Cedar Point Lakeside Beach Music Festival
Summer Fun Heats Up with Cedar Point Nights
SANDUSKY, Ohio (July 11, 2019) – When the sun goes down, the fun goes up at Cedar Point’s annual summer nighttime beach festival, Cedar Point Nights. Every night, guests can customize their fun, whether they want to unwind and relax next to a lakeside fire pit or dance the night away to live music and DJ’s.
Lakeside Beach Music Festival
New this year along the Lakeside Midway, the Lakeside Stage will host a nighttime music festival featuring continuous live performances from local bands playing the best beach summer hits. Guests can relax on the outdoor lawn, on blankets or Adirondack chairs, roast s’mores and enjoy family games, crafts and more.
The Lakeside Beach Music Festival includes bands Not Fast Enuff, Surf’s Up!, Mellow Yellow, Country Chill and Walkin’ on Sunshine. The show will conclude with the Beach Bash for the ultimate end-of-the-night beach blowout playing beach party anthems.
Near the Lakeside Stage, the beach boardwalk atmosphere lights up with stilt walkers, clown performers and characters dressed in mesmerizing LED costumes, entertaining guests of all ages. Plenty of activities for kids will be available, including Lake Erie driftwood painting, mini pirate raft building, a seashell sand dig, glow face painting and giant corn hole.
On the Famous Cedar Point Beach
The sandy surface where the park had its start becomes a nighttime glow-in-the-dark party place with even more activities that extend beyond rides and roller coasters.
The diverse soundtrack to Cedar Point Nights guarantees something for everyone with Silent Disco, an opportunity for guests to grab custom headphones tuned to the musical genre of their choice. DJ Hurrikane and DJ Resistance will play the best summer sounds while guests dance the night away at the Beach Glow Party, while the Toes in the Sand Band will crank out soothing sounds and live music near the Sand Bar at Hotel Breakers, along the Cedar Point Boardwalk.
The beach comes alive with oversized glow inflatables, beach activities like glow volleyball, glow corn hole, light-up limbo and glow cube team trivia. Fire pits and glow furniture will provide places to relax and chill.
Surf’s Up Food Fest
When guests get hungry, a wide variety of late night food items will be available at the Surf’s Up Food Fest, located near the Lakeside Stage and along the beach and boardwalk. Summer favorites like perch tacos, jerk chicken pitas, custom hot dog creations, grilled pineapple-on-a-stick, ice cream novelties and blueberry crumb dessert will be served up fresh, grilled on the beach or from the Cedar Point Food Truck.
The new Moon Glow signature drink, a blend of tart green apple flavor with Sprite®, served in a souvenir light-up glow cup, joins many other summer thirst-quenching beverages from electric lemonade to bottled beer, craft beers and wine.
New Ticket Deal
Guests can join in the fun of Cedar Point Nights inside and outside the park with the new “25 after 5” ticket.
Valid for admission to Cedar Point only, the ticket is just $25 (plus applicable taxes & fees) and can be used after 5 p.m. any single evening during Cedar Point Nights. The 25 after 5 ticket is available online only and cannot be purchased at the park.
Cedar Point Nights runs nightly (weather permitting) starting at 6 p.m., July 12 through Aug. 18. Schedules for bands, activities and entertainment vary and can be found at cedarpoint.com/events.
Cedar Point Voted “Best Amusement Park” Once Again
SANDUSKY, Ohio (June 28, 2019) – Cedar Point has once again been named “Best Amusement Park” in USA TODAY’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. The park beat other famous travel destinations in Florida, Virginia, Tennessee and more.
In addition, Cedar Point’s world-record-breaking Steel Vengeance hyper-hybrid roller coaster won the “Best Roller Coaster” award. This comes just after its “Best New Ride of 2018” recognition, chosen by readers and voters in Amusement Today’s Golden Ticket Awards.
The historic Hotel Breakers, Cedar Point’s beachside resort, also captured the top spot in the “Best Amusement Park Hotel” category. The iconic property offers spectacular views of Lake Erie, the famous mile-long Cedar Point Beach and the world’s best amusement park destination.
