This past summer, I met up with two of my friends in Cleveland, Ohio to make our way over to the illustrious Cedar Point. As the title suggests, I grew up in Southern California, which meant my theme park and roller coaster enthusiasm was fueled by frequent visits to Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, and Universal Studios. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to visit several other great theme parks in different parts of the country due to circumstance, but Sandusky was a place that had always eluded me. Sure, there are many great parks across the US, but there’s clearly a general consensus in the community that if you’re a roller coaster guy, it doesn’t get better than Cedar Point. Therefore, I was extremely excited when I finally got the opportunity to give “America’s Roller Coast” a visit.
Instead of giving you a beat-by-beat rundown, I decided to list my biggest takeaways and hot takes based on my experiences over those 2 days. Note that Top Thrill 2 closed for the season before I was able to visit.
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1. THE BEST RIDES ARE AS GOOD AS THEY GET
The park’s top 3 of Steel Vengeance, Maverick, and Millennium Force are now easily all in my top 5 coasters ever ridden. Honestly, there’s not a lot I can say about these rides that haven’t already been said; they all do what they set out to do absolutely perfectly, and are probably going to remain some of my favorite coasters for a long, long time. Specifically, I would like to highlight Millennium Force for being significantly more exciting than I had anticipated. Growing up I heard a lot of jokes criticizing the ride’s overuse of over-banked turns and straight sections to the point where the nickname “Millennium Force-less” became ingrained in my head, but I soon realized that sometimes it’s just fun to be blasting through track going at 90 mph, even without a ton of positive/negative G-force moments. Mangum XL-200 was also a highlight of mine; although it’s probably a lot bumpier than it was when it opened, I really enjoyed all of the great airtime moments and the drops.
2. THE NEXT TIERS OF RIDES WERE SURPRISINGLY UNREMARKABLE
This was probably the most disappointing thing about the park for me. In short, Raptor, Rougarou, Valravn, Gatekeeper, Gemini, Corckscrew, and Blue Streak were all a lot worse than I had anticipated. More specifically, Gatekeeper, Valravn, Rougarou, and Raptor were all very middle-of-the-road B&M loopers that felt just as good if not worse than equivalents you can find at any other Six Flags or Cedar Fair park. Sure, Valravn has a fun first drop, and Gatekeeper’s “keyhole” manuevers were visually appealing, but besides that none of these rides took it to another level in the way I was expecting. B&M inverts like Batman: The Ride have a break-neck pace and some great positive G-forces, B&M floorless coasters like Medusa feature unorthodox inversions and some great hangtime moments, and other B&Ms like Tatsu or Silver Bullet give through fantastic visual “tours” of the surrounding rides and scenery. In comparison, I feel like Cedar Point’s B&M loopers were lacking in all of these elements. All 4 rides just felt like loop after loop after turn after loop. Sure, they were fun rides, but I could happily go the rest of my life without experiencing any of these attractions ever again.
For the next tier of coasters, rides like Blue Streak, Gemini, Corkscrew, and Cedar Creek Mine Ride, I was even more let down. Notably, I felt that Blue Streak, Gemini and Corkscrew were all rough to the point of not being enjoyable. Gemini especially broke my heart. During my college interview at my now Alma Mater, I talked extensively about Gemini and how badly I wanted to be able to experience it myself. However, when I actually got the chance to ride it, I found myself constantly bracing for the non-stop shakiness and harsh transitions. Maybe I hyped up these rides too much in my head, maybe these rides just got rougher over time, but either way I was pretty disappointed.
3. A LOT OF RIDE DOWNTIME, YET THE FASTEST OPERATIONS I’VE EVER SEEN
I’ve seen a lot of posts on here about how bad Cedar Point operations were over this past summer. While I do agree that there was a significant amount of ride downtime (there was one 30-minute span where Steel Vengeance, Millennium Force and Maverick were all closed an hour after park opening), this didn’t bother me that much.
In fact, I was actually blown away by how great the Cedar Point staff was in general. Personally I’m used to places like Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain, where the ride ops could care less about maximizing ride capacity. No knock on the employees at either of those parks, but there it’s clear that there being a ride op is just a “job” and their thoughts and aspirations are elsewhere. I’ve had plenty of great small talk conversations with employees at KBF and SFMM, but it’s always been because they’re just “chill” people my age who were willing to joke around and talk about stupid stuff they probably shouldn’t be discussing at work.
In comparison, the ride ops at Cedar Point felt like a well-trained army. I’ve never been to a park where the ride operators were just so dedicated to efficiency and speed. Every ride felt like it had an over-abundance of staff members, and they were all solely focused on unloading the ride vehicle and loading the next one. One moment that stood out in particular was at Steel Vengeance, where the ride ops would high-five and briefly celebrate whenever they sent out a train before the preceding train could hit the final break-run, only to immediately get back into position. I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was just how much pride these workers had, you could just tell that being a Cedar Point employee really meant a lot to them.
4. WHERE’S THE THEMING?
My final (and most nitpicky) observation about Cedar Point is the lack of theming. This is something I wasn’t aware of beforehand, and I feel like it isn’t brought up nearly enough. Although the western areas in the back/left-hand side of the park are pretty great, I was really shocked by how the entire front half of the park just has a generic “boardwalk” theme. I understand that not every park can be Knott’s or Dollywood, but I feel like almost every other park I’ve been to at least tries to put some vague theming outside of the entrance area with random lands like the Spain & Mexico area at SFOT, Samurai Summit at SFMM, Rockville at SFNE or the various DC Universes across Six Flags parks. I feel like Cedar Point, on the other hand, just doesn’t try hard enough.
