The very top photo is of A in our hotel room-she was calling the front desk to find out where we could have breakfast at. The photo under that is of the Dragster-which was thankfully closed during our stay. B and I had agreed to ride EVERYTHING and so we would have been honor bound to ride this as well. This ride was supposed to only take 17 seconds. It reminded me of the little match box cars racing tracks-which I am sure it was supposed to be a lifesize version of that for every little kid that wanted to really ride on the race tracks they built for their cars. I would have ridden it and will ride it next year if it is open-but I can honestly say I dread it. The third photo down is the Power Tower-which was the very first ride we rode when we arrived at Cedar Point on friday night. You can choose to ride up or down-we chose up. The ride pulls you up quickly to 240 feet and drops you slowly OR pulls you up to 240 feet slowly and drops you quickly. We all hated it and never discussed riding it again and going down. The fourth photo down, is I think, the Raptor. The Raptor was my least favorite ride because there was no car to ride in. We were strapped into a bike seat kind of thing and our feet hung down. I was ok until they started pulling us up the incline to drop us down the first hill. I looked down and between my feet I could see people walking around the park beneath us and I swear I thought I was going to have a panic attack. My chest got tight, my breath grew short and I felt dizzy. Fear-which is not something I feel often-truly siezed me. I even used my Buddhist meditation techniques to calm down. I looked at the car infront of me, focused only on that and counted my breaths. By the time the ride really got going I was fine-but I do not have any desire to EVER ride that again. I have since found out it is supposed to the safest ride at the park-whatever, I hate the feeling of flying without being in a closed vehicle of some kind. Good thing witches do not really ride broomsticks or who knows what a mess I would be in. The final photo down, this was our view of Cedar Point from our hotel room window. We stayed in the park at Hotel Breakers. The ride shown is the Magnum XL200 and it was my favorite of the rollercoasters. I had never stayed in the park before. I had been to Cedar Point many times-once a year through most of my middle and high school years-yet only as a day trip. Take a charter bus for the day, arrive around 10 am spend the day and leave around 10 pm. I never realized how much more there was than rollercoasters.

I am really glad that we were able to go. It was a rough trip though. Everything was all set in place and I woke up Thursday sick as a dog and got sicker as the day progressed. I should have put myself, A and my plans ahead of work and taken the day off sick-but I did not. I knew S (store manager) was out of town and did not want to leave D (assistant store manager) hanging. D was actually off and set to work the weekend-it was just J (senior sales rep-supervisor/manager) and I( senior customer service rep-supervisor/manager) both as closing managers and no opening manager. D had to come in on her day off and open the store. The greeter never showed up, we were short staffed and very busy-so I stayed. I was so miserable, my nose and eyes were running and I was sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. It was so bad even customers were telling me I should go home. Thankfully no one was too rude or horrible because I just was not in the mood. P(my dad) brought B (my sister) out to my house and I called A into the school absence/attendance line for friday because I was too tired to get up with her in the morning-she was supposed to go to school friday until 1PM-and wanted to try and sleep as much as possible. I stopped at Meijers thursday night and bought every cold/allergy medicine I could think of and went to bed early. We got a late start friday because I was feeling so shitty. Then we had stop a couple of times for gas and snacks-but we were on the road just before 1PM. The trip went pretty smoothly until we actually got to the Cedar Point exit. I had printed directions off of mapblast, mapquest and the Cedar Point website-this is the season for construction after all and I wanted to be prepared. However, the freeway had a sign saying exit here for Cedar Point-it turned out to be the scenic route-we drove through town and then the country. I even thought I was lost at one point, but we were not. Eventually we ended up at the park. We checked into the hotel and were ready and at the gates at 5:30. Resort guests can enter the park a 1/2 hour early on friday. We walked around-trying to pick a ride that was open-not all rides are open friday night. Finally we realized thateven though we were able to pre-enter the park, no rides were open until 6pm. We decided to ride the Power Tower, then we rode the Iron Dragon. I was so sick I am not sure what all we rode that night-but I did not really enjoy any of them. I know we rode the Raptor, the Magnum, the BlueStreak and maybe a few other rides. We walked