230610 St Louis Arch

Epic Road Trip: National Parks Tour (Part 1)

230610 St Louis Arch

St Louis Arch

Back in 2019 our family set out on our first ever cross-country road trip, traveling from Cleveland to Los Angeles and back. In the process we saw some of the United States most beautiful National Parks like Badlands, Yellowstone and Grand Tetons, plus a variety of amusement parks.

In trying to decide where we wanted to travel for 2023, we went through various options and ultimately decided we really wanted to see all of the epic Utah National Parks, getting to see all new areas of the country. So in June 2022 we started planning.

Just like our trip in 2019, the ultimate tool we utilized was the Roadtrippers app. With such an epic scope and knowing our journey goal was Utah, we started routing the trip to determine how many days we wanted to do going there and back.

Just like any journey, one can quickly be overloaded with information with so many options to see along the route.

In addition to the Roadtrippers app, we also utilized our large pool of IHG points to try and get as many free nights as possible. This required tailoring the route to the hotels that could easily accommodate five of us.

Our three boys are no longer little and staying in a two queen room is no longer feasible. So at a minimum, we had to find rooms with a king bed to share with our youngest and a pullout couch. In some cases we were able to secure suites with three beds.

This quickly became the most important thing we could do a year out from the trip. Within a month or so of booking, many of the rooms on the route were booked and rates quickly started to rise as we price watched. We easily saw some of the rooms we secured for free with points double in points or cost, if they were even still available. Book early!

Using the Roadtrippers app and our hotel reward programs, we ultimately decided we would take June 10 to June 21 (12 days) to get from Cleveland to Los Angeles. Then to minimize my time off work and get back to Cleveland would take 4 days, returning June 25.

The tough part of planning such an epic road trip a year in advance is you are locked into your plans.
1) Changing hotels at any point could drastically increase costs
2) Many places like National Parks require a reservation and securing the limited supply could throw the entire trip off course
3) Should one have an emergency like vehicle repairs, etc. mid trip, it makes it hard to change course.

While of course we would make do with the cards we were dealt, we were lucky this trip and had no issues with our cross country travels.

Knowing we had the trip planned a year in advance, we traded in our Honda Odyssey for a newer model in late 2022, making sure we had something reliable for cross country travel.

Just like our 2019 National Park Road Trip, we will break down the trip each day in separate posts as highlighted below.

Epic Road Trip: National Park Tour (Part 1)
Epic Road Trip: Cleveland to St Louis (Part 2)
Epic Road Trip: Silver Dollar City (Part 3)
Epic Road Trip: Rt 66 to Texas (Part 4)
Epic Road Trip: Texas Surprises to Santa Fe (Part 5)
Epic Road Trip: Four Corners and Arches National Park (Part 6)
Epic Road Trip: Canyonlands National Park (Part 7)
Epic Road Trip: Capitol Reef National Park (Part 8)
Epic Road Trip: Bryce Canyon National Park (Part 9)
Epic Road Trip: Zion National Park (Part 10)
Epic Road Trip: Knott’s Berry Farm (Part 11)
Epic Road Trip: Universal Studios Hollywood (Part 12)
Epic Road Trip: Meow Wolf Las Vegas (Part 13)
Epic Road Trip: Worlds of Fun (Part 14)
Epic Road Trip: Trip Wrap Up (Part 15)

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Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

220327 Universal Studios Florida Entrance

Our family of five has our first ever trip to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) scheduled for October 2023. With that comes the need to strategize how to maximize our time at getting most everything done while also trying to minimize the outpouring of cash.

This post is not meant to be an all-encompassing Hollywood Horror Nights post with every detail and strategy of the event. It is honestly more of a means for me to organize and talk through my own thought process to try and justify the cost and planning strategy. In no way is this going to be the perfect HHN strategy guide, and in probably most cases, will not impact your planning process. However, it really helps me with the planning.

