Monday, August 18, 2003
Cedar Point!
The night of July4th, we satyed in Buffalo, a city abt 20mi from Niagara. Our plan was to leave from there early in te morning (about 5am or so) and reach Cedar Point, which is abt 4 hrs drive from there. However we were so exhausted that nite that we never woke up to the alarm I'd kept in my wrist watch. (And yeah, did I mention that I had purchased a new wrist watch here....a pretty cheap and simple one from Armitron, which has 2 functionalities I really wanted, night time light glow and water resistant. However, it doesnt have one more functionality i would've liked....a compass needle. Believe me, driving in America, itz a very handy thing to have!) We left for Cedar Pt at abt 8am on Jul 5th.
Cedar Pt is a small town (but looked pretty rich since it had a large no of shopping mall!) located on the shores of Lake Eerie. Itz bang on the way from Niagara to Chicago - almost mid-way. There are two amusement parks there consists of - one with all the rides and another a water park. We went ot the rides on Jul 5th and water park on Jul 6th.
I went to Cedar pt expecting it to be better than the Six Flags amusement park near Chicago I had been to before. The main attraction is Cedar Pt is that it boasts of the world's tallest roller-coaster.
Called the Dragster, it looked very exciting and thrilling. The funda of this roller-coaster is that it will accelerate u from 0 to 120mph in abt 3-4 secs on a horizontal bar.. This acceleration would then take u vertically up 420 ft! And then u come down vertically down in a free-fall and along the way down, the bars are also twisted to add to the fun! The whole ride is over in abt 15 secs!
However this setup is very fickle! Lotsa times, the machine is not able to generate enuff power to take u up 420 ft. If that hapens, then, as u might have guessed, u will come down back all the way - a free fall backside! However, fortunately, those guyz have meters that wud tell them if the machine has geberated enuff power or not. If the machine has not generated enuff power, thenthey will ask ppl to get down, do a trial run (during which lot of times the coaster actually came back after almost reaching the top!). This consumed a lot of time and hence the crowd was growing bigger.
A lot of ppl got jiffy looking at the 420 ft tall roller-coaster. out of 9 of us, only 4 decided to take the ride (one of us was Ramendra, for who these were the first rides in the roller-coasters in US. He was a little apprehensic=ve in the begining, but was pretty enthusiastic later!). And no one was ready to give me company to take the first row of the roller-coaster (Typicallly, if u r seated in the first row, the excitement is much higher, since u r seeing the full path - or the lack of it ;-) - ahead of u. So, there will be a separate queue for the first row and one for the rest of the rows). We joined the q at abt 10:15pm and we actually took the ride at abt 11:30pm! Well, at the end of it, I felt the ride was not as exciting as expected. however, the initial accelartion was toooo gooood! Going from 0 to 120mph in 3-4 secs, the air hits ur face like anything, and it was literally a hair-raising experience ;-) Since the whole ride is over in abt 15secs, u will hardly realise what happned, and by then u r firmly down on terra firma!
There was another roller coaster in Cedar Pt where it takes u up abt 360 ft, and at that topmost point is almost on the sea! If u see below, u can see only the sea, and when it drops u from 360ft height, u feel as if u r falling into the sea! I enjoyed this ride the most.
Another good one in Cedar Pt is called Tower Power. Itz similar to the 200ft free-fall in Six Flags. However, this was abt 400+ ft high and there were 2 flavors of it. One where u r taken up and then pushed dpwn with force, and second where u r taken up with a high initial thrust. I enjoyed the second one better...the initial thrust is more like a rocket taking off!
Overall, I found Six Flags to be a better place than Cedar Pt....except for some attractions special at Cedar Pt.
That nite we spent at Cedar Pt. Next day, we went to the water park.....it was more of a family park....nothing too exciting abt it, except for the crowd ;-) We also did some go-karting also in the evening.
We left Cedar Pt at abt 5pm on July 6th. The journey back was almost equally thrilling.......we got stuck in a thunderstorm on the highway. It was pouring so heavily, I could not see beyond a few feet! Lotsa ppl stopped the cars on the shoulder of the road! And once we hit Illinois, we got stuck in a huge traffic jam. It took us abt 2 hrs to travel the last 30 miles! We were finally at home at abt 11:30pm.
