Special Ingredients: Get to the Point

Last summer, I took a day out of my busy schedule (sitting around an air conditioned office working on Power Point slides) and traveled to Sandusky, Ohio with my fiancée, Christy, to visit Cedar Point, the world-famous amusement park that bills itself as “the number-one rated amusement park on the planet.” We had been planning on going for over a year prior, but due to extemporizing circumstances (laziness), we never got around to going. So I decided that we were going and we were going to have FUN DAMMIT, EVEN IF IT KILLED US.

I was excited about the trip, because I hadn’t been to Cedar Point in over ten years. I used to go to Cedar Point every now and then when I was a kid, and it never failed to scare the crap out of me. That’s because Cedar Point’s main attraction is a series of increasingly-fatal roller coasters that are designed to make you think very strongly about updating your will. Their crowing achievement, the Millennium Force, features a 310 foot drop and speeds of 93 mph, a combination I’m sure is capable of, if given the proper conditions, transporting riders to another dimension.

I was terrified of the roller coasters, though I worked my way up to some of smaller ones, but only because they didn’t make me feel like I was going to get ejected from the seat. I wasn’t alone in this. Christy was also frightened of these rides, so we decided, as a loving couple who is able to stand up to anything together, to bravely face our fears and get into the roller coast car, at which point I would spring from my seat at the last second and watch as the ride whisked Christy away for a whimsical lesson in dread. At least that was my plan.

No, I’m kidding. We were going to face this childhood fear together. So we embarked on the hour and a half journey to Sandusky, stopping in the beautiful lakeside part of town to have lunch at a restaurant called, appropriately enough, the Lunchbox. I was in the mood to experience a local delicacy, and I have to say that the Lunchbox proved an astonishingly mediocre meal. I was pretty peeved when I found out that there was a Friendly’s on another (better) route to Cedar Point. In fact, I missed a handful of interesting places to stop, a turn of events that I’m sure Christy is thanking the heavens for to this day.

I did check out a few seedy thrift stores in the area, though, so her pleas were not totally answered.

We continued on our journey, twisting and turning through neighborhoods, following the scattered road signs that pointed us in the right direction. We eventually ended up on the road that lead to the edge of the peninsula that was Cedar Point, a shining pinnacle for our travel-weary eyes. A miracle of humanity’s engineering. An oasis in our harrowing trek. The place where we had to pay nine dollars to park and walk the rest of the way to the entrance, which was only one-fourth of the total trip.

Weeks later, we found ourselves at the entrance, where I readied a printed-out coupon that gave a discount to people with a college ID. That year, Cedar Point was just under $40 a person to enter, a price that may seem steep to the casual observer, who would blindly calculate that the $40 allows guests to, if I can get ahead of myself a little, stand around in the hot sun all day. But this is FUN, dammit, and some naysayer with so-called “common sense” isn’t going to ruin our day of FUN.

Fortunately, we only had to pay $30 for the standing around privilege, though I was apprehensive about the whole coupon thing. The coupon was available on Cedar Point’s website, but was apparently hidden, and I only knew about it because a co-worker told me and provided the link, which lead to a very plain, uninviting page. What was strange about the coupon was it allowed a person to use a single college ID to admit two people for $60, but you had to have two coupons on hand. So basically, you had to print the coupon twice, which any idiot could have done. Or not, which is probably where they get you. I’m surprised Kinko’s didn’t set up shop close by and charge $8 to make a copy of the coupon in question.

So I was worried that we would hit some technicality, like the ticket seller didn’t feel like dealing with the paperwork, and our discount would be rejected. Fortunately, things went smoothly, and before long, we were in the park, ready to have FUN for the entire day. My first choice was to go on the Disaster Transport, a mild indoor roller coaster with a campy eighties sci-fi theme (designed in 1990, natch), mostly done up in black light reflective print. Here’s a picture of one of the displays that decorated the waiting area, just to give you an idea what it looks like. If you think it looks cool, imagine how cool it was after you had to stare at it for half an hour.

The biggest hurdles on our track of FUN were the lines for the rides, which, on conservative estimate, would have reached about half the length of the eastern coast, assuming you were waiting for an unpopular ride. We waited for over half an hour just to get on the Disaster Transport, a ride that hasn’t been popular since the first Bush era. But we persevered, and after a half hour of enduring the imprudent banter of fellow ride-waiters and a foot speed of 1/8 of a mile per hour, we arrived at our roller coaster car, eager to reap our rewards. We jumped into the car, and in the moment of anticipation, I sneezed. Then the ride was over.

