Roller Coaster Thread: Whee!

[Bear Up North]

First, let me say this.....Cedar Point is the best amusement (theme) park in the world. The reason for this statement.......go there and count the huge roller coasters.

Sure, Cedar Point is a northern Ohio theme park, located on a thin split of sand that stretches into Lake Erie. When I went there as a kid it was rundown, only one (1) coaster was there, and it had a monorail that circled the park.

They started to improve the place in the late 1960's, early 1970's. They went on a roller coaster binge, that continues today. (Although, roller coasters are no longer the only type of thrill rides.)

Cedar Point is a success even though the season is much shorter than most of the other bigger parks in the U.S.A. The Toledo group that owns Cedar Point also owns Knott's Berry Farm and a couple other smaller parks.

If you ever watch networks such as The Discovery Channel you will see Cedar Point's coasters......over and over.

The Millenium is awesome. This Bear and Katie rode that world's tallest coaster just after it was built. What a ride!

The giant wooden coaster in the back corner of Cedar Point is called Mean Streak. It is an engineering marvel and a blast to ride. I figured out where the cameras are hidden, so they can snap your picture while you ride it and try to sell it to you. So now I flip the camera off. Great juvenile fun.

Cedar Point also has the Top Thrill Dragster (basically straight up and then straight down at over one-hundrfed miles an hour), the Demon Drop, the Raptor, and many others. They still have an old wooden coaster, The Blue Streak, which gives some good quality "air time" for riders.

The park has a couple (just OK) taverns. Good hotels are adjacent to the park. The swimming is pretty good, too. Clean beach.

I challenge one (1) and all to come up with a better theme park, when using roller coasters and thrill rides as the determining factor.

I dare you to try it.

Bear On The Raptor

[Suburb Repairman]

The Bear speaketh the truth.

I have been to probably 20 roller coaster parks in the U.S. and not a single one comes even close to Cedar Point. I've been there twice when I've gone up to Swanton to visit the future family-in-law. It's like a non-stop adrenaline rush. What's really great is that they have so many awesome coasters that lines are short for some of the best ones, like Magnum XL200. Millenium is quite possibly the best coaster I've ever ridden. Top Fuel Dragster is pretty cool because of the speed and height, but I still think Millenium tops it. What's really fun is when the Dragster doesn't make it up the hill and you have the fun of going forward at 100 mph & backward at 100 mph!

If any of you get even close to Sandusky, I strongly suggest stopping at Cedar Point. You will be hard-pressed to ride everything in one day, but if you're smart with scheduling, you can pull it off.

[Trail Nazi]

Maybe we should have some sort of roller coaster laefest at Cedar Point. It sounds like a great place. I love roller coasters but have not been on a good one in awhile. I am familiar with all of the WDW, Sea World, and Universal Orlando ones. Kracken and the Hulk are great! I haven't been to Busch Gardens in sometime but they are supposed to have a great wooden coaster. I also love water theme parks.

[donk]

My favourite roller coaster memory is a time at Canada's Wonderland when it was near closing. We were riding the dragon fyre (loop de loop coaster) and the lines were non existent. Due to a park "rule" everyone had to get off teh roller coaster and re renter teh line up. So we would ride the ride, run back through the line up and get back on in about 30 seconds. Rode it 15 times in about 30 minutes. Felt a bit dizzy, but enjoyed ii.

Other coasdters there the wooden - great cnadian mind buster, a suspended one, a frontwards back wards one, plus a few others.

Also like 6 Flags Great Adventure near Lakewood NJ. First real theme park I ever visited as a kid. it always was the "treat" part of visiting my cousins.

[Super Amputee Cat]

Last October, on a cool cloudy day, I went to Cedar Point for the first time since 1988. At the end of the day, I was left feeling more than a little melancholy from the whole experience of witnessing how much the park has changed in those 15+ years. This in turn, aggravated haunting memories of happier times long since passed and evermore so out of reach.

Everything looked so out of place, with entire sections of the park totally unrecognizable. Not only did many of the old familiar rides of my ever so distant childhood disappear, but also whole sections of the park had been literally ripped away and replaced by strange new, gleaming structures.

As a child, our family went just about every year during the early and mid 1970s and we often stayed two-days for many of those visits. But throughout high school and after, my visits there became less frequent. I would sometimes go three or four years at a time between visits and there were always one or two strange new rides during the interim. And of course there were one or two new rides that had been taken away.