The night of July4th, we satyed in Buffalo, a city abt 20mi from Niagara. Our plan was to leave from there early in te morning (about 5am or so) and reach Cedar Point, which is abt 4 hrs drive from there. However we were so exhausted that nite that we never woke up to the alarm I'd kept in my wrist watch. (And yeah, did I mention that I had purchased a new wrist watch here....a pretty cheap and simple one from Armitron, which has 2 functionalities I really wanted, night time light glow and water resistant. However, it doesnt have one more functionality i would've liked....a compass needle. Believe me, driving in America, itz a very handy thing to have!) We left for Cedar Pt at abt 8am on Jul 5th.
Cedar Pt is a small town (but looked pretty rich since it had a large no of shopping mall!) located on the shores of Lake Eerie. Itz bang on the way from Niagara to Chicago - almost mid-way. There are two amusement parks there consists of - one with all the rides and another a water park. We went ot the rides on Jul 5th and water park on Jul 6th.
I went to Cedar pt expecting it to be better than the Six Flags amusement park near Chicago I had been to before. The main attraction is Cedar Pt is that it boasts of the world's tallest roller-coaster.
Called the Dragster, it looked very exciting and thrilling. The funda of this roller-coaster is that it will accelerate u from 0 to 120mph in abt 3-4 secs on a horizontal bar.. This acceleration would then take u vertically up 420 ft! And then u come down vertically down in a free-fall and along the way down, the bars are also twisted to add to the fun! The whole ride is over in abt 15 secs!
However this setup is very fickle! Lotsa times, the machine is not able to generate enuff power to take u up 420 ft. If that hapens, then, as u might have guessed, u will come down back all the way - a free fall backside! However, fortunately, those guyz have meters that wud tell them if the machine has geberated enuff power or not. If the machine has not generated enuff power, thenthey will ask ppl to get down, do a trial run (during which lot of times the coaster actually came back after almost reaching the top!). This consumed a lot of time and hence the crowd was growing bigger.
A lot of ppl got jiffy looking at the 420 ft tall roller-coaster. out of 9 of us, only 4 decided to take the ride (one of us was Ramendra, for who these were the first rides in the roller-coasters in US. He was a little apprehensic=ve in the begining, but was pretty enthusiastic later!). And no one was ready to give me company to take the first row of the roller-coaster (Typicallly, if u r seated in the first row, the excitement is much higher, since u r seeing the full path - or the lack of it ;-) - ahead of u. So, there will be a separate queue for the first row and one for the rest of the rows). We joined the q at abt 10:15pm and we actually took the ride at abt 11:30pm! Well, at the end of it, I felt the ride was not as exciting as expected. however, the initial accelartion was toooo gooood! Going from 0 to 120mph in 3-4 secs, the air hits ur face like anything, and it was literally a hair-raising experience ;-) Since the whole ride is over in abt 15secs, u will hardly realise what happned, and by then u r firmly down on terra firma!
There was another roller coaster in Cedar Pt where it takes u up abt 360 ft, and at that topmost point is almost on the sea! If u see below, u can see only the sea, and when it drops u from 360ft height, u feel as if u r falling into the sea! I enjoyed this ride the most.
Another good one in Cedar Pt is called Tower Power. Itz similar to the 200ft free-fall in Six Flags. However, this was abt 400+ ft high and there were 2 flavors of it. One where u r taken up and then pushed dpwn with force, and second where u r taken up with a high initial thrust. I enjoyed the second one better...the initial thrust is more like a rocket taking off!
Overall, I found Six Flags to be a better place than Cedar Pt....except for some attractions special at Cedar Pt.
That nite we spent at Cedar Pt. Next day, we went to the water park.....it was more of a family park....nothing too exciting abt it, except for the crowd ;-) We also did some go-karting also in the evening.
We left Cedar Pt at abt 5pm on July 6th. The journey back was almost equally thrilling.......we got stuck in a thunderstorm on the highway. It was pouring so heavily, I could not see beyond a few feet! Lotsa ppl stopped the cars on the shoulder of the road! And once we hit Illinois, we got stuck in a huge traffic jam. It took us abt 2 hrs to travel the last 30 miles! We were finally at home at abt 11:30pm.
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