Taking the day off last Wednesday and going to Cedar Point ended up being an A+++++ idea, you’re welcome, Henry. The thing with Cedar Point is that you truly have to plan for the day you want to have. You want to be royally pissed off and get to ride maybe 3 coasters all day? Go on a weekend. Otherwise, you’re gonna have to take a day off and go on a weekday. Preferably in May or end of August once kids are back in school. Then you have to pray for decent weather because even one rain drop or the slightest breeze will shut the whole place down, I swear to god.

We didn’t renew our passes this year because it’s still kind of confusing with the Six Flags merger + without Chooch, we don’t anticipate going to very many parks. That being said, now that we had to PAY FOR PARKING, we were totally grossed out to see that it was $42!! FOR PARKING. Let that sink in. So what, we’re paying daycare for our fucking car? It’s not enough that they price gouge you at the gates and every subsequent place you get food & drinks from therein? Fucking racket.

Once we were in the park, we went straight to the dreaded Tope Thrill 2 because the last time we were at CP, it was 2 summers ago and that was the season the new TTD debuted and then proceeded to be shut down for the whole season for maintenance. One thing to know about me, I might LOVE rollercoasters, but I hate strata coasters. I hated the OG Top Thrill and I SUPER HATED Kingda Ka. It’s the anticipation of the diabolical launch, and then the launch itself. Not the height of the top hat. I just get NO thrill (top or otherwise) out of it. But I felt like I needed to do this new-fangled one at least once, especially since the wait was FIFTEEN MINUTES, LET’S GO.

“What row do you want to sit in?” Henry asked and I quickly said, “Literally wherever they assign us, I just want to get it over with.”

Bro. They put us in the front row. :(

The worst seat for me on these types of rides.

I literally just screamed FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK the whole time and then as it hit the brake run, “Oh. That wasn’t that bad.” Somehow less bad that Kingda Ka, even though this Top Top 2 has three launches now: one that launches you forward and halfway up the tophat, one that launches you backward up a spike, and then one that launched you forward again but this time with enough speed to send you over the tophat.

I texted Chooch about it and all he said was, “You’re at Cedar Point?” I know it’s just words over text but IF IT DIDN’T SLAY MY HEART. I felt so guilty being there without him and also missed him so much! Even though had he been there, he would have been Mr. Miz.

We headed to the Frontier section of the park after this and got in line for Steel Vengeance. I kept saying the line was long and Henry was denying it but it was at least 60+ minutes, so I made the executive decision to leave the line and come back later. These situations are a lot like gambling! I was going to make a poker reference but then remembered that I barely know how to play Solitaire so we’ll just leave it at a vague gambling reference and move on.

Maverick’s line was long AF as usual so we skipped it completely (all day too, actually!). I realized that I actually hate Maverick moreso because of the annoyance and frustrations that go into riding it. We had one good experience EVER. And that’s usually the one line where we experience the most line jumpers too and it makes me want to Hulk out.

LOL I took this picture just for Chooch – and the Internet. This was in line for Millie (Millenium Force for all you GP) and I was panicking because there is all this drama this year with new seatbelts that are significantly shorter than the originals, preventing 60+% of previous park-goers from riding now. I was so afraid that Henry was going to be affected by this. We watched as people were getting turned away, ride attendants unable to get the belts to buckle. Henry was pointing out other people who succeeded, saying things like, “Oh come on, if HE can still ride it, so can I.”

And phew – he was fine. We sat in the backrow (I will only do front or back on Millie, thank you) and I am happy to say that this was one of the smoothest rides I’ve had on it. I grayed out, too! (I mean, I was also super hungry and probably half dehydrated, so that always does it.)

The only downside was that this should have been about a 10 minute wait but because of the seatbelt drama, ops have slowed drastically and it seemed like it was taking them a good 5 minutes to send some of the trains. And they only had 2 running instead of 3, which makes sense with how slow the ops are now. They’d be stacking trains on the brake run.

