On Friday, May 5, Karen and I headed off to Sandusky, Ohio, to visit our daughter and her family. Just one little rant about our travels: When Karen and I were driving through New York to get to Ohio, we needed to avail ourselves of the rest areas along the New York Thruway. For nearly four years, the state had been in the process of renovating those facilities, and they made relatively little headway. The old facilities were quite attractive, with a rustic woodsy look and spacious seating. They offered multiple food choices, from McDonalds to D'Angelos to Aunt Anne's. And there was always a large convenience store. For the long construction period, the state decided to renovate in two phases. Every other rest area was closed off except for gas stations. It became a running joke to see signs advertising, "No food. No restrooms. Gas." That meant it was over an hour's drive between functioning rest stops. And when the first phase was completed, the plan was to shut down the other half of the rest stops, most likely for another four years. We possibly wouldn't live to see all the rest stops restored on the New York Thruway. Well Karen and I finally got to experience one of the new-from-the-ground-up rest stops, one of the few that had been completed. It was one of the ugliest buildings I'd ever seen. It looked like a small industrial office building. For some reason there were a lot of flagpoles out front, only two of which were being used. The color scheme on the building was black and brown. It didn't look much better on the inside. The aisles were so narrow that it was difficult for people to pass each other. There were just a few tables and chairs for people to sit and eat, and they were crammed against the front side of the building, so tightly packed that I couldn't see how people could even use them. There were just two places to order food -- a Shake Shack and a Starbucks. So nutrition obviously wasn't the state's biggest concern. There was a much smaller convenience store that had a few prepared sandwiches. But that was it. The men's room had four urinals and four stalls. Karen said the women's room had just eight stalls. What the heck was the state thinking? To be fair, some other buildings under construction looked much ... taller, sort of like huge black barns. But they'll supposedly have the same vendors. I wondered if New York was trying to force travelers off the interstate and dine in towns instead, helping the local economies. After 11 hours of driving, we made it to Sandusky. We stayed at our usual haunt, the South Shore Inn, just around the corner from one of the largest amusement parks in the world, Cedar Point. There were some big changes at the park this season and I was eager to check them out. So Karen dropped me off there on Saturday while she went shopping with our daughter. It was the park's opening day and they had beautiful weather, sunny and in the 60s. She dropped me off in front of the entrance where Gatekeeper, the park's wing coaster, was soaring overhead. I arrived just before the 10:00 opening and there was already a big crowd waiting to get in. The security entrance had new technology, so unless you had a bag you could just walk right through that gate. Within a few minutes, the attendants began letting people into the park. The big 150th anniversary logo was still inside the entrance, even though that was three years ago. But seeing as how the last three years were a wash because of the pandemic, I could understand them leaving it up. Most of the people entering the park were heading for one of the big roller coasters. Rather than get caught up in that crowd, I stopped at the oldest ride in the park, the 1912 Daniel Muller carousel. I was pleased that it still had a working band organ. Curiously, whenever the ride operator made an announcement over the PA system, the sound of the band organ cut out. That gave me the impression that the organ music was a recording. But it definitely looked and sounded like the organ was playing. Unlike the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round which had thin poles for the standers and thick poles for the jumpers, this ride had thick poles for every horse. I ended up on a stander, thinking it was a jumper. Also unlike the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round, this carousel moved rather slowly. But I was glad to see that it was still featured so prominently at the front of the park, and still in such good condition. The Sky Ride was operating, so I queued up for that. It was another ride that most of the guests bypassed, so I didn't have to wait long in line. Soon I was soaring high above the midway. I got a brief glimpse of the newest addition to the park, the Boardwalk area along the east side near the giant Ferris wheel. Just below me, I could see the former Johnny Rockets restaurant which appeared to be abandoned. (I later discovered it was