Before today I hadn’t been to Cedar Point in probably 10 years, so it was a thrill to go there with my friend Joe. I will admit there was a moment when I wondered if I was too old for the lines and lurches of amusement park rides and I’m pleased to report the answer is “not just yet.”
Although I had catching-up to do on the newer rides, we started with the Blue Streak, the oldest coaster at the park and one my Mom rode once when she was pregnant with me, which may explain a few things. Afterwards we churned around washing-machine style on maXair. Up to 50 people sit, feet dangling, on the perimeter of a giant wheel which rotates as it swings back and forth on a giant pendulum. Great hang time!
Shaped like a “U,” the Wicked Twister sports 215-foot-tall vertical posts resembling helixes. With riders secured in seats suspended from the track, the thing whooshes backwards and forwards a few times like a demented half-pipe, sans skateboard. Although we didn’t take a front seat, Joe reports that sitting there gives one the sensation that the ride will wing right off the tip of the “U,” visible at the top of my photo below.
For old-times sake, we took the front seats of the first car of the Magnum XL-200, which commands an impressive line despite its age. (I was in junior high and rode it the year it opened!) Its stark, 205-foot first hill, which features the most effectively ominous click-track in the park, affords chilly breezes and grand views of nearby Lake Erie. It remains breathtaking even if it has been rendered surprisingly quaint; the first hill of the Millennium Force, which opened in 2000, is more than 100 feet taller.
I felt as if I was setting a new land-speed record on Top Thrill Dragster, which hurls down a straightway, twists up, over and down the equivalent of a 42-story skyscraper (or phallus, as some insist), then beats a retreat straight back to the station. The whole thing takes about 15 seconds, most of which I spent wondering if my viscera would return to their original, uncompressed positions.
Taking over the real estate and part of the Frontiertown-style mill building of the late, great White Water Landing (“The Log Ride”), the park’s newest coaster, Maverick, is a low-slung, twisty bugger with periodic jet propulsion. We waited the longest for this one as storm reports halted the queue for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, we refreshed ourselves with overpriced Chik-Fil-A lemonade, waffle fries and chicken sandwiches, then took a digestion-aiding ride down memory lane on the Gemini and, almost, the Mine Ride, which shut down due to mechanical difficulties just as we were ready to board.
Closing the day, we queued up for what turned out to be my all-around favorite coaster, Millennium Force, the aforementioned first hill of which felt even more thrilling in the dark. Combining pleasing proportions of hills, banks, twists and tunnels, the ride boasts a super-smooth speed (a maximum of 93 mph!) with none of the head-boxing or vertebrae misalignment resulting from certain other big-‘n’-tall coasters. A DJ in the pre-ride queue spun goofy pop songs while we waited. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” really is more fun when several hundred sweaty people are singing along.