Well, not exactly. We barreled down through the dark tunnel that made up the ride, and by the twenty-nine second mark, I was really getting into it. Unfortunately, the ride was over in thirty-seconds. Christy and I stumbled out of the car and back into the mocking sunlight, thinking uniformly in a way that only true couples can: “That was IT?! What a gip!”

And that’s where the true amusement park experience hits you like the greasy amusement park concessions. You willingly spend astonishingly disproportionate amounts of time preparing yourself for the ultimate thrill ride, only to find yourself, seconds later, confused and a little unsatisfied. The sex analogy is so obvious it’s barely worth pointing out.

We ended up picking rides that didn’t have lines that were too long. The trick is to ride the smaller, third rate rides that no one cares about during the day, then wait to ride the real rides in the evening, when there are fewer guests competing for the finite amounts of FUN.

Actually, I like the smaller rides a lot, which was good, because that’s all I used to ride when I was a kid, and I would hate to think my mother spent all of her time and money to take her son to what amounted to the Torture Device Expo. But these manageable rides were only a small comfort, because I knew that I would have to stand in line of a roller coaster, and it would be then that I would test my steel and find out if I was truly a manly man. So I opted to go to a food stand.

Food stands are pretty abundant around the park, which should make it pretty obvious that the entire thing is a scam. You’ll innocently walk up to one of them, pay out $18.67 for a small box of fries and a medium drink, then, with the realization that time’s-a-wastin’, hop on a ride that’s designed to temporarily invert your internal organs into an improper position, which will cause you to merrily harf up your $18.67 worth of concessions. After a few seconds of feeling like you’re going to die, the spirit of FUN overtakes you and you repeat the process until you have to resort to selling your children.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen, which was good, because then I would have to pawn off Christy, and then I wouldn’t have anyone to walk on the beach with. Cedar Point has a beautiful beach where patrons can swim in Lake Erie, which would only result in two different types of cancers. We left our shoes at the front entrance, vaguely concerned they would be stolen by punk kids, who are notorious for making off with unattended used footwear, and skipped romantically through the sand. This is true, in the sense that “skipped romantically through the sand” means “hopped awkwardly while avoiding sharp debris because the sand had reached the same temperature as the Earth’s core.”

We eventually reached the water and cooled our feet off until the feeling came back, then it was off for a Hollywood-style romantic stroll on the shoreline, which lead us to a spot with group of other beach goers. For some reason, these folks, who didn’t really seem to know each other, decided to cluster together in one tiny spot on the beach when the rest of it was just as good as the patch they were cluttering up. Who knows, maybe they were all part of a several different religions that believed that particular part of the beach was holy and refused to budge, much like Israel, except with more girls in bikinis. Just ask me which of the two examples I prefer dwelling on.

After returning to the entrance and cleaning an estimated 54 pounds of sand off our feet, Christy decided it was time to bite the bullet and ride a roller coaster. I opted to ride one of the smaller roller coasters that had just about enough thrills for me to handle, but since the one I wanted was designed for the single-digit age demographic, we had to settle for the Mine Ride, a mild roller coaster that I always enjoyed riding. For some reason, though, the line was packed, so I can only assume that other guests had decided on the same in-park therapy and beat us to the punch.

So Christy, after becoming impatient with my indecision and stall tactics, decided to ride the Gemini. The Gemini is probably the least threatening of the terminal-grade roller coasters, but definitely larger than the ones I’ve wrangled. I tried to talk her out of it by using a normally-effective debate technique that, to the untrained ear, sounds like whimpering, but she used a counter-point technique of dragging me to the ride. And so I stared up at the monstrosity, its giant visage mocking me for my fear.

And you better believe that it had a long while to mock me, because of course the line for this ride was pretty long. It was at this point that I realized I was forming a bond with my fellow line-waiters, getting to know them as we lurched forward one foot every half-hour. It was a pretty diverse crowd, almost like a high school hallway, but without the wedgies, featuring jocks, nerds, Goths, girls with their gazoombas on display, and a blind person who could have been either a man or woman (like the school librarian). It was saddening to think that once they boarded the roller coaster, they would probably die. At least that was the fate I resolved myself to.