being converted into a new arcade with an upcharge mirror maze.) A few minutes later I was at the north end of the Main Midway and back on solid ground. From there I headed over to my next point of interest. Along the way, I passed under the track of the old Arrow Corkscrew coaster. When it opened in 1976, it had a record-breaking three inversions. It also began Cedar Point's practice of integrating coasters along the midway so that you were surrounded by them. It still made for a breathtaking visual experience. After passing the Corkscrew, I arrived at the pond next to Iron Dragon, the park's suspended coaster that was dormant. A section of its track had been removed for construction work a few months back. That section was now in place, but the ride wouldn't open for another week. I wasn't interesting in Iron Dragon, though, but what was next to it. The tallest and fastest ride in the park, Top Thrill Dragster, closed due to an accident in 2021. Near the end of the 2022 season, Cedar Point announced that it was "reimagining" the ride, but what that meant was anybody's guess. What we knew for sure from online postings was that the 420-foot-tall hill (the "tophat") and the station was all that remained of the ride. The rest of the ride's track had been removed and the area had been dug up and was fenced off. An online controversy had developed over work that had been done in the Iron Dragon pond. Three large footers (concrete blocks that act as a base for vertical supports) had been poured in a triangular arrangement. The talk online was that these footers were huge and indicated that the park was building a 500-foot-tall spike for Top Thrill Dragster. I didn't think the footers were unusually large; they looked to me like an average size for a big ride. And the orientation of the footers weren't ideal for a spike of that size. So there were lots of questions, which created a lot of publicity for the park. And next season we'd have all the answers. Once my curiosity was satisfied, I made another park walk-thru video. That took about an hour. During my walk, I discovered how much of the park hadn't opened. A large number of concession stands, both games and food booths, were closed. The park once again brought in some food trucks to help alleviate that problem. Even so, to see so many shuttered buildings in a park that size was a bit disconcerting. The problem, as with so many amusement parks, was staffing. It seemed that no one wanted to work. So the park put its limited resources into what they thought guests wanted the most. That explained Cedar Point's recent obsession with building giant cafeteria-style restaurants. They required relatively little staffing, but were able to efficiently serve thousands of guests. As a result, there were fewer and fewer small specialized food concessions in the park. One casualty was the one vegetarian stand, Wild Turnip, which had morphed into Watkins Horse and Hatchery. It was closed as well, but apparently whenever it opened it was going to serve emu eggs. It also served cocktails, and that was a common sight throught the park -- lots and lots of alcohol. There were also a lot of rides that weren't running. The only ride that appeared to be mechanically down was the Wave Swinger. But many other rides were still testing (and remained that way for the entire day). I would have thought that if a park sets an opening date, they would have everything ready to go. Instead, the day was more like a "soft opening". The result was that the operational rides had extremely long lines (even though many die-hards stood in lines for the rides that were still testing). By far my favorite ride in the park was the venerable Blue Streak wood coaster. So I headed for the north Sky Ride station and rode back to the south end of the Main Midway. I could see the huge parking lot and it was already about 3/4 filled. When I arrived at the Blue Streak station, guests were spilling out onto the midway. That was unusual for a coaster that was often a walk-on. A sign at the entrance said that the wait would be about 45 minutes. As I made my way toward the queue, I was approached by a Cedar Point employee who had a clipboard. He asked if I'd be willing to to help him out. He would give me a card with the current time marked on it. I would give that card to the ride attendant as I entered the station, to help them determine if their wait time estimate was correct. In return I would get two exit passes for the ride. I told him I'd be delighted. So he gave me the card and I entered the longest queue I'd ever seen for Blue Streak. It was completely filled. And it was barely moving. I was wearing a black Cedar Point hoodie. Even though the temperature was only in the 60s, the bright sun was making me sweat. After nearly an hour, I had gotten only about halfway through the queue line. The problem seemed to be with the two ride attendants, who