Cedar Point set to reopen May 3 with revamped Top Thrill 2
When Cedar Point reopens on May 3, the Ohio amusement park's re-engineered and renamed roller coaster — Top Thrill 2, what ride enthusiasts like to call TT2 — is set to once again reign as the world's tallest ride.
"It's been a long winter, but the entire Cedar Point team is ready to once again welcome guests," Colleen Murphy-Brady, Cedar Point's vice president of park operations, announced Monday. "We can't wait to see them here again!"
TT2 opened last year, but at the time was No. 2 — and beset by problems.
And those eager to ride Siren's Curse, another record-breaking thriller at the park, which was announced last fall with much fanfare and is still under construction, will have to continue to wait a few more weeks.
The park said that Siren's Curse, billed as "North America's tallest, fastest, and longest tilt roller coaster," is set to debut in the summer. Officials did not give a specific date.
More: Cedar Point, much-anticipated new Top Thrill ride, opens Saturday with new rules
Near Sandusky, the vacation destination off Lake Erie is now the second-oldest operating amusement park in America and has long been associated with record-breaking, gravity-defying rides that remind visitors that they are still alive.
Visits to the park have long been a rite of passage, a badge of courage, and a favorite summer camp outing.
Cedar Point announced some minor park upgrades that would be open Saturday, including new eateries — a "star-spudded" Happy Friar fresh-cut fry joint, and a Famous Dave's Restaurant — and a new lineup of live entertainment.
Last year, Cedar Point's owner, Cedar Fair, merged with Six Flags to form one of the nation's largest theme park companies, with dozens of theme parks, water parks, and resort properties throughout North America.
Known as Top Thrill Dragster when it opened in 2003, TT2 was the first roller coaster built to be over 400 feet tall and, at the time, was the tallest roller coaster and fastest coaster in the world.
Both records were broken in 2005 by Kingda Ka in New Jersey.
By 2010, Formula Rossa at Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, debuted, breaking the world speed record.
But late last year, however, Kingda Ka permanently closed, leaving TT2 as the tallest coaster again.
That distinction, however, is being threatened again by Falcons Flight, a new roller coaster at Six Flags Qiddiya in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that is expected to become the world's tallest, fastest, and longest thrill ride when it opens later this year.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Cedar Point set to reopen May 3 with revamped Top Thrill 2
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Tom Brady Turns Heads With Career Announcement on Wednesday
Tom Brady Turns Heads With Career Announcement on Wednesday originally appeared on Athlon Sports. After finishing his NFL playing career with a league record seven Super Bowl wins, former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady didn't stay away from football for too long. Advertisement Two seasons after his retirement, Brady made his broadcasting debut with Fox Sports in 2024, joining Kevin Burkhardt and sideline reporter Erin Andrews. He even called the Super Bowl in his first season in the booth. Adding to his many off-field ventures, Brady launched his own organic, vegan gummy brand, GOAT Gummies. On Wednesday, he announced that the products are now available exclusively through Gopuff with a dual post on Instagram. "Don't be like artificial Tom," Gopuff wrote. "Get GOAT gummies. Only on Gopuff." The post featured a video of "organic" Brady alongside a more jacked, 'artificial' version of himself, with the two engaging in a goofy back-and-forth conversation. Advertisement "What you put in your body matters," organic Brady said. "That's why I made GOAT gummies. Clean, organic and delicious... Good gummies are made with real ingredients." NFL fans took notice of Brady's newest career move, leaving their thoughts in the Instagram post's comment section. "That one took me to my knees," one fan wrote. "Now this is good Marketing😂," another wrote. "This is not the marketing strategy I expected from Tom Brady 😂," another wrote. "Why do I feel like artificial Tom Brady is just Gronk? 😂," a fan wrote. Advertisement "Artificial tom brady would have been #1 targeted receiver for organic tom," another wrote. "Epic💪🏼," a fan wrote. Fox Sports announcer Tom J. Rebilas-Imagn Images The official release of GOAT Gummies features three flavors: Sweet Rush, Sour Burst and Tropic Fusion. In a recent interview with Forbes, Brady also revealed that more products are potentially coming through Gopuff. "I met the founders (GoPuff) and they knew my background in health and wellness," Brady said. "We wanted to develop some products that we thought the consumer would love, and we found this unique product. It's the first product I've developed with them and there's more to come." Advertisement Related: Travis Kelce Makes Chiefs Decision on Tuesday This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
USA Today
19 hours ago
- USA Today
Did Patriots tease major uniform change for 2025 season?
