FIRST Cedar Point Gathering?

[Lisa Rodriguez]

OMGosh!!! My family went out to Ohio last year and we went to Cedar Point, it is possibly one of the best times of my life!!
I would give ANYTHING to go back and let's see if i can convince some people on my team to go.........

[Vincent Chan]

If I can road trip, I'll road trip. :-)

I've been needing to go to Cedar Point for about the last eight years. I've ridden the coasters at SFOG too many times now. (Though I haven't ridden Deja Vu-- I'm sure PKI's Invertigo is way beetter-- and I haven't ridden Superman: Ultimate Flight-- but I will this Friday.) I know almost all of them by heart. And I'm going to miss the viper...

I was considering road tripping up to OH to go back and visit PKI and stop in at Cedar Point anyways, so if I can be there, I'll be there. (The Beast is my favorite coaster of all time!)

[Matt Krass]

Originally posted by M. Krass
That's Mantis, and there are no cracks.

...as for the get together. It's 8 hours away, and I don't even like Cedar Point that much, but who knows...maybe I'll be there.

You're going, I need a ride

Seriously give us a date and I'll try to bully him in to going.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Okay... very VERY preliminary plans here... as it's only the first day after I made the announcement. As of right now, we're looking at a weekday in the last two weeks of July. I'm open to suggestions on exact days, but it will be some time either July 21-25 or July 28-August 1.

Now, some other things: do we want to try and set this up as an actual group event, or just have everybody show up and meet somewhere at a specific time? If we book it as a group, the tickets are $31 apiece, as opposed to $43.95 for a standard one-day admission. In order to do this, though, I would need firm numbers at least a month in advance. Payment would also be an issue. The question is, how many people would be going, and is it worth the time and aggravation to try and book a group?

One caveat, though: I'll organize this if it just involves setting a date and meeting place. I won't handle money, though. First off, I'm only 17. Second, I've been left holding the bag too many times when people haven't paid me for trivial things like t-shirts. I'm not going to try to collect $31 from people I've never met that live 500+ miles away. It's too much.

An interesting side note, though... walk up groups of 15 or more can get a slightly discounted $36 rate. This may be the way to go. What do you think?

[Joe Matt]

Set a meeting place and time. This would be the best IMHO. I can't guarantee I can come, so just a meeting place and a 'try to find as many FIRST people as possable' contest might be cool!

The meet could be at the end of the day. People will get other teams to sign off on a sheet and the person with the most will get a prize!

[crispyc]

Originally posted by Vincent Chan

I was considering road tripping up to OH to go back and visit PKI and stop in at Cedar Point anyways, so if I can be there, I'll be there. (The Beast is my favorite coaster of all time!)

Sweet man, you know what you're talking about! I love living 20 minutes from King's Island, and man I don't wanna know how many times I've ridden the Beast! Has to be over 100... can't go a year without getting season passes to that place. I might be able to check out Cedar Point if you guys go, I have never been there before

[Matt Attallah]

I'm game to go, if I can. Thoes dates seem perfect for me!

The discounted ticket at the gate seems like the best deal!!

[Joe Matt]

If there is a CP get-together, mabey there should be a get together for FIRST teams at Paramount Kings Dominion in Roswell, VA! Hypersonic, Volcano, Anaconda, and Flight of Fear!

[KenWittlief]

If you goto Cedar Point stop at Tops (local area supermarket) and get discounted tickets there

you save something like 20% off the gate price

[Mr. Ivey]

Joe, I like the sound of a Kings Dominion FIRST get-together. That would be fun, and I know some people at the park, I'm not sure if they still work there, but they are the high management people. If I can get into contact with them, I might be able to arrange a FIRST Day kind of thing, just like the BET Day that happened last week. BET Day was a day when only people from BET Productions could get into the park, and it was a day for just them, and in the evening they had a huge concert, don't know how much money it would be, but it would be fun. But the catch is that we would have to get a ton of people to go, so we would have to have a registry, and you would have to pay in advance, and you would have to kick back some cash if you wanted to have a concert. But if we didn't have a concert, we could do some sort of off-season competition with robots from previous years and such.

To the comment about the Six-Flags coaster Deja Vu, it was still in the expirimental stages when I rode it as Six-Flags over Georgia. They had the speed really turned down from what it is now, mainly because they didn't know how fast they could run it without it flying of of the return incline. The rumor is that when first built, Six-Flags over Georgia lost 2 trains by shooting them off of the return incline. But it was an insane coaster to say the least.

Mr. Ivey

[skrussel]

Hey Jeff,

Why not a weekday, say 28, 29 or 30th of July (Mon, tues, or Wed). That is the week after IRI. Weekdays are not as crowded.

Why not just proclaim one or two of these days (unofficially) FIRST day at Cedar Point.
.
If people have to work during the week, perhaps they can make arrangements far in advance to have one of these days off.

We could arrange to meet a couple times during the day at certain places and times, just to say hi or join up with each other. We could even plan to have lunch together.

How about this.....everyone MUST wear their team shirts!


And HEY!!! don't forget to bring your coaches and engineers, too! Old people still love to ride the coasters!

[Jeff Waegelin]

That would be the plan. I think I'll put up a poll for the date in a few days, after everyone has had a chance to read this thread. Essentially, I think it's just going to be a "meet there" kind of thing, and any FIRST students or mentors are welcome to show up. Team shirts defnitely sound like a good idea, though... it'll help us know who's who.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

Just look at my avatar!!!!

I'll need to see what I can do about getting out there, but I'm definitely going to try since I missed the last one. If I can convince some Wildstangers to go, they could pick me up on the way (wink wink, nudge nudge). My suggestion....if you go for two days (which with the lines for Dragster and Millennium Force..), you save a whole ton of money (one day is $45 i think, two days is $56...or something rediculously low like that!), but then you have to get a hotel...but most people will probably get one anyway, since a good deal of people are more than a couple hours away. The date sounds good to me. Maybe if I go with my friends as we have been talking about, I'll just pick up a season pass instead.

Also, I'm working on organizing a trip to Six Flags Great America north of Chicago. Don't know when...maybe earlier since July is getting busy. I'll talk to some people and put up a thread by the end of the week hopefully.

Kev

Why don't you set up a time to meet in the morning (like between 9 and 10) and a place somewhere outside the gate to meet, then once you get 15 people from random teams they can go get the $36 rate

[RyanShutes]

Originally posted by skrussel

And HEY!!! don't forget to bring your coaches and engineers, too! Old people still love to ride the coasters! [/b]

Old people!?!?!?!?!?!? For your information, not all of the engineers/mentors are old! And yes, many of us still do enjoy the thrills of the roller-coasters at Cedar Point, America's Roller Coast.