When it was our turn to get into the roller coaster car, I contemplated running off sobbing, by ego damaged, but my organs intact. Unfortunately, I decided that since I was the man, I had to stick this one out. As the restraints came down like the helmet of an electric chair, I knew there was no turning back. The car shot off and the first hill came almost immediately, and my muscles tensed as gravity prepared to drop us back to the ground with a vengeance.

There’s nothing quite like the building dread of the first roller coaster drop. The constant clicking of the car being dragged up the hill gives the impression of a time bomb, and unless you’re sitting pretty close to the front car, you can’t see exactly when the drop is going to happen, not that you really want to. When the car finally reaches the top, it lurches over the threshold, time seems to freeze for a moment, and it’s at that point that you know that you can’t go back.

Then there’s the drop, a violent feeling that the car is being thrown downward, as are you, but not nearly as fast, and your stomach somehow manages to go slower than you. You feel like the car is going to leave you behind, or worse, send you flying straight into the air, defying the laws of physics. Physics, of course, is the last thing you’re thinking about.

And then it’s over. The car reaches the bottom and you’re slammed into your seat, feeling like you were caught from a long fall by an angel who wasn’t particularly good at his job. The car soars on, usually through some twists and turns, but all you’re marveling at the fact that you somehow survived. If there are any more drops, they somehow don’t invite as much terror as the first, even if the subsequent drops are taller. Eventually, the ride lurches to a stop, and you’re left staggering off, praying to your deity of choice for granting the mercy to allow you to live, or wanting to do it again.

Honestly, I enjoyed the roller coasters we rode. Interestingly, some that I would never have stepped foot on when I was younger were actually less frightening than the ones I used to ride. There was more than one occasion when Christy and I would get off a roller coaster, look at each other, and say “That’s IT?!”

For the record, I did not scream. I never scream when I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, whatever I’m going is technically safe, like watching a horror movie, or doing my taxes (okay, I’m lying about the last one). Christy was very disappointed in this, since she had her heart set on watching this wonder, because I never scream in front of her except in that special way that only she can make me scream: by making me watch Felicity.

Meanwhile, she screamed at every thrilling turn, which is usual when she’s with me. Yaa.

There are more interesting rides than just roller coasters at the park, more than I could point out without either droning on or getting bored. Perhaps the one that screams family FUN the most is the train ride, which takes riders on an interesting tour involving skeleton hillbillies (I’m not making that up), serves as a roundabout way of getting from one park of the park to the next, and allows families to have a relaxing time sitting together and basking in the flow of family bonding. Plus, the lines move pretty fast on this one.

Besides riding the rides, we spent the remainder of the day checking out the sights and shops. Not that I had any interest in dropping any money in the shops, mind you. You know those useless trinkets, like a shot glass featuring a drawing of a semi-naked woman with a lighter attached that beeps and lights up when you set it down, that gas stations try to pawn off at the counter to people who, after getting said trinket home, wonder what they hell they were thinking when they bought it? Replace the picture of the woman with a Cedar Point-themed image and quadruple the price, and you’ve got a standard Cedar Point souvenir.

I do have fond memories of buying a light-up katana one year, which I still have. It was so fragile, though, I never dared use it during one of my big battles with the Shredder, even if I was aided by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Actually, I was tempted to pick up a hat. One of the vendors was selling hats in the shape of pizzas, hamburgers, and hotdogs, and at ten dollars, I was almost tempted to buy one to rekindle childhood memories of spending my college fund on Cedar Point wares. I decided against it, because, let’s face it, I can just pick up another Taiko Drum Master hat if I want some stylin’ headwear.

We also stopped at the arcade, which, is probably the biggest arcade I’ve ever been in, and has the biggest crane game I’ve ever seen, one that is probably capable of grabbing and crushing a human head. Just about every type of game from every era is represented here, and while the temptation to spend all our gas money on rekindling the hardcore gaming nerd in me was strong, Christy’s manifested desire not to push the car all the way back to Oregon was stronger. Women can be so irrational sometimes.

