Cedar Point 2024

Despite living within a day's drive of one of the world's most famous amusement parks visited by people from around the world, it had been three years since I had last visited Cedar Point. It's a great park, but it was even better to re-discover it after several years. This month's post will be a short trip report showing some of my favorite parts of America's second-oldest amusement park. 

"We apologize for the inconvenience" is in reference to the park's failed 2024 investment, which operated for a total of eight days and was then closed for the rest of the season. A bit more on that later.

Gatekeeper was cleverly designed to interact with the main entrance, and it has these cool "keyhole" moments where the train threads the needle, so to speak.

One vintage ride maintained by Cedar Point is a 1962 Von Roll Sky Ride.

I believe all the gondolas received a fresh paint scheme for this season, and one neat touch they added is the Von Roll logo on the car doors.

In 2003, Cedar Point opened the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster, Top Thrill Dragster. With a complex hydraulic launch system, it was plagued by issues for years until 2021, when a piece of the coaster train flew off and hit someone in line. It was closed indefinitely after that, but in 2023 it was announced that the ride would be reborn as "Top Thrill 2."

The major modification made to the ride was the addition of this "reverse spike" tower. The hydraulic launch system was replaced with a less maintenance-intensive magnetic launch, but that means the train no longer has enough momentum to make it over its 420-foot hill in one go. It now launches forwards, backward up the spike, and then a final time forwards over the main hill, which remains the same as the old ride.

I took these pictures in May, and by then the ride had already been shut down for re-engineering due to problems found with the train wheels. It never reopened for the rest of the season. I don't know what they were expecting by going with Zamperla as the ride's manufacturer, who is notorious for malfunctioning rides and had previously only designed roller coasters as tall as 50 feet or so. It's definitely a bad look for Cedar Point.

Although the park has experienced countless issues with its newest piece of roller coaster technology, one of the earliest modern steel roller coasters continues to operate flawlessly. The Arrow Dynamics-designed Corkscrew opened in 1976 as the first coaster with three inversions. Its maintenance bay is placed under the station with this interesting piece of sloped track to reach it.

You can't go to Cedar Point without riding the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad, and if you board at the Frontier Town station, you'll be treated to a ride through Boneville.

It's been a staple of the ride since it opened in 1963.

In this picture, you can see one of the skeletons falling over in a mock shootout that includes blank gunshots.

The Cedar Creek Mine Ride is a vintage mine train coaster that skims over a small lake next to the train trestle.

You always need a moonshine still for these types of displays.

More gunshots are in this scene. The skeleton on the porch is shooting at another skeleton scurrying over the fence to the left.

Cedar Point debuted an elaborate boat ride in 2021 called Snake River Expedition, yet it only lasted for three years and did not return for 2024. The scenes can still be seen sitting along the waterway in the center of the park. The ride featured several live actors, and it's a shame that they couldn't find a way to make a slower-paced ride like this sustainable. I guess they decided that the crowds only wanted roller coasters.

Only a video clip can do justice to the animation of this tableau.

And with that we're back at the main station!

The Coliseum was built in 1906 and still features an Art-Deco ballroom on its second story. It's a strange time capsule left untouched in the middle of a bustling theme park.

Perhaps Cedar Point's rarest ride is Cedar Downs, a classic derby racer carousel that previously operated at Cleveland's Euclid Beach Park from the 1920s until 1969.

It runs substantially faster than any normal carousel, and the horses jockey back and forth for position during the ride. It's always a treat to take a spin on this huge ride, which sits in the same building it sat in at Euclid Beach.

The first few times I went to Cedar Point, there was an antique car ride in Frontier Town. That ride was retired after 2021, and the bridge that the cars once traveled through was replaced with a walking path. The rest of the ride's plot was replaced with a large restaurant.

Although the park maintains one classic Von Roll Sky Ride, it used to have two. The defunct Frontier Lift ran from the main midway to Frontier Town, and its station remains today. The entrance and exit ramps to the ride remain intact, and I'm sure there are more remnants inside the building itself.

A sentimental favorite of mine is Gemini, a dual-tracked roller coaster built by Arrow that has been in operation since 1978. Its space-frame station is straight out of the 70s. 

This is one of the few coasters where you can still reach out and clap hands with the train you are racing against. During one of my rides, our train blew right through the brake run seen in this picture, while the other train seen here ground to a halt. It was pretty funny watching everyone's faces as they stopped abruptly and we kept coasting along. When we got back to the loading station, the attendants seemed pretty confused as to what happened. Hopefully the stranded riders got down eventually!

Along with practically everyone who visited the park this year, I will have to come back to ride Top Thrill 2. But there are so many more rides to enjoy here than just that.

Before we left, I couldn't help but admire the vintage pennants in the gift shop. Until next time Cedar Point!

