Rockin' Roller Coast.
The Great July - Day 15
We packed waaaaaay too much food for Cedar Point.
A tub of tuna salad, cheese, and crackers. Eight Peant Butter and Jelly (or Honey) sandwiches*, apples, plums, bananas, tons of cookies and energy bars, dried apricots, pickles, and I'm sure I'm probably forgetting something. AND fourteen bottles of water that were frozen at the beginning of the day.
Boy did we ever need those bottles of water.
Since emmy_roo asked the other day and I forgot to reply, Cedar Point is quite simply the best amusement park in the country, if not the world, for roller coasters. I'm sure there are maybe better ones for family/ theme-oriented trips or the resort experience, but at last count I think CP has close to twenty roller coasters of all different flavors, most of them holding some kind of record or other. I went there on Thursday with some friends from church: Ruth, Michelle, and Paul.
We started our day with the Top Thrill Dragster, which shoots you from 0 to 120 MPH in four seconds and then shoots you up in the air four-hundred feet. We waited a little over an hour in line for a forty-second ride. And, I've got to tell you, my roller coaster tolerance level is pretty high, but I don't think I'll be in a hurry to ride that one again unless there's a really short wait time for some odd reason. It wasn't the height so much as the speed. The human body simply is not meant to go 0 to 120 in 4 seconds. I had an instant headache. Still, as short as the ride was, I guess I can see why people are willing to wait so long for the rush. It certainly makes an impact.
That was the longest line, and really, for the highest-profile attraction in the park, 1 hour really isn't bad, especially since it was the peak of the morning when most people are lining up for rides.
My favorite coaster at CP has always been the Millennium Force. It's beautiful just to look at. Really beautiful lines in a striking shade of blue, it has sort have been the icon of the park ever since it was built. Classic coaster in the sense that you sit on a train that rides on top of the track, she doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles to hold her own. There aren't any loop-the-loops or extreme twists, just a satisfyingly long ride of graceful hills and curves (and a couple of tunnels). The first hill is 300 feet tall and very gently inverts on itself on the way down. I love to ride in the front car for this one-- it's worth it. But we didn't put in the extra twenty minutes of time this time around.
The other coaster I rode for the first time was the Maverick which was voted the best new ride in 2007 in the whatever competition they have between all the parks. It's also a top-train steel coaster (orangey-red this time) but definitely comes with bells and whistles. I've never been on a twistier roller coaster. They actually have a requirement that people take off their earrings because of the surprising way it whips your head around if you aren't careful. Halfway through the ride, I figured out that if I held on to either end of my head restraint, next to my ears, the jerking was significantly diminished and I had a fabulous time on this ride. I would have loved to ride it again, but there is so much park to see and so little time.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find my good sandals that morning when I was getting dressed, and knowing we were going to be riding water rides, I didn't want to wear my New Balance sneakers either, because you either have to put up with getting soaked shoes that squilch for the rest of the day, or you have to leave your shoes at the front of the line and walk the entire line barefoot, which in such a public venue, kind of grosses me out. So I opted for my brown converse sneakers, which didn't require socks and would dry out much more quickly after they got wet. I even packed a bunch of bandaids knowing that there was chance they would start to rub on the back of my heels after a while.
Well, they did, but not as much as the shoes squeezed my wide feet together and gave me blisters on the bottom of my feet. Getting them soaking wet on the predicted water ride didn't help with the friction, either, but in fact made everything worse. By mid-afternoon I was in agony, and since the shoes also have terrible support, my feet just plain hurt. Then Michelle got really motion sick and the long and short is, our original plan of staying until close to the park's closing at 10:00 fell laughably short. We are not old, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are we 20 anymore.
Still, riding home early had its advantages. Ruth and I started singing Disney songs (beginning with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because Paul had been talking about technological prospects of airplanes that double as cars in the future) and after a while we switched to hymns because they were the only songs that everybody in our party all knew. We weren't the most coordinated singers in the world, but we did love the songs we were singing. I was especially impressed with Paul joining in, because the greater part of guys that I know are too cool and immature to proactively participate in a hymn singalong.
Then I came home and the shower gave me just enough water to wash my hair and get the grime off my skin. It ran out before I had a chance to condition, but I was clean, so that was good enough.
