Saturday July 17, 2021.
Temp: 74 /70, Humidity: 64/98%, Top Wind: NE21mph, Precip: Early morning rain, Miles Traveled: one for Island Girl, 10,752 steps for us
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We had some early morning rain, but that cleared up. However, there was a big ol bunch of wind. It wasn’t terrible right here in our slip, but we could see out to the bay and it was rough out there! We were only planning to move one mile across the bay today, but there was a small craft advisory out on the lake, so we knew the wind was cookin. 🌬 Oh boy. We couldn’t go to the new marina until 11:00and the wind was increasing as the morning wore on. We actually considered if we should just stay here another night and adjust our reservation over there. The wind was pushing us away from the dock, taking up that little 18 inches of space that we had between us and the neighbor boat. It was blowing from the northeast. That meant that in the marina where we were going, we should have a bit of shelter. I texted fellow loopers on Happiness Is, who were already there. They said it was actually pretty calm in their marina. Okeedokee then! Captain said – let’s go!
As we were preparing our lines to leave the dock, and figure out how to get out without kissing the neighbor boat, a local couple came down the dock and asked if they could give us a hand. YES! That would be fantastic! If we could let all the dock lines go at the same time, captain would be able to back us straight out. If I had to do one line at a time, the boat would blow in the wind and we’d get all katywompus in the slip before I had a chance to get to the other lines. Whew! It worked great! Thank you Kip and gal for your help! Captain backed us out without touching a thing, and got us turned around and on our way! Woo-hoo! But then we had decided that we should get fuel here, so we pulled into the fuel dock. It was parallel to the fairway, but the wind just really wanted to blow us our stern into the dock before we got to the end where the diesel pump was. It was weird – we were moving along the dock with our bow out and stern in, instead of totally parallel to the dock. Fortunately, we got in and out of there without any problem. Then we made our one mile trek across the bay. It was choppy on our side of the bay, but the farther east we got, the calmer it got.
The wind was still blowing up high at our fly bridge level, but down low it wasn’t bad at the water level. We had all the windows open upstairs just to try to reduce the ‘sailboat’ effect we usually have to fight with. We tootled into our 50’ slip bow first, just so we didn’t have to mess with getting turned around and so on in the wind. A couple of dock hands came out to help us get all tied up, powered up, and then we headed to the marina office to check in. This is a neat place. The marina is right at the Cedar Point roller coaster park. We had only planned to go to the park on Sunday for one day, but it was only noon, and the sky had cleared up nicely, so we bought two-day tickets. In we went to scope it out!
This looks like a crazy place! There are eighteen roller coasters, and numerous other rides! I had no idea it was this big.
Our first ride was on the train, because we thought it might help us get the lay of the land a bit. We had been hearing it’s ‘choo-choo’! It was a for-real coal fired steam train!
We watched them fill up with water, and the conductor/engineer guys wore striped overalls that were definitely grubby with coal!
We got off at the next train station, which was near this big ol “Steel Vengeance” coaster. It looks like an old fashioned wood coaster, but it’s been modernized with steel and modern engineering over the years and is knows as a hyper-hybrid. Stats: 205 feet tall, 74 miles per hour, longest hybrid coaster in the world at 5,740 feet and almost 30 seconds of airtime – the most airtime on ANY roller coaster in the world – along with twists, turns in the 2 minute, 30 second ride. Drop 200 feet at 90 degrees and topple through 4 head-over-boots inversions. Yep – we did.🙂🙃🙂
We were surprised that the seats were normal coaster height with no head rest, and no over shoulder harnesses. But the seat was a molded for your butt and thighs, with a seatbelt and then a big padded piece that came down and locked in place over your legs. And that was necessary! It was a very smooth ride, but our butts spent a lot of time in the air! It was super fun!
It was early afternoon on a Saturday, so the line that we had to wait in was pretty long – probably an hour. All the other lines looked really long too, so we walked around and tried to just get a feel for the park. At the main entrance we found their focal point for celebrating 150 years! Yes – seriously! It was technically last year in 2020, but they couldn’t party during the pandemic, so the party was postponed to this year.
Cedar point started out as a beach resort in the 1870’s, and it has a very long history of being THE beach destination in the midwest.
We went out to the beach to scope it out. There is a nice long beach all along a boardwalk.
The 20mph winds were cooking up some serious surf! Remember… this is a lake. A Great lake, but still a lake!
This is The Breakers Hotel, built in 1905. I also discovered that the park’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railway, opened in 1892! It stood 25 feet tall and reached an unbelievable top speed of 10 mph.
There were lot of beautiful flowers looking for their portraits to be taken.
Back in the park, strolling around and scoping it out, I had a little dance moment with Snoopy. The Peanuts gang are the mascots in this park.
We had a late lunch at a restaurant/sports bar, then headed back to the boat for awhile. There are a lot of chain restaurants inside the park, and they seem to charge pretty normal, not inflated prices. Around 8:30, I headed back in to see the 150th birthday celebration parade and show. It was fun because their history goes back to the old days of beach resort attire and carnival rides.
