There are 2 big Ohio amusement parks. There used to be a 3rd, & I miss it. All are/were owned by Cedar Fair. $45.99 & $49.99 are the current at-the-gate admissions for one day, for one park, for people over 48" tall, in US dollars as posted on their websites today. I don't promise these to be valid tomorrow. ;-)
King’s Island opened in 1972. I went there once in 1979. It was the year The Beast opened & the lines were so long, we didn't get to go on it. We did ride The Racer. That's about all I really remember. It’s been awhile. I’d like to go back. According to their website (http://www.visitkingsisland.com/) there are currently 12 rides classified as thrill rides that are included with admission. I like roller coasters & my family likes roller coasters. KI offers a total of 14 roller coasters. Wooo-hooo! The park is located in Mason, OH, kind of near Cincinatti, & can boast that The Partridge Family (I ♥ you, David Cassidy!) filmed there in 1972,
 |
| The Bradys |
The Brady Bunch filmed there in 1973 & in 1975, ABC’s Wide World of Sports filmed daredevil entertainer Evel Knieval jumping 14 Greyhound busses. In 2008, Robbie Knievel, the son of the legend, jumped 24 Coke Zero trucks, & high wire artist Rick Wallenda, grandson of Karl Wallenda, broke a world Skywalk record by walking the distance from Kings Island's Eiffel Tower to the park entrance setting a world record-breaking distance of 2,000’ on a 5/8 inch high wire 75’ above the ground. (I know, blah, blah, blah, but visual what that is & it's got wow-factor.) Grandpa Wallenda set the previous record in 1974, also at Kings Island, AND, hold onto your hats, Barry Williams, Susan Olsen, & Mike Lookinland returned to Kings Island for A Very Brady Reunion, a 4 show special of song, dance, and Brady Bunch stories. Some very impressive claims to fame if you were a child of the 70’s like me. The bad news is that the biggest, baddest coaster in the park, Son of Beast, the world record holder for the longest wooden roller coaster, plagued with problems having allegedly caused injuries to at least 28 people is routinely shut down & there are no plans to open it at all in 2010. Are the others good enough to warrant a trip there when it is a good 4 hours further than the tried & true Cedar Point?
 |
| The Millenium Force |
Cedar Point opened in 1870 as a beach & dance hall. The 1st thrill ride, a roller coaster called the Switchback Railway debuted in 1892 & forever shaped the future of the park. With a whopping 17 roller coasters, Cedar Point is the self-proclaimed ‘Roller Coast’ as it sits on a penninsula on the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky, OH. It has bragging rights as the park with the most roller coasters. Period. Another 15 rides are classified as thrill rides & there are 3 water rides in the park. Our family favorite rides are Raptor, Magnum & Millenium Force. It's been said that on a clear day, you can see Canada across the lake from the top of the MF hill. I teasingly asked my kids if they did, to which my husband replied, "All I could see was, 'Please keep your hands & feet inside the car at all times...'."
2nd tier faves would include Gemini, Iron Dragon & Wildcat. Non-rollercoasters I personally like are the Witch's Wheel, Ocean Motion, Matterhorn & Scrambler. My kids love Chaos. They exited Skyhawk white as sheets while claiming they loved it. I'm not nutty enough to have tried that one. Check them all out at http://www.cedarpoint.com/.
I will admit to never having ridden Top Thrill Dragster. I know my limits. (Aerosmith's Rock 'n Roller coaster at Disney's Hollywood Studios is also a slingshot effect coaster with massive G-Forces & I thought that if it didn't start exactly when it did, there was going to be a mess. I've never been sick from a ride before & I don't intend to start now. So when I saw how strong the forces were on Top Thrill, I declined. Maybe I'm a baby or maybe I'm genius!) I also don't think a one-hill thrill ride, regardless how skyscrapingly high that hill is, ought to be called a roller coaster. That's 1 roll & a lot of coast. I don't care if you spin around on your coast down; there still ought to be another hill. Do something with all that power & speed that's been created! Blue Streak, the oldest coaster in the park, has multiple hills & lots of air time.
Come to think of it, I have a few issues with some of the other larger coasters too. Mean Streak is bumpy & can give me a headache. Maverick nearly gave me whiplash, & as it is the newest coaster in the park, I was disappointed by it after waiting in the longest line we'd had all day. Mantis is the standing coaster, & if the seat isn't positioned exactly perfectly, you will be walking funny when you disembark. (Wow, they have a lot of M-named roller coasters!) Don't misunderstand me, I still ride them, but conditions have to be just so. No long waits for the less optimal rides. I'd rather ride any of the 1st 3 I named multiple times before waiting more than 15 minutes for these last few. I don't need any help getting aches & pains these days. (Remember, I was a child in the 70's which now makes me on-my-way-to old.) I’ve been to the park almost every summer, at least once, since I was 7 or 8 years old, though I did miss a few years here & there. I always missed what I'd missed on those years.
