Henry and I had plans to go to Cedar Point on Sunday for the last day of the season, but I almost let my depressed mood convince me that I wanted to stay home. Too much happened all at once and it was weighing on me big time:
- The hawk incident (more deets on this in a separate post);
- There was another car crash on my street Saturday night and I’m sorry, but hearing that sickening crush of metal never gets any easier (no one was seriously injured thank god but the lady driving took out about 3 parked cars on my block and then later tried to say she wasn’t the one driving but no one else was with her and she also threw an absolute fit when my neighbors tried to call 911, then her husband came and started yelling at her when she started to make up more stories);
- But mostly: the Itaewon incident has really hit me hard. I can’t explain it, but it feels close to home. Anytime anything awful happens in South Korea, I feel it in my heart. Such a tragic, horrific way to die. My friend Jiyong moved back to Seoul last year, but she luckily was not in Itaewon.
So, I didn’t really feel like going to Cedar Point in light of all of this, but Henry was like, “You can’t just stop doing everything because bad things have happened” blah blah, but he’s a sociopath who doesn’t care about anything ever so taking advice from him is not advisable. In the end, I agreed to go but I was a mopey lump in the passenger seat for the entire 2.5 hour drive there. I kept getting news alerts about Itaewon, texting Chooch about the hawk (“IS IT THERE? WELL, ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING FOR IT??”) and crying every time we drove past road kill. At one point, I wailed, “I WISH I DIDN’T FEEL SO MUCH!”
I’m becoming more and more of a fatalist as I grow older and it’s kind of psychologically debilitating, I have to say. I feel like I’m on a fast track to reclusion.
After an uneventful drive with me brooding out the window, we arrived at CP with about 20 minutes of Early Entry left. We headed straight to Millennium Force, because this is the coaster we have the best luck with during early entry. The line was already starting to get kind of long, so I was a baby about that because PROJECTION, but it actually was only about a fifteen minute wait.
“I’m not screaming,” I said as I stood in line for the back row with my arms crossed miserably over my dumb chest.
“OK,” Henry laughed, knowing that this was like, an impossible feat for me.
It was really funny though because when it was our turn, the ride attendant with the mic was like, “If you’re ready….don’t scream.” Henry was like, “WOW” because for every train before that she was of course telling everyone to scream and it was like she knew that I said I wasn’t going to!?
But then as the train started to leave the station, she was like, “OK you can scream” and I forgot that I wasn’t GOING TO so of course I screamed like a lunatic.
And then I grayed out after the first drop! That doesn’t happen to me very often on Millie!
The wait time for Steel Vengeance was listed as 30 minutes which is SHORT for that fucker! We got in line and it was moving super steadily until an announcement came on saying that there was going to be a short delay in order for a train to be removed from the track for maintenance. The recording INSISTED that it was A SHORT delay. So we didn’t let our inner Karens run rampant.
But then, and I fucking swear to god it happened at the CURSED SECTION of the queue, right where the dummy Fast Lane people come in, another announcement came on saying that STEVE WAS DOWN AND THAT MAINTENANCE HAD BEEN CALLED.
Motherfucker, SteVe! Has there been a time when I visited CP when SteVe hasn’t broken down while I’m in line?! MAYBE ONCE?!!? The only good thing about this is that people start dropping out of line like flies. So even though the dumb ride is broken down, we’re still kind of moving up in line.
I killed time by making this sick meme of THE ONE THING THAT CAN PULL ME OUT OF MY MOPEY MOOD. lol. Even Henry kind of smirked when he saw it on Insta.
We finally made it past the Fast Lane spillway and into the last stretch of queue before LOCKER TIME. But then there was ANOTHER ride delay announcement right before we got to the metal detector (riding RMCs is a real experience, you guys). Henry was annoyed because he forgot his dorky eyeglass strap thing in the car and hadn’t bought a new one there yet so he had to leave his glasses in the locker. Which meant he was standing in line, visually impaired. LOL.
Anyway, I would say that in total, we went from a 30-minute wait to probably a little bit over an hour but you guys gotta know that SteVe is fucking worth it.
Mostly, our day was pretty chill. We didn’t ride a whole lot (Raptor / Ferris Wheel / Mine Train Thing / TIKI TWIRL / plus Millie / Steve) because we only stayed until around 4:30 and spent what felt like most of the day roaming around looking for HALLOWEEN TREATS which apparently didn’t come out until the haunt shit started later that night. The one thing we saw a sign for though were two “creepy-themed” cupcakes, $10.99 each! Is that a joke?! I’m sure they were probably just regularly sized cupcakes!
So, here are some pictures from the rest of our day.
I realized that we had never ridden the ferris wheel at CP before so we changed that. We spent the whole time in line trying to figure out the reasoning behind why they don’t load every car. I know it’s a balance thing, I’m not a stoop (mostly) but like, why don’t they fill the whole thing if there are still people waiting in line?
It’s weird how small Cedar Point looks from above, when it feels like you’re walking a half marathon to get from one side to the next.
It was kind of nice to just relax on the dumb ferris wheel for a bit!
After that we rode the Tiki Twirl which is a Calypso-style flatride and I just love these types of rides SO MUCH. I was cracking up during the whole ride and Henry was not amused which made it even funnier.
I love that Cedar Point has a little food truck area – all amusement parks should do this! The truck with the delicious sunflower veggie burger was there again and I was delighted. This was literally right up there with SteVe on the list of reasons I got out of bed on Sunday.
IT IS SO FUCKING GOOD. I also got a maple & brown sugar-flavored coffee from the bagel food truck and that too was wonderful. It was a really mild day with JUST ENOUGH chill in the air to require a jacket and hot bev.
Henry got a pizza bagel or something, who cares.
I don’t care about shows but for some reason we stopped for a few minutes to watch these people do super glam and overdramatic covers of not-great pop songs and it was actually making me uncomfortable; I’m not going to lie. One of the dancers reminded me of Weird Paul but the more I think about, I think he moreso reminded me of one of the guys from ARMY OF LOVERS:
Yeah, the guy on the right. Alexander Bard, apparently.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE. Hilariously, I had peanuts in my fanny pack because why wouldn’t I?? So I got to feed a CP squirrel.
This was only our second time riding this and I gotta say it’s actually not that bad and it made me kind of giddy. (I feel like I spent most of the ride screaming OW MY BACK OMG though, lol.)
Henry was not happy about riding it but then admitted it was not as bad as he remembered.
It’s weird – I love amusement parks and I love haunted houses, but I don’t care much for the haunt events at amusement parks. I do like the decor though but I’m not trying to stand in those lines! The haunt crowds were starting to pour in by the time we were on our way out and I was not sad about leaving.
Overall, it was a nice afternoon. I don’t think we fought at all, although he was annoyed that I texted Chooch while we were in line for Raptor to tell him that Henry said he doesn’t like “those hanging ones,” instead of calling them by their real name: INVERTS. Ugh, some thoosie he is.