Tickets and Frequent Fear passes are now on sale for the 2023 season, and OMG. I know anytime guests visit Disney or Universal, it is stupid expensive, but the prices are crazy. How do these parks remain packed to the walls at these prices? As you will see at the end of this article, the HHN are not even necessarily the high costs; it is the crazy approach they take to pricing day tickets when it is essentially the same number of hours in the park.

From what we have seen during our research, one thing HHN is not short on is crowds. Which means the parks are going to maximize the amount of money they can bring in, all while trying to manage crowds. So maybe, just maybe the high prices will defer some people from attending and make our visit more enjoyable. Wishful thinking.

Lets start with single day tickets.

The Universal Studios side of the park shuts down and reopens under a separate ticket for Horror Nights. This means guests are paying full price for a day, but only getting part of it. You would think tickets might be cheaper. For example, a 1-park, 1-day ticket to either Universal Orland or Islands of Adventure during the HHN season is the exact same price (i.e. no discount for the Universal Orlando side which closes early) (I get the whole argument that guests still have full day access to the Island of Adventure side if buying a 2-park ticket.)

However, on the day of our visit, a single day, two-park ticket runs $204. After tax, we will be shelling out $1086.30 for one day. And we still have to add on evening tickets for Horror Nights. That is absolutely insane when you are only giving me a part day at one of the parks.

So the question is then how to we maximize our strategy? Day tickets are what they are unfortunately as we are visiting with a friend who has never been and want to spend the day with her seeing Harry Potter.

Due to logistics of our family’s schedule and flights, we have the potential for 3 days/nights at Universal on this trip, encompassing a partial day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We had hopes that the Frequent Fear pass would save us some money versus purchasing single night HHN tickets. However, here is the breakdown.

3 nights of Horror Nights tickets (Wed-Fri)- $1437.59
Frequent Fear Passes (include Friday nights)- $1437.70

Therefore, the only way to make the Fear Pass that include Friday nights viable is to visit more than 3 nights, which is not feasible for our trip. So now we need to realistically look at how we will approach visiting the parks.

220329 Universal Studios Florida Werewolf Monster

Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

Wednesday

When we get into Orlando on Wednesday, we can not check into our house until 4, which means we have two options. Either go straight to the parks and then when we stumble out of Horror Nights potentially at 2am, then we are trying to check into our rental home that we are sharing with lots of other families. That could not bode well for both us trying to figure out the configuration of the house in the middle of the night and the potential of waking other guests. Not the best strategy to start out a shared vacation with other families.

The other option is to check into our home and then make our way over to Horror Nights. This means a more casual evening enjoying the sites and sounds of the event without too much focus on knocking out too many of the haunted mazes. This seems to be the ideal situation for our family. And maybe we get lucky knocking out several of the haunted houses.

Our Horror Nights tickets for Wednesday evening will run $452.57. I find it humorous that HHN tickets get me access to the park from 6:30pm-2:00am (7.5 hours) and are far cheaper than a day ticket that only gets me into the park from 9:00am-5:00pm (8 hours).

I also want to make sure our very first night doing Horror Nights, we do not go balls to the wall trying to fit it all in, and then be bored with it come Friday.

Thursday

Assuming we stay till 2am from our Wednesday visit, the idea would be to rest during the day, taking in the enjoyment of the shared house and pool.

Our initial thoughts of the Frequent Fear passes was to head back at night for another evening of fun. However, we also need to think about Friday, where we plan to spend the full day at Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios and Horror Nights in the evening, meaning a very long day. So going Thursday evening and staying till late is not the best strategy.

Maybe we take a swing over to Disney Springs during the evening or something casual. I think our best strategy for Thursday is lay low and prep for Friday.

Also saving the money of another $85 HHN ticket per person.

Friday

Again the plan is to spend all day and night enjoying Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios and Horror Nights.

The nice thing about our visit on this day is we will already be in the park and can easily take advantage of the Stay & Scream strategy, where we will be able to queue for select houses inside the park and ahead of other guests.

The cost for day ($1086.30) and evening ($532.45) tickets will run $1618.75. That’s insane! The day tickets are what really is just absolutely shocking.