We packed waaaaaay too much food for Cedar Point.
A tub of tuna salad, cheese, and crackers. Eight Peant Butter and Jelly (or Honey) sandwiches*, apples, plums, bananas, tons of cookies and energy bars, dried apricots, pickles, and I'm sure I'm probably forgetting something. AND fourteen bottles of water that were frozen at the beginning of the day.
Boy did we ever need those bottles of water.
Since emmy_roo asked the other day and I forgot to reply, Cedar Point is quite simply the best amusement park in the country, if not the world, for roller coasters. I'm sure there are maybe better ones for family/ theme-oriented trips or the resort experience, but at last count I think CP has close to twenty roller coasters of all different flavors, most of them holding some kind of record or other. I went there on Thursday with some friends from church: Ruth, Michelle, and Paul.
We started our day with the Top Thrill Dragster, which shoots you from 0 to 120 MPH in four seconds and then shoots you up in the air four-hundred feet. We waited a little over an hour in line for a forty-second ride. And, I've got to tell you, my roller coaster tolerance level is pretty high, but I don't think I'll be in a hurry to ride that one again unless there's a really short wait time for some odd reason. It wasn't the height so much as the speed. The human body simply is not meant to go 0 to 120 in 4 seconds. I had an instant headache. Still, as short as the ride was, I guess I can see why people are willing to wait so long for the rush. It certainly makes an impact.
That was the longest line, and really, for the highest-profile attraction in the park, 1 hour really isn't bad, especially since it was the peak of the morning when most people are lining up for rides.
My favorite coaster at CP has always been the Millennium Force. It's beautiful just to look at. Really beautiful lines in a striking shade of blue, it has sort have been the icon of the park ever since it was built. Classic coaster in the sense that you sit on a train that rides on top of the track, she doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles to hold her own. There aren't any loop-the-loops or extreme twists, just a satisfyingly long ride of graceful hills and curves (and a couple of tunnels). The first hill is 300 feet tall and very gently inverts on itself on the way down. I love to ride in the front car for this one-- it's worth it. But we didn't put in the extra twenty minutes of time this time around.
The other coaster I rode for the first time was the Maverick which was voted the best new ride in 2007 in the whatever competition they have between all the parks. It's also a top-train steel coaster (orangey-red this time) but definitely comes with bells and whistles. I've never been on a twistier roller coaster. They actually have a requirement that people take off their earrings because of the surprising way it whips your head around if you aren't careful. Halfway through the ride, I figured out that if I held on to either end of my head restraint, next to my ears, the jerking was significantly diminished and I had a fabulous time on this ride. I would have loved to ride it again, but there is so much park to see and so little time.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find my good sandals that morning when I was getting dressed, and knowing we were going to be riding water rides, I didn't want to wear my New Balance sneakers either, because you either have to put up with getting soaked shoes that squilch for the rest of the day, or you have to leave your shoes at the front of the line and walk the entire line barefoot, which in such a public venue, kind of grosses me out. So I opted for my brown converse sneakers, which didn't require socks and would dry out much more quickly after they got wet. I even packed a bunch of bandaids knowing that there was chance they would start to rub on the back of my heels after a while.
Well, they did, but not as much as the shoes squeezed my wide feet together and gave me blisters on the bottom of my feet. Getting them soaking wet on the predicted water ride didn't help with the friction, either, but in fact made everything worse. By mid-afternoon I was in agony, and since the shoes also have terrible support, my feet just plain hurt. Then Michelle got really motion sick and the long and short is, our original plan of staying until close to the park's closing at 10:00 fell laughably short. We are not old, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are we 20 anymore.
Still, riding home early had its advantages. Ruth and I started singing Disney songs (beginning with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because Paul had been talking about technological prospects of airplanes that double as cars in the future) and after a while we switched to hymns because they were the only songs that everybody in our party all knew. We weren't the most coordinated singers in the world, but we did love the songs we were singing. I was especially impressed with Paul joining in, because the greater part of guys that I know are too cool and immature to proactively participate in a hymn singalong.
Then I came home and the shower gave me just enough water to wash my hair and get the grime off my skin. It ran out before I had a chance to condition, but I was clean, so that was good enough.