Cedar Hell
So I recently returned after three months working at Cedar Point for the 2010 season, America's self-appointed 'Rockin Roller-coast'.
This blog will detail why - if you are considering working there - you should stay well away from this deserted Alcatraz masquerading as an amusement park. For 3 months I was caged in this prison, without contact with the outside world, forced to work an inhumane amount of hours for minimum wage. Employees risked being fired if they published pictures of any kind on Facebook and all emails sent out were checked and censored incase anything bad was said. Cedar Point tried their best to silence their employees via a set of iron rules but now that I'm finally free of it all I can share my experiences with the world courtesy of that classic feature of democracy: freedom of speech.
The following are accounts of my own experiences on this depressing peninsula of despair. I will tell you everything you need to know - and the things Cedar Point don't want you to know.
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
"The Fun & Only" and "America's Rockin' Roller-coast" are but two of the oft repeated phrases Cedar Point advertises to the outside world. It works. Around 3 Million people visit Cedar Point every year, and many of these guests will return for repeat visits. The same can't be said for its employees - of whom I was one. But why was it so bad? You have no idea. Everything at Cedar Point is designed to completely screw-over its employees - especially if you're an international travelling to America from thousands of miles away like myself. But I'll save that until later on.For now, let's break explain why you should stay away - and more.
First Impressions
Cedar Point is a great place to visit for a day if you're a guest. The weather's 'great' (explained later on) and there's a ton of Rollercoasters. The prices are somewhat extortionate but hey it has a beach (entirely fake and man made - they even use tractors with rakes to recreate tidal wave marks), waterparks and s**t! You can even rent a Jet-Ski and go out on Lake Eerie. Beard of Zeus! But behind the scenes of this idyllic Eden of Rollercoasters lies a murky employee underworld.First impressions of Cedar Point weren't great. The novelty you're working there soon wears off. In my case as soon as I checked in. Having travelled thousands of miles with the understanding I wouldn't be living in Hilton-grade accommodation, it was foolish of me to arrive thinking I'd have bedsheets and a pillow! I checked in, entered my room and was greeted by a bare plastic mattress. Alright, I thought, I'll go and get some stuff to sleep with I'm pretty tired after flying thousands of miles. The guy behind the desk says Cedar Point doesn't provide bed sheets or pillows.
I spent my first night lying under a beach towel using my hooded jumper as a pillow. The next day I ask a completely different person at the front desk where to get some things to sleep with, where I'm then told I can buy them from Cedar Point. He points me to a door which leads to an old back room full of covers/sheets and 'blankets' - but no pillows. Although I couldn't buy a pillow I could however buy a pillow case. But no pillow. Um, yeah. I buy a cover for my bed and something to sleep under. I say something because this thing isn't a blanket/duvet/whatever it's called where you're from - this thing was last seen in the trenches or on Tom Hanks' back in Saving Private Ryan. It would have been ideal had I been storming the beaches of Omaha, but I wasn't. The water from a bottle I once spilt on it rolled straight off it - that sort of material, really scratchy and itchy.
The Area & Transportation
Cedar Point is built on a peninsula near Sandusky, Ohio. To its employees however, it feels more like it is built on the fringes of Hell itself, and not just because of the heat. Temperatures regularly reached the mid-high nineties. A typical day at Cedar Point was 98 degrees Fahrenheit - a cool 36 degrees Celsius. Every single day. For 3 months. On certain days the humidity factor rose the mercury on thermometers to over 100 Fahrenheit or 38 Celsius. |
| Depths of Hell |
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| Cedar Point |
The point of this is that if, like me, you hate it when you spontaneously combust, then don't come to Cedar Point. I've worked with people from all around the world - from South America to Asia and the Far East - and none of them had experienced heat like it. For a person working outside it was unbearable - although you will get some sweet tan lines.
The area itself is non de-script. If pushed into using a word to describe the area I would probably say deserted. You see Cedar Point itself is pretty far from the 'place' or area where all the stores are. This necessitates the use of some mode of transport and this is where the problems just begin.