Express Passes Strategy

One of the options we had to determine if it was worth was adding on Express Passes to one of our visits, giving us quicker access to all the haunted houses plus select rides and attractions. This is a very enticing option given limited time to take advantage of HHN.

However, that would add on another $1064.95 to our trip, and I just can not justify the additional cost.

I had considered it if the Express Pass gave us access all day to both parks and the rides + HHN. However, I called and confirmed the HHN Express Pass was only for the special ticketed event.

Scream Early Strategy

Universal also offers an add-on of allowing guests into the park early ahead of Horror Nights. This runs $40 per person. The idea is guests can queue early ahead of guests who come in from the main gate. Since we would not be able to use it on Wednesday due to checking into our house, and Friday we will already be in the park, this option was not necessary.

Is it not just crazy the idea of having to pay to queue early?

Summary

Before we finalized our itinerary, I wanted to look at one more option.

The current plan calls for:
– HHN on Wednesday
– 2-park day + HHN on Friday

The total cost for those two days would be $2071.32 for our family of five.

However, what if we skipped Wednesday, doing only Friday and adding Express Passes.

The cost for day ($1086.30) and evening ($532.45) tickets will run $1618.75. Adding on Express Passes for our Friday nights adds another $1064.95. Bringing the total to $2683.70…for one day! Yeah I can not justify the extra $600. I would much rather spread it out over the two nights.

In summary, we determined doing one evening Horror Nights tickets + one full day + evening tickets was the best strategy for our family. Everyone has their own preferences to what they feel comfortable spending versus the luxury it provides. When you scale in our family costs multiplying it by five, you can quickly see how the costs skyrocket and maybe are not as easy to swallow as those that might be single or a couple.

We are really excited to finally go to Hollywood Horror Nights and scratch off that bucket list item. Since we are not local, I can not see us outpouring this kind of cash again in the future when we get such great Halloween passes with HalloWeekends and Haunt at Cedar Fair parks thanks to our Cedar Fair season passes. Follow along on our sister site, the CPFoodBlog, for all things Cedar Fair related.

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First Visit to Waldameer Amusement Park

No matter what business you work in, one of the healthiest things one can do for their career is check out the competition. Often when working in the same position for an extended period of time, we can get fixed in our ways and fail to see the bigger picture of how things can be done differently, and perhaps even more efficiently.

As the long time curators of the CPFoodBlog.com, our family and team cross North America each year visiting Cedar Fair amusement parks since 2014. Our website has become the go-to resource for all things associated with food and beverage throughout the Cedar Fair chain. In addition, our heads are often crammed with all kinds of useless information in how the Cedar Fair parks are operated. Of course like all things, there are things the company does extremely well, and of course things that can be improved.

Often time working in an environment, we can see the problem, but perhaps the solution is out of reach either because of means and methods, or because we do not know any better.

That is where we love to visit other amusement parks and see how they operate. Are they clean? How are the operations? What are the things we really enjoyed as a paying guest, and where do we see the Cedar Fair parks already excel compared to their competition?

As a resident of Ohio, we have limited, albeit very good, amusement park options. It might sound weird, but the promised land actually resides over in Pennsylvania, with parks ranging in size from Hershey Park all the way down to little mom and pops amusement parks. Perhaps the reason Pennsylvania is of such interest to our family is because we have not been to many of them.

To date, we have visited:

Dorney Park
Hershey Park
Knoebels
Kennywood

So when we were trying to find a new local park to visit, we opted to check out Waldameer located in Erie, PA over the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Going into the trip, we knew very little about the park other than it was free to enter, and for guests wanting to partake in the attraction, they bought tickets to ride each or purchased an all-day wristband. Since it was our first time at the park, we opted to purchase the wristbands so we could ride as many of the attractions as possible and not have to worry about balancing how many tickets we had left for each ride.