Did Patriots tease major uniform change for 2025 season? Are the New England Patriots teasing a uniform change for the 2025 season? Fans are asking the question following footage of players wearing grey game pants instead of the navy bottoms for their pictures at Wednesday's media day. The Patriots wore the grey pants throughout the Tom Brady era. That look has become synonymous with the previous success of the franchise that won six Super Bowls in Brady's near 20-year run. You can trace the origin of the look as far back as 1993, when the Flying Elvis era began. The Patriots moved to the navy bottoms to kick-start the post-Brady era in 2020. However, one has to wonder if they are considering a more permanent comeback for the grey pants. A change in uniform isn't going to magically make the Patriots a better football team, but there's hope they can draw on history and tradition to aid in their confidence in 2025. Perhaps that would be enough to help them get back to their winning ways. Follow Patriots Wire on Twitter and Facebook.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
How Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady Took ‘Fearless' Swings with ‘#1 Happy Family USA'
On June 5, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2025 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for some of the most impressive and engaging work of this TV season. Curated and selected by IndieWire's editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind television well worth toasting. We're showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event. Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady were big fans of each other who had never met — and as soon as they did, they started to work together on a television show. The duo teamed up for A24 and Prime Video's '#1 Happy Family USA,' an animated series about a Muslim family in post-9/11 America that 'has no business being as funny as its first season proves to be.' More episodes are on their way, thanks to a two-season order from the streamer, and Youssef and Brady will receive this year's Spark Award for animation at this season's IndieWire Honors. More from IndieWire Sheryl Lee Ralph Remembers Sidney Poitier's Early Support: 'I Expect Great Things from You' 'Squid Game' Creator Teases Potential Spinoff: 'I Want to Show What They Did' Between Seasons 1 and 2 As a millennial stand-up and creator of his own show, Youssef was (of course) influenced by 'South Park,' which he describes as an ''Oh shit' moment' breakthrough about the possibilities of animation and 'the crazy things that you could say when it's just coming out of like little animated children's mouths.' Brady had been impressed by Youssef's work and begged her manager to set up a meeting, just to 'understand how [his] mind worked.' She played it cool when he asked her about working together, while inside she was freaking out. She wasn't alone. As the show went into pre-production — and production and post-production — Youssef said that at the studio, 'everyone, at every time' was nervous about how it would go ('including right now'). 'It's so interesting, because the show is in a lot of ways about fear, but working with Ramy, the creative process was pretty fearless,' Brady told IndieWire. 'It didn't feel like we were being provocative for no reason, just to be provocative. We were just telling the story. We're exploring a 12-year-old boy's mentality at a really tough time, and the fact that it felt true gave us the confidence to push it.' 'In a lot of ways, making an animated show was less daunting than making a live-action show that was not only dealing with things that were sensitive to me, but also using my face and my name and all that stuff,' Youssef said, referencing Hulu's award-winning 'Ramy.' 'To go into something that's like, 'He's just a cartoon' actually felt way more liberating, and felt like let's just fucking throw it at the wall.' Early on, the show brought Youssef back to his stand-up roots, riffing on a joke with an audience — the writers room — for immediate feedback and finessing. The comprehensive process of animation allowed them to be what Brady calls 'joke maximalists' in terms of fine tuning something for as long as possible. 'In live action, we do so much iterating, but at a certain point you go home with the footage, and that's just what it is,' said Youssef. 'Here, as long as you don't need to move a background, that mouth is yapping and moving. You could have it say whatever the hell you want it to say, pretty much up until the last day.' Each episode of '#1 Happy Family USA' opens with a cheeky disclaimer. They're rated H for haram, and not intended to serve as cultural representation. It started as just that — a humorous insurance policy for Youssef, whose work is often tasked with speaking for large swathes of the Arab and Muslim community — and grew into a reliable running joke. 