It isn’t every day that I drop 300 feet at an 80-degree angle on a roller coaster reaching a top speed of 93mph. If I thought that 215 feet (Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure) was a long way down, 300 feet was going to be a long, long way down. I had high expectations of Millennium Force and it not only met but exceeded my expectations. From start to finish it was one of the best rides I’ve ever had. The ascent to the top was quick and smooth, thanks to the cable lift. (I’m becoming quite partial to Intamin, which designed this coaster and my all-time favorite, El Toro; both use cable lifts.) And the location could not be better, as Lake Erie is directly to your left as you are going up the hill, so that the scenery is spectacular. Once you get to the top, look out! The drop was unquestionably the best first drop I had ever experienced on any roller coaster at the time that I first rode it. (This has since been equalled and possibly surpassed by Intimidator 305, Fury 325, Leviathan and Cannibal.) And the rest of the ride is a blast. This coaster doesn’t have a lot of drops but what drops it does have are sizeable and it does have a good long track. I felt that it had both floater and ejector airtime; some of the best airtime was on a bunny hill near the end of the ride.
This coaster features a succession of overbanked turns and two tunnels. After the initial drop, it ascends into an overbanked turn and goes through a tunnel. From there it speeds over a hill, enters a helix, negotiates several turns, travels over another hill and goes into another tunnel. The first time I rode, it was dark and because the track is not well illuminated, I could not see the drops coming up until we were descending and the second tunnel was pitch black. The overbanked turn at the end of the ride was definitely one of the highlights. All in all, a super good ride. The only downside (no pun intended) to Millennium Force is the excessive waiting time to get on. I probably picked a bad time to go to Cedar Point – the next to last weekend of the 2011 season – because on a Saturday night I hadto stand in line for 2 ½ hours to get on this coaster. I went back as soon as the park opened the following day and managed to get to the loading station in half an hour but by midafternoon, there was again a long queue. Other coasters at Cedar Point have a much shorter waiting time. It seems that everyone wants to ride Millennium Force, and I can certainly understand why. This gets 5 out of 5 stars. For more information about rides at Cedar Point, use the following link to their website: http://www.cedarpoint.com/
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ReplyDeleteHi Bobbie, thanks for your description of Millennium Force....not having been to Ohio it's interesting to hear someone's actualy experience of the ride. Great work on the blog. Are you going to check out Shambhala at Portaventura?
ReplyDeleteYou can also check out some awesome rollercoaster POV vids here, in a random compendium of some of the world's impressive rollercoasters
Hi Michael
ReplyDeleteGosh, I haven't checked this blog for so long that I didn't realize that someone had actually left a comment! Thanks for the compliment. Have no immediate plans to check out Shambhala; am going to Busch Gardens at the end of April, Kings Island and Six Flags New England in May, Michigan's Adventure in June and back to Cedar Point for Coastermania in July. Hope that this time around Mean Streak is open; when I went there in October, it was closed for the season. Will check out the roller coaster vids on your link.