reminded me of Beavis and Butthead. In the past, guests would simply walk up into the station and line up at the gate for whatever seat they wanted. But instead, one of the attendants stopped people at the station stairs. He would ask how many people were in the group and let only them into the station. Then for some odd reason, he would run up the stairs and watch where they went. Sometimes he would tell them in which seat he wanted them to sit. Then he would run back down the stairs and ask how many were in the next party. He would let them in and run back up the stairs to watch them. He did this every single time. When every seat was filled, he wouldn't let anyone else in until the next train was dispatched. It was really frustrating to watch. Compounding the problem were guests who had the infernal Fast Lane, which allowed them to cut to the front of the line for an extra fee. They always got preferencial treatment, which held up the line even longer. Then a train was stopped on the lift hill and the ride was shut down because someone pulled out their phone while in the train. I wasn't willing to wait another hour in line, so I gave up and exited the queue. I walked next door to the classic Cedar Downs racing derby which was all lit up but unstaffed. Nearby was the last surviving antique car ride in the park, the Cadillac cars, and the line was unusually short. So I queued up for that and in a short time I was enjoying my leisurely trip next to the Raptor and Valravn coasters. I liked the humorous billboards along the course that advertised the park's coasters as automotive products. After that, I walked across the midway to the Pagoda gift shop, which had the best merchandise in the park. This year, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad, they featured an all-metal Lionel O gauge recreation of one of the park's engines. It was really well made, with Bluetooth capabilities, smoke and sounds of the engineer announcing various landmarks along the train's route. I watched as one guest after another ogled the display. Many of them were prepared to buy it, until they were told the price: $499. Even so, I heard that the park sold quite a few of them on that opening weekend. Since the station was nearby, I hopped aboard the actual Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad, a coal-fired steam train that had the highest capacity of any ride in the park. Next to the station was the return of the VIP Lounge, an upcharge where you could sit in easy chairs under a tent and get drunk as the Millennium Force trains blasted by above you. The sharp toot of the engine's whistle pierced the air and we began rolling alongside Lake Erie. We rode past the queue line for Millennium Force, which was packed and probably had an hour-and-a-half wait. Even though it was a decent coaster, it wasn't my favorite in the park and I didn't want to wait that long. The train dropped me off at the north end of the park near one of my favorite stops: Sagebrush Sue's, which featured fresh lemonade and my favorite treat in the park: cheese-on-a-stick. Cedar Point was the only place in the country that still sold that delicacy. I first encountered it at a chain called Corn Dog 7 when I lived down south. The chain went out of business. I always looked forward to my yearly trip to The Point so that I could have one or two or three of the decadent delights. But Sagebrush Sue's was closed. So I went to check out the nearby Steel Vengeance coaster, which was my second favorite ride in the park. Unfortunately, the queue line was full and spilled out onto the midway, meaning a wait of about an hour and a half. So instead I strolled through the Frontier Town section and onto the Gemini Midway. When it was built, Gemini was the largest roller coaster in the world. It also had the highest capacity in the park, a double-tracked racing coaster running six trains. But the park had reduced it to two-train operation. It was all a moot point, because the ride was still testing. Across from Gemini was another cheese-on-a-stick stand, the Happy Friar, and it was open and had four lines stretching back toward Gemini. I wasn't about to wait that long only to find out they didn't have any cheese-on-a-stick. So I approached one of the windows and asked the next person in line if I could just ask a question. They were fine with that. I asked the attendant if they had any cheese-on-a-stick and he replied, "No. Not until Memorial Day weekend at the earliest. We're having supply issues and we might not have any all season". I was crestfallen. And I wondered, what did he mean by "supply issues"? They had corn dogs, which were essentially the same thing. The only difference was that cheese-on-a-stick had cheese inside instead of a hot dog. Did cows in Ohio suddenly stop producing milk? I couldn't understand it. I continued along the Gemini Midway and came to one of the park's landmark