Support Mystic Timbers First Rider Auction

I'm super excited to get to ride Mystic Timbers, the new wooden roller coaster at Kings Island and front runner for best new coaster of 2017. I will be participating in the First Rider Auction where Kings Island and Cedar Fair Charities are joining with the Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation to give us fans a chance to raise money for a great charity and be some of the first people to ride Mystic Timbers. 

The Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation is "a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing life-changing experiences to seriously ill and physically challenged children and their families in the Cincinnati area."  They have created numerous community outreach programs in the past that benefit local hospital and their patients.

If you have a dollar or two to spare, I would appreciate it if you could donate through my fundraising page, in order for me to help reach and surpass my goal:

https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/nick-weisenberger/mystic-timbers-first-official-rides--launch-party

Mystic Timbers features a 109 foot tall lift hill, speeds of 53 miles per hour and 3,265 feet of track in the woods. Kings Island is teasing a mystery finale to the ride: "what's in the shed?" My guess is some kind of media presentation generated by Holovis. Be sure to stay up to date on the ride's progress via the official Mystic Timbers website. And look for my review of Mystic Timbers in April!

Valravn Dives into Cedar Point

The world's tallest and longest dive coaster, Valravn, premiered at Cedar Point last weekend and I got to check it out before it opened to the general public. It's a fun ride and the view at the top of the 220 foot tall hill is incredible. The first drop is one of the best around but the rest is forgettable.

Off ride footage of Valravn: Valravn opening ceremony for LeBron James Foundation.
Valravn in slow motion:
Have you been on it? Do you think Valravn is the best dive coaster?

GateKeeper Media Day Video

I was lucky enough to be able to attend GateKeeper's media day at Cedar Point. Here is some off-ride video of GateKeeper I took. If you've been on any other wing coaster then know Gatekeeper feels exactly the same, only longer. I like airtime above everything else so I rank rides like Leviathan and SkyRush over GateKeeper. However, I will say GateKeeper is one of the, if not, the most visually stunning ride in the world today (followed by Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit at Universal Orlando which I think is one of the coolest looking rides out there). I also have to hand it to Cedar Point for putting on an outstanding media day event. The weather was perfect too, unlike the past couple of days that have seen three coasters valley: Maverick, Millennium Force, and Woodstock Express.

Cedar Fair CEO, Matt Ouimet, hinted at a new attraction, saying that he had given his team a new "challenge." I believe that challenge is creating a family dark ride attraction not tied to an existing Intellectual Property. What do you think?

Cedar Point 2013 GateKeeper Layout

The layout for Cedar Point's 2013 record breaking wing coaster has leaked online a day before the official announcement. GateKeeper will be large and in charge at the front of the park. This will be B&M's fifth wing coaster built in three years and will be the world's tallest, fastest, and longest. The official announcement is scheduled for 3:30pm EST tomorrow (Monday, August13). Pictured below is the Gatekeeper layout image released by the Sandusky Register and on Cedar Point's website.

Cedar Point 2013 Coaster

The Sandusky Register is reporting that Cedar Point will remove the Space Spiral observation ride and the Disaster Transport indoor roller coaster in order to make room for a B&M wing rider roller coaster to open in 2013. According to the newspaper, a memo dated February 15, 2012 from Cedar Fair CEO Matt Ouimet sent to Cedar Fair's board of directors claims the new 2013 roller coaster will be the tallest, fastest, and longest wing coaster in the world when it opens next year. Details at this point are thin but we do know the lift hill will rise 170 feet in the air and the ride will most likely be an out and back style design (think Wild Eagle as opposed to X-Flight). The front entrance to the park and parking lot will also be upgraded.

Cedar Point has not made an official announcement about the new ride but did confirm they will be investing $25 million into the park next year. Cedar Point's 2013 ride will keep their roller coaster count at 16 (was 17 then will drop to 15 after removing Wildcat and Disaster Transport and will return to 16 after new ride is built). After going years without removing a major coaster, Matt Ouimet has already signed the death warrants for two roller coasters not even a full year into his new job.