Although I was planning on spending some money on Cedar Point’s Fascination game. What this game entails is rolling rubber balls down a lane and into numbered holes, trying to get the highest score before anyone else in the entire room. It’s that element of competition that really made the game exciting. That, and the fact that winning nets tickets that can be exchanged for cheesy prizes (or “fascinating” prizes if you’re willing to spend the money). Yeah, you’re going to pay 138 times more than what any of the prizes would cost you if you just went out and bought them, but that’s not the point. The point is you WIN them. I have two Ren and Stimpy keychains that attest to the quality of the prizes.

Unfortunately, Fascination fell victim to the terrible beast of progress, by which I mean restaurant chain Johnny Rocket’s opened a restaurant where Fascination used to be, tucked in the midst of the other game booths. Considering the kind of high-caliber eatery Johnny Rocket’s is, I found this change to be advantageous when, near the park closing time, I marched through the doors and used their bathroom, which was the only use I had for that place.

Fortunately, there were other games on hand designed to take your money. Unlike county fair games, where game operators stop short of hitting you over the head with a blunt object and dragging you to their booths, Cedar Point game operators are fairly polite about the affair, because the last thing the company wants is people running out of the park, escaping weapon-wielding game operators, never to return.

In fact, these games are fairly straight-forward and don’t have the usual trade-up-57-times-for-the-top-prize mechanics. Instead, the games fall into four distinct categories:

1) The game doesn’t cost a lot to play, but is nearly impossible to win.

2) The game doesn’t cost a lot to play, but has prizes that are so junky nobody really cares if they win or not.

3) The game costs a lot to play, but might be possible to win, though maybe not, and they get to keep your money.

4) Players have the option of spending less money to play, but they get lesser prizes, making them think maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to toss in a couple extra bucks, just to be safe. Then they lose.

A perfect example is a game where the object is to navigate a metal ring down a swirling wire without touching the ring and wire together. I’ve never attempted it, but it seems to be about as possible as riding the Millennium Force without requiring a change of shorts. The prize for winning this game is a very large stuffed animal or (I’m not making this up) an electric guitar with a case. A sign also informs potential shysters that only one prize will be awarded per season. Frankly, if I had the skills to complete this game, I would apply them in the brain surgery field and use the resulting money to buy 1,962 guitars, though I think I would have an above-average number of patients who find, after the surgery, they believe Dancing with the Stars to be the greatest art in the universe.

I decided against spending money on games or souvenirs, which is sad, considering one of my reasons for going to Cedar Point was to relive my childhood. With the thrill of spending money on overpriced baubles and impossible carnival games suffocated by a simulated sense of adulthood (but more likely frugalness), I was left with one recourse: visit the Bernstein Bears and their town.

Like a lot of kids growing up since the seventies and eighties, I loved the Bernstein Bears. While the world of the Bernstein Bears was a little too saccharine sweet (though some light research seems to indicate that this has changed in the last few years), it was still a fun and friendly place to travel to. I can’t explain the appeal, but I owned a few of the books, and to this day look at the series without critically rolling my eyes.

Way back, the Bernstein Bears were so big, Cedar Point actually had an indoor “Bernstein Bear Land,” featuring a couple of the landmarks from the books. I used to go into that place with enthusiasm, whether I was traversing the murky swamp or hanging out around the Bernstein Bears’ tree house. While it wasn’t much more than a giant playroom, the designers really put some effort into it, with sturdy, well-crafted structures, paths that inclined and sloped, and a TV that played some of the Bernstein Bear cartoons.

However, the popularity of the Bernstein Bears waned to a point that Cedar Point decided to close down the attraction and hand it over the Peanuts gang. For whatever reason, Charles Shultz allowed his Peanuts franchise to be whored out to MetLife and Cedar Point, which bore a connection to those two companies that is only know to the world’s most abstract thinkers. Snoopy and the Peanuts gang now serve as a mascot of sorts for Cedar Point, complete with a Peanuts store, which is now where the Bernstein Bears area used to be.

To be honest, I never understood the appeal of the Peanuts comics. I’ve seen strips from all the way back in the fifties, and I can’t think of a single one that I found to be exceptionally funny. Most of them were not only not funny, but sort of depressing, like the running gag where Charlie Brown never gets to kick the football because Lucy keeps taking it away from him. It was occurrences like that which radiated the message “Don’t bother trying, kids! Optimism is for losers, especially bald losers!”

