Rank Your Cedar Fair Parks

[lauren]

Well, I've only visited two of the Cedar Fair parks, Cedar Point and Canada's Wonderland, so it's really a comparison between the two.

1. Canada's Wonderland - I have some obvious bias with CW being my home park, and I visit there a lot. The coasters are not amazing, though I love Leviathan and some of the flats. The atmosphere, especially with the fountains/mountain in the entrance plaza is really nice. Bonus points for admission to the water park being included in the normal pass.
2. Cedar Point - I visited only a few days ago, and I think my expectations were too high going in. They have an amazing coaster selection, and some great quality coasters (Raptor was a welcome break from the SLC at CW). The rides were walk on because the local area schools had started. However, I happened to visit on a hot day so I really noticed the how few trees there were in some areas/amount of concrete everywhere, and just the lack of landscaping compared to other parks i've visited. I ran into some nasty ride ops who seemed like they didn't really care about their jobs. I'm hoping I just visited on a bad day.

 

[Jake]

1) Canada's Wonderland - Huge variety of creds (even though most of them are pants) and some really unique flats. The operations are really good and it's not offensive to look at.

2) Gilroy Gardens - Garlic Jail and the Artichoke Vagina <3 <3

3) Knott's Berry Farm - don't understand the hate really, everything is decent apart from Ghostrider and the Boomerang and I thought it felt clean and fresh.

4) Dorney - Similar to Knott's but much grubbier.

5) Kings Dominion - Meh.

6) California's Great America - from the second I walked in to the second I walked out, I felt like dog **** was being rubbed repeatedly in my face.

 

[Jarrett]

Thought this topic could get a lot of use out of a second chance now that the season's winding down and I'm sure some of us have been to new ones to add to our rankings.

Cedar Point- It's an island dominated by coasters, what's not to like? This park has it all. Great rides, great location, and it's easy to stay near the park.
Canada's Wonderland- What a beautiful park! I think this is the prettiest of the Cedar Fair parks next to Knott's with all the water around it and all the rides that interact with it, Wonder Mountain is such a beautiful structure, it has by far the best main street entrance I've ever seen, and Leviathan and Behemoth are amazing! Wonder Mountain's Guardian was also a brilliant addition and I loved the freefall drop. Two things I have to knock it on are the ride lineup (it has a good variety of rides but some of them are absolutely vile) and their Action Zone area not looking very nice. But I really liked it. Crowds forced me to forfeit four creds, though, so I have an excuse to do it all again!
Kings Island- My home park would have been much lower on this list until very recently. It has my favorite hyper, favorite invert (which is my #4), and the best night ride anywhere. Not to mention a pretty awesome Arrow suspended and some nice theming in some parts.
^ Carowinds- This Cedar Fair park really improved since my last visit in 2011, but it still has a long way to go. Fury is absolutely amazing, the entrance is really nice, and I was getting this vibe that they were trying to renew focus on quality. Harmony Hall's also very nice, and they have a really nice lineup of flagships with Little Timmy, Fury, and Afterburn.
Knott's Berry Farm- I feel like I caught this park on a bad day because I got spited on Xcelerator, Ghostrider, and Pony Express but this park doesn't feel like a Cedar Fair park one bit. The theming is by far the most immersive and beautiful of any Cedar Fair park. It lacks a bit in the ride lineup but it's not for enthusiasts, it's for families. However, Silver Bullet is a nice, smooth, solid invert and Sierra Sidewinder totally blew me away with how crazy it was. I totally forgot I was in metropolitan LA at this park, I'd love to take the family here someday. Maybe I'll win those plane tickets from the KI contest. I'm still kicking myself for rushing through such a fab park and not doing the train or stagecoach.
Kings Dominion- Gross park! Some of the rides are okay (I-305 ROCKS and Volcano is a top 20-er for me but not much other than that). Granted, like KBF, I hit it on a bad day and got spited on over half the creds, but the only major one was Dominator and after riding Scream, I'm convinced I didn't miss much. It's hard to get around, it's ugly, the area it's in didn't seem to be very accommodating, and it had some of the worst park food I've ever eaten.
Dorney Park- I had fun when I was there, don't get me wrong, but this park has a plethora of issues. If you go on a weekend be prepared for an absolute parking nightmare; they have to funnel cars in one at a time because the drivers there are so insane that it's caused multiple accidents, and in order to keep things safe it takes 30 minutes to park your car. Once you're in the park, some of the clientele is awful, it's insanely bland, those electromagnet station gates are annoying, and everything bar Hydra and Steel Force is meh to offensive at best. Not to mention Stinger's rapped safety announcement. Like I stated, Karly and I had an awesome time, it was a fun day, but for Cedar Fair's recent quality-based approach, it felt like this park had been left in the dust a long time ago.