back to our hotel room to get our jackets and then we went to a magic show with Tim Hill-it was very funny and we went to a haunted house-Pharoah's Keep-it was lame. Then we finished the night off by going to CarnEvil-at which point A freaked out anf started screaming-very embarassing-and we had to get an escort out of the event. That kind of killed the mood and we headed back to the hotel. Saturday I was feeling better and because the park had been so empty friday assumed-quite incorrectly-that it would also be empty or semi-empty saturday-HA! So we had a late breakfast and did not worry about being at the park early-as resort guests we could enter 1 hour early saturday and sunday. We ate way too much and decided to walk around for awhile before taking any rides. We wandered over in the old section-Frontierstown. It was home to the wooden rollercoasters-we rode all of them. The Meanstreak, The Gemini, The Cold Mine-whatever the name was. I really liked the wooden rollercoasters-they did not go as fast as the newer ones and the drops were not as sudden or scary, but the rides lasted longer and were fun without being scary. A rode either the Gemini or the Mean streak-I can not remember which-but refused to ride the Cold Mine-which was lame and definetely a kiddie rollercoaster. It was funny too because they psyched us out. They pulled us slowly up-a long way up- which made me think we were going to be dropped fast and far-I was all ready to scream-B and I-when we started fall and were immediately level again. We had to laugh. Then A decides she wants to go on this log ride-which involved water and I felt it was too cold out to get wet, B agreed so A decided to go alone. Finally after like 45 minutes we see her in her boat with this horrified and traumatized look on her face. It turns out that this ride had a huge drop-like a roller coaster-and that A had begged to get off the ride and been told repeatedly that it was too late to stop it-poor baby! The park was horribly crowded the later in the day it got. I assumed that it would be less crowded in the evening-don't know why I thought that-so we headed back to the room to rest and then eat dinner and return to the park at about 6 or 7. Well, by the time we returned to the park it was even busier than before. We rode a few more rollercoasters-but the waits were up to 1 or more. So long in fact that we ended up not riding the Millenium Force because the wait was over 2 hours and it was already 8pm. We rode more rollercoasters, the Iron Dragon a 2nd time, the Magnum a 2nd time, A went on the antique cars a 2nd time, we caught another haunted house-the Vampires Lair-and a another show. We thought it was about 11:45 or so when we left the park-but it was only 10:15 and we could habe riden another ride, possibly even the Millenium Force. I did not bother to get tickets for Sunday but will do so next year because Sunday was as empty as friday and EVERYTHING was open. I am going to price a summer trip, first or second week in June, Monay thru Thursday at Hotel Breakers-if it is reasonable we will go then. The hotel is right on the beach and I think it would be really nice to stay during the summer and take advantage of some beach time as well as the rides. However, if it is too expensive than we will definetely be going back in October for the Halloweekends. In fact we may be going for the Halloweekends regardless. I hate crowds and halloweekends I think will probably always be less crowded than during the summer. I will see. But if we do go for Halloweekends, we will still go friday night and saturday, but we will also stay for sunday and leave monday. I am pretty sure it is not that much more expensive to stay another day and we could have had alot more time at the rides. Either way, we will definetely be going back next year. I had a blast! In fact, in all of the pictures they take during the scariest moments of the rollercoaster rides, i was smiling in every one. Holding on for dear life, but smiling none the less. B, on the other hand, was looking decidely nervous and tense. Yet, everytime we got off the ride, she would say, "oh, that wasn't bad at all, that was nothing". LOL!!!!!! B's favorite ride was the Mantis-which was a standing up rollercoaster. The ride was not bad, it was fast and fun and very scary, but, it was uncomfortable. The harness that went over my head was loose and I hit both sides of my head at every turn. By the time the ride was over I was working on a migraine and seeing spots in my vision. My favorite rollercoaster was the Magnum. It was fast and scary and I loved it. It was the last ride we rode at Cedar point and I am really bummed that we did not stand in line for the Millenium Force because everyone I have talked to says if I liked the Magnum I would love the Millenium Force-that will be my first ride next year. I am not sure what A liked best, probably the Iron Dragon because she wated to go on it twice. It was a cool ride and like the corkscrew took us through quite abit of the park, which was very cool.

~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!