America's Rockin' Roller Coast

Jes asked me (Dave) to guest blog about our day at Cedar Point.  Before I get to that, I wanted to comment on something that happened earlier in our trip.  We were driving along U.S. 195 through eastern Washington on a beautiful sunny day.  I got pulled over for speeding (shame, shame).  Fortunately for us, the nice lady police officer seemed more interested in our license plates than the fact that I was doing 72 mph in a 60 mph zone.

She lamented the fact that Washington was too politically correct to allow such a plate, she asked us whether we were a Catholic home schooling family, and she said that we were brave to be doing the cross country trip in a minivan.  (Apparently, she is planning a similar trip but is planning to rent an RV.)  She let me off with a warning in spite of Matthew urging her to write me a ticket.  I credit the license plates, though I'm sure the 4 kids in the back of the van helped.

Back to the regularly scheduled blog post ...

Cedar Point was truly the perfect exclamation point for our trip.  It has a scenic location on the shore of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio and is aptly called the roller coaster capital of the world.  About the only thing that could have improved upon the day was for Matthew to have been about an inch taller in order to make him eligible for the slew of rides with a 48" height requirement.

We got up bright and early, had a quick breakfast of zone bars and fruit snacks, and were at the park gate before 9am.  Because we were staying at a Cedar Point resort hotel, we got to enter the park an hour before the general public.  We raced around in order to ride as many rides as possible while the lines were short.  When Jes and I were at Cedar Point in 1996, we waited over an hour to ride the Raptor, an inverted coaster with 6 loops.  This time, we rode it twice in 10 minutes.  Running around frantically in order to do as many rides as possible was one theme of the day.  Rachel managed to squeeze in about 30 of the best rides the park had to offer.  Matthew rode 40-50 since he was riding smaller rides with shorter lines.  We squeezed in two quick meals but were otherwise on the go from 9am to 10pm, often running from ride to ride.  We did have a couple casualities from the frantic pace.  When racing to get in one last ride before 10pm, Alex banged his mouth on a steel railing and split his lip.  We also ended up sacrificing the traditional end-of-the-day funnel cake treat in favor of a few extra rides.

The other theme was brave kids.  I guess after risking life and limb on the edge of 300' cliffs, the tallest and fastest roller coasters in the world were not so intimidating.  Zack was initially pretty nervous and even spent a restless night tossing and turning worrying about riding the Magnum, a great coaster that Jes and I talked up in advance.  But after seeing the biggest hill of the Magnum, a 200' drop that accelerates riders to 72mph, he exclaimed, "I was worrying about that?!?".  By the end of the day he had ridden the Millenium Force twice.  That coaster features an 80 degree 310' drop and reaches speeds of up to 93 mph.  It was also voted the best steel coaster in the world, something he likes to tell people when talking about the trip.  Alex and Rachel rode the Top Thrill Dragster twice.  This coaster was intense enough to even make Jes and me nervous.  It launches riders from 0 to 120 mph in 4 seconds before climbing 420' at a 90 degree angle and then descending an equally steep drop.  Check out the point-of-view video.  It is a pretty amazing ride.

http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/park/rides/coasters/top_thrill_dragster/

The other point-of-view videos on the site are worth watching too if you are a roller coaster fan.

The Iron Dragon was the biggest coaster that Matthew could ride.  He rode it 6 times.

"See, I'm tall enough to ride the Raptor!"  (He was 2" short.)

Matthew venting some of his frustration about not being able to ride the big coasters.

One of my favorite parts of the day was listening to other riders make comments like "look at them, they're so little" (refering to Zack and Alex sitting in the front seat on the Magnum) or "wow, you're going to ride this?" (refering to Alex on the Top Thrill Dragster).

"They're so little!"

At the end of the day, I was really tempted to suggest that we stay for another day.  But I knew that (a) Saturday was bound to be more crowded and (b) there was no way to improve upon our great day.  As a family, we love visiting amusement parks, and at least from the perspective of the thrill rides, this day stands out as the best visit yet.