 

[Sythe]

1. Cedar point, amazing park! I loved it.
2. Kings Dominion, it's close, but cedar point just has too many more amazing coasters.
3. Canada's Wonderland, I really liked this park, although leviathan, behemoth, and mindbuster are the only rides there I really like... If they hadn't removed skyrider it might have ranked higher tho ._.

 

[CedarMan1996]

1. Cedar Point
2. King's Island
3. Carowinds
4. Canada's Wonderland
5. Knott's
6. Worlds of Fun
7. King's Dominion
8. Dorney
9. Valleyfair
10. Michigan's Adventure
11. Cal. Great America

 

[CarolinaRider]

Asterisk denotes parks I have visited.

1. Canada's Wonderland
2. Cedar Point*
3. Kings Island
4. Kings Dominion
5. Knott's Berry Farm
6. Worlds of Fun
7. Carowinds*
8. California's Great America
9. Dorney Park
10. Valleyfair
11. Michigan's Adventure

 

[gavin]

Since it's been bumped, I'll add to this. Bear in mind that the original list was done over three years ago, with the parks at the time having been visited three years before that. I'll shove newer parks in italics with a couple of notes for older ones.

1. Canada's Wonderland - Great selection of rides including a really good suspended coaster and my favourite B&M hyper, Behemoth. Yeah, there's some **** there as well (the invert is APPALLING), but the cool selection of flats make up for those. I'm yet to ride Leviathon as well, so I'm sure the park will go even further up in my estimations if/when I get back there.

2. Cedar Point - Far, far, far from the BEST PARK IN THE WORLD!!!!!!! but I had a great day there. Really enjoyed TTD and Magnum, Maverick was good but overrated, Mantis was a lot better than expected, everything else was a bit crap though. Gatekeeper and Valravn are new since then and the RMC could potentially push this place above CW

3. Kings Island - Really liked Beast, Diamondback was very good, Flight of Fear and Flight Deck were both fun. The new woodie looks decent, but that and Banshee are probably not enough to move it up.

4. Knott's Berry Farm - I had a great day here after expecting it to be awful. Xcellerator was fab and Silver Bullet was better than expected, but nothing else really stood out coasterwise. The log flume and mine ride were fab though: very non-CF.

5. Kings Dominion - Similar to Kings Island really; I always get them mixed up to be honest. Really enjoyed Dominator and Volcano. Again, Flight of Fear was fun. I actually quite liked Grizzly as well. Didn't rate Intimidator 305 though, and the stand up is atrocious. F**k all new since I've been, so it probably deserves moving down.

6.Valleyfair - Very similar to World's of Fun really when thinking about coasters. Renegade was fantastic, probably better than Prowler, but not by much. Wild Thing was better than Mamba, but then Patriot of WoF was better than the rest of the filler at VF.

7. Worlds of Fun - Two great coasters (Patriot and Prowler), but nothing else to really speak of.Again, nothing added since my visit. Looking back, I think I was being generous before based on having a decent day there.

8. Michigan's Adventure - One excellent and one very good woodie, but nothing else of any note really, other than an SLC which wasn't dreadful. A pleasant park though, but definitely needs some investment.

9. Dorney Park - Talon was very good. Steel Force and Possessed were ok. Everything else was crap and the place has zero atmosphere. Can only have got worse since then with zero new additions.

10. Carowinds - My least favourite park from all the ones I've visited in the USA, apart from perhaps that Rye Playland s**thole. f**king dreadful park. Relocate Afterburn, which is a fantastic coaster, to a better park (ie, any park at all) and then just drop a bomb on the place.See below; I've now been to worse. I reckon Fury would easily boost this place up by at least three places by now.

11. California's Great America - Vile s**thole with not a single redeeming feature. Hated everything about the place. S**t rides with s**t operations from s**t ride staff and lying s**theads in customer relations. My worst major park by a long, long way. Cedar Fair should be f**king embarrassed.

Just realsied by adding to the list that I've actually done all but one of their parks, Gilroy Gardens. Had no idea I'd done that many of them; I thought there must've been a few more.

 

[Hyde]

^ I forgot about your dedicated Michigan's Adventure trip - glad to hear it was a relatively good experience.