Our Trip to Cedar Point, Kings Island, and Great Wolf Lodge

Our theme for 2020 was “spontaneous trips”. And so, when we looked at the calendar & realized that there was one weekend left – the very last weekend in August – before my wedding season kicked in in full force, we decided to make the most of it & take one last roller coaster riding trip. In reality though, this trip was a little more planned than some of our other “fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants” trips this summer (in other words, we actually booked our hotel rooms about 5 days in advance – which seemed SO far in advance considering that we booked our Dollywood trip less than 48 hours before we hit the road!)

We knew that this was going to be our last big trip of the year, so we decided to end it with a bang – a SECRET bang.

We left Thursday evening with the hopes of making it out to Sandusky, Ohio around sunset-time, and we were crossing our fingers that we would be able to go out on Cedar Point’s beach. Well, we made it there in time for a beautiful sunset – but the beach was closed unless you had a reservation & were staying on Cedar Point’s property. We knew that that might have been a possibility, but it didn’t stop us from trying. Oh well.

We got up bright & early the next morning & headed off to Cedar Point.

The beginning of the day was beautiful: blue skies with amazing massive, fluffy clouds. Literally, I just kept squealing over & over again about how excited I was for these clouds in my photos.

While we were at Cedar Point, we met up with another roller coaster YouTuber – Chris from Airtime Thrills. We’ve followed his channel for a long long time, so it was so much fun to meet in person & hang out for a bit (I know it’s hard to tell with the masks, but in the picture below, Chris is sitting in the very front row, with Derrick right behind him).

Words cannot even describe how thrilled I am to have caught THIS photo. It’s 100% real – no Photoshop done to the photo! You can see Chris in the front row & Derrick (with his hands up) behind him. We joked that the caption to this photo should be something like: “XscreamThrills trying desperately to catch up to Airtime Thrills’ YouTube subscriber count.” (That’s a joke, Derrick is just shy of 10k subscribers & Chris has over 40k)

Unfortunately, our gorgeous day came to a screeching halt when the rain finally caught up to us & storms descended on the area. Even though it was a short day – we still got in just as many rides as we did when Derrick & I had visited Cedar Point for a full day just a few weeks prior!

We left Cedar Point & drove over to Kings Island, where we spent the next day & a half.

We honestly had talked very seriously about leaving the park early. We were coming back the next day after all – it was hot & the kids were tired. Did we really need to stay late? We actually decided on leaving the park – but decided we’d do one more ride – and after that ride (and some ice cream), we decided to stick it out until at least sunset. And WOW, and I SO glad we did!

The last time we were at Kings Island, we were fortunate enough to see a gorgeous sunset, but this sunset was unlike anything I have ever seen before!!

After our second (part of a) day at Kings Island, it was time for our surprise. I honestly don’t know how we kept it from Braelynn the whole time – we were SO excited! We surprised the kids with a 2-night stay at Great Wolf Lodge (which happens to be right next door to Kings Island). Trust me, you want to watch the highlight video I posted to my YouTube channel (it’s at the top of this post) for Braelynn’s reaction to us pulling in – it’s absolutely priceless and something I am forever grateful to have caught on video!!

I truly can’t believe that the 2020 amusement park season has come to an end. It was SO SHORT – but we packed in way more than we ever thought we would! When everything got shut down at the beginning of this year – we were forced to toss all of our previous amusement park-ing plans out the window. In April & the beginning of May, we honestly wondered if we would be able to visit any amusement parks this year!

Thankfully, when things began to open back up at the beginning of July, we were able to take some super fun time off & hit up some fabulous new (and old) parks. We truly did way more than we had even hoped & I am so thankful.

Our Trip to Hersheypark
Our Trip to Dollywood, Holiday World, Kentucky Kingdom, and Kings Island
Going to an Amusement Park in 2020

And now, we just hunker down & wait for the spring of 2021.