
I rode all the rides I could handle, usually alone. When I’d get to the end of a ride, the operators would just ask if I wanted to go again.
Is there anything to the Labor Day phenomenon, or was it a fluke?
How can anyone go to an amusement park these days and not expect to spend 80% of the day in line? How is that possible? That’s the way it is! Get with the goddamned program! Yeah I’m bitter about it too, (my last three times at Kings Dominion), but really, isn’t that how it always is?
A buddy o’ mine went to Cedar Point last year. His wife, being a pretty sharp cookie, and employed in the “customer tracking” department of a major insurance company to boot, deduced that Cedar Point must keep statistics on average daily attendance. With a little persistance, she tracked down the pertinent department, phoned them, and asked what day had the lowest average attendance. The answer is: tah-dah! Labor Day. If I recall correctly, Memorial Day runs a close second.
Now that I’ve dispensed with my public service, let me say that I hate amusement parks, for exactly the reason JBirdman states. Hell! I get antsy standing in line for five minutes at the grocery store. Standing in line for an hour (an hour on a good day! Yikes!), and paying $35.00 for the privilege, is not my idea of fun.
As a matter of fact, I would rather go to the local Farmer Crack’s. Being pushed around the parking lot in a shopping cart might not be as much fun as riding the Millenium Force, but it at least has the element of real danger. Plus I can go home with $35.00 worth of iceburg lettuce, Funyuns, and grape Snapple for my money.
So don’t give 'em your money. I can’t believe that some “fun-ride” is SO fucking exhilarating that I’d waste an hour and a half standing in line for that fifty-second thrill.
As far as my kids are concerned, there are two amusement parks in the world…Nelly Bly, down in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and Old Orchard Beach, in coastal Maine, on our vacation drive up to Mt Desert Island. Both pretty well stopped evolving around 1933. Needless to say, the maximum wait for any ride is about five minutes.
If they see Disney World or Great Adventure or Six Flags on the teevee and ask about them, I just chuckle and tell them that there’s big laughing purple dinosaurs on television, too, but that doesn’t mean that they exist in the real world.
There is actually a very good reason why attendance is usually so low on Labor Day and Memorial Day: That’s when most out-of-state visitors go home, so they can get back to work or school on Tuesday. A few even have to start heading home on Sunday. (They have to drive further.)
Motel and hotel rooms are usually cheaper on Labor Day night for this reason. Some places aren’t even a third occupied on Labor Day night.
Did you know that at the Central Florida parks (Disney, Universal & Sea World), the least-crowded days are usually Saturday and Sunday? Most visitors are from out of state. Saturday is when most of them arrive and check in. Sunday is when most of them check out and go home. And the majority of domestic visitors drive to and from Florida.
Cedar Point is always a huge money sucker. I agree with 2sense. The best time to go is in May. Not only is there no one there, but Pepsi cans have a huge discount on them.
The only problem is that you can’t go on the water rides because it’s really not warm enough to walk around with wet clothes on.
Another hint, bring a cooler and leave it in the pavilion outside. Never had a problem with thieves. Also, the restaurants have a better value for your money than the concession stands.
No matter what, you should go expecting to get gouged in the wallet. The lines are a seperate problem. Bad weather is the best thing to clear up the park to have a great time.