'It started from the sincere place, and then became this really funny runner where every episode we list off the things we're not representing,' he said. 'So immediately there's a joke as the episode starts, but then you also kind of know what we're about to satirize, and you go, 'Oh, well, how's that going to happen?'' '#1 Happy Family USA' goes to some pretty surreal places — the code switching, the talking lamb, the musical interludes, and, of course, George W. Bush — but that's not unusual for animation, or indeed for those familiar with Youssef's work. The series grew from the same seed that informed Episode 104 of 'Ramy,' a 9/11 flashback with a strawberry-loving Osama Bin Laden hallucination. Breaking that particular story, Youssef said, showed him that 'there's this whole era here. The best parts of the live-action episode were very surreal, and then I got really inspired by pushing it even further and taking it into something that was animated.' In the show, Youssef also voices the young Rumi Hussein, and his father Hussein — a deliriously entertaining track that Brady pushed for. 'If I look back, probably my favorite thing about making this show is finding that character of Hussein Hussein. I think he's the heartbeat of the show,' Youssef said. 'There's a depth to the idea that that Ramy as a kid lived through 9/11 as a 12 -year-old, and now he's playing it as a 12-year-old but also seeing the experience through a father's eyes,' said Brady. The show excels because it sees the world through Rumi's eyes, or Hussein's, or sister Mona (Alia Shawkat) or mother Sharia (Salma Hindy). Consider Rumi's dalliance with illegally downloading music, which puts him on the radar of a not-so-mysterious pen pal known as Curious_George_Bush43! By the end of the season, President George W. Bush arrives at the family's doorstep, masquerading as Rumi's friend while barely concealing his sinister intentions. 'What's so great about getting to know his character through Rumi is that he just gets to be a mischievous adult, who at first is like, 'Hey, I'm your pal,' until the other shoe drops,' said Youssef. 'I think kids have that experience of adults: 'Hey, you're a really good kid. You get to do this, but first you got to do your homework,' or whatever the kid doesn't want to do. But in this case it's the President of the United States, and he wants to implicate this kid in his global fight on terror.' 'We also wanted to make sure we didn't present him in the way that he's just this boob and this puppet, because we all felt pretty clearly that he knew exactly what he was doing,' said Brady. 'We just wanted to show him being a bastard to Rumi, and show this guy is not your friend.' As for the central family, Brady said, 'The thing that's funny about 'South Park' that people don't talk about that much is it's a story about four best friend boys. At its core, it's very sentimental — not in the bad way, but it's about friendship. That's why you can get crazy, because you buy their relationship. [This show,] at its core, it's showing the the bonds of the family.' Youssef likes to start broad with his humor and then add layers of specificity. He gives a perfect example: in the show's pilot, there is a crisis over where to bury Rumi's grandfather (Azhar Usman), a crisis which culminate in Uncle Ahmed (Elia) being arrested at the airport on the morning of September 11, 2001. 'You have this family that is so loving they really care where their dead relative is about to be buried, but then there's so much dysfunction that the body has to be stolen,' he explained. 'That is its own can of worms, before you even add on the layer that they're Arab and Muslim and add on what happens at the airport. What would it look like for this family to have a dead body at the airport on 9/11? That is a very wild thread to connect, and is emblematic of the kind of things we try to pull off on the show.' It's clear that Youssef and Brady take pride in the show, as much as the artist's impulse often leans toward self-criticism. They've also got the second season coming, and were thrilled to draw on a well of ideas that supplied both installments. Brady is happy with with the audience response, and hopeful that a show like this one won't always feel so radical. For Youssef, it's a welcome addition to a diverse body of work. 'I'm finding that this animated show is sitting with different fans in different ways, and that's really cool,' he said. 'There are people who love 'Ramy,' and then there are other people who go, 'Yeah, 'Ramy' was OK, but I really like 'Mo,'' and then there's people who are like, 'Hey, this is my favorite thing you've done.' I find all of that really exciting. You just get to learn more about different things that that can connect in different ways.' '#1 Happy Family USA' is now streaming on Prime Video. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
