Karen and I went to Ohio to visit our grandkids and family. On Saturday, Karen had things to do with her daughter so she dropped me off at America’s roller coast, Cedar Point, in Sandusky. It was a beautiful day, with bright sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 70s. It was also a Saturday and that meant big crowds at the park (35,000 people, in fact). That didn’t bother me all that much, since the rides I preferred weren’t the ones most guests queued up for. When I lined up at the entrance gates at 9:30 there were already several hundred people in line. There was a notice on the huge video screen above the entrance that reminded guests that Top Thrill 2 would not be opening. It was looking very likely that their new coaster would be out of commission for the entire season. At 10:00 the gates opened and guests flooded into the park like a dam bursting open. Cedar Point had finally removed their 3-year-old 150th anniversary sign inside the entrance and replaced it with an advertisement for their popular Boardwalk Nights events. Just behind the sign, music was filling the midway from the band organ on their classic carousel. Before the line got too long, I headed over to the Blue Streak, the oldest roller coaster in the park. The ride turned 60 this season yet the park wasn’t advertising that fact. A line was already forming, even before the queue line was opened. But within a few minutes we all were walking through the queue toward the station. Thankfully the attendants were just letting people into the station to queue up for whatever seat they wanted. So naturally I chose the front. There were just two people in front of me, so within a couple of minutes I was seated and on my way. Even though it was an old ride, it still gave a great thrill. It reminded me of Mountain Park’s Mountain Flyer, a simple out-and-back ride filled with airtime hills. It was still my favorite coaster in the park. I walked across the midway through the Kiddie Kingdom and over to the big colorful Ferris wheel. Although the wheel had 36 cabs on it, the operators were filling just 8 of them. So it took a while for the queue line to move. When I finally arrived at the entrance, the attendant told me I couldn’t ride by myself. There were two families in front of me: a father with his son, and a family of five. Strangely, he told me to sit with the family of five. Then he changed his mind and had me sit with the father and son. The queue line was growing longer, so after we were seated and the ride started they began filling more of the cars. The son was telling the father how he wanted to go to the Grand Pavilion to ride the elevator. The father kept telling him they were at the park to ride roller coasters. But the son (who looked to be about 10 years old) kept insisting he wanted to ride elevators. So I suggested he ride Power Tower, which was basically a 300-foot-tall elevator. The Ferris wheel offered stunning panoramas of the park, along with mouthwatering smells coming from the exhaust fans of the Grand Pavilion directly below. Off to the side was a small swimming pool with a high-dive platform attached, one of the entertainments during the Boardwalk Nights. I was going to take the Sky Ride over to the center of the park, but the queue line was filled so I walked over instead. I wanted to take a ride on Iron Dragon, one of my favorite coasters, but the queue line spilled out onto the midway. Instead, the Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad was in the station, so I hopped aboard for a ride to the north station. The park had sent out two of their steam engines for refurbishment, with a plan to eventually refurbish all of them. I noticed that the park’s "VIP Lounge" (essentially a bar under a tent next to the Millennium Force turnaround) had been given a beefy wooden pavilion. But it was still and open-air pavilion between a coal-fired steam train and a deafening roller coaster. I didn’t find that very relaxing. The train began chugging away and as we rounded the curve on the west side of the park, I could see that Millennium Force was down. The trains were all parked on the brakes and the queue line was closed. Several maintenance workers were in the station. It was already about noon when the train pulled into the north station. So it was time for that hard-to-find delicacy: cheese-on-a-stick. I walked over to Sagebrush Sue’s, and thankfully it was open. With the meal plan Karen had got with my season pass, I got a CoaSt and a bag of potato chips (not pretzels like last time). I had to pay an extra $6 for the drink though. I sat on a bench in the shade and enjoyed my rare treat. It was really tasty. One coaster I hadn’t been on in over a decade was the nearby Cedar Creek Mine Ride, an old Arrow mine train that once had been one of the longest in the world. Like most Arrow mine trains, it consisted mainly of two lift hills with two helixes, but in this case with a lot of other track in between. When I got to the station, I found that the attendants were assigning seats. The station was so huge, I couldn’t understand why they were bothering. They could have just let people fill up the station, queuing behind whichever seat they wanted. But they would allow only one train’s worth of people in the station at a time. It made no sense to me, especially since that policy seemed random. Some coasters loaded that way but others didn’t. I ended up in the middle of the train, which seemed to have been constructed for the seven dwarfs. The attendants were proactive about that, announcing to riders that they should cross their legs under their seats. After a few minutes, the train left the station. It was still one of the quietest roller coasters I had ever experienced. We wound our way over to the first lift hill. Off the lift, there was the typical Arrow mini-drop, a turn and then a plunge. There was the dive across the pond, a long stretch of straight track. Then the second lift hill and the final helix. It was a fun if cramped ride. Nearby was the