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Written by Matt [Comet]
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Saturday, 19 January 2008 |
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Millennium Force Review
By Comet
When you're driving down the well known Cedar Point Causeway towards Cedar Point, you can easily see this ride to your left. The reason being is the famous 310 foot lift hill.
If you enter the park at opening I suggest going with the crowd to the end of the main midway, then ditch the people going to dragster and bear left. This will take you to the former #1 steel coaster in the world, Millenium Force. Hopefully you can beat the crowd and experience a short wait, because after your first ride, you will not find a wait less than 45 minutes.
The queue area is quite boring, being just a block of cement with hand rails and a few sunshades, although it's great placement under the last overbank is quite entertaining. Anyway, at the end of the of the never ending rows of switchbacks, you will reach a ramp. Don't get too excited when you get here, due to very slow load times it could take up to 20 minutes from this point. However, the 20 minutes get worse when a train goes screaming by you every minute. Sure it's cool the first time, but it gets extremely annoying.
Towards the top of the ramp you will reach the first of two stations. This is where you will hear the ride's theme music, which is pretty sweet and really gets those adrenaline juices pumping. Don't get too excited though, this station is not where you load the train, it is used only to unload the passengers. After around 5 minutes of being in that station, you will move on to where it's really at...Millenium Forces loading station.
Once here it is impossible not be excited, or maybe scared. This station is very organized, mainly due to the fact they only let one train load of people in, which I think is nice. However, it has it's faults as some times you can't choose your row. The only two rows of choice are the front and back. I would suggest back here, mainly due to the fact it is around 15 minutes shorter, and the front, while better, is not that much better.
You will most likely get stapled like with all Intamin lapbars, but that's not a bad thing for this wild ride. You leave the station directly into the lift. This ain't no ordinary lift hill though. Instead of the normal chain you are taken up by a cable, and this thing gets you up quick. Look out to your left and you got a beautiful view of Lake Eerie, while on the right there's a beautiful view of the park, but it doesn't last for long.
Ok, now I will admit that at the top of the first hill I was scared my first time, even after being on dragster. This was mainly due to the fact that we were going about 25 miles per hour and I was about to drop 300 feet at a near vertical angle.
After the best drop in the world, you enter an enormous overbank providing a very disorienting experience. Then the train enters a turning tunnel. Directly after leaving this tunnel you will be taken up an amazing air filled hill.
Now you are back on an island secluded from the rest of the park. Here, you will experience consecutive overbanks, leading to another airtime hill. This hill gets you off the island and leads you into another turning tunnel adjacent to the first one.
There is then one last small airtime hill which packs some extremely insane air, and is also a fly by of that ramp in the queue line. Then there's one last intense overbank over the queue area. The train then brakes smoothly and enters the unloading station with minimal stacking.
Ride Experience: 9.5/10
Theming: 6/10
Overall: 9.5/10
Comet's Rank: 2
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