But to see a place that changes as much as Cedar Point after fifteen years was an experience I was not prepared for. I found myself utterly disoriented at many points in the park: Isn't the big Ferris Wheel supposed to be here? In fact, I'd been away so long that some rides that were built after my 1988 visit were already demolished by the time of my most recent visit. That really made me feel old.

The whole experience for me that day went beyond bewildering and into the realm of depressing. While I recognize that an amusement park of this caliber must continuously metamorphasize in order to maintain a regional attraction, I think Cedar Point has gone a little too far. They removed too many rides that just shouldn't have been f'ked with: The Pirate Ride, Earthquake, Frontier Cable Cars, Fun House, etc. What's worse, they have replaced them with huge out of scale rides that destroy the continuity and pedestrian level scale of many sections of the park.

I might add that concession prices were outrageous and the park no longer allows outside food or drink. In the 1970s and 1980s, they not only allowed outside food, but had picnic tables set up near the entrance specifically for that purpose.

Top Thrill Dragster was fun I guess, but was it worth it to stand in line for almost and hour for a ride that lasts less than 30 seconds? As I mentioned, we were there at the end of October, so I imagine it to be even worse in the summer.

Thank God the old Cadillac Cars were there (Frontier as well as Midway), as well as the Wildcat, Blue Streak, the racing horse merry-go-round, Coliseum and a few of the other vintage '50s through '70s rides. The IMAX was still there, but no longer shows films at the level they once did.

My kids being there helped also - everything was fresh, exciting and new to them. Nothing in the world could beat the look on my four year old daugher's face when she was driving one of the Cadillacs in frontiertown all by herself. Boy did she think she was the cat's pajamas on that day!

If it weren't for my kids, I don't think I would have been able to stand it.

Cat wishing it were 1975.

[Zoning Goddess]

Originally posted by Trail Nazi

Maybe we should have some sort of roller coaster laefest at Cedar Point. It sounds like a great place. I love roller coasters but have not been on a good one in awhile. I am familiar with all of the WDW, Sea World, and Universal Orlando ones. Kracken and the Hulk are great! I haven't been to Busch Gardens in sometime but they are supposed to have a great wooden coaster. I also love water theme parks.

TN had to take my son on his first roller-coaster ride at WDW because I can't even ride on the little kid coasters. Probably for the same reason I get mortally sea-sick on those allegedly stable cruise-ships.

[SW MI Planner]

Originally posted by Trail Nazi

Maybe we should have some sort of roller coaster laefest at Cedar Point.

I'm there! My family and I have gone to Cedar Point for as long as I remember. Now the hubby and I go about once a year. Last year we went on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and it was perfect. Great weather, low crowds. We took a cooler and went and ate lunch and drank some beer in the parking lot.

I agree Cat, they have taken some great rides out (Pirate Ride - I still remember exactly where it was at), but they still have some good classics - the Matterhorn, Ocean Motion (or whatever it is called), Tilt a Whirl. I love frontier town

[Tom R]

Kennywood in Pittsburgh is a really cool OLD park.

[Gedunker]

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus, Indiana! And in Santa Claus, Indiana, is one of the great, non-affiliated amusement parks -- Holiday World. And there you can ride on the roller coaster voted best wooden coaster in the world -- THE RAVEN! Fanfreakintastic!

[JNA]

Following up on Gedunker's post,

Holiday World has a website: http://www.holidayworld.com/index.html
and on their site is a video of riding the Raven.

[Tranplanner]

I have a fear of roller coasters. Wouldn't get me on one for a million dollars. Well, okay maybe for a million dollars, but no less than that.

[donk]

Forgot to add, that this thread reminds me of one of my favourite Dead Milkmen songs, "Stuart"

You know that carnival that comes to town every year?
Well this year it came with a ride called the Mixer.
The man said "Keep your head and arms inside the mixer at all times."
But Bill Jr., he was a daredevil, just like his old man. He was leaning out saying, "Hey everybody! Look at me, look at me!" POW! He was decapitated. They found his head over by the snowcone concession.

[The Irish One]

Colossas, magic mountain Valencia, Ca

[Super Amputee Cat]

Originally posted by SW MI Planner

I agree Cat, they have taken some great rides out (Pirate Ride - I still remember exactly where it was at), but they still have some good classics - the Matterhorn, Ocean Motion (or whatever it is called), Tilt a Whirl. I love frontier town

I think the Tilt-a-Whirl is gone too. Is that the ride that spins you around?