Town Hall Museum, which used to display artifacts from Cedar Point’s past along with scale models of various rides. I always enjoyed checking it out. I heard they had closed it down a few years back, but I checked it out anyway. Sure enough, the doors were locked and the windows were blacked out. That seemed a shame. It was an impressive building and provided a relaxing (and air conditioned) escape for adults. Instead I followed the Gemini Midway back toward the south. I was thinking of riding the Gemini, the park’s racing coaster (which was essentially two Arrow mine trains). But I was surprised to see the queue line stretching all the way over to the Happy Friar (which had a large poster celebrating 80 years of Cedar Point French fries). I passed by that. Next to it was the former entrance to the Snake River Expedition, another relaxing ride that the park closed. That whole area now sat there idle. I continued down the midway and over to Magnum XL-200, the first "hypercoaster&Quot;. There was hardly anyone in line, so I queued up and within a few minutes I was in the station. There was another long line for the front seat, so instead I took the first seat of the second car (sometimes referred to as the "Schmeck seat" after Herb Schmeck, the coaster designer noted for his airtime moments). I was glad that the ride attendants didn’t staple me in, jamming the lap bar down as far as it would go. The little bit of play I had made the severe airtime on the ride a bit more comfortable. I followed the path south and passed by the silent Top Thrill 2. I noticed that all of the trains were sitting on the storage track. Many of the seats had been dismantled and were hanging in a row next to the trains, There was no one in line at the north Sky Ride station so I hopped aboard for a picturesque ride back to the park entrance. The colorful Cedar Point landscaping was in full bloom. I was thirsty so I decided to stop by the ice cream parlor, formerly run by the local company Tofts but now being run by the park and serving Blue Bunny ice cream. But it was closed. The other ice cream shop in Frontier Town was also closed. So there was nowhere in the park to get ice cream (except for Coasters Diner which basically had McDonalds ice cream). So I hydrated at a nearby water bubbler. I walked into the giant Coliseum arcade and wandered past the tiny nine-hole mini golf course. I wished they still had their wall of pinball machines. Something I spotted that I’d never seen before was a small bowling alley. It was basically duckpin bowling; it wasn’t ten pin and it wasn’t quite candlepin (which I love). The lanes were all self-serve. They had flashing credit card readers that had 24 marked on them. I thought, "$24 for a round of bowling?" But it was 24 credits. You had to get a Cedar Point arcade card from a machine. So I paid $20 for 80 credits. I chose a lane at the end and swiped my card. It deducted 24 points and the lane came to life. I’d never seen an alley like that. The pins were all suspended at the top by cables. Striking them with the ball would sometimes knock them over, but often would not. And the machine had trouble figuring out what had been hit. I knocked over 9 pins, but the machine said only 7 were knocked down and then reset 4 pins. So I didn’t exactly have a stellar round. I played a second game and didn’t do much better. But it was a good workout. Since I had quite a few credits left, I walked across to the Funway Arcade and took a stroll through the nicely designed Maze of Mirrors (which ate up the rest of my credits). It was almost meditative until a few young kids arrived and, as young kids usually did, tried to get the through the maze as fast as they could. Next I walked over to the Grand Pavilion and went upstairs and out onto the veranda. I pulled up a chair in the shade and relaxed, staring out at all the activity on Lake Erie as a gentle breeze blew past. It was like being back in Maine. I stayed there for about a half-hour and then headed back out onto the midway. I was going to get back on the train, but I noticed that the line at Iron Dragon had diminished, so I queued up. Even so, it took about twenty minutes to reach the station, where the attendants were assigning seats. I ended up in the second car sitting next to a guy who also loved the ride. And it certainly delivered with its sudden bursts of speed and rapid changes of direction that swung the cars back and forth like pendulums. Then I headed back for the train and stayed on for the full round trip through Boneville with its humorous scenes of skeleton shenanigans. When I arrived back at the south station, I strolled back toward the entrance. I passed by the big stage near Iron Dragon. All the lights were on and technicians were checking things out. Very few people were in line at the Cadillac Cars, so I took a ride. There was a child in front of me who couldn’t quite figure out how to drive and kept lurching forward and then stopping. When we arrived back at the station, a woman behind me with her child driving slammed into my car. I thought I got whiplash. I hobbled out of the station and walked next door to the great Cedar Downs, one of the last racing derbies in the world. It was a huge ride and held an enormous number of guests. But each time I walked over to a horse, a kid would come running up from behind me, cut in and jump on the horse before I could. A family was kind enough to point me in the direction of an available horse. It was a really fun ride and I still found it to be mechanically fascinating. By that point it was 3:30 and Karen was coming to pick me up so that we could go out to dinner with the family. So I headed off to the park exit. Once again I had a delightful time at Cedar Point. I couldn’t have asked for better weather. There was plenty to occupy my day, whether it was riding coasters or relaxing by the lake. And of course, there was cheese-on-a-stick. And what more could I ask from a day at a park?

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