HalloWeekends at Cedar Point: A Screaming Good Time

This may have been the coldest weekend so far this fall. So what did we do? Go spend all of Sunday out in the cold, of course!

When we went to Cedar Point back in August, we saw the signs for their HalloWeekends events and thought it would be fun to come back out and see the park all set up for Halloween. Halloween is one of my family’s favorite holidays: costumes, candy, spooky stuff – what’s not to love?

The weather, though, did not cooperate with our plans. It was cold and cloudy, and we decided quickly to ditch plans for letting the kids wear their Halloween costumes to Cedar Point. Layers of warm clothing were the costume of the day.

Despite the cold, HalloWeekends at Cedar Point was a lot of fun. The entire park was decorated in skeletons, pumpkins and monsters. There were Halloween-themed events all day long, as well as scary haunted houses for the older kids and grown ups later in the day. And of course most of the usual rides were open, too.

This time we took our sister-in-law and a friend of hers with us so that we could trade off kid-duty from time to time, giving Aaron and I the first chance to ride a roller coaster together in YEARS. (Seriously, super big thanks to you both!)

There are plenty of kid-friendly HalloWeekends events that are fun and not too scary. They have the Magical House on Boo Hill, which is a young kid version of a haunted house. It was mostly spooky decor with some slightly scary special effects, like a floating table, a kid-size organ that played by itself, and a skeleton who appeared and disappeared in a closet.

At the end of the house, the kids were all given a small bag of treats as a reward. I also liked that they had someone at the front door, keeping out older kids and teens who weren’t accompanying a smaller child.

Cordy and Mira also loved the hay maze and ran through it several times.

The HalloWeekends monsters came out a few times during the day to interact with kids and dance.

Cordy even followed along to learn the Thriller dance.

There was a costume contest for the kids, but we didn’t bring costumes due to the cold so we didn’t enter. At 4pm, the HalloWeekends parade came through the midway, filled with bands, dance teams, monsters, floats and of course the Peanuts gang. Even though there were monsters and zombies, the kids weren’t scared seeing them marching in a parade.

But of course the main attraction is still the rides, and Cedar Point has some of the best. Aaron and I were thrilled to ride the Raptor, a suspended coaster that has several loops in it. And thanks to shorter lines we were able to experience the 195 foot drop of the Magnum XL twice. (Back car, naturally. It’s a must for that roller coaster.)

The kids had plenty of fun in Camp Snoopy, too:

Cordy opted out of any roller coasters, even the Cedar Creek Mine Ride. Mira, still not quite tall enough for most of the roller coasters, was limited to the Iron Dragon (a suspended coaster with no loops) for her thrill experience. And she went on it three times. It would have been four, but a late day rain shower stopped her fourth attempt. Hopefully she’ll grow another inch by next year to gain access to several other roller coasters.

Aaron and I also went through one of the more scary haunted houses. It was appropriately spooky and we jumped several times as we wound our way through all of the tight spaces.

Despite the cold, we had a fantastic time. HalloWeekends still has all of the fun of any day at Cedar Point, with the addition of some great Halloween themed events and attractions. The decorations are amazing, the shows and haunted houses are fun, and I paused for a moment to pay tribute to the recently closed Disaster Transport in the Rides Graveyard.

HalloWeekends at Cedar Point is open Friday-Sunday through October 28.

Full disclosure: We received complimentary passes to attend Cedar Point. Parking, travel, food, and an amount of money I’d rather not discuss to win our kids two Pokemon toys in the games area were covered entirely by us.