Picture Copyright Carsten Anderson of COASTER-net.com, used with permission.
After 11 years, Millennium Force is finally being repainted. It currently looks like the lift and queue line area of track has been painted so far. Hopefully the whole ride will be sporting a new coat of paint by Opening Day. I would like thank Carsten Anderson of COASTER-net.com who allowed us to use his pictures.
Picture Copyright Carsten Anderson of COASTER-net.com, used with permission.
Cedar Point Press Release
SANDUSKY, Ohio – Marathon Petroleum Company LP (Marathon) will add even more dazzle to Cedar Point when it sponsors a spectacular new nighttime music and light show this summer at the Sandusky, Ohio, amusement park resort.
Called American Portrait, the new attraction will feature exciting music, high-def digitized video, advanced lighting system and an extensive display of colorful pyrotechnics that will illuminate the evening sky.
“American Portrait is dedicated to the Spirit of America,” said John Hildebrandt, vice president and general manager of Cedar Point. “It will combine patriotic and contemporary music with unique images of American life. The program will be fast-paced, uplifting and will be enjoyed by everyone in the family.”
The 15-minute program will be presented nightly beginning Friday, June 3 through Sunday, Aug. 21. American Portrait will be shown on the park’s huge 3,600-square-foot projection screen located on the Iron Dragon Midway. On most nights, American Portrait is scheduled to be shown at 10 p.m.
The park’s first nighttime sound and light show, The Summer Spectacular, began in 1995 as part of Cedar Point’s 125th anniversary celebration.
“We are proud to join Cedar Point in bringing this patriotic salute to the park,” said Tom Kelley, Marathon’s Senior Vice President Marketing. “The brilliance and high energy of the new American Portrait nighttime show will be the perfect ending to a visit to Cedar Point.”
In addition to American Portrait, Cedar Point will also have a new show in the Jack Aldrich Theatre plus live music in two other theaters, an ice skating show featuring the PEANUTS characters, a thrilling stunt show with inline skaters and skateboarders and sing-a-longs with Snoopy and his friends.
Marathon is an integrated international energy company engaged in exploration and production; oil sands mining; integrated gas; and refining, marketing and transportation operations. Marathon, which is based in Houston, has principal operations in the United States, Angola, Canada, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Libya, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom. Marathon is the fourth largest United States-based integrated oil company and the nation’s fifth largest refiner.
For more information, please visit http://www.marathon.com or cedarpoint.com.
For my first trip of the year, I had the opportunity to visit the park in the winter off-season. Mr. Innes was very nice and agreed to take myself and a few select CP Guide members on a tour of the main midway, wicked twister midway, and a small part of the wildcat midway.
To start we walked through the Hotel Breaker’s parking lot and saw the roller coaster cars awaiting a winter check-up.
Then we moved on to the WindSeeker construction site. They had just poured the foundation the Friday before and they were working on setting up the concert mold for the ride base.
The concert they used was special concrete that need to be done in one pour, the reason behind the giant concert pour. The foundation is 60ft by 60ft and the ride will go down 6ft.
The ride is currently scheduled to open on opening day, but so was Shoot the Rapids, so we will have to see.
Moving down the midway, we find Chaos, or the spot Chaos used to occupy. Chaos is undergoing its off-season maintenance, but it doesn’t sound like it’s coming back.
Troika, like Chaos has been taken apart for its off-season maintenance, the rumor circulating is the Troika will go to Chaos’ spot and open up space for Disaster Transport to be replaced with a new coaster. Of course, this is just a rumor, and I don’t have any real facts to support it.
Throughout the park many rides have been shrink-wrapped; maXair is one of them as well as the test seat.
On the main midway, the games are all closed up as expected and Raptor was hibernating until May.
Ocean Motion, on the other hand, will be getting a new home at the old Demon Drop location and it will be complemented with a pond when it opens in May. In the Blue Streak area, we find Calypso taken apart for its maintenance.
Boo Hill has been reverted to its normal season look and the Blue Streak was nicely covered with snow.
Moving onto the Wildcat Midway, we find that Dodgems has been enclosed so the floor doesn’t get ruined and Wildcat’s queue ramps have been taken apart for easy access to the track for car removal.
Many of the fences around the park have also been removed for easier access to the rides.
The train cars for the CP and LE Railroad are at different parts of the track: one set back in Frontier Town and one is parked by the Mantis.
Moving on to Millennium Force, we find two cars left on the midway. Of course we all went crazy taking pictures of it and the brand new wheels.
Ending the tour, we walked back down the Wildcat midway and by Scrambler and Matterhorn.
We passed Kinzel’s Castel and through the parking lot of coaster cars.
On the way out I took some pictures of Mean Streak’s off-season track work and some views of the park from the road.
To finish the day I took a picture of me in front of the “Welcome to Cedar Point” sign.
Cedar Point Press Release
SANDUSKY, Ohio – Although there is ice on the lake and snow on the ground, the Cedar Point Beach will be a hub of activity tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 14) when the concrete foundation for its new ride, the 301-foot-tall WindSeeker swing ride, will be poured.
Weather permitting, more than 1,600 tons of concrete will be needed to build the 30-story ride’s foundation. The dimensions of the foundation are 60 feet by 60 feet by 6 feet deep and will require more than 800 cubic yards of concrete. Prior to the pour, more than 36 tons of steel rebar and 176 steel anchor bolts were placed in position.
Overall, the total weight of the foundation will be more than 3.3 million pounds or 1,650-plus tons of concrete and steel.
The Adena Corporation, Mansfield, will build the foundation while Huron Cement, Huron, will deliver the concrete. The pour is scheduled to begin at approximately 7 a.m. and should be completed by 5 p.m. A fleet of 14 trucks will make 80 continuous trips to the park to transport the concrete to the park.
To watch the construction progress, Cedar Point’s web site: cedarpoint.com will have two of its webcams covering all of the activities. You can also follow the conversation about the construction via Cedar Point’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
Costing more than $5 million to build, WindSeeker will stand more than 30 stories above the Cedar Point Beach. Seated in two-passenger swings with their feet dangling in the air, riders will be treated to breathtaking views of Cedar Point, Lake Erie and the Cedar Point Beach.
Cedar Point will open for the summer on Saturday, May 14.
From WKZO.com…
Coaster buffs like myself will enjoy a full 30 minutes with Ed Dangler, Director of Maintenance and New Construction at Cedar Point. Topics include various coaster wheel assembly arrangements, launch and restraint systems, how coasters and maintained and repaired, the process through which Cedar Point decides what to build and how to build it and much more!
