Day 1: Cedar Point

Woke up bright and early today, said our goodbyes to mom and the animals and set out for America. Boarder crossing was thankfully short and uneventful. After some frustration to do mostly with the GPS not finding Sandusky, we got oursleves a good old-fashioned map... and then saw that we never checked the region settings. Naturally, they needed to be changed to USA before the GPS would find little old Sandusky. But not to make our purchase of the map a waste, the GPS seemed to want to take every right turn when all we to do was follow one road. So after a heartfelt "screw you" to the GPS, we went old skool and followed the map.

By the way, I feel I should mention the fact that we had to go to two gas stations and a Walgreen's before we could find a figgin map of Ohio. What's up with that?

At any rate, we rolled into Sandusky a little later than planned, checked in to our hotel, ditched the baggage in the room, grabbed a small lunch and went to Cedar Point. In case you are unfamiliar with the roller coaster world, Cedar Point is easily considered one of the best parks on the planet. It has won the Golden Ticket award for Best Park in the World... fifteen years in a row. Not only that, it has the Golden Ticket winner for Best Roller Coaster in the world, Millennium Force. So if you like roller coasters at all, you have to go to Cedar Point.

Once all parked we made our hurried way to Millennium Force only to find it out of service, much to our dismay. But, there are no shortage of othee coasters in the park, so we headed to Maverick.

Maverick was a pretty sweet ride, with its LIM (linear induction motor, basically it accelerates your train with electro magnets similar to a rail gun) lift hill, it launches you up and over, down 95 degrees through the first section of the ride. Flips you over twice before stopping you in a tunnel under the station for a moment, before the second LIM run launches you out at 70 mph. Just too bad the hill after the launch has brakes near the top, or it would have been awesome negative g's. Awesome ride, though the queue is somewhat grating if country music isn't your thing. Recommended.

Next up was Raptor, one of the highest rated inverted roller coasters in the world, and with good reason. Nice tall lift hill sends you screaming down to the first huge loop at some intense speeds. The ride is very condensed and twisted, frankly it boggles the mind to try and reconcile the track design with the experience. Top coaster, a must ride, and we had very little wait to get on.

GateKeeper, new for this year was our next stop. Very unique ride, the seats are actually on either side of the track instead of above or below. The track design is insane, after the lift your are immediately twisted upsidedown into a diving loop, then back up again into another inversion that twists you out level again at the top, I believe this is called an Immelman. Then you get tossed up over a huge hill for some awesome negative g's before going for a barrel roll through two gates above the park entrance that appear nowhere near wide enough for the train to clear. Then you get twisted around and go for a second barrel roll behind the gates you just went through. Six inversions in all. Fantastic ride, unbelievably smooth, especially for how much lateral movement you go through, another must-ride.

While in line for Gatekeeper we finally saw a train get slung over the top of Millennium Force, so after a brief hydration and coat losing stop at the car we went to wait for Millennium Force. Definitely the highlight of the wait was a girl in line showing off her Magnum XL-200 ride photo which somehow captured her phone floating away from her pocket thanks to the negative g's there. I just laughed, and told her I was sorry for her loss. At least she has a picture worth paying for, heh.

Finally we get on Millennium Force, and as we are slung up and over the 310-foot tall (101 metres) special 'elevator' lift hill into that 80 degree drop we can see why it is called the best coaster in the world. Hitting speeds of over 90 mph after that drop you are flung up through a 200+ foot over banked turn. Some massive hills with great air time follow, with two tunnels along the way and some truly intense speed turns. Once you ride it, your mind takes a while to recover, it is not hard to see why it is rated as high as it is. If you go to Cedar Point and don't ride Millennium Force, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Ride this ride if at all possible!

We got off Millennium Force almost at 2 minutes to 8, closing time. The wait is usually pretty brutal, about an hour or more for us, but it is well worth it. It is just too bad the Top Thrill Dragster, which launches you up a 410 foot hill at over 100 mph, was out of service all day, hopefully when we get to Kingda Ka at Six Flags it'll be open. Same thing as Top Thrill, just taller and faster. We made it back to the hotel, watched the Leafs blow their only chance in how many ever years to touch the Stanley Cup, then went to sleep. Big day tomorrow! Never been to King's Island before, looking forward to it!

Record Holders:
Millennium Force, 6th tallest, 5th fastest, 6th longest
Top Thrill Dragster, 2nd tallest, 3rd fastest (We didn't get to ride this time, but I have ridden before)
GateKeeper, 1st tallest inversion
Maverick, 8th steepest drop

Golden Ticket Top 10 2012
Millennium Force, #1
Magnum XL-200, #8 (been on before, great ride, world's first hypercoaster with tons of air time)

**note, this post is a day late due to very annoying technical difficulties**