While this is great news for Cedar Point fanboys and roller coaster enthusiasts, families who like to visit the park and ride together have to be groaning. The park is once again removing family friendly attractions and not replacing them with something suitable. Though the Disaster Transport buiding has been an eyesore for years, the Space Spiral is an iconic structure at Cedar Point. While this makes me sad, I can't wait to see the Cedar Point 2013 roller coaster blueprints and layout.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates on Cedar Point's 2013 coaster.

And in other exciting Ohio news, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium are building a huge expansion for the 2014 season. Safari Africa will include giraffe feeding, camel rides, and a new zipline experience. Read more about Columbus Zoo 2014 Safari Africa at Zoo Tails blog.

New Thrills Connect Ad in AAA Magazine

Cedar Point (and Cedar Fair for that matter) are rolling out a new marketing campaign this year called Thrills Connect (which I detailed in an earlier post). I saw one of these new "emotion over promotion" ads today in AAA's magazine, Home and Away. In case you can't read it the white text says "If kids are going to wake you early, rides should be involved."

2012 Amusement Park Ticket Price Per Coaster

There are a lot of variables that go into amusement park entrance ticket pricing but from the viewpoint of a roller coaster enthusiast – someone only going to the park to ride the coasters – might look at the ticket price as cost per coaster. I decided to do a little quick research and proceeded to go to a few amusement park web sites to see what their one day ticket price at the gate is and then went to RCDB to confirm how many roller coasters they have. I charted out the results shown above (I use Excel spreadsheets a lot).

A few interesting notes from my research:

• Six Flags has an affiliate program with 5% commission for selling park tickets. Very smart. Why don’t more parks do this (or maybe they do and I've never heard about it before?)
• Six Flags has one of the harder websites to find out how to buy tickets while Kings Island was by far the easiest.
• Holiday World has the highest cost per coaster while Cedar Point has the lowest.
• I omitted the heavily themed parks such as Disney and Universal for obvious reasons (extremely high cost per coaster).
• Lagoon Park seems to be pretty good value as it's the same price as Holiday World but offers 5 more coasters. That is until you actually see the roller coasters that they do have to offer.

Of course this is just all fun and games as I stated to begin with there are many other factors which go into ticket prices like what other perks are included - water parks, parking, soft drinks, world class shows, etc. At the same time, those folks complaining about how expensive Cedar Point is need to realize that Cedar Point is very affordable compared to other parks as well as alternative forms of entertainment.

Roller Coaster Freakonomics

I wrote an article featured in the latest issue of Theme Park Geekly where I attempted to analyize some roller coaster data in a unique way. I compared the speed of wooden and steel roller coasters versus their height and found that they were pretty much the same. Then, I looked at height versus length and noticed a very interesting trend. Joel, the Coaster Critic, was able to take my data and create a pretty cool interactive chart that you can play around with. Check it out for yourself!

Cedar Fair's new marketing strategy: Thrills Connect

I'm very impressed by Cedar Fair's new marketing strategy thus far. They have hired a new company using "emotion over promotion." The new slogan is "Thrills Connect" and encourages family to visit the parks together and no movie or video games can replace the physical thrill of amusement park rides. The new president has the company headed in the right direction. Here's a few sample posters which I totally love:

Cedar Point Police Department Video

Classic video of the Cedar Point Police Department.

Picture of the Week: Windseeker

Cedar Point Ridership Chart 1996-2008

Have you ever wondered how many people have rode Millennium Force in one year? Cedar Point used to post on their website the number of riders each of their major rides had given every year for a couple of seasons. I believe they have unfortunately stopped posting this information but fortunately for us a few roller coaster enthusiasts have captured the data before it was taken down and put together an Excel spreadsheet chart for us to analyze.

 

One thing to note is the numbers for the train ride. I believe the peaks are when the park was utilizing two trains at one once instead of just one on those busiest of days. I am predicting Ocean Motion's ridership will increase this season due to its new placement at the front of the park. It's nice to see Top Thrill Dragster's performance has constantly been improving. I think the park's peak attendance was 3 million guests and has slowly been on the decline ever since.

 

What trends do you notice?

Demon Drop K'nex Recreation

It's finally finished! My brother and I created this Demon Drop K'nex model recreation to enter in Cedar Point's Build Off competition.