2nd tier faves would include Gemini, Iron Dragon & Wildcat. Non-rollercoasters I personally like are the Witch's Wheel, Ocean Motion, Matterhorn & Scrambler. My kids love Chaos. They exited Skyhawk white as sheets while claiming they loved it. I'm not nutty enough to have tried that one. Check them all out at http://www.cedarpoint.com/.
I will admit to never having ridden Top Thrill Dragster. I know my limits. (Aerosmith's Rock 'n Roller coaster at Disney's Hollywood Studios is also a slingshot effect coaster with massive G-Forces & I thought that if it didn't start exactly when it did, there was going to be a mess. I've never been sick from a ride before & I don't intend to start now. So when I saw how strong the forces were on Top Thrill, I declined. Maybe I'm a baby or maybe I'm genius!) I also don't think a one-hill thrill ride, regardless how skyscrapingly high that hill is, ought to be called a roller coaster. That's 1 roll & a lot of coast. I don't care if you spin around on your coast down; there still ought to be another hill. Do something with all that power & speed that's been created! Blue Streak, the oldest coaster in the park, has multiple hills & lots of air time.
Come to think of it, I have a few issues with some of the other larger coasters too. Mean Streak is bumpy & can give me a headache. Maverick nearly gave me whiplash, & as it is the newest coaster in the park, I was disappointed by it after waiting in the longest line we'd had all day. Mantis is the standing coaster, & if the seat isn't positioned exactly perfectly, you will be walking funny when you disembark. (Wow, they have a lot of M-named roller coasters!) Don't misunderstand me, I still ride them, but conditions have to be just so. No long waits for the less optimal rides. I'd rather ride any of the 1st 3 I named multiple times before waiting more than 15 minutes for these last few. I don't need any help getting aches & pains these days. (Remember, I was a child in the 70's which now makes me on-my-way-to old.) I’ve been to the park almost every summer, at least once, since I was 7 or 8 years old, though I did miss a few years here & there. I always missed what I'd missed on those years.
 |
| The Mantis |
My husband hadn’t been there when he was growing up, so I had to take him. I took him on his first major roller coasters! He'd been on some, but not on the scale they have at Cedar Point. I made him go on the ferris wheel with me too when he still cared about acting all manly & couldn't show his fear of heights. I have a funny story about that for another time.
While CP doesn’t have nearly as impressive a list of celebrity appearances or filming credits it does have 2 of which I'm pretty sure no one has ever heard- the 2004 movie Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Infestation From Mars is set in Sandusky and contains numerous scenes set at the park. Cedar Point is supposedly integral to the plot of the movie & some CP executives even appear in in cameo roles. Also, characters in the 1998 'coming of age' movie Edge Of Seventeen work at a restaurant at Cedar Point. Though the movie is set in the 1980s, the only shot featuring the park is filmed at a distance and clearly shows Raptor, which was built in 1994. Ooops.
 |
| View from the Boardwalk of Geauga Lake- the Americana Ferris Wheel, the Thunderhawk & the Dominator |
My family started frequenting the now-closed & dearly missed Geauga Lake when our children began expressing an interest in the rides. They would see the commercials on TV & get excited. They really weren't big enough at the time to ride enough stuff at CP to make it cost-effective. So Geauga Lake, very family friendly & wallet friendly saved the day & won our hearts.
It was an historical amusement park having opened in 1888 & was home to Ohio’s (7th in the nation) oldest wooden roller coaster, The Big Dipper, built in 1925. While rides of all types were relocated to other Cedar Fair properties, some were auctioned. Roller coaster aficionados purchased the Big Dipper, but have no home for it. It makes me sad. It was a really fun ride. I only have a picture of 1 of my kids waiting in line for it, not 1 photo of the ride itself. We had hoped that our favorite roller coaster, The Dominator, would have been taken to Cedar Point because Cedar Point is known for record breaking roller coasters, but no, it went to one of their parks in Va. [Dominator was built while the property was owned by Six Flags, was once called Batman, & still, to the best I can ascertain, holds the record for the longest floorless roller coaster.] GL was located in Aurora, OH & was only a 15-20 minute drive from our home. We got season passes the last 2 years the park was open & would have a 3rd year, if the park had remained open. It was a great amusement park for a family- lots to do even with the little ones. There were only 5 rides in the park, to my recollection, that our youngest couldn’t ride. That’s not bad. But it seemed clear the last year that the parent company, Cedar Fair, was not invested in the park’s success. Rides were shut down. One of our favorite roller coasters, Raging Wolf Bobs, wasn’t open during the entire last season. We’re still annoyed by the way they went about closing the park. They didn’t announce it until the day after the last day the park was open. FYI- that was Oktoberfest 2007 & it happened to be cold. We were there in our jackets, but I heard from numerous friends that they would have gone too had they known it was their last chance.