Cedar Point, Steel Vengeance and Hotel Breakers were chosen to be included in the 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards by a panel of experts that includes a combination of editors from USA TODAY and travel industry contributors. Online voting for the awards lasted four weeks and readers were allowed to vote for their favorites in each category, once per day.
Adding to these accolades, Cedar Point has been issued TripAdvisor’s Certificate of Excellence for a fifth consecutive year. The Certificate of Excellence is awarded to businesses all over the world that consistently deliver great service. According to TripAdvisor, approximately ten percent of total businesses listed on the travel site earn top reviews on a regular basis.
With 2019’s Certificate of Excellence, Cedar Point has been “inducted” into TripAdvisor’s “Certificate of Excellence Hall of Fame,” which recognizes businesses that have received a Certificate of Excellence for five consecutive years.
“We’ve made it our mission to be the top destination for family fun, and these awards help validate our team’s efforts,” said Jason McClure, vice president and general manager of Cedar Point. “We’ve been a summertime tradition for almost 150 years, and we won’t ever rest on our promise to deliver an exceptional experience for our guests.”
Cedar Point Frontier Festival
Cedar Point Partners with Prayers From Maria;
Frontier Festival Debuts The Weekend of June 7th.
SANDUSKY, Ohio (June 5, 2019) – Cedar Point’s all-new Frontier Festival, a sunflower-inspired celebration of bounty, harvest and provisions of the Old West, kicks off this weekend. In addition to food and beverage sampling, live music, artisan crafters and family activities, a new partnership is literally growing with Prayers From Maria, an organization that brings hope to children with cancer. Their mission features the sunflower as its symbol of strength and hope.
Planting Hope with Prayers From Maria
Founded in 2007, Prayers From Maria bears the namesake of seven-year-old Maria McNamara, who was diagnosed with a glioma in 2006. During her own battle, Maria chose to pray for all children suffering from cancer, along with their families. Since her passing in 2007, her parents Megan and Ed McNamara have worked tirelessly to raise awareness and money to fund childhood cancer research.
Standing as a symbol of hope, the original “Maria’s Field of Hope” in Avon, Ohio, a 60-acre field of sunflowers, has bloomed annually since 2013 in support of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Today, Cedar Point is helping to grow the movement with a second location: Maria’s Field of Hope at Cedar Point.
More than 160,000 sunflower seeds are being planted on eight acres of land next to Cedar Point’s Express Hotel on Cedar Point Drive. In addition, the sunflower becomes the shining icon of Frontier Festival, celebrating hope and harvest at this fully immersive Western street festival. The sunflower is featured throughout the activities, décor and merchandise.
During Frontier Festival, guests can learn more about Prayers From Maria, make donations and purchase Prayers From Maria merchandise with all proceeds going to the organization.
“Our efforts to help families in meaningful ways goes beyond our park gates,” said Jason McClure, vice president and general manager of Cedar Point. “The inspirational story of Maria’s battle and her selflessness is something that we are so very happy to support.”
Megan McNamara, co-founder of Prayers From Maria, added, “Cedar Point is a special place that embraces being a kid and where special memories are made. We couldn’t think of a better fit to expand our message of hope.”
A Festival of Cedar Point Proportions
The new Frontier Festival will transcend all of Frontier Town from the Town Hall Museum to the Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad’s Frontier Station. Fit for guests with hearty appetites, the festival combines samplings of refreshing suds and ciders, wines, live music and dancing, hoedowns, kids’ crafting and talented artisans.
For complete Frontier Festival details, guests can visit cedarpoint.com/events.
Frontier Festival Logo Courtesy of Cedar Point
Kentucky Kingdom Celebrates 30th Anniversary!
WHAT A THRILLING RIDE IT’S BEEN ...KENTUCKY KINGDOM CELEBRATES 30YEARS OF FUN!