Despite visiting over the busy Labor Day Saturday, the park is dealing with a shortage of staff like everywhere. As a result, the park did not officially open until noon. The nice thing about being a “free” amusement park is guests could purchase their tickets/wristbands and then roam the park ahead of the actual opening.

210904 Waldameer Ravine Flyer II

Our family started out the day on the famous Ravine Flyer II and were on the second train of the day. It was quite interesting to see that they only cycle the trains one time ahead of opening. If this had been a Cedar Fair park, they would have been cycling for an hour or more ahead of guests for the day, and that is only if there is enough staff to operate the attractions that early.

Ravine Flyer II was quite the unique roller coaster built in 2008 with some great elements like the bridge over the road and banked turn near the end. We all absolutely loved the smooth ride.

Next we immediately hustled over to check out the Whacky Shack dark ride. LOVED IT! Everything about the attraction was old school and cheesy, and the exact type of fun we had not seen in an amusement park in some time.

210904 Waldameer Wacky Shack

After we checked out the Pirate Cove, which is a walk through fun house attraction. Sadly I was disappointed in this attraction and expected to see more. We were probably half way through and I found myself asking where are the pirates? Luckily some started to appear near the end of the attraction. All for the classic attractions, just wish this one offered some more decorations and elements.

210904 Waldameer Pirate Cove

Next we went and checked out the Steel Dragon, which offers a unique take on a classic wild mouse style roller coaster. Normally I might be a little hesitant for anything spinning, but the Steel Dragon was incredibly smooth and not jarring like a normal wild mouse can be, thus making it a quite enjoyable attraction.

210904 Waldameer Steel Dragon

Sadly, the Waldameer log flume, Thunder River, was not in operation during our visit.

After a quick snack lunch, and the kids enjoying a couple of the flat rides, we made our way over to the Ferris Wheel followed by the Sky Ride.

210904 Waldameer Ferris Wheel

210904 Waldameer Sky Ride

We then closed out our visit by riding the Comet roller coaster (great little family wooden coaster), the train, their Music Express and Chaos rides. The Waldameer Music Express was quite unique as it included a “tunnel” effect, and the ride operator runs the attraction both forward and in reverse at very high speeds.

210904 Waldameer Comet

Following our visit to Waldameer, we then headed next door to eat at Sara’s. Local hot dogs, homemade fries, zucchini fries, onion rings and milkshakes made for a wonderful meal before driving back to Ohio.

210904 Sara's Erie PA

Overall, our family was quite impressed with our visit to Waldameer amusement park. Despite being a Saturday over Labor Day weekend, and with staffing of rides down, our longest wait of the day was for the Sky Ride at about 30 mins. While we understand why Cedar Fair does the things they do with seat belts, etc. to meet the requirements of certain safety certifications and thus insurance requirements, it is always so refreshing for our kids to ride some of the younger kid attractions and not have locking seat belts. The extra safety measures Cedar Fair makes ride associates go through can cause ride cycles to be very long and thus long lines. Waldameer was very good at getting people in, cycling, then off the attraction.

210904 Waldameer Landscaping Ravine Flyer II

The thing we noticed the most about Waldameer in general is the park was extremely clean and well maintained. Beautiful landscaping throughout the property.

The only negative we encountered throughout our entire day was the food staff was not the most friendly, and the food was anything but good. Although we only had some hot dogs, chicken tenders a burger and fries to hold us over till dinner, the meal was uninspiring.

The other interesting concept was how the attractions were accounted for with the tickets/wristbands. Each guest scanned their tickets (card) or wristband at the ride gate to confirm entry. We bring that up because Disney Parks are now testing the idea of not only charging admission to the park, but also up charging guests for each individual ride if they wish to “cut the line.” Either the plan is going to fail miserably, or if it catches on and comes to U.S. based parks, the Waldameer model presents an interesting opportunity. Cedar Fair parks do have scanners at select parks (i.e. Cedar Point) where Fast Lane is being used to verify validity of the wristbands. So it will be interesting to see how the business models develop over the coming years.

210904 Waldameer Wristband