Fall 2018 Theme Park Trip-Day 10

Today was day two at Cedar point.

The goal was to finish up the coasters that I didn't get yesterday. I didn't spend any time trying to repeat anything. I ran into two problems. The first was with Wicked Twister. It was listed as closed on the app. When I went over there, the sign said one hour, but the app still said closed and there was a sign saying closed but there were people in the station. The other was Wilderness Run. That is in Camp Snoopy. The problem is that if you are an adult over 54 inches you can't ride alone unless you had a small child with you. So on the latter, it was a no go. With the former, I was at Wicked Twister at the right time and got on without a wait when they reopened it.

So from opening until 6pm I was able to get the coasters and some of the flat rides. Mission accomplished!

One of the items that I think would be very helpful is if Cedar Point would standardize what you do at the coasters. Some of them have no bins, some have bins, some only have lockers, some have bins but the sign says leave in locker, some have bins that are only for loose footwear. It would be great if they could get the signage to match what is at the coaster at least.  With the lockers, they need to put up some barriers so that there is shading on the screens. There were several times when I had a real hard time trying to use the screen as it was washed out by the sun.

I also tried a couple of eating locations and couldn't find any place that had unsweetened iced tea. For those of us trying to avoid sugar, the only option was for water.

Lastly,  if I had paid for the Halloweekends event, I would have asked for my money back. I tried the event tonight. I went through another scare zone and then two outdoor mazes. To me the mazes were horrible and the scare zones weren't much better. The biggest issue is the way the lighting and the fake fog interact. The lighting blinded you so you can't see any detail in the sets they had set up. All the details were lost. The players, you couldn't see any details about them. They were backlit and their faces and the makeup or masks were obscured. There was confusion as to were areas began and how the lines were supposed to be lined up. The app didn't give much clarification on these items. again, it was a good thing that it was included and not a separate charge item.

I'm going to head to the park tomorrow. I had purchased a two day ticket. For a third day, I'd have to buy a new ticket. I'd also pay for parking. BUT, Knott's is a Cedar Fair park so I talked to customer service and made the decision to upgrade to a platinum pass. So I'm covered for two more park days and have the parking covered. Weird to be a pass holder for such a short time.

One aspect of the fall season is how the parks decorate outside of the Halloween theme. I really liked all the pumpkins, corn stalks and squash and bounty items scattered around. Due to the difference in the seasons in Hawaii, these sort of decoration really aren't used. It brings back a lot of memories growing up in Massachusetts.

Something I have to give Cedar Point a big thumbs up about is the mark parking spot portion of the app. When you park you can go into your profile and click the save parking location. It shows a google map image of the parking lot with a dot of where you are within the huge parking lot. When I left the park, it changed to Return to Car. I click on that it and showed the dot where my car was parked and another dot where I was. It was very helpful!

Tomorrow will an attempt to run and at the park repeat rides on a couple of coasters and then probably call it a short day so that I can get a bit of rest and updates processed before flying to Orlando on Monday.

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...

Fall 2018 Theme Park Trip-Day 4

Today was all over the place!

I have the Honolulu Marathon in December and decided that for this trip I'm going to do my best to keep up some sort of training while I'm traveling. Going running in an unfamiliar city can bring about different vistas and running patterns. The run brought me along a long veterans highway with a huge side walk along it although for most of it, there were just fields and forest next to it. I ran early so that I could spend the rest of the day running around to attractions so I started at 6am. Next to the motel where I'm staying there is a beautiful mountain stream which lead to a mill. What a beautiful site. As I got closer, I couldn't hear my podcasts as there was a small drop off and the water cascading over it made this beautiful thum-thum-thum sound. From there is was up towards Dollywood's entrance and then just kept going. It was dark and there were very few cars. Being the Smokey Mountains, there was mist everywhere. Several times when I went to scratch my beard I was surprised at how much moisture was clinging to it. I didn't encounter any other people walking or running and I'm sure I must have been out of place to the drivers as they went along their task.  When I returned to the motel, at the embankment of the river there was an older gentleman sitting on top of a picnic table there playing his guitar and singing.  What a way to start a Sunday morning!

For activities, spent the earlier portion  of the day heading into Gatlinburg. Did my first mountain coaster which was before you got into the downtown district. It was different than what I expected but still a lot of fun. I had been on a alpine side where you take a chair lift to the top and then ride down. Part of the charm was being towed up while sitting in the cart. The ride down was lots of fun but didn't expect it to be so short.

I had been to Gatlinburg once before in 1982 when I had visited Knoxville for the world's fair that was taking place in the city. The one memory I had from then is a store that sold these troll creations. Funny enough, the second store I went into had trolls. Not exactly as I remember them but thought it odd that I ran into them so quickly and only in the one store on the second floor of a mall that was tucked away in the back of the walkway.

I did a couple of the really touristy things like the The World of Illusion, Earthquake, the ride, and Mysterious Mansion. The first two were really hokey. I laughed though the whole Earthquake experience. With the Mysterious Mansion, I got grouped up with a number of other people and the "leader" was this 6 ft 270 lb guy that was a really scaredy cat but yet he
kept taking the lead and screeching out as the two actors would pop out of different places and yell boo.

Throughout the day I did four of the mountain coasters. The newest one is called The Rowdy Bear and in addition to the coaster they also had a what is being called a mountain glider. You're suspended from the bar and you zip along. I trust that these devices are safe but there were a couple of corners that I whipped around that made me swing back and forth that made me wonder for a second. I mentioned the Florida Zipline Coaster and they said they were aware of it but this was the first deployment of their technology in the US. I did buy the pic and a video and they have done something that I've never seen before. They gave me the physical print and on there is a QR code that you can use to download both pic and video. Something that I didn't like it that in the downloaded pic, it also includes the QR code so that other people could get it too. I'll need to photoshop it to remove the code, but eventually I'll get those posted.

Away from Gatlinburg, back in Pigeon Forge, spent time at both the Titanic and Alcatraz East attractions. Within Titanic, the item that I thought really drove home the point of what happened to the people is you walk outside the bridge and they have a representation of the iceberg next to the ship. You can run your hand along it, and it's real ice. The air in that room is chilly like it was that night. Then you can put your hand in some water that is kept at 28 degrees, the temp the people of the Titanic were dropped into once the ship sank. I only kept my hand in it for about 20 seconds and could really, really feel it. I could pull my hand out of the water, but they didn't have the option which really drove home the point of how these people died.

At Alcataz East, it's not a history of the place itself, but a museum that looks at crime and justice in all sorts of aspects going from back in ancient times to today. They had a number of actual items involved with topics they were discussing. Something amusing here that happened is that unlike at Titanic where they just handed you a self guide tour wand, the Alcatraz folks wanted you to leave your ID. So I asked if they would be responsible if I had ID theft during the next year. She then commented that the wands were $300 a piece and they could use my car keys to make sure they got it back. Fine. In the back of my head I'm thinking Titanic didn't ask for something as a hold but then again, maybe as a crime museum that's what they're worried about happening to them. At the end of the tour she asked for the name on the ID and said I was the guy with the car keys and she responded, "Oh yah, you....". Bit of an attitude, but the information presented was fascinating. I ended up spending 90 minutes in there.

By this time, it was almost 9pm and it was raining so decided to call it a night after grabbing a bite to eat. Unfortunately, that meant no moonshine tasting so I'll have to save that for another trip. Tomorrow is up really early for an early fight to visit family in Boston.