I assume that the “boardwalk” theme is supposed to tie back to the park’s historic past with some slight Victorian touches, and I guess that’s good enough for most. But for me, a park of this size and magnitude really could be doing more to make you feel like you’re stepping into another world. Why not make the area around Magnum XL-200 and TT2 feel more futuristic and sci-fi adjacent? Why not add some Scandinavian-inspired architecture around Valravn? Why is there not a single dark ride in this entire park? In general, this just feels like a huge missed opportunity to make some of these rides feel “larger than life” and add an extra sense of excitement and variety to the park. I know people don’t come to Cedar Point for theming and “relaxing” experiences like dark rides, but after a while, walking around a generic boardwalk all day just isn’t a pleasant experience.
ULTIMATE THESIS: IT'S ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION
Jay-Z once asked the question “Would you rather be underpaid or overrated?”. To me, Cedar Point is overrated, and visiting made me realize that Six Flags Magic Mountain is underpaid. I still loved my visit and I had a fantastic time, but I really did walk away feeling like it’s the exact same caliber of a place like SFMM. The difference is just that Six Flags Magic Mountain is the fourth most popular park in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, whereas Cedar Point is the most popular park in the entire Midwest. I talked to a lot of people in the park who drove 6+ hours and stayed at a hotel just to visit Cedar Point, whereas the vast majority of SFMM visitors are just locals who are going to go home at 5:00 to eat dinner with their family. Because of this, Cedar Point just means something different to people; the staff members take their jobs more seriously, the roller coasters stand for themselves without dark rides or themed areas to back them up, and there’s just a feeling in the air that this place is a “big deal”. In the end, Cedar Point is a great place, but it also made me appreciate what I have at home and realize just how great a place like SFMM is, even if the general public doesn’t recognize its brilliance in the same way I now do.
As a fellow southern Californian who has made four separate trips to Cedar Point between 2008 and 2021, I both agree and disagree with some of the points you brought up. I do feel people make Cedar Point out to be some masterpiece of a park, but on my list of well over a hundred parks I've visited, it's somewhere I've always placed in the 20s (for reference, Knott's is in the teens and SFMM is in the 40s). I enjoy visiting Cedar Point, but I never leave feeling like I can't wait until my next visit because it just doesn't differentiate itself enough from the other major regional parks around the country.
Coaster-wise, I consider Cedar Point to have six headliner coasters to SFMM's five, but SFMM has five strong supporting coasters to Cedar Point's four. They are definitely 1 and 2 for coaster collections in the world, but which you prefer is going to depend on whether you prefer relatively common ride models that are presented in their optimized form (Cedar Point) or unique creations that aren't necessarily the most impressive stat-wise but can't be experienced elsewhere (SFMM). Raptor is definitely the ride I most strongly disagree with you on...that's a top tier invert in my book and blows away any of the Batman clones. I also feel the Point's other B&Ms as well as Gemini are solid rides on par with SFMM's supporting rides, though most of the others are past their prime.
Operationally, Cedar Point has always been on top of things, which comes in part due to the wild demands placed on employees at the place. I have heard quite a few stories regarding how strict the park is with quotas as well as the hours seasonal employees are required to work there, and it always impresses me the park is running as well as it is. However, with the crowds they get, it's truly necessary to maintain anything close to reasonable queues for the headliners. The lack of theming can be a bit surprising as the newer attractions at the park have been themed, but the place has always been a pure amusement park for the most part and thus that's not something that really surprised or bothered me.
Glad to hear that even if Cedar Point fell a bit short of your expectations you still had a good time at the park.
I think this is pretty consistent with the current feelings towards the 2 parks that are now owned by the same company. I do think there's a general perception among Cedar Point "fanboys" that nothing could possibly be better than "America's Roller Coast", and while the park has some top notch attractions, there are aspects of the park that are not any better than their main competitor (now sister park) n California. I do think Cedar Point is very "top heavy", and that their mid tier rides and attractions could be better.
Personally, I would rate Raptor and Gatekeeper much higher than you Juan (Raptor is a tick below Alpengeist, Montu, Banshee, and Afterburn in my list of best American B&M inverts, while Gatekeeper is up there with Swarm and X-Flight for the best B&M wing coaster), but I'm also among those who think MF is indeed "forceless", and would rank every other giga ahead of it aside from Orion (Fury 325, I-305/Pantherian, and Leviathan).
I do think from an operational perspective, my personal experience that CP has some of the best ride ops in the US (outside of Disney/Universal), while SFMM has some of the worst. I will never forget that my second ever visit to SFMM was a day where the park was open for 8 hours, and we spent from open to close in the park and only got on 8 rides the ENTIRE day (and 2 of those rides were on Scream! because it was the only ride in the park with <60 minute wait). That was over 15 years ago, and our more recent visits to the park have been better, but even on our most recent visit in July 2019 we encountered single train operations on many of the park's coasters. I would also agree that in general the theming at Cedar Point is pretty weak aside from the western areas, but I also feel that SFMM's idea of theming an attraction is subpar and haphazard.
Ultimately, I think SFMM and CP are 1a and 1b (whichever way you want to rank them) when it comes to American regional thrill parks (with SFGAm and SFGAdv close behind), but I do agree that there is something to be said for your theory regarding guests who travel hours to visit CP (and thus wanting more out of that visit) versus those who drive a few miles to visit SFMM.