Our Cedar Fair Park Tour Part 3: Kings Dominion and Money Saving Tips.

Welcome to part three of our Cedar Fair Park Tour adventure.  You can view the first two parts here:
Our Cedar Fair Park Tour Part 1: Kings Island and Cedar Point.
Our Cedar Fair Park Tour Part 2: Canada’s Wonderland, Niagara Falls, and Dorney Park.

Park 5/5: Kings Dominion, Doswell, Virginia.
“Virginia’s Premier Themed Amusement Park”

We got to visit this park on day 10 of the trip, and the park was celebrating being 40 years old.  We visited on Memorial Day weekend and were able to enjoy an army band performing some great songs in the park.  It reminds me that I’m grateful for our military and the sacrifices they make.

My favorite three intense rides:

1) Intimidator 305.  Ah, finally, a racing themed coaster that actually resembles a race track.  We got into the park early with our season passes and were able to ride this four times in a row before the ‘regulars’ arrived.  Although, I’m not sure I could have ridden nonstop for very long because this ride is just so intense.  This is the first ride that made me have tunnel vision from the forces, which is a bit alarming and disorienting.

I love how the first turn goes underneath the lift hill.  And the side to side turns on this ride are an absolute thrill; we even got air time on the turns!  How often does that happen?  The whole ride takes my breath away.

2) Volcano, The Blast Coaster.  Another unique ride; this ride was the first launched inverted roller coaster.  At this point I had finally come to understand how launch coasters are designed and I wasn’t quite as nervous about a potential roll backwards (see the story time on part 1).  You start out at the base of the volcano, get launched at 70 mph, make a large turn, and then you are launched to go straight up and roll out of the volcano summit.  This part of the track has the highest inversion in the whole park.  You stay up in the air for quite some time doing loose, easy rolls before dropping down to the side of the mountain.  There are thrills around every turn on this ride.

3) Dominator.  First we were intimidated, then we were blasted, and lastly we were dominated.  I think we waited longer for this ride than any other one during the whole trip.  The extra-long lines were surely a result of the holiday weekend.  This is a floorless coaster, the worlds longest one, that used to be located in Ohio.  It’s nice when you get to go upside down a lot, and this coaster does that with its cobra roll, corkscrews, and record-breaking vertical loop.

Favorite moderate thrill ride: Avalanche.  My first bobsled coaster experience and one of the last of its kind.  I personally think that the transition from regular track to bobsled chute is terrifying, but at least I got to sit close to Mr. Meena.  The ride goes around in circles with lots of sliding and bumping involved.

Photo by Jeremy licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Overall impression: Unfortunately, this was my least favorite park.  I was upset from the beginning because season pass holders are supposed to get in an hour early to enjoy the park and they let us in only 20 minutes early.  We actually booked a hotel at the last minute the night before for the sole reason of arriving early enough to take advantage of this.  We also wanted to get in early because we knew it would be a very busy day and had to drive back to Charlotte afterwards.  Not only did the park make us wait for 40 minutes for (seemingly) no reason, but once they let us in we couldn’t just walk straight to the first ride.  We were corralled into the longest route possible through the park since they blocked off some of the walkways.  This is why we only got to ride Volcano and Dominator one time – because the lines got too long before our limited time at the park was up.  We also walked in circles for a while because we couldn’t find Grizzly (you have to walk through the Dinosaurs Alive exhibit to find it).  What a terrible design!  It wasn’t even working when we finally found it.  I’m not planning to return anytime soon.

Trip Budget.

Two platinum season passes: $364.99
However, we would have renewed our annual Carowinds season passes for about $200 anyway, so I’m only counting this as an extra $164.99 as far as trip related expenses.

5 nights in hotels: $543.38
We stayed in two budget hotels and one mid-range, and spent four nights with various friends and family.

Food: $121.27 or $6 per person per day.
Gas: $152.62

Total: $982.26 or nearly $100 per day.

So, how we we manage this?

Our Money Saving Tips.

I learned a lot on this trip and I hope that it might help you to plan your next roller coaster vacation.

• Season passes (obviously). These passes covered the parking fees (which are anywhere from $10 to $25) and allowed us to re-enter each park on the trip as much as we wanted.  We went into the five different parks a total of eight times, bringing the cost down to $23 per person visit, approximately.  I would be very surprised if you could beat that price.  Plus, we used our season passes to visit our home park (Carowinds) on a weekly basis, making it even more worth the cost.
• Don’t eat in the park. The food is marked up to the point of ridiculous.  When you leave the park, you get a stamp on your hand or wrist that allows you to re-enter (in Canada we got a neat black light stamp).  You can usually find a cheap place to eat really close to the park and the whole process usually takes less than an hour.  The only time we eat in the park is if we are very limited in time and feel that it is worth it, like when we only had spent six hours at Canada’s Wonderland.
• Pay attention to your rewards. We used rewards from our credit card company to get gift cards that we knew we could use on the trip.  My favorite gift card to pick is the Olive Garden one.  Aside from amazing food, they have a good mobile ordering system; we could order while driving, pick up the food, and then go to our hotel to eat it.  This saved us money because we would buy just one meal with an appetizer and split everything (when you add in the complimentary bread sticks, it’s more than enough) and because we could tip a bit less for to-go orders than for in restaurant service.
• Plan to save. If someone gave us a gift card that could be used for food or gas, we set it aside for the trip.  We packed as much food as possible at the beginning of the trip, especially granola bars.  My birthday was right before the trip, and a lot of places give you a gift to use within one month of your birthday, so we used those rewards too.  I also took advantage of the season pass holder portal for each Cedar Fair park and looked at all of the associated discount programs.  You can get discounts for local tourist attractions and restaurants, for example I found a Wendy’s coupon on one of the sites.
• Use your smartphone. Want to go out to eat?  Why not use a groupon?  Most hotels will let you use a printer in the lobby or computer area.  You can also use your phone to find cheaper gas stations and hotel deals on the go.
• Stay in a Microtel. We tried it all on this trip.  We stayed with family, in a really cheap motel (it was a scary experience that I never wish to repeat), in a deluxe hotel, and in a low cost Microtel.  I really felt that the Microtel was the sweet spot.  It had all the qualities that I wanted in an overnight room: comfortable bed, no bugs, clean, and breakfast was included.  It was the best value for our money since we only had to sacrifice space, and we didn’t need much of that anyway – we were pretty much riding coasters or sleeping!
• Eat some real food.  Occasionally we would just stop at a grocery store and buy some produce or deli to-go meals instead of eating out.  Not only was this cheaper, but it made us feel better and usually was tastier.

This was the first long trip that Mr. Meena and I have taken together (even our honeymoon was only five days).  I think that every couple should strive to go on an adventurous trip where you focus on each other and the fun you are having together.  Long trips are also good to help reconnect and remember why you are with that person.  I feel that we were so fortunate to be able to take this trip and experience so many thrills along the way.

Thanks for reading – now go have an adventure!