rides, Magnum XL-200, the first roller coaster to exceed 200 feet in height. Thankfully, the queue line was nearly empty. Within a few minutes, I was in the spacious station area. Unlike with Blue Streak, no one was holding people back at the stairs, so I was able to walk right over to the front seat queue. And right when I got there, the attendant announced that the ride had mechanical problems and would be down for a while. There were groans from the crowd, and many people decided to leave. That allowed me to progress further toward the front. Evidently the mechanics solved the problem quickly because they began cycling empty trains to test the ride. While I waited, I looked across the midway at the awkwardly-named BackbeatQue restaurant, where a line had formed at the door stretching down the midway. By then it was about 2:00. It took around twenty minutes to finish testing Magnum, and then guests were allowed to board. A few more minutes after that I was sitting in the front seat and rolling up the lift hill. The ride had one of the best placements of any coaster I'd ridden, right on the edge of Lake Erie looking out onto the seemingly endless expanse of grey-blue water. We flew down the first drop, which seemed much steeper than it actually was (about 65 degrees) and then up into the first big airtime hill, pinning me against my lap bar. We plummeted down the second drop and up into the curving second hill with even stronger airtime. Then we dove into the pretzel-like turnaround, after which we sped back toward the station. The three tunnels with lighting effects worked well since the sky had become overcast. Each tunnel was over a series of angular bunny hops that produced violent airtime, jamming my thighs up into the lap bar. Then we hit the brakes and made the long swooping turn back to the station. After over 30 years, the ride still packed a punch and was a lot of fun. I headed back toward the Main Midway alongside the remnants of Top Thrill Dragster. The coaster's footprint was concealed by tall wood fencing, the same fencing that last year hid the construction along the new Boardwalk area. I was getting hungry and, with few vegetarian choice available, decided to try Melt, the park's grilled cheese concession next to Planet Snoopy. (The restaurant used to be Peanuts-themed.) I arrived to find it closed. Instead I went to the nearby Sweet Shoppe and got myself a snickerdoodle cookie for a whopping $7. I wandered through the new Boardwalk area. Cedar Point never presumed to be a theme park like Disney. But they always took care to give areas of the park a visual coherence. The Boardwalk carried over the bright colors from the nearby Kiddie Kingdom, with splashes of yellow, orange and blue. The Boarwalk signs were an homage to the old Cedar Point entrance sign that featured a series of colorful pennants. The big new ride in that area was the Wild Mouse, a spinning coaster that I had no interest in. There was a long line of people waiting for it to open. At that late hour of the day, the ride was still testing. I headed back to Blue Streak to see if the line had shrunk. Indeed, there were hardly any people in line, probably because Beavis and Butthead were no longer there. People were being let into the station to choose their own seats. So naturally I lined up for the front. I should have given that time card to the attendant, but I had forgotten about it. They would have been amazed that I had waited nearly four hours in line. In a few minutes I was seated and rising up the short lift hill. The ride was still smooth, with delightful sustained airtime on nearly every hill. When we hit the brakes, a girl behind me exclaimed incredulously, "This is supposed to be a kid's ride?" By then it was 3:00 and I needed to find something to eat, so I called it a day. I was glad that opening day seemed successful for the park, even though not everything was working and there was no cheese-on-a-stick. I returned to the park on Monday, this time with Karen. First we had a delicious (if pricey) breakfast at the Pancake House in Sandusky. Then we headed to Cedar Point for 10:00. I expected the crowds to be a bit thinner, and they were. And I'm sure the weather had something to do with that. Even though it was supposed to be a bit warmer, a thick fog had descended upon Sandusky. When we we arrived at the parking lot, it looked as if there was only one coaster in the park. Everything else was shrouded in mist. I had never seen the park like that before. The first section I wanted Karen to see was the new Boardwalk, so that's where we headed. The new restaurant they had built, the Grand Pavilion, was beautifully designed to look as if it had been there since the early 1900s. The interior was just as meticulously crafted. The queue line for the food was elegant (and empty at that early hour). The park salvaged some vintage stained glass windows for the interior. There