[Gedunker]

Originally posted by Super Amputee Cat

I think the Tilt-a-Whirl is gone too. Is that the ride that spins you around?

You bet -- the tilt-a-whirl is a spinner.

Sprinsteen, 4th of July--Asbury Park (Sandy)
You know that tilt-awhirl out on the south beach drag
I got on it last night and my shirt got caught
That joey kept me spinnin' I didn't think I'd ever get off

[zmanPLAN]

Originally posted by Tranplanner

I have a fear of roller coasters. Wouldn't get me on one for a million dollars. Well, okay maybe for a million dollars, but no less than that.

I'm with you, Man.

Tranplanner and me sitting in the pavilion drinking Molson and watching girls.

[JNA]

BUMP

Holiday World takes riders on Voyage
New wooden roller coaster features 3 drops of more than 100 feet, 5 tunnels

SANTA CLAUS, Ind. -- Holiday World is expected today to debut its newest attraction: a 1.2-mile-long wooden roller coaster that gives riders a feeling of weightlessness.
The Voyage will feature three drops of more than 100 feet, which will give riders a feeling of freefall for about 24 seconds during the ride, park President Will Koch said.
Part of the Southern Indiana theme park's new Thanksgiving section, The Voyage will be among the world's longest wooden roller coasters, Koch said. The coaster will have a top speed of 67 mph and go through five underground tunnels.
Enthusiasts from the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain are expected to be among those testing the coaster during its first rides, park officials said.
The park about 35 miles east of Evansville will open for the season Saturday. Officials hope to boost attendance at Holiday World and Splashin' Safari water park to about 1 million visitors this summer.

From the Indy Star.


The Holiday World website page for the Voyage is worth looking at:
http://www.holidayworld.com/voyage_video.html

click on the "on-ride video"

[savemattoon]

^^Don't tell my wife, or we will have to go there again


Thank you for riding the Ravennnnn

[TOFB]

Millenium Force scared the crap out of me. This Sunday, I rode American Eagle (and others) at Six Flags Great America (Gurnee, IL) in a steady rain. Afterward, I felt like a Dick Cheney hunting partner.

My favorite is the Aerosmith Coaster at Disney MGM in Orlando. What a show.

[cch]

Six Flags Great America is the park I go to most, and one roller coaster there (I think it is called The Raging Bull) is the only ride I've ever been on that seriously scared the be-jesus out of me. I'm glad I road it, but I don't know if I'll ever do it again. American Eagle, Screaming Eagle, Colossus... they are all basically the same wooden roller coaster at three different Six Flags (Gurnee, IL, St. Louis and Valencia, CA), and they can't be beat, partly because the rides are so long. Newer roller coasters seem like super short rides to me.

[cololi]

Originally posted by zmanPLAN

I'm with you, Man.

Tranplanner and me sitting in the pavilion drinking Molson and watching girls.

And that is all you could do, is watch the girls, because no girl wants to be with a guy who is afraid to ride rollercoaster. ( this statement loses some of its uumpf when I replaced the word of choice with "afraid to ride" statement)

[Bear Up North]

Cedar Fair, based in Sandusky, OH but in all reality a Toledo, OH company just announced the purchase of a number of competing amusement parks. The new roster of parks and the attendance figures for same will place Cedar Fair parks at number three in the USA.

Wall Street applauded the move because it spreads some of the risk geographically around. The corp now has parks in warm weather climates, moderate weather climates, and climates that enjoy Winter.

The purchase included rival King's Island, north of Cincinnati. Year after year we would watch the attendance figures for those two parks.....they both average around 3,000,000 visitors a year. (Ohio is the world leader in coasters and now many of the often-listed TEN BEST are owned by Cedar Fair.)

Bear On Raptor

[RichmondJake]

I want to go on a rollie coaster again someday. I have to find somebody that will go with me. *RJ, kicking the tile floor*.

[Zoning Goddess]

Originally posted by RichmondJake

I want to go on a rollie coaster again someday. I have to find somebody that will go with me. *RJ, kicking the tile floor*.

Hey, you get to go on a new one this summer. I won't be there with you, of course, since I can't take anything even remotely resembling a roller coaster. I would have to leave burial instructions with you if I went on one.

[kjelsadek]

I'd rather get teeth pulled with no novocain than ride a roller coaster.