Date:6/5/2022
Destination: Sandusky, Ohio
Goal: Cedar Point, Farmhouse Restaurant
Distance: 163 Miles
Means of Travel: Driving
Potential Credits: 0
(Disclaimer: This blog isn't here to get millions of views and get me internet famous, it's here so I can have a place of my own to tell my story and show it to those that care. However, I do know that there are a few recurring readers, and I'm sure some of that might be for my coaster photography, which I try to showcase in each entry. And if you're here for that, please be warned it's not as good as it normally is. For a pretty awful reason that will be addressed in this trip report, I did not have my DSLR on me as I normally do, and had to resort to my phone and a little point and shoot I used before I had a real camera. The photos here aren't as good, I hate it, but you can thank the jerk who stole my camera. I promise I'm doing everything I can to find or replace the camera and hope to have it back before I get into more shenanigans. Terribly sorry the report looks like it was shot with a potato but you should still read it, because the birthday antics Drew and I got into were a ton of fun.)
Nobody wants to turn 28. I'm getting to that age where birthdays are less about celebrating maturity and growth and more about the grim reaper standing off in the distance pulling out and waving his bony willy at you to taunt you with marriage, aching joints, and getting way too excited over your bird feeder. I've always kept my head up about being thirty not next birthday but the one after, but it's been a challenge. But what better way to keep your head up than by celebrating making it another year still somewhat functioning and having not killed yourself than with a run to your favorite place in the world? Sooner or later, every season I find myself wanting to go back in late spring/early summer when the park opens, so now's as good a time as any.
And to make things more interesting, Cedar Point ripped out their antique cars, made the fanboys cry, and put in a Hooters new restaurant themed to a farmhouse repurposing the bridge as a walkway. Drew had been there a few times this season and wanted to take me, so I invited him to tag along. Happy Birthday to me, let's go ride some coasters and eat delicious food, right?
Right?
Drew and I woke up relatively early for a weekend, and his "on my way" call woke me up, so I got ready. Park clothes? Check. Phone? Check. Keys? Check. Wallet? Check. Car charger? Check. Mountain Dew? Check. Camera?
Camera?
...Camera?
Where was my camera? I remembered I put it in the car for a Wednesday Kings Island trip that was rained out. I tore my place apart. Not in the bedroom, not in my coaster room, not in my car, nowhere. And then when I realized a bag was missing from my car too, I realized what happened: it had been stolen somehow. I texted my folks to make sure I didn't leave it at their place while I was dogsitting last week, in a spurt of quick thinking got my point and shoot, and got outside just in time for Drew to roll up. We got on the road to deal with Ohio's iconic state troopers all the way up to Sandusky and I showed Drew the Facebook jail video, and before you knew it, we were there!
We pulled in...and literally half the park was down. GateKeeper went, Millennium was stuck on the lift, no Dragster obviously, we were on the island by the time Rougarou sent an empty, and worst of all, no Steel Vengeance. But we waited and it opened back up basically as soon as we got there, so we got in line.
Advantage of bringing the little dinosaur point and shoot is that it can go in Vengeance's lockers, and I can bring it into the queue where my DSLR can't go. Needless to say, this isn't exactly National Geographic in terms of quality, but it's better than not having a camera at all.
And the ride was great as always! Honestly one of the weaker rides I've gotten on it, but it was still nice and edgy. Plenty of airtime, plenty of violent tossing, and while I agree with Ben that the repetitive ride experience keeps it from being quite as good as Velocicoaster (and specifically to my rankings, Railblazer), but it's still got that bronze medal as my #3 and there's no denying it's an unbelievable coaster. Best in the Midwest easily and I'll always love coming back here for it every year.
Frontiertown, you are beautiful!
Drew had been here a few times already this season and fell in love with Farmhouse, and always told me he was dragging me there the second he got the chance, so I did the walk of shame across the bridge to go be fat. And I loved that they not only kept this but worked it into the new area. The bridge always looked nice and I wished I could stroll across it when walking around Frontiertown, really glad it was incorporated into the new addition as well as it was. I felt like I was arriving at Grandpa's farm and expected hazy sunshine, tree cover, and a tire swing on the other side.
Farmhouse is so cute! Building is a little tall with the gabled ceilings, but it looks so nice and I loved all the different seating options both outside and on the porch. I think this might actually be big enough to accommodate a crowd of diners on a crowded day, which Cedar Point needs with how bad things get in the fall.
