Well, it's no secret that Cedar Point is up to something and just recently I took a look at a few of the clues and potential locations for their newest attraction. I'm still in the mindset that this will be some kind of dark ride. I just don't see the park adding a new coaster after spending $30million on Gatekeeper just last year and recent hints from the park definitely lean dark ride.
Just recently, the
official Cedar Point blog "On Point" released a series of pictures and a few stood out to not only myself, but also
+Carrie H.C. and
+Alexandra F as well. The first one in the series definitely caught my eye.
What looks to be just an unused building by the Blue Streak queue to many is actually the former home of another attraction from Cedar Point's past. In this case? A dark ride.
The Pirate Ride (yeah, we know, not really an original name) operated for a span of 30 years from 1966 until it's eventual closure in 1996. As you can see in the picture to the right, we're looking at the exact same location as pictured above.
Could be something to throw people off, but we're talking about a ride building that's been unused for nearly 20 years now. That's a little weird.
This could be the bigger clue.The next couple of pictures show ground markings. Yeah, I know, so exciting. But, the fact that we're looking at some kind of plastic pipes (PLAS) in the very area of an older ride gives some pause here and feels like something is about to change in the vicinity. Sure, it could just be coincidence but somehow I doubt that.
At first we thought the markings had something to do with water lines, but a little more examination has proven that to be wrong. These are in fact typically used for marking communications, alarms, signals, cables or conduits under the surface. The color is a little hard to make out and there's some debate over , but somehow I doubt there's any flammable lines running under the park here.
The bigger issue though, is that these are pretty far from the location above. These could have more to do with FUNtv than anything else.
The rest of the pictures from the blog post seem pretty random though a couple of things did catch our eye. One of them being a picture of a steel building that's right next to Gatekeeper. This one's a little confusing because I doubt they'll be removing it or putting in something new so close to the coaster, but weirder things have happened.
Now, I'm not 100% sure if this is the building that some people were referring to earlier or if it was the one that I pointed out
in the previous article about this. Either one could be the case, but I think if anything this one gets used for one of the mazes this fall.
I can't really see them doing much with it at all for a ride building since there's not much to it and that close to Gatekeeper would be very strange indeed. I don't care how tight they are on space, that's just not a good idea.
The last little tidbit
in the blog post was an interesting bit about not waiting century and the use of the word "mi", which is Italian for me. Now, we're not sure what they're up to with this one at all since from the looks of things Centurian or at least a Roman theme was planned for Carowinds, but at this point, it's hard to say just what they're up to at all.
My bet right now is whatever is coming to the park in 2015, leaning towards a dark ride of some kind still, that it will likely be either in or near the old Pirate Ride building. Until more clues and a date for the announcement becomes known, we'll continue to speculate and try to piece together the pieces. Stay tuned for more updates!