By Adam Birkner
Louisville, KY -Nestled in a town known for bourbon, race horses, fried chicken, and the legendary Muhammad Ali,Kentucky Kingdom, an amusement park and water park, is gearing up to celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2019. The park will open for the season on Sunday, April 28.
The park’s roller coaster history, with ups and downs, challenges faced, and accolades received along the way, is one of the great comeback (and comeback again!) stories in the amusement industry.
In the summer of 1987, the original Kentucky Kingdom, a small 10-acre park,was opened by a group of Texas investors.Between an unseasonably wet and hot summer and overzealous hype from the operators(the park’s small size and ride selection did not measure up to its pre-opening advertising campaign, which centered on “Disney Comes to Kentucky”). As a result, the inaugural season lasted a grand total of six weeks before the park was forced to close due to poor attendance.
The park remained closed for two years, but the 1990’s brought a new owner, Louisville businessman Ed Hart, and a new era of growth. Although he might be the only amusement park owner in the world who suffers from motion sickness and doesn’t like to ride rides, Hart broke new ground inthe amusement industry, including introducing North America’s first suspended looping coaster (still in operation today at Kentucky Kingdom). He was also one of the first to build a water park as an integral part of an amusement park, rather than as a stand-alone, separately gated attraction. In other words, only one admission price was charged for both parks.Throughout the tenure of Hart and his team in the ‘90’s, the humble 10-acre park grew to more than 63 acres, attendance rose from 130,000 visitors in 1990 to 1.2 million in 1997, and the park received numerous awards and recognition as the fastest growing theme park in the world.
Following its sale to a national theme park operator in 1998, Kentucky Kingdom’s attendance slowly began to dwindle,and the park once known for introducing first-of-a-kind rides and other innovative concepts began to stagnate. Arguably the park’s most impressive marquee attraction of the 1990’s, the stand-up steel coaster called Chang, was removed at the end of the 2009 season. This was ostensibly to make room for new water park attractions, but in reality,it was the final nail in the coffin, as the national operator shortly thereafter filed for bankruptcy and abruptly closed and abandoned the park.
The park remained closed until a group of investors from Louisville, including Hart, came to the rescue. They were encouraged by a group called “Save My Park,” which was formed by hundreds of former guests and employees of Kentucky Kingdom who wanted to see the park reopened and put pressure on both state and local government officials to do so.The investors (Hart, Ed Glasscock, Bruce Lunsford, and the Al J. Schneider Company, a major Louisville hotel operator) brokered a deal with the state to invest at least $42.5 million to redevelop the park, with an additional investment of $70 million over the course of the 50-year lease. As it happens, over the course of only five years, their investment has already exceeded $64 million.
Hart and his team reopened the “bigger, better, and wetter” Kentucky Kingdom in the summer of 2014 and have continued the proven strategies of the park’s 1990’s "golden era." The water park (Hurricane Bay) was doubled in size and many new rides and attractions were added. They include Lightning Run, a first-of-its-kind Hyper GT-X steel roller coaster; Deep Water Dive, the second tallest body slide in the world with a Skybox™ launch (in 2017, Universal Studios installed one that beats this height record by only one foot); and Storm Chaser, the first coaster in North America with a barrel roll drop right off the lift hill, named second best amusement ride in the world in 2016 by Amusement Today.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Kentucky Kingdom is adding its sixth coaster, the Kentucky Flyer, one of the most anticipated new rides in the amusement industry in 2019. With this addition, Kentucky Kingdom has introduced three new coasters in the past five years. As Hart likes to say,mimicking a famous line from a 1990’s political campaign, “It’s the coasters, stupid!” Besides the coasters, however, Kentucky Kingdom has added 24 new attractions since reopening, as well as many new amenities for its guests. Now the proof is in the pudding. The new Kentucky Kingdom is once again among the top tourist destinations in the state.
What else is in store for Kentucky Kingdom? If you ask Hart, he'll tell you, "Hang on! It's going to be a great ride!"
GOCC Will be having our Mid Summer Scream event here on August 17th... Watch the website for details.
Coaster History at Kentucky Kingdom