When I saw pictures on social media, I instantly hated the decor. I'm in a People Against Modern Farmhouse group on Facebook that home design shames those Karens that show off their depressing nurseries decorated with burlap and mason jars and corrugated tin and a baby crib that looks suspiciously like a wheat bin for little Braxton. But it grew on me actually being here. I especially loved the windmill turbine-themed ceiling fans. It's cute and cozy while still feeling organic and rustic, something millennial moms don't seem to get when they put this in their home and get roasted on the internet.
The staff here is crushing it for Cedar Fair food. Usually I find this is where you're likely to the people that don't seem as thrilled to be there (and it's understandable, nobody likes work and I've heard food service sucks as a whole), but the Farmhouse crew was crushing it. They have these cool uniforms, they were super friendly with me discussing what I should try, and they were efficiently processing park guests through the line like a cattle drive.
(On that note, what kind of meat's in that chili again?)
We're 'bout to find out! I was on the fence about sausage or steak, but I wanted to try the chili since it looked good and I'm trying to acquire a taste for beans. Drew and the server dude I asked both recommended the steak, so that's what I picked. And I was not disappointed! I was a bit iffy on trying steak from a theme park since I usually order mine so rare it can still moo, but it looked to have a good cook on it, and it does! Simple dish, just smoke the steak and season with salt and pepper, but the smoke adds so much to the flavor. A few bites I had were a bit tough, but nowhere near inedible shoe leather. And the chili was amazing, incorporating both leftover steak and sausage into the spicy stew with tomatoes, pepper, and beans, topped with your choice of cheese, sour cream, and raw onion. This, my friends, is the best thing to eat at Cedar Point hands down and I'm so glad Drew recommended it.
Next up, we circled through the Gemini Midway for a ride on Trojan Magnum XXXL-200. We got in line and it broke, as was the theme for that day. We waited around for maybe ten minutes before cutting our loss and leaving. And in other news, when Trojan Magnum XXXL-200 breaks, Kiddie Kingdom always gets really busy for some reason...
We got our stuff out of the locker when I noticed that this thing was in it. I had no idea what it was, so naturally, I picked it up with my bare hands and examined it. It looked like a pen with NJOY printed on it, when I googled NJOY it said it was a vape thing. I attempted to turn it in to a path sweep, who said because it was a vape I should give it to security, so I did that and found an officer in the Dragster gift shop.
Passed Dragster, never knowing when it'll be the last picture you take of it...
Heading back around, we encountered the construction wall up around what used to be Wicked Twister, and it's massive. Like, not just a fence made of crudely nailed together planks of thin wood like Kings Island uses. This is a real, legit wall, not sure if they just want to keep it from looking ugly or some other engineering reason or if there's something big going on inside that they're trying to deter us from seeing. And for what it's worth, it also extends behind GateKeeper's plaza, blocking the view of the beach behind the sign.
Speaking of GateKeeper, that was our next ride. This coaster has kind of been an on/off favorite for me in its near decade lifespan (damn, I'm getting old), loved it when the renderings leaked, enjoyed it as a new enthusiast, and while I might now have triple digit credits and it's not enough to place near my top ten anymore, I love it on days it's not rattling your brains out on those cantilevers.
We had no issues getting on, short wait, Drew tried to get them to wish me a happy birthday but told them his name was mine (referencing the Verbolten station chanting my name to celebrate his 200th credit back in April)...and the ride ops still butchered the deliberately wrong name. My name was not Drew, it was not Jarrett, my name was Nick for some reason. And after we got off, the ride op stopped and asked me, "that was right, your name was Ryan, right?" We all three laughed it off and got about our day but that was funny as hell!
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And she delivered! Having just been on Thunderbird last week, that's clearly got the edge, but this is also a lot of fun. They're very different, this one plays the height and inversion game better where Thunderbird is all about speed, force, and visuals. But flying on a wing over the lakeshore like that is always incredible as long as it's not bouncing you til your balls pop out your nostrils. Love this coaster!
We went to go find my brick next, and we didn't, but we found my good friend Ben's that his mother got him, commemorating his love both riding and operating coasters. Gatekeeper, Blue Streak, and Raptor are among the rides he operated when he lived here in the Buckeye State. And speaking of his time working Blue Streak...
Blue Streak had been down since we got there, but had just gone back up, so we decided to go do that. Just an innocent ride on the little blue coaster that could at the front of the park, right?
