Well, our big voyage north of the Mason-Dixon line to see our Yankee family members, the one which included a stop at an off-island beach, was actually also laced with a little business. Okay, a lot of business. As in, a week’s worth of business turned into four weeks’ worth of business.
So there went my own personal little vision of summer and How It Was Supposed to Be.
Anyhow, we did get to see family quite a bit, which is always fun, and on the way home, we took the kids to Cedar Point.
Cedar Point and Six Flags Great America are the two main amusement parks that loomed largest in the background of LCB’s and my childhoods. It seemed appropriate then, having already conquered Great America twice with the small people, that we give Cedar Point a whirl with them as well.
My overall evaluation?
Cedar Point has two strengths. First, it has a large number of rides for smaller children, ones geared toward preschool-aged children especially. Second, they have 16 roller coasters to keep fanatics occupied for quite some time. My soon-to-be second grader’s favorite was the Iron Dragon. LCB was itching to try Top Thrill Dragster, a roller coaster that goes from 0 to 120 mph in 4 seconds and shoots you 420 feet straight up into the air (a ride I’d cheerfully volunteer to clean the park’s toilets for years in order to avoid riding it), but the line proved longer than his interest.
Not being roller coaster people ourselves, nor preschoolers either, my older son and I had a harder time finding rides we liked than the three other people we vacation with. Fortunately, it’s a big park, so we did find several rides to keep us busy while the others were off cavorting around on roller coasters and Snoopy rides. Since Disney World still looms large in my mind from last fall’s trip, I should also point out that Cedar Point (like many amusement parks I’ve seen) doesn’t have much of a theme carried through the park like Disney does. I guess since I’m a story person, and a person who loves the idea of make-believe worlds, something about seeing a theme carried strongly throughout the park really appeals to me. Given their dabbling into the movie business, however, Disney has the obvious advantage over other parks.
By six o’clock that evening, we had done everything we wanted to do at Cedar Point, and the small people were eager to try out the water park in our hotel. So we headed back, threw on our swimsuits, and jumped in.
Castaway Bay has several pools, including a very shallow toddler pool and a larger wave pool as well as many large water slides and a giant play area several stories high. It also has a large hot tub, half of which is inside the water park with the other half extending outside into a patio area. I’ve made mention a gazillion times once or twice before my penchant for warm air and water temperatures, so the thing I liked most about Castaway Bay was the fact that the water and air temperatures were warm enough where we all felt comfortable moving in and out of the pools for hours on end. I had friends in Chicago who once splurged and took their kids to an indoor water park for a winter weekend getaway, and they said afterward that it was a bit of a disappointment because the water was too cold for any of them to spend more than a short time in it.
The small people loved the water park and had to be dragged out at closing time. In the end, all three kids were happy to have tried Cedar Point, but Castaway Bay was the clear-cut winner in the entertainment competition.
We returned to the water park in the morning for a short time before check out, and then hit the road. First, however, we had to stop and purchase the longest Nerf gun on the market. Someone, who shall remain nameless, had some birthday money burning a whole in his pocket and just simply couldn’t spend one more nanosecond as a non-owner of the longest Nerf gun available to humankind.
And so we made our way southeast toward home, with a giant Nerf gun aimed at all signs of roadside nefariousness along the way.
Given the extreme heat and humidity in the midwest this summer, that girl standing in the bumper boat pool has the Best. Job. Ever.
My daughter rode the bumper boats 3 times in a row, and the entire time I was thinking that very thing. Frankly, it took a bit of restraint on my part not to just jump in myself, because this was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and it was blazing hot out.
We were just debating if Cedar Point would have enough to do that wasn’t Big Coaster stuff for the majority of our family, so I’m glad you wrote this review. We may end up in Ohio at some point this summer, so Cedar Point seems reasonable. Not sure I would make the 8-ish hour drive otherwise.
Yes, we were glad we tried it with the kids, but it’s probably most ideal for people who love roller coasters. They do have some shows, if that’s your thing, and several car-type rides (although you have to be 16 to ride the “fast” one, much to my son’s disappointment), and a few spinning rides. And your youngest would have plenty to do. But everyone loved the water park. We weren’t planning on doing it but we just stumbled on a package deal for hotel and tickets that was really discounted for the night we ended up passing through. It was definitely worth it, but (if you are going to need a hotel for a night like we did) play around with dates and when you look for packages, because we ended up getting ours for $100 less than the price we were given a few days earlier.