Glen Echo Park

Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo, Maryland outside of Washington D.C. is a must-visit for fans of amusement park history. It's preserved by the National Park Service and only home to one surviving ride, but I can't think of any other park with as many layers of history as Glen Echo. It began as a National Chautauqua Assembly in 1891, with distinctive stone architecture and many lecture halls. This was not particularly successful, so by 1911 the Chautauqua had been transformed into an amusement park. After decades of operation, Glen Echo was a hotspot for the Civil Rights Movement in 1961, and the park eventually closed in 1968. It was reestablished as an art center beginning in the 1970s, with the old park buildings being restored. Today, it's a fascinating place.

Oh, and the park grounds sit next to a former home of Red Cross founder Clara Barton. There's an interesting story where a one-time owner of the park wanted to acquire Barton's land, so he built a roller coaster called the Dip right in her front yard in hopes of forcing her off the property. 

When that didn't work, he built a Ferris wheel too. Barton remained unshakable.

Like countless other early amusement parks, people came to Glen Echo on the trolley. This preserved trolley trestle sits abandoned in the woods next to the bridge that takes you into the park grounds. In the park's heyday, the Coaster Dips and the Derby Racer both plummeted into this ravine, crossing the creek twice for an added thrill.

The colorful carousel building comes into view after you cross the bridge. The ride and domed building were built in 1921 by William Dentzel, and it is absolutely one of the best carousels in the country.

You can pay $2.00 for one ride or $5.00 for an all-day pass. There is something special about the sound of a band organ drifting through a quiet park.

The carousel has one of the most beautiful restoration jobs I've seen on a ride, and this horse mostly features 100+ year old original paint, which explains why it is not rideable.

The horses that don't have original paint still feature the original colors.

The star of the show is this Wurlitzer 165 band organ, which echoes wonderfully throughout the wooden building.

The park has no shortage of music for the organ. Some of these rolls are likely almost a century old.

I always take delight in carousel building architecture. The Glen Echo carousel appears to have half the number of light bulbs on its sweeps compared to other Dentzel carousels. Kennywood's, for example, has bulbs that fill in the gaps seen here.

 I'll let the plaque explain the role the ride played in the Civil Rights Movement. When you know the important history behind a ride like this, it makes it all the more special to experience.

There's more than just the carousel here, like this vintage concession stand. I would love to see the park after dark with its abundance of neon.

The building at left is the last vestige of the old Chautauqua days at the park. I love how it runs right into this neon-rimmed canopy, representing two eras in the park's history.

The carousel is wonderful, but the park's Streamline Moderne entrance is also a sight to behold. I would have loved to have lived in an era where fantastical amusement park architecture like this was the norm—imagine rolling up to the park in a trolley after dark and walking under this archway blazing with neon.

I dig these cut-throughs in the bottoms of the marquee supports. They don't have to be there, but they add to the charm.

Some of the trolley tracks remain, and occasionally a replica trolley is parked in front of the entrance.

The streamlined architecture continues along the former main midway. Once home to games and concessions, it's now home to cultural institutions including a conservatory of music.

The vintage Cuddle Up pavilion is all types of amazing, from the rounded canopy to the neon sign and perfectly integrated ticket booth. I couldn't help but think how the distinctive rumbling of a Cuddle Up would have mixed with the carousel organ across the midway.

The whimsical paint job on the carousel roof was added in the mid-century, then painted over after the park closed. It was restored when the park was acquired by the National Park Service, and they deserve great credit for maintaining such an intricate design.

The bumper car building is another delight. Now used as a pavilion, the interior contains many spindly trusses from which the metal ceiling used to hang.

The Spanish Ballroom was also restored when the NPS took control. I'd love to see the interior.

The First Aid depot is quite quaint. If I could live in this building, I would.

The final touch of Art Deco in the park is the Crystal Pool entrance. It's just a facade, as the pool that once sat behind was perched on the edge of the ravine.

Again, I will have to come back to this park when it's dark to see the lights!

Along the midway sits an untouched shooting gallery behind a glass window, though it appears to also be used as storage for maintenance. Knoebels is the last park I know of that still operates a real shooting gallery like this one.

Glen Echo clearly doesn't bring in the crowds anymore with its only attractions being a carousel and the history, but it's pleasant walking around the park with the carousel happily spinning in the center.

Here's a short video of the carousel spinning to the tune of "A Whale of a Tale" from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Before we go, let's take one last ride on the carousel. The lion is the trademark of Dentzel, and this one glows.

I chose the deer for my final ride. It's a nice change of pace to ride the stationary animals or the chariots every once in a while.

If only all carousels could be maintained as well as this one!

See, I wasn't the only person at the park! Here we see two ghosts that have been waiting for candy apples since 1968.

With that, we say goodbye to what could be called a museum of amusement park history. I enjoyed my first visit to Glen Echo Park immensely, and I look forward to returning in the future.