Cedar Point Early Ride Times

[fanofFirehawk]

I was at Cedar Point a couple of days ago and we stayed in the breakers. One of the benefits of staying there you get early rides times (like with a gold pass), so on Tuesday we entered the park at a little after 9:00. We decided to head back to Maverick their was a very lite drizzle. When we got there the guy that sits out side the entrance with the stick told us the ride was closed we asked if it were to stop drizzling would it open up and he said he didn't know. We toke a chance and waited to see if were to open it soon it was almost 9:30 now we had been standing the rain for fifteen minutes the rain began to stop and the ride ops dispatched an empty train and it stop on the break run and sat there behind the station and about fifteen minutes later they said on a speaker to us all (there was a lot of people in line with us) that they were experiencing mechanical problems with the ride (remember the rain had stopped). So all of the line dispersed, we headed to Millennium Force. When we arrived there it wasn't open and their was a bit of a line in front of us out side the entrance (it is about 9:40 now and there is no rain) we waited about ten minutes then and empty train flew by us and pulled in to the station a couple minutes after that a train with two people (ride ops most likely) flew by in another train and seemed to be having a blast in the front seat. I was really starting to get annoyed they dispatched about a dozen more trains with ride ops in them every other time they finally opened at around 10:30. I rode it and loved it but I am still Rather annoyed that a lot of the rides didn't open till then or after (Maverick didn't open till like noon).

Could some one explain the procedure to open a ride for me? Am I just unlucky or has any one else had some thing like this happen.

[jcgoble3]

I'm not an expert by any means here, but I'll give it a shot based on what I've observed.

In the morning, each ride must be tested before the park opens. The procedure probably varies from coaster to coaster, but often the first few test trains are sent off empty, then more are sent off with ride operators in them so that the ride ops can check to see if there's anything amiss that could only be noticed while riding. However, some rides cannot operate in the rain for safety reasons, e.g., TTD and Millie. This is due to a variety of reasons, but on fast coasters, one of the reasons is that raindrops hitting your face at the ride's top speed can hurt and potentially cause injury (especially if they hit you in the eye). Therefore, the faster the ride, the less rain it can tolerate before having to shut down. This is why TTD cannot operate in even a light sprinkle. I'm not sure what the policy is on Millie as to whether it can operate in a very light rain like Diamondback or not, but I would not be surprised to learn that it is the same as TTD. This is likely the source of your problem: they were probably unable to perform the necessary test runs on Millie before the park opened due to the rain, and thus had to wait until the rain stopped to begin testing.

Again, that's my educated guess based on my observations. I invite anyone with better knowledge to correct me if I got something wrong.

[flightoffear1996]

I have rode Millie in the pouring down rain. Not something I want to do again.

[beastrider97]

It's all a matter of luck with the weather at Cedar Point. You can have beautiful days with no rain and every ride running, then the next day pouring rain making every ride come to a stand still. My only wish is that somehow during ERT that it could be told to those waiting that Maverick would not be running, due to it being in the very back of the park and far away from the other ERT rides.

Speaking about the weather and TTD, it reminded me of how it took my Dad 4 of our yearly trips to finally be able to ride TTD. On the third year, he was 3 trains away when a very light drizzle started. The ride was immediately shut down and didn't open for the rest of the night. I'll never forget his face when he finally got to ride it after a total of 12 hours waiting over those 4 years.

To summarize, at CP you are subject to whatever Mother Nature feels like throwing at you.

[PhantomTheater]

Millie can run in a light rain, in one train operation only.