were two wide staircases leading to an upper level, as well as an elevator. Upstairs was a spacious lounge with a full bar, along with a snack station. The bar featured a whimsical bottle rack shaped like a roller coaster. The area was surrounded by large windows overlooking Lake Erie. There were patio areas with tables and chairs. I could imagine those would be extremely popular on warm evenings. Overall I was really impressed with the Grand Pavilion, and that's where we planned to eat later in the day. Back outside we continued walking north. The Wild Mouse was finally operational and had quite a few people waiting in the queue. Next to the entrance were six cartoon mouse faces in different colors, representing the six different cars on the coaster. Each one had a name, and the park went all in with merchandising them. Some of the more popular souvenirs in the park were six collectible buttons, each with one of the mice on them. One was named Masey. Except on the button, it was spelled "Masy". Social media lit up over that one, and people began scarfing up that button. When the park realized the mistake, they pulled the button off the shelves. Then enterprising individuals began offering Masy buttons on eBay for over $100 each. Isn't the free market wonderful? Across from the Wild Mouse was a small red truck with ornate lettering spelling out "Cedar Point -- The Amazement Park". It had a small matching counter next to it. I'm not sure what it was, but I suspect it sold beer. From there we walked over to the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad for a trip to the north end of the park. I wanted to see if I could get a ride on Steel Vengeance before the crowds came. We arrived at the entrance to find that the ride didn't open until 11:00 and there was already a sizeable crowd waiting outside the queue. We had to wait on the other side of the railroad tracks; the entrance plaza was already filled. There was a separate long line for the Fast Lane guests. We only had about fifteen minutes until the ride opened, but some people got sick of waiting and left the line. When the ride finally opened to cheers, I was surprised how many people were waiting in the plaza area. It took about ten minutes for them to filter into the queue before our line started moving. Karen didn't want to ride, and decided to accompany me to the station where she would step over the train and out to the exit, a practice we'd done many times in the past. As always at Cedar Point, the queue line wound its way really close to the coaster track, so you could feel the power of the ride as the trains blasted past. I was wearing cargo pants and stowed my phone inside one of the buttoned pockets. And I had a zippered pocket in my jacket and placed my hat in there. As we approached the end of the queue, there was a security station and an attendant with a wand. I walked throught the security station and, of course, set it off. So the attendant searched me with his wand and found my phone. He told me I had to leave it in a locker. I told him I was going to give it to my wife, since she wasn't going to ride. But he said if she wasn't going to ride, she had to leave the queue. I said my phone was quite secure in my buttoned pocket, but he didn't care. No phones were allowed past that point. So I gave my phone and hat to Karen, and she left by the locker queue as I proceeded up the stairs to the station. When I got to the top of the stairs, the attendant asked how many people. I told her one, and she tried to assign me a seat. I asked her if I could wait for the front (since there were only four people in that queue). She sighed and said it would take me an extra ten minutes. I told her that was fine, and with an annoyed gesture she sent me off to that separate queue line. It didn't take anywhere near ten minutes to board and I was quickly seated. The ride attendants were stapling the lap bars down forcefully. They pressed so hard on mine it knocked the wind out of me. There was a TV screen over the ride operator that showed the status of each seat, and they had to get the lap bar to click to a certain point before the train could dispatch. I couldn't understand why they would design the system that way. Everyone's body is different and the lap bar should be able to accommodate that. (Quassy's little Wooden Warrior coaster does that brilliantly!) All stapling does is make the ride more uncomfortable than it needs to be. At any rate, we finally were dispatched and rolled out of the station and over the three bunny hops up to the lift. At the top, the drop seemed impossibly steep. The speed off the drop was intense, followed by the first extreme airtime hill and then the insane outward-banked airtime hill. From there the ride was a blur of sudden inversions and unexpected changes of direction, with a very brief breather on the flat mid-course brake run. Then it was non-stop