I love Blue Streak not only because it's a solid ride, but because it almost never has a wait. It sort of ensures that the Roller Coaster Capital of the World never has too bad a wait for a good roller coaster. Would be nice to see them redo the queue though, it's a bit blah and could be landscaped better. Shade structures, placards with historical information, something other than a concrete cattlepen and chain link fence, please.
Getting on the ride, the ride op laid into someone for vaping in the train (maybe he left his Tooty Fruity cartridge at Magnum, idk) and called him out over the mic. So that was an interesting start to the ride...
Blue Streak is Bae Streak, as usual. Great coaster that never fails to deliver a really fun ride, I was getting air over all of those hills, and it's the textbook definition of what a classic preserved coaster should be. Eats the crowd, everyone who can ride it could reasonably enjoy it, not too rough, and looks really nice off the ride. Love me some Blue Streak!
We went back to go look for my (newer) brick, with no guidance other than the website saying that the newer bricks were inside the circle. This led to Drew and I scanning bricks for a good twenty minutes, when I noticed some of them were newer than others and appeared shoehorned in. When I started looking closer at the newer, redder, shoehorned bricks, I found mine! When I'm asked what Cedar Point is, I always tell them, "it's this amusement park on a penninsula in Lake Erie full of awesome roller coasters, it's beautiful, it's my favorite place in the world." Couldn't think of a better way to tell the future what I think of America's Rockin' Roller Coast.
We went for a spin on Millennium next, or at least tried to. It had been by far the worst offender for breaking down constantly all day, usually stuck on the lift. But they were cycling so we waited outside, they let us in...and there's only the yellow train on the track, with blue and red transferred off. Okay, one train, we can deal I suppose. Well, they couldn't even load the one train because the simple act of moving it from unload to load broke it again. Like, they opened the ride and couldn't even load a train before it had issues again. I talked to a ride op, he saw my birthday button, and told me, "birthday advice, go ride something else."
We went to do Forbidden Frontier next, saw it wasn't ready yet (I thought it was good to go Memorial Day but shows what I know), so went around to do Snake River Expedition when we saw that Snake River Falls had boats being lifted on and off the flume, while Vengeance and Maverick were both down. So we continued around to Expedition, wait is an hour, but then Vengeance was cycling trains, so we decided to try for that. And the wait was two hours by the time we got there, but Maverick only had half its cattlepen full, so we went for that.
Maverick has a new rule this season that the bar of the restraint has to touch your thighs, and this might be the one time my thicc thighs came in handy fitting into a coaster. Wait was a little annoying, but we got the back so I could live with it. And man, she was kicking ass! This recently passed Millie for my second favorite in the park last year, and my appreciation for this coaster has skyrocketed lately. Tons of airtime, kept pace the whole ride, strong second half, my only complaint was that Drew and I's Cobra Kai-themed Funpix somehow didn't make it onto my account.
Frontiertown has the two best rides in the park, the best restaurant in the park, and the best theming in the park. This is where Cedar Point happens, folks. There's a reason I park in the Soak City lot and go straight here every time I come.
Speaking of the best restaurant, we used our second dining plan charges at Farmhouse before taking off, and I wanted to try the sausage, but the chili was already spicy and the chicken tenders looked good so I tried those and they were great! The breading is delicious on them and they were nice and juicy.
And no, it did not come from the chicken restaurant that hates gay people.
Sitting there on that porch with the sun shining through the barbecue smoke from the festival, I got up and took this picture because it just felt...right. Nice Sunday evening, everybody relaxing from the fun weekend they had ready to go back to work, sitting in swings and rocking chairs and the like with happy bluegrass music playing. It was nice, it was pleasant, and not a single roller coaster needed to be involved. This is why Cedar Point is so special, especially in recent years. The park is beautiful, there's no denying it, but when balancing coaster and non-coaster experiences in a park, this one fully delivers on both. And while Fiesta Texas might be my favorite park because of the beautiful location and amazing ride lineup that resides there, Cedar Point is my favorite place in the world because the way I like it sort of goes beyond just an amusement park. Simply being there makes me happy and I'm not sure why.
Drew and I packed up and headed home, dealing with a boring drive (there's literally nothing between here and Dayton except for the porno store near Bowling Green and the fetus barn in Botkins) but despite starting my day with the shaking discovery that my camera was stolen, I made the best of it and managed to have a great birthday. Thanks to Drew for tagging along and our friend Ben and my partner Beth who talked to us on the phone on the drive home, I had a wonderful birthday made possible by a wonderful place and amazing people.
Maybe I can deal with being thirty in two years if I'm gonna get days like this out of it.
