Cedar Point and the Rain That Would Not Stop

Today we woke up in Sandusky, Ohio. Not once, mind you, but over and over again as a crazy amount of rain pelted our tent.  We also learned our tent isn’t exactly waterproof. Nevertheless, the last time we woke up today, the rain had stopped.

We showered and headed back to the most magical place on Earth: Cedar Point. Everything was as we remembered it, save for the new roller coaster and newly renovated entrance (which incorporates said coaster). Sadly there were no anonymous benefactors awaiting our arrival in the parking lot to hand us admission coupons so we had to pay FULL PRICE.

Cedar Point's new entrance featuring Gatekeeper roller coaster

Our first stop inside was the new roller coaster Gatekeeper. It’s a Wing Coaster, which means the seats are on either side of the track. Nothing above you; nothing below you. Apparently it is the longest, the fastest, has the longest drop, and has the most inversions of any Wing Coaster. I’ve been becoming an adrenaline junkie as of late so this was right up my alley. The experience is indescribable. There are a number of times where you feel like you are going to smash into something on this ride. My only regret was not riding it 7 more times.

Gatekeeper

We then rode on something called Wicked Twister. The only way to describe this ride is that the track is U-shaped, you start in the middle, are rocketed forward at about 70 mph and go forward and backward up and down the sides of the U 5 times. All in all, quite fun.

After this we went to Millennium Force, still the highest rated roller coaster in the world. Thankfully, as we had gotten to the park way earlier than we had last year, the lines were much shorter. We only had to wait about a half hour this time before we were rocketed through the sky. AWESOME.

LOL

We decided at this time to find sustenance, which we did at Coasters, a ‘50s diner-themed restaurant. Having not eaten breakfast, our eyes were much bigger than our stomachs and we ate WAY too much too fast. That ended up not being a big deal as soon after leaving the restaurant the skies opened up. Here and there the rain would let up as we hopped from covering to covering.

We even managed to discover a part of the park we hadn’t been to last time, modeled after 18^th and 19^th century frontier life. We stumbled upon a make-your-own candle shop and a glass blowing shop. It seems people don’t really go to amusement parks renowned for the roller coasters for the thrill of glass blowing as we were among the six people there. Seeing an opportunity to share their craft however, the two glass blowers sprang (I’m using that term liberally) into action making a flower and a candle holder. Don’t get me wrong, it was completely awesome and something I’d love to try doing someday, just unexpected and out of place. So we bought a glass flower as Jaimie has this collection of flowers made out of things that are not flowers. They have this neat service at Cedar Point where, for a dollar, they’ll have someone pick up whatever you buy and bring it to the main entrance for you to pick up on your way out. We went with this as we had no idea whether we’d be going on any more rides.

Turns out we wouldn’t be going on any more rides. The lightning and rain were so intense that they were telling people to go into designated storm shelters. We, instead, opted to leave.

Entrance as we ran to the car

We went back to our campsite fearing our tent and belongings had been scattered across Camp Sandusky. They hadn’t and the rain had cleared up, so we feel good about sleeping here again tonight.

After we cleaned ourselves up, we got a call from Cedar Point telling us our flower was finally at the front gate.

We went back and picked it up and on the way back to camp we stopped by the Brown DerbySteakhouse. Awesome. Steak. Totally worth it. Extremely full. Huge loaded baked potato. When we got back to camp, I thought that would be the perfect time to go running. After all, carbs before a workout is good right? I’ve been doing a couch to 5k running program and I haven’t missed a day since. So I ran. Amazingly enough I did not vomit or die.

We managed to get a fire going throughout all the sogginess and then realized we have three days until our check-in in Missouri and only 12 hours to drive. It seems we’ll be taking it slow. Not sure where we’ll end up tomorrow, probably somewhere in Indiana.