My trip to CP on Saturday turned out a lot better than most of the reports on here...
My friend and I showed up at the park around 10:30 - by the time we got up to the roped off area we only had to wait about 20 minutes for the 11:00 rope opening... walked at a fairly brisk pace to Millennium Force and when we got in line we noticed that there were already riders on it!... 10 minutes later we were on the ride in the back seat(my 3rd MF ride of the season, my friend's first). We had an awesome ride and as we were walking toward the on-ride photo booth, I noticed Jeff was on his way up the ramp to the loading station. I didn't get a chance to say hi to him and that was the only Guide to the point siting for me for the day.
We headed over to Mantis and had a bit of a wait ... seemed like they took forever to finish their test runs before opening the ride... we rode in the middle of the train and got off of the ride around 12:10 - not a bad start to the day... only 10 minutes after the posted ride starting time and we had already ridden back seat on MF and gotten a good ride on Mantis.
We headed over to Power Tower next - Turbo Drop side had a bit of a wait so we went on the Space Shot side instead with about a 2 minute wait. The line was still short when we got off of it so we grabbed another Space Shot ride. It was still only 12:30 and we had gotten off to a great start which was fortunate because the park started getting crowded very quickly.
We were able to get a ride on Magnum in seat 1-3 with less than a half hour wait... Monty Jasper was on the exit side of the station while we were waiting and he grabbed a ride in 1-3 with a single rider 2 trains ahead of us.
Lines for just about all of the coasters were quite long at that point so we spent the middle of our day enjoying other attractions.
We grabbed a ride on Chaos, hit 2 of the haunted houses (Eerie Manor and Pharaoh's Secret), saw the Tale of Terror show at the Glassblowing theater, watched Alien Adventure at the Imax, had a good lunch at the Midway Market, played a bunch of games and hit a bunch of shops.
Around 7:20 we got in line for Raptor... the line was out of the main queue area so we thought it might be a really long wait but it ended up not being too bad. We could have been on the ride in about 75 minutes but we decided to wait for the front car which added about 20 minutes to the wait... it was well worth it though since it was my first ever front seat night ride on Raptor.
We hit Coasters for a quick meal before our final ride of the night : MF
We got in the line at 10 pm and were told to expect a 2 1/2 hour wait. The queue moved along fairly quickly for about a half hour but then it came to a dead stop for 10 minutes or so. We were a bit concerned at first but once we realized that the ride was still running with no delays, we realized what they were doing : closing off a bunch of the queue rows near the station, which has the effect of making the line appear longer than it is. The end result will be less people in the queue when they close it for the night, allowing the ride ops to go home at a half-decent hour.
Around 11:50 we were almost to the station when things started to look bad... The ride shut down for about 20 minutes... to make matters worse, we were able to count the people in front of us and knew that we would be near the back of the group on the 3rd train once they got it running again, ending our hopes for our first front seat rides.
Just before they got the ride going again, a miracle happened : a group of 5 people came up the exit ramp (one of them was in a wheelchair)... they were given seats on the train in front of ours and we got the gift every MF rider hopes for: the station op let the riders in for that train and my friend and I were left as the first 2 for the following ride.
As we took our places in the front seat queue, the people behind us let us know how lucky we were ... all we could do was agree with them :)
We had an awesome ride... first night MF ride... first front seat MF ride... our final ride of the season... can't ask for anything better...
We took our time while leaving the park and after fighting the parking lot crowds for a while and stopping for gas, we finally got on route 2 headed west for the Detroit area around 1:20 ...
I dropped my friend off in Ann Arbor at 3:18 and made good time back to my Novi apartment, arriving at 3:45 in the morning, tired and happy.