Oh, the other downside was that, until we made it into the station, we were stuck behind the MOST ANNOYING/TRASHY MOM who was eating a bag of BBQ chips with absolutely no couth or regard for those around her, spraying crumbs out of her bitchy Karen mount every time she started complaining about something, anything. Meanwhile, the three girls with her were all fighting over who was going to sit with her?! Like, they all actually WANTED to ride with this bitchy cow. And they did my most pet-peevey thing of all at an amusement park — they passed through the turnstile into the station and proceeded to JUST STAND THERE instead of choosing a row to stand in.

I. Fucking. Hate. That.

When you enter the ride station, YOU DISPERSE, PEOPLE. Move it! I gotta get to the backrow and you are BLOCKING MY ACCESS.

I kept saying, “Let’s go eat, I have to eat” but then we ended up riding Millie and then I said, “Oh we might as well ride Siren’s Curse too since it’s right here.” LOL. Coasters over food.

Siren’s Curse was AMAZING!! The line was only about a 20 minute wait. Similar to SteVe, once you get closer to the station, there’s a free locker area. I don’t know what Henry’s deal was but he was taking FOREVER punching in PINS and whatnot but overall the experience wasn’t too hectic. It was about a 5 minute wait from that point on.

We just let the attendant assign us a seat because I truly just wanted to ride it once and see what all the fuss about – the first tilt coaster in the US! We were pretty much in the middle of the train and even then it was a crazy fun experience! I LOVED the onboard audio. I will tell you now that we went back later and, after having an annoying experience with some lone kid (maybe 11 or 12) who just casually skirted almost the entire line—Henry actually tried to trip him LOL–I asked the ride attendant if we could have the backrow. He was like, “YES, JUST MOVE ASIDE AND I WILL GET YOU ON THE NEXT ONE”–sometimes all you have to do is ask and unless it’s an over capacity weekend and the crew are dicks, they will usually say YES. Sometimes with attitude, but this was a good day and the guy was super nice.

Also, not me automatically adding “do you care?” to the end of my “back row” requests like it’s my vocal stim. I hate myself sometimes.

BACK ROW, BRO!! I can’t explain the sensation of being that high up once the train does the total vertical tilt, but it is INSANE. Even Henry REACTED and he usually is very “arms up yet stoic” on coasters, not even a single scream. But he was like, “THAT WAS REALLY GOOD” when we got to the brake run. Yeah, you’re welcome! It was so good that I had to buy a t-shirt!

I had to get a Youth version because the adults only had sizes too big for me, what is up with theme park merch sizing this year?

Satisfying pizza and bean side salad at Hugo’s – I really miss the food truck area because there was some place that had a “sunflower veggie burger” and it was one of the best veggie burgers I have ever had. I used to look forward to inhaling one of those just as much as riding SteVe! But this pizza did the trick and I felt super powered up and ready to ride.

Immediately after eating, we went right next door to Raptor and it was A STATION WAIT.  I have had actual miserable experiences waiting in this line in the past so this was a real treat. I LOVE RAPTOR SO MUCH. B&M inverts are some of my absolute favorites and this one is one of the best. Plus: the color scheme!

The ride ops were so high-energy and fun, too. It really does add to the overall experience when you see the crew members legit having fun and enjoying their job! These guys kept pantomiming that they were kicking the trains out of the station and it brought me a dumb level of joy.

Gatekeeper station selfie!

This was probably the longest line we stood in all day. It was at least 45 minutes even though the line barely came out from where it splits into two lines – one for each side. But turns out, they were only running ONE TRAIN and ride ops were slow AF. They also seemed to be having major malfunctions with the station recording – it kept playing the “train is entering the station” part or whatever, over and over, and one of the ops in the control room thingie was hilariously losing his shit over it. It was making me crack up so bad. Then he was playing rock, paper, scissors from the control room with the people in line for the front row.

Since we were in the backrow, we got to be privy to the comings and goings of the people with the ADA passes, etc. The ride attendant at the exit on our side took the pass from this one family and told them to go back down, around, and to the other side and the attendant on that side would get them on the train (Gatekeeper is a wing coaster so there are two sides/lines). Our guy went over to the train while it was still loading and handed the pass to the attendant on the other side, would made my control room op boyfriend get on the mic and drolly say, “Hey. No passing notes in class.” I LOL’d but Henry of course missed the whole thing because he was probably wishing he had some candied prunes to suck on.