Cedar Point does operate a bus service that will take you to the Mall or Walmart for instance, but the problem is that buses operate to these locations every 2/3hours. What's that? You decided to use some of your (rare) day off and go shopping? You finished your shopping in 75 minutes? Well then I've got some bad news for you - you're stuck for almost another hour and a half - sometimes more. Towards the end of season the time between buses increased up to 5 hours. You're just going to have to entertain yourself for that time.
Alternatively you could become friends with an American who owns a car and has the same day-off as you.Cedar Point needs more - and regular- buses. Period. It's infrastructure is shocking. Given that the surrounding area is so hostile this is a necessity, which brings me on to my next point.
The area around where all the 'stores' are is completely hostile to pedestrians. What I mean by this is unless you have a car, you're screwed. Sure, it has a Walmart and even a (tiny) Mall where some dude from Twilight went to sign books (why he chose Sandusky no-one will ever know), but they're all along a stretch of highway. The distance between Walmart and the Mall for instance is well over 1 mile. Unless you mind the exercise feel free to walk between the two with your heavy groceries. Did I mention there isn't a pedestrian walkway/sidewalk/pavement? Enjoy the walk across some of the biggest and most deserted car parks you will ever see (I'm convinced there aren't even that many cars in Sandusky itself), and overgrown grassland. You can always just walk along the highway though.
The shoddy transport system only adds to the feeling that you are a prisoner at Cedar Point. It is strictly forbidden to walk the road that connects Cedar Point to the Mainland. It's not that it's unsafe - they just don't want you to leave. The only way you are leaving Cedar Point is in a company bus, friends car or taxi. Even if you could walk it there's a whole lot of nothing for miles around you. Sidenote: the Taxi system in the area is worse than the bus-system. Be ready to order Taxis up to an hour in advance, wait and have them never show up because they got a better call. There aren't Taxi companies in Sandusky, there are Taxis (i.e. a single person operating as a taxi in their own car and advertising in the local Yellow Pages). If you're foreign, be prepared to be ripped off or ditched for calls where the people are easier to reach.
The Housing
Housing at Cedar Point was perhaps the worst experience of my time there. As there are a lot of people, housing is broken down into three 'sites'. There's 'Commons' (co-ed, mostly inhabited by Americans, off-site about 15 minute bus ride), 'Cedars' (all male dorms, mostly internationals, on-site outside park) and 'Golds' (all female dorms, mostly internationals, on-site outside park). |
| Cedars |
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| 'Commons' |
For me however, it was a different story. I stayed in Cedars and don't be fooled by the fact it's a converted Hotel. The place is as old as Cedar Point and fittingly falling to pieces. The rooms have no Air Conditioning meaning it gets very hot, no cable TV, no bug-screen and no wireless internet (except in the common area - except unlike Commons you're screwed unless you own a laptop. Commons provides the PC's for you). The place felt like a prison both literally and figuratively.
With nowhere to cook meals except for 3 microwaves at the main desk, night-time in Cedars is a battle for a microwave so you get to eat for the night. With everyone finishing work at the same time, this is literally true and with tens of people watching you and the microwave intently, incredibly uncomfortable. Consider making a 'microwave friend' or two so you can help each other out, because it is literally an all-out for a space in the microwave. I hope you like noodles, pizza and burritos and chips (crisps) because that's all the built-in 'store' sells and all you'll be eating at night. Dig in.
It's the same deal in Golds (the all female equivalent). Rooms in both sites are easily and often filled with bugs of all kinds. Many of the rooms have no bug-screen so don't open your window for the day while you're at work - I learnt that the hard way. Bedbugs and Scabies are commonplace at Employee Housing. One Cedar Point veteran with a considerable number of years service I spoke to - who shall remain anonymous - said there was on average one outbreak of Scabies every year, consistently. A girl I knew who lived in Golds shared her bed with bedbugs and the machine to get rid of them is located at Commons so only Commons residents get the benefit of this.
***The Following Images are actual pictures taken from Golds Dorm of Bedbugs. Feel free to click on the image to zoom in on those bad boys***
If you want to do laundry, I hope you know someone with a laundry card and/or a car because in order to use the laundry machines you must have a card....the only problem is these cards are for sale in one location: Bayside (also employee housing but not mentioned here). At least a 15 minute drive from the on-site dorms.
