Fall 2018 Theme Park Trip-Day 9

Well, I have day 9 listed but the last post was day 4, what happened to the days in between you might be asking? Well, those weren't days spent at a theme park or traveling to/from one. I went back to the Boston area to visit my family. It's been 6 years since the last time I saw them which was when I returned for my mom's funeral. Briefly, it was a emotionally weird trip as I spent most of the time cleaning up my old bedroom. I moved to Hawaii in 1990 with the idea that I would be returning. That didn't happen. This trip makes trip six back and each time I've shipped items back. I have a number of items that I'm shipping back to myself in Hawaii so that I can scan them since I have the devices and software to be a good job doing it. I'll cover issues and feelings while home in another post later.

Meantime, today was a very exciting day. I flew into Cleveland for the second time in my life. The first time I was visiting my Walt Disney College Program trailermate Jim and that was back in 1988. But it wasn't the fact that I was in Cleveland, but that fact that I was on my way to Cedar Point, the East Coast Roller Coaster Capital of the US. The park was open tonight for their Haunt event. My goal is to get my coaster count up.

I arrived and got misty eyed. It was so excited that I finally am doing something that I talked about doing for a long time. As I was driving into parking lot I had that night before Christmas feeling about it. I'm walking in feeling like I'm walking on air as I had an electricity just exciting me as I moved to walk under the Gatekeeper keyhole structures. As I walked in, my head turning left and right looking around taking it all in for both the coasters that surrounded me and the park being decked out for their Halloween event. I also had chills due to both the excitement and the temperatures. I'm really glad I brought the long sleeve shirt.

I figured I'd get the newest, most popular ride out of the way first and Steel Vengeance is all the way at the back of the park. Even though I got there when the park opened, I still ended up waiting for the better part of an hour to ride. I don't know the exact time as they don't want to see any cell phones in line and I put mine in a locker. I did start a conversation with the group of people in front of me. One facet that I have going for me when I do talk to people is that I live in Hawaii. People want to know about Hawaii.  While waiting in line, the park was showing promos on monitors through out the queue . I was surprised that my old In the Loop co-host, Adam House was featured. Unfortunately, I was too far way from the monitor and holding a conversation to hear what Adam was discussing.

In the next line for Maverick I started a conversation with a family who comes from Michigan and the kids in college coming from New York join up for a family event. They highly recommended doing the Haunt events tonight and the rides tomorrow as they said the park will be crowded. I walked around a bit and did one maze and was not impressed. The scare area and the maze had, in my opinion, poor lighting. I couldn't see the objects or people as I had lights flashing in my face. Due to the back-lighting, I couldn't tell if the person coming towards me was a monster or a fellow park attendee. I could hear grunting and yelling and other noises, but couldn't see how the monster was decorated.

The rest of the night was spent riding coasters and doing a bit of shivering as the chill winds blew in from Lake Erie. I know that tomorrow I'll make sure to bring a third layer to have with me. I'll leave it in the car. I'll also be talking to park staff to see if I might save some money by getting a 2018 season pass as I'll be going to Knott's Berry Farm who has Cedar Fair as their parent company as well.

Until then...