The crew makes all the difference, I’m telling you! Instead of this long-ass wait being the lowlight of the day, it ended up being a pretty funny and memorable moment!

The Boardwalk is my forever favorite area. I’m still bitter that Spaghetti Noodle was removed in order for this area to come to fruition, but at least it wasn’t all for naught?? They are always playing the most fun retro pop over in this bitch too.

Henry finally succumbed to the cold (the “feels like” temp was 40 degrees!) and went into the gift shop to buy a hoodie. I tried to get him to buy this one but he started crying about how there was “too much going on.”

He did end up buying one that I picked out, and then we went next door to get our one Cedar Point non-negotiable food: COOKIES. We got a lemon and snickerdoodle and split them. I love their cookies!

LOLOL. Hoodied up.

In line for Wild Mouse! The one downside to CP is that because they’re always trying to maximize the thru-put, they will pair you up with other people on this one to make sure each car has 4 people in it. So, we ended up riding with two giggly boys that could have been Chooch and one of his friends, honestly. It’s fine, but it does prevent me from wildin’ out as much as I typically would on a Wild Mouse! I don’t know why—some weird “sharing a car” shyness comes over me or something!

BRUH THEN IT WAS STEVE REDEMPTION TIME AND HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT. I can’t say this was my BEST experience on SteVe because NOTHING beats on a night ride, but this one was close. First of all, the line stopped right where the line splits—people who need a locker vs people who don’t. If you have never been to CP before, this is essentially so close to the station that it’s nearly a station wait. Almost unheard of. On any regular day, you’re waiting at least an hour for SteVe. We waited MAYBE 10 minutes. And then I used my charm to ask the ride attendant if we could have the backrow and he very nicely said yes.

The ops were ON SPEED. They were running all three trains and the efficiency was admirable. I think it’s a prerequisite—if a park is going to have an RMC, they need to train their crew to know how to run that ship. RMCs are always the CRAZIEST station shows. I’m pretty sure most crews even time themselves. It’s so good, so fast, you are in that train and then OUTTA THERE.

THE MIDCOURSE TRIMS WERE OFF. I was practically having an out of body experience over this. Every time I think that maybe SteVe isn’t my #1 anymore, I ride him again and it’s like…how could I ever have any doubts?!

AND THEN WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE STATION THERE WAS NO ONE WAITING FOR THE BACK TWO ROWS SO THEY LET US AND THE PEOPLE IN FRONT OF US STAY ON.

THAT HAS HAPPENED TO CHOOCH ON STEVE BEFORE BUT NEVER TO ME!!! I WAS FUCKING FREAKING OUT!

Afterward, I kept saying, “WHAT A BLESSING! WHAT A TREAT!” over and over.

Henry, meanwhile, offered up this great review that I think should be put on a banner near the entrance to entice new riders:

“It was no stopping. All fast, no slow.”

Siren’s Curse is genuinely so sick. I’m very glad that we were there on a day when we were able to easily ride this twice. I wish Chooch had been with us though :(

OMG I love Iron Dragon but Henry and Chooch are always like “….” when I say I want to ride it. It was a walk-on though so Henry was like, “JFC, fine.”

These kids were in front of us yelling at someone on the coaster — it sounded like JANNA but was probably Jada or Jana. I was cracking up though, thinking it would be funny if actual Janna popped up as Iron Dragon entered back into the station, making these kids the New Gen of Janna hecklers.

CALYPSO TIME! I LOVE CALYPSO! HENRY DOES NOT LOVE CALYPSO! But he rode it anyway, even though he kept complaining about his stomach hurting lol.

I always forget how diseased this Hipstamatic filter is on skin tones, lol

And then we left around 7, an hour before the park closed, because we had a three hour drive home ON A SCHOOL NIGHT. It was such a great day, PTO perfection, never too old to take a day off to go ride roller coasters. (Well, in Japan you can’t ride coasters after the age of 65 or something, so…)

There were only two bad things:

• Chooch wasn’t with us and I missed him terribly;
• Magnum was down all day. :( (Henry was happy about that, though. “Maybe they’re replacing the square wheels,” he muttered.)

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