It was an historical amusement park having opened in 1888 & was home to Ohio’s (7th in the nation) oldest wooden roller coaster, The Big Dipper, built in 1925. While rides of all types were relocated to other Cedar Fair properties, some were auctioned. Roller coaster aficionados purchased the Big Dipper, but have no home for it. It makes me sad. It was a really fun ride. I only have a picture of 1 of my kids waiting in line for it, not 1 photo of the ride itself. We had hoped that our favorite roller coaster, The Dominator, would have been taken to Cedar Point because Cedar Point is known for record breaking roller coasters, but no, it went to one of their parks in Va. [Dominator was built while the property was owned by Six Flags, was once called Batman, & still, to the best I can ascertain, holds the record for the longest floorless roller coaster.] GL was located in Aurora, OH & was only a 15-20 minute drive from our home. We got season passes the last 2 years the park was open & would have a 3rd year, if the park had remained open. It was a great amusement park for a family- lots to do even with the little ones. There were only 5 rides in the park, to my recollection, that our youngest couldn’t ride. That’s not bad. But it seemed clear the last year that the parent company, Cedar Fair, was not invested in the park’s success. Rides were shut down. One of our favorite roller coasters, Raging Wolf Bobs, wasn’t open during the entire last season. We’re still annoyed by the way they went about closing the park. They didn’t announce it until the day after the last day the park was open. FYI- that was Oktoberfest 2007 & it happened to be cold. We were there in our jackets, but I heard from numerous friends that they would have gone too had they known it was their last chance.
 |
| My girls on the Tea Party in 2007 |
I’m sure the rationale was that they were competing with themselves. CP is about an hour’s drive west from GL. What they didn’t figure was the locals… We had a choice between a 15 minute drive or an hour drive. We had the choice between no noticeable gas usage & a ½ a tank, depending on the vehicle's consumption. We had the choice to drive back roads, avoiding traffic jams. We had the choice to go to the ‘twilight hours’ & feel like we still got our money’s worth. We got season passes for the family. We don’t do that at Cedar Point. 1 day’s admission at CP is a good $15 more than it was at GL. I’m estimating of course, because I can’t account for all the discount plans available, but for a family of 4, that adds up. Then you add on the gas. Then you add on $2 more for parking. Then you add on possible tolls for driving the turnpike, unless you know the alternate route. There’s wear & tear on the car adding that many miles. There’s no going for ‘twilight hours’ anymore. Now when you go, you have to get your money’s worth. It’s a full day. You must leave early & stay late because you can’t come back tomorrow. If it’s crowded & you wait in lines for an hour for a ride, well, you’re going to wait because it is the only time you’re going. I mean, it involves advance planning. No spontaneity to head over after work... You've got to pull the day off work. You have to have sunscreen & good walking shoes. There’s no backing out if it’s too crowded or if it’s raining. These were all things we enjoyed about Geauga Lake. We took full advantage of such perks & conveniences that are no longer possible. Yet we also still took the 1 trip to CP. They didn’t lose us. They just aren’t getting as much as they used to from us. These are things you think about as you're reading the news & feeling the disappointment of an era gone by. It's not what you think about at the park. At the park, you're all caught up with the bright colors & the happy music, the laughter & the screams of joy... There's a magic when you're there that allows you to think you might actually win that big Snoopy & you don't care that you're shelling out $5 or $7 for cheese-on-a-stick that's going to kill you. It's fun, it's tasty, & when you're there, it's worth it! I just know that when I'm there, I feel like a kid again. It's with nervous anticipation or sheer delight or the tickle of inertia... that I laugh. A lot! I have fun & I giggle & squeal & scream~ Wooooooohooooooo!
 |
| The Raptor |
Isn’t that why we go? Don’t we love to get whirled & twirled? Don’t we want the highest of highs & the fastest of fast to make our stomachs drop & our hearts skip & our adrenaline rush? Pounding the pavement & bearing the Ohio summer heat & humidity is worth 1 ½ -4 minutes of breathtaking air time, is it not? My favorite way to end the night at CP is to ride the Raptor. Since your legs & feet are free, they swing a little & there's some relief for them tired & barkin' dogs. Go ahead, kick the sky!!!
But here’s a question I do have: Since Geauga Lake is no longer an option, which one is better, Cedar Point or King's Island?
But here’s a question I do have: Since Geauga Lake is no longer an option, which one is better, Cedar Point or King's Island?
Oh Kerbs, I'm with you. I miss Geauga Lake!It's sad the smaller parks have just about faded away, including another of my favorites, Idora Park in Youngstown. Wonderful piece on Ohio's amusement parks, love it!
ReplyDelete