I thought this boat-bike was pretty fun.
They did a fun show with lots of dancers and singers, and talked about some of the park’s history in a fun way. I headed back home when that was all over at 10:00, which is when the park closes. We were surprised that the rides kept running for nearly an hour. I guess maybe they let people ride that were in the lines at closing time?
We had talked on the docks with Rummel and Amy from Happiness Is. Amy is not a fan of twisty turny upside downy kinds of roller coaster, but Rummel is. So they asked if we could do some rides together tomorrow so that Rummel would have a ride buddy. That sounded like fun, and since we’re at the marina, we get early entry at 9:00, one hour before the general public. We agreed to meet at 9 and get to ridin!
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Sunday July 18, 2021.
Temp: 80 /61, Humidity: 52/93%, Top Wind: N9 mph, Precip: NONE! blazing sunshine! ☀️, Miles Traveled: 15,866 steps (6.2 miles on foot)
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We were up an atum with a cup of coffee and a banana, and ready to go ride. Amy said that Rummel was so excited about today! In we went, and where should we start? Kenny really wanted to do a ride called Top Thrill Dragster, and I didn’t, so we headed there first. Unfortunately, it wasn’t running yet for early entry. Boo! So we headed right back to the entry where we came in, and rode the coaster that we’ve been hearing from the boat. It’s called the Valravn. It is the tallest, fastest, longest dive coaster in the U.S. It takes riders 223 feet up into the skies and then dangles them over the edge for what feels like an eternity before dropping them at a 90-degree angle, it goes 75 mph, with multiple inversions, including a 270-degree roll. Dude!
I was hanging out way over on the left. We went so fast that I couldn’t even scream like a girl. But I tell you what! Our buddy Rummel can whoop it up loud! He was having so much fun, and it was a blast riding with him.
Somewhere along in the day we rode this hangy coaster. Again, I was on the edge.. Third row from the left, that’s me! My white looking legs with gray shoes, and Kenny’s black shoes next to me. 🙂🙃. This one was the Raptor – it went 57 mph, had a lot of twists, a 100-foot vertical loop, two inverted corkscrews, a zero gravity roll and the world’s first ever cobra roll for a total of six inversions. After this one, we decided that we needed to let our equilibrium figure out where north was for awhile.
We walked around for awhile, and then came across the Magnum XL200. When it debuted in 1989, it was the fastest and steepest complete-circuit coaster in the world, the first hyper-coaster and first ever coaster to top 200 feet. 😳.
There are so many coasters that I didn’t realize which one we were getting on. And then I saw us going up this huge hill into the sky. I swear we could see all the way back to New York from up there! They do say that on a clear day, you can see across Lake Erie to Canada! This sucker was so tall and narrow, I couldn’t believe we were trusting our lives to the steel work to not twist and fall over! YIKES!!!
Ha! Here’s Rummel, our enthusiastic rider!
Amy didn’t ride a single coaster with us, but she did get some good pictures!!
We finally saw that the Dragster was open, so the guys went for a ride. 120mph, 420 feet in the air. I did not want to go. So this was Rummel’s turn to go on Kenny’s choice.
There they are – second from the left. They went by so fast!
In fact, 3.8 seconds from a complete standstill to 120 miles per hour, for a 17 second ride. The car is launched then goes straight up at a 90-degree incline to 420 feet in the air, over the top, and hurtles back to the ground in a 270 degree twist. We watched it yesterday, and the car went up to the top and couldn’t make it over, and came back down backwards. WHAT?!?!? They tried again, and it STILL didn’t make it, and came back down backwards again! Finally on the third try, they juiced it up somehow, and got it to go over the top! YIKES! The car goes up on the right, over the top, and down on the left.
You can see the car coming straight down through the twist on the left down side. 😳
After that it was time to relax and have some lunch, and another train ride.
This was cute – we went through a section of the park we hadn’t seen before. This was “Boneville”, and they had various scenes set up with skeletons taking care of the town.
There were some water rides that weren’t running.
There were lots of pretty gardens, so it is not just a big concrete jungle of coasters.
The frontier town was fun with lots of shops and farm critters, as well as Camp Snoopy with lil people rides.
Speaking of Camp Snoopy – there he is, with his little buddy Woodstock and friends!
We paused for a soda and a picture near the farm critters.
We were pretty well worn out by about 3:00, so we headed home and changed into some swim wear for a dip in the marina’s pool and hot tub! YES! A sunny day, in a place with a pool, can you believe it? I swam a few laps and it felt sooooo good!
Then we just enjoyed the hot tub for awhile until it was time to go meet our other loopers from Slo Pace for dinner at Famous Daves BBQ.
We had such a fun day with Amy and Rommel. I’m really glad we stopped here at Cedar Point to take a few days to just play and be silly. We have more play days coming as we continue to enjoy Lake Erie’s playground. Up next are The Islands!
And a good time was had by all!