We had our third yummy breakfast and let the kids have a swim.  John’s status as a Preferred Member of the IHG group meant we had late check out options and though we’ve never used them before we did this time. 

I enjoyed the patio a few minutes.

We stopped at a Pizza Hut outside Buffalo where the exceedingly friendly waitress showed us the smartest way to order fancy pizzas and we had fun trying new things.

Do you SEE that cheesy goodness????

It was short, and occasionally painful, but it was good to get away.
It can’t always be cruises and castles… as long as we’re together it is magnificent.

Was so awful.

Awful.

Awful.

Another yummy breakfast and to the park in no time.
I’d pre-purchased as much as possible to make our transactions smoother and to promote healthy exchange rates.

The day was not smooth.

Here – I shall cut/paste my review from TripAdvisor for your reading pleasure:

No way would I go again.

I hadn’t been there in more than 17 years, and I had fond memories of my frequent visits as a child. I can’t even. It was so unpleasant.

I purchased tickets, parking, meals, and refillable soda cups online a few days before our trip. This saved us some money.

We arrived just prior to park opening. We had no issue with our pre-purchased parking or admission.

By 3:30 P.M. I was sitting on the ground outside guest relations sobbing.

I am a Level 6 Contributor not prone to hyperbole. We travel often and I have a very upbeat outlook.

The park was tremendously busy. Very, very busy. Hideously busy.
And the park was tremendously understaffed. Very, very understaffed. Hideously understaffed.

I’m not sure what they should have done, except to quit admitting people to the park claiming full capacity based on the paltry staffing. The load/unload cycle at the rides was just awful. They also had only one or two vehicles in circulation on many of the rides. Not that I felt they had enough staff to keep more than the minimum going.

Our eldest has a number of food allergies. Prior to visiting CW, I thoroughly read their website which not only includes a information on dining with allergies in the Dining section, but they go so far as to recommend certain establishments in the park for certain allergies. As our biggest concern is nut allergies we used that as a guide. We found a restaurant that accepted our pre-paid meal deals on the list of nut-free restaurants. We waited 65 minutes in line. It was a fiasco. First we were told by not one, but two employees that they did not have ingredient lists for their food. (Is that even legal? It is not in US.) Then they *found* packaging labels for some products (not all, mind you) and these labels boldly claimed they were not peanut-free/tree nut-free. Really.

My son ate a 2.5″ square hunk of chicken and a coke… for $15.99 prepaid.

After the almost two hours it took to order, receive and eat our food we headed back out to the lines of the rides. My family got settled into lines (looooooong lines) and I headed to see if I could start figuring out what we could do for dinner food. After three more kiosks where they could not tell me what ingredients were in their foods, I was encouraged to go to guest relations.

The line was out the door.

It took 19 minutes for it to be my turn to speak with one of the representatives. It was a Very Busy Day in that office. I should know. I was in there for 65 minutes. NOW – to be completely fair, the men and women in that office were superb. There were some Very Crazy Requests being made of them. (For example, teens who lost their group, but didn’t have even the name of the group they were with much less a contact number expected Guest Services to help them find whom they had lost???) The guest service people were so patient and helpful and upgraded dozens of season passes, and corrected scores of over charges, and issues parking permits by the handful. I had asked if there was someone who perhaps oversaw dining in the park whom I could speak with to shore up a plan for later in the day. She took my question and left… for almost an hour. I saw a TON in that time. Sadly, when she returned she suggested he eat a salad.

I will never go back. Ever. The infrastructure in the park was so miserable. We love to travel and we love amusement parks, but I have very little confidence in CW and Cedar Fair as a whole right now.

The one saving grace was that the exchange rate is outstanding right now, so when we got home and looked on our credit card statement the numbers were slightly less painful to look at.
PLEASE NOTE – if you purchase a one-meal-deal it includes an entrée, side and beverage. Every place we went wanted to argue and say the beverage was not included. We had to point it out on the print out each time.

Also – if you purchase the refillable soda cup, please note there are only certain places they can be refilled and the lines are long and they are “self-serve” but you have to have your cup scanned first.

OH – And there was no ice to be found anywhere after 2 P.M.

Six minute swan ride had a 50 minute wait. 

We finally found Stewart safe pizza at 6:30 P.M.  Too bad there were no cold beverages to drink along side.

Room temp Coca-Cola is nasty.

I want to time warp back to last week and make other plans. 

Hotel and miserable beds around 11:00 P.M.

“Say goodnight, Gracie.”

With no major vacation on the radar AND the exchange rate of USD to CAD as favorable as it is right now, we decided to make a quick trip up to Toronto for a long weekend. 

We hit the road after lunch.  Stewart had his first bout of Thruway driving.

And I had my first pop since Easter.

The ride was smooth until we hit a bit of traffic just west of our hotel north of the city.  We settled in and drove south to the city.

The kids got their first taste of city-city traffic and I saw just how much Toronto has changed in 15 years.

We found parking easily enough down.

We had dinner at an olde favorite of John and I: The Olde Spaghetti Factory.

Service was slow, but polite and the food was decent and comfortably priced. 

We took the long way back to the hotel to take in some of the wildlife lights.

And were glad to try out the pool area. 
It was so warm and the water was a neat combination of chlorine and salt water???

We found our beds around 10 P.M.  And to say they were cozy would be an ugly lie!  Although the rest of the hotel was amazing, the beds felt like sticks and hay stuffed into a giant Ziploc.  Yes.  They were that bad.