Blog / Random thoughts and musings.

Cedar Point

July 30, 2001

We hit the road around 9 am for what turned out to be a pretty boring 7-hour drive. Mike hooked up the portable GPS receiver to his laptop with some mapping software to show where we were and keep us from getting lost. Plus he put 15 hours of MP3s on the laptop and used a tape adaptor to play them in the car. We stopped twice, once for breakfast and once for gas, and arrived in Sandusky at about 4 pm. We checked into the Comfort Inn and lucked out getting a king bed / non-smoking room. The room was pretty clean and decent-sized, and was one of the least expensive we could find. We’d probably stay there again.

Since Cedar Point Park has discounted admission after 5pm ($22 instead of $39), we decided to go check it out. The park is pretty impressive, and has 14 coasters. The newest one is the Millennium Force, which is almost 400 ft high, has a first drop of 80 degrees at 95 mph. We first headed to Demon Drop just inside the park entrance, which is a ride that brings you up about 150 ft and drops you for about a 1.5 second free fall. Definitely terror inducing when you are just hanging at the top waiting for the car to drop. Then we went on the Raptor, which is a suspended steel coaster. The wait was only about 15 min long. The Raptor was amazingly smooth with lots of tight turns, twists, and corkscrews. Mike says that coaster was his favorite. We tried the Iron Dragon that looks like one of Cedar Point’s older coasters. Each car is suspended, so there’s some movement that is independent. The first half was pretty lame, but the second half was okay. We then headed to the Mantis, a steel stand-up roller coaster. We’ve tried the Shockwave in King’s Dominion but we weren’t impressed with it. However, we decided to give the stand-up another shot. While the Mantis had more twists, turns, and loops than the Shockwave, it was still very bumpy. Then we hit the Mean Streak, which is a wooden coaster. The coaster was pretty cool. It had a lot of angled turns that seem to speed the trains up a lot. Plus the ride is much longer than most coasters that we’ve ridden in the past. Of course since it’s a wooden coaster, it was still pretty bumpy. Then we headed towards the Millennium Force. We had to wait an hour and a half and by the time we got on the ride, it was completely dark outside. The coaster was great! They bring you up the hill pretty fast and when you head downhill you’re going over 90mph. The ride also has a lot of tilted turns where you are not quite upside down, but you’re definitely sideways. It helps that the chairs are open on the side so you feel very exposed and vulnerable while on these turns. The ride was definitely worth the wait. We rode the Raptor one more time then headed back to the hotel. Coming in the evening on Monday was a very good idea since a lot of people had already headed home so most of the rides didn’t have very long waits. Other than the Millennium Force, we didn’t wait longer than 20 min for each ride.

July 31, 2001

We decided to do another half day at Cedar Point Park since it worked out so well yesterday. So we slept late and went for an early lunch at Max and Erma’s. It’s a lot like the typical restaurant (Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays, etc), but the food was better than expected. Then we headed to Soak City, which is the Cedar Point water park. The lines were pretty long and the park was definitely not as big or nice as Blizzard Beach in Orlando, though they had some nice slides and two lazy rivers. Actually only one of them was a lazy river – the other was Renegade River and had lots of waterfalls, rapids, and a wave generator, which made it pretty cool. The slides were average. After only 2 = hours we were finished and headed back to the hotel. We headed to Brown Derby Roadhouse for dinner. It’s a typical steakhouse with peanuts and yeast rolls. The steaks were pretty good, as was the shrimp. The ribs weren’t that good though. Then we headed back to Cedar Point for the evening. Unfortunately Tuesday was actually more crowded than Monday. We went onto the Disaster Transport, which is an indoor bobsled ride in the dark. Mike wasn’t too impressed with it; I thought it was ok especially since some parts were pitch dark. Then we headed to the Magnum XL-200, which used to be the highest roller coaster until they built the Millennium Force. I liked the ride a lot, it had some pretty good hills and tunnels in unusual places. Next ride was the Gemini, which is a wooden coaster that races two trains at a time. I think either this or the Magnum was my favorite ride. For a wooden coaster, it was remarkably smooth. Plus we were in the back seat, and the speed was great. The car came off the track a couple of times, which popped us out of the seat. Then we headed back to the Millennium Force. The wait was again an hour and a half, even though we got there an hour earlier than Monday night. We ended up riding at dusk so we could see the tracks. I was quite amazed when Mike put his hands up halfway through the ride and kept them up the rest of the way! We finished and left the park about an hour early.

July 31, 2001

We decided to check out the islands on Lake Ontario. We took a cruise on the Goodtime I tour boat. The boat left from Jackson Pier at 9:30 and headed to Kelley’s Island. Kelley’s Island is the largest American island in Lake Erie. We rented a golf cart and visited Glacial Grooves. It’s a small area that shows grooves left behind after a glacier went over it. Unfortunately the larger area was destroyed due to quarrying years ago. We then took a leisurely drive down W. Lakeshore Dr, which paralleled the shoreline. We got back on the boat and headed to Put-in-Bay, which is on South Bass Island. We rented a golf cart there also. We grabbed lunch at Pasquale’s, which is a casual Italian restaurant. Their pizza was good; the crust was good, but there was a lot of cheese and sauce on it. We stopped at Crystal Cave and Heineman Winery and went on a quick tour of the winery and the cave. Crystal cave is basically one large room with full of crystals, so it’s considered the largest known geode in the world. It’s quite cool in the cave and its full of bluish crystals. We also got to try a cup of wine at the winery. I tried the sweet belle and Mike tried the Chablis. The sweet belle is the sweetest wine they had (with the exception of the ice wine, which is a dessert wine) and the Chablis was a semi-sweet wine. Both wines were pretty sweet. Next stop was the Lake Erie Island Historical Museum where we saw models, photographs, and artifacts of different ships and boats that have traveled on the lake. Last stop was Perry’s Victory & International Peace Memorial. It’s a huge Roman Doric style column that was erected after a victory over the British navy in 1813. It was also a monument of the international peace between the US, Canada, and Great Britain. I have to admit it looked rather odd to see just a giant column in the middle of the sky. Then we headed back to Sandusky. Since we were leaving in the morning, we took it pretty easy the rest of the evening. After all the walking in the last few days, I am looking forward to heading home and relaxing for a couple of days.