The Peanuts also seemed to take place in some kind of obtuse alternate reality that Charles Shultz thought was amusing back when he started the strip and never really changed much up to his death. Actually, I think he reminds me a lot of Jack Chick. This slight alteration from normality that wasn’t far enough away to be surreal gave the Peanuts world a gloomy overtone of hopelessness. Yet it seems that few others share this view, and are all too willing to follow this series, even years after the creator died and no new material has been written. Even newspapers, a normally conservative business when it comes to comic strips, happily pay for old Peanuts comics that they probably already ran years ago.

I sauntered around the Peanuts store, half-heartedly noting where the old Bernstein Bear attractions used to be. Surprisingly, not a whole lot had really changed. Most of the landmarks were still there, and only a few of them had a coat of paint slapped on them to transform them into Peanuts settings, like having the dark forest leading to the Great Pumpkin patch. It struck me as a pitiful effort to cover up the old Bernstein Bear franchise, but I’m grateful they left the remnants mostly intact so future generations can enjoy a version of what I did. At least until the next big franchise comes along.

So after a day of facing childhood fears and the fall of childhood places, we decided to grab a bite to eat. Since I knew eating at the usual amusement park fare was going to cost an arm and both legs, I decided that if I was going to financially lose limbs, I might as well give an extra digit or two and eat at one of the park’s sit-down restaurants. My wallet may have been exploited, but at least we got to sit in a cool building for a while.

We decided on a place called Macaroni’s, a family restaurants that oozed with FUN. The bright colors and simple layout made the place attractive, and the fact that they had food that appealed to average smucks like me was also a plus. We had a simple meal of chicken strips and pizza sticks, even though I was tempted by the pricey make-your-own-burger bar.

I originally thought this translated to “all-you-can-eat-burgers,” which I would have definitely gone for, since I was on vacation, and it’s universal knowledge that calories consumed on vacation and holidays don’t count. However, it turned out that the server would deliver a single burger unit, and it was the customer’s job to fill it up themselves. By the looks of the bar, this would appeal to the type of person who enjoys topping their burgers with cottage cheese and chocolate sauce.

Though we probably should have gone out to appease the sea gulls. Cedar Point is home to an abundant supply of sea gulls, many of which aren't afraid of people, and will come up to you if you offer them the food that isn’t lost due to the rides. I imagine if you don't feed them, they'll get irritable, form a little gang, and snatch up small children as punishment. I snapped a shot of one from our snack earlier in the day, and if looking into a sea gull's cold, malevolent eyes doesn't make your blood chill, I can't imagine anything could.

The rest of the evening was spent riding more rides (go figure). In fact, once the sun started to go down, we had more rides-per-minute than at any other point in the day, since the park clears out rather early. Most of the time, we were able to get right on the rides without waiting. If Cedar Point wanted to make some serious cash, they would charge $20 for people to come to the park in the last two hours, and they would probably ride only a couple fewer rides than those who were there all day.

One of Cedar Point’s flaws is they shut the gates at ten at night, which doesn’t give patrons that long to see the place lit up at night, an effect that trumps most Disney films in the childhood magic category. It’s also interesting riding the roller coasters when you can’t see anything in front of you, especially if you’ve never been on that particular ride before. It really gives you a wondrous sensation, a sensation you can’t get anywhere else, a thrill that you could be hit in the face by a passing bird and never know what hit you.

If Cedar Point wanted to really make the money, they could keep the park opened twenty-four hours at day. What they would lose in admission from the few hardcore morons who would try to stay up a week straight having FUN, they would make up for in concession sales, pay hygiene facilities, and a service where a janitor comes around in a golf cart and scoops up the comatose bodies of ill-rested thrill seekers and automatically bills their credit card.

After taking on a few lighter roller coaster, Christy and I decided it was time to bid Cedar Point farewell. We blindly groped around in the parking lot, searching for my car and avoiding incoming seagull deposits. We spent the car ride home listening to music and sleeping. Well, Christy was. I don’t think I was, but that would explain the extra dings.

I really enjoyed my trip to Cedar Point, and can’t wait to visit again. If you’re still not convinced, check out this aerial shot of the park that I took to archive the beauty of the park from an objective source. Of course, if Cedar Point officials want to pay me for the shot, I’ll be willing to look over the offers. Regardless, I highly recommend planning a trip up there for you and your family to make some great memories together. Or if you don’t like your family, you can load them up on the Millennium Force and go look for a new one.

I’m kidding. Get over there now.