speed all the way back to the station with one airtime hill after another. It was a fantastic ride, but completely exhausting. I'm glad I had another chance to ride it since the ride was built, but that was it for the day. After that, we headed down the Frontier Trail toward the Main Midway. One noticeable absence this year was the Forbidden Frontier, an area that was created for families in 2019. It featured a large number of performers who engaged families in a story. It featured a lot of family activities, a huge outdoor play area and a really good restaurant. But management felt it wasn't popular enough and required too much staffing. So this season they permanently closed it. I was disappointed by that. I really enjoyed the concept when I experienced it, and the families that were there seemed to have a really good time. It was a much different experience than was offered at most other parks. I'm sure opening it right before the pandemic didn't help. I wish they had given the attraction more time to catch on. The park still offered the Frontier Excursion boat ride, which used to be closely tied in with the Forbidden Frontier storyline. I wasn't sure how the park was going to handle that, but it was a moot point because the Excursion was closed while we were there. We kept following the Frontier Trail and stopped off at The Barnyard, the park's petting zoo populated by goats, ducks, geese, a llama and a couple of camels. The camels had such expressive eyes. Karen paused to pet one of them. Nearby was a corral that held horses for the pony rides across the midway. I felt bad for them. Their corral was comparatively tiny and right up against one of the tunnels for Millennium Force, where the coaster would come roaring through every few minutes. We emerged onto the Main Midway, where I noticed the Dragon's Inn stand. It had been there for many years, but I never paid much attention to it. But what caught my eye was that it advertised cheese-on-a-stick! Naturally, the stand was closed. But it was good to remember for the future. By then the fog had dissipated and the sun was beginning to shine. I was hoping to take the Sky Ride to the south end of the park. But for some reason, it wasn't running. So instead we walked over to the Cadillac Cars and took another relaxing ride on that. I wanted to get one more ride on Blue Streak. The line wasn't that long, and evidently the attendants had gotten better at their jobs. They were letting people line up in the station rather than holding them at the bottom of the stairs. In just a few minutes I was in the front seat and rolling along through another fun-filled airtime extravaganza. The CP Shops underneath the south Sky Ride station was open, so Karen and I checked it out. There were a lot of new coaster-themed souvenirs in there. Nothing in particular caught my eye except for some shirts they had in their display window that mentioned specific coaster manufacturers. Unfortunately, they didn't have any of those shirts for sale. At that point it was about 2:00, so we decided to beat the crowds and head over to the Grand Pavilion for something to eat. There were only a few people in the queue when we arrived. Karen ordered shrimp with steak fries. I ordered the beer-battered fish, pineapple fried rice and a key lime pie. Each order came with a dinner roll. It was served on a bamboo plate covered by what appeared to be an old newspaper. Ahead of us was an older woman with a disabled girl. She kept asking the servers to give her one of each item behind the counter. They kept trying to explain to her that she had a choice of one entree and one side. But the woman couldn't seem to comprehend that. So it took us a while to make it to the cash register. (I say "cash" register, but this season the park officially went cashless.) We finally paid for our food ($44 for both of us) and found a table upstairs overlooking the lake. Karen liked her shrimp. I'm not a big fried fish fan, but mine was really delicious. It wasn't at all greasy. The coating was crisp and flavorful. The rice was really good, as was the dinner roll. And the key lime pie (about the size of a cupcake) was mouthwatering. I was glad that the food measured up to the building's design. After our meal we headed back to our hotel. I was impressed with the work that Cedar Point had done. The Boardwalk area looked really nice, especially the Grand Pavilion. I was really disappointed that there wasn't any cheese-on-a-stick, and I hoped it was only a temporary absence. Management was dealing with the labor shortage as best as they could, especially thinking ahead with designing and managing their restaurants. I was really intrigued by what was in store for Top Thrill Dragster, and I'd be sure to watch that progress closely. Next season would give us yet another reason to visit America's Roller Coast.

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