Back to the on-site dorms. They have no built-in air conditioner like Commons, so get ready to buy a fan and drag it back to your room from Walmart somehow. Shower facilities consist of a metal separator similar to those found in toilets/bathrooms and a green shower curtain with red tiled floors. Some would say these cattle-showers are ugly and intrusive to privacy and they'd be right, but they also add to the prison-theme Cedar Point has going on.
Not to mention the rules. Among the most infuriating rules of Cedar Point housing was the infamous 12pm or 'Midnight' rule. If you're a guy and are found with a girl in your room past midnight, expect to be terminated from housing (but not your job), led out by police escort and left to find yourself a new place to stay. F**k if Cedar Point cares where. The rule is infuriating on a number of levels. I travelled to Cedar Point with my girlfriend who after finishing work at 11pm, I got to see for 1 hour each night before she had to leave.
Cedar Point just assumes everyone there is going to f**k each other and disturb other employees thus affecting their work performance as they will be tired the next day - hence the rule. It is beyond their comprehention to think that a guy can invite a girl over to chill and watch a movie. It annoys me how they think having a girl/guy over disturbs employees, yet the guys down the hall having a techno rave at 3am is OK?
Myself and my girlfriend were too tired to do anything of the sort even if we could. The hypocrisy of this rule is also amazing. The rule is enforced by a platoon of policemen at the on-site dorms where all the internationals live - but less so in areas where Americans lived, i.e. Commons. I was regularly told by American friends about their conquests the next day in work.
To enforce this rule police have been notorious for setting off 'fake' fire alarms to flush people out from rooms. Get caught with a guy/girl and consider yourself over. They patrol the small roads and parking areas on foot, bicycle and by car to make sure no-one sneaks in around the back. They even sweep the beaches at night with torches to check for cheeky boys and girls who have had too much to drink. You're living on your own Alcatraz where the police have nothing better to do than make your life misery. I couldn't even sit by the harbour at night with my girl after midnight one night before being asked by some old police officer taking his job too seriously to vacate the area. I s**t you not.
The Set-Up
There are a plethora of jobs available at Cedar Point, some better than others - but all underpaid ($7.40 p/h) and overworked (14 hours per day towards the end of the season without a day off for three weeks). If you get a job inside consider yourself lucky not to be outside in the heat, i.e. a Rides Host or Sweep. All of the jobs still feel like groundhog day. Same s**t, day in day out. Push a button and another one, deal with the same retarded guests everyday. Slowly go insane. I worked a Rides position and it was the most depressing thing I've ever done at times. Getting asked the same questions over and over i.e. where are the bathrooms, how tall is this ride etc etc, parents getting angry because they tried to drag their 2ft tall kid onto your ride designed for taller people and you busted them, and general retarded behaviour such as people ducking down under your height stick asking if they are tall enough (at least 10 times a day). Cedar Point attracts some nice people and cute families, it also attracts some of the biggest retards who when they time out from f***ing each other in the hills come down and pay a visit to your ride to completely f**k up your day.
As I've mentioned the infrastructure at Cedar-Point is messed up on many levels, from transportation to housing to just about everything else. Here's an example. The only way to cash your cheque from Cedar Point is via the bank at Walmart. If you happen to get a day off it's probably a good idea to cash it to you know, eat and s**t. So you have a day off, time to get the bus. The buses run every 2/3 hours. You wake up uber-early to get the bus only to find 80 of five thousand employees had the day off and thought of doing the same thing. Now you can't get on the bus because you're at the back of the line. Wait 2 hours and get next bus (you hope).
You finally arrive at Walmart to cash your cheque and there's a ton of people infront of you - everyone on the bus must have had the same idea. Once the retarded American woman behind the desk from the Hills of Ohio is done trying to understand the broken English of tens of random South-Americans and Eastern Europeans you're finally up. Take an hour out of your day to create an account. Ok, now you're done and you've got your shopping - you only wanted some Poptarts and some instant meals. Wait an hour for the next bus pickup.
The whole process takes 4 hours if you're lucky. This isn't how an employee wants to be spending their days off. It makes no sense that Cedar Point does not have any means to cash a cheque on site and instead makes its employees - all of them without cars (and that's an awful lot) - travel via a bus that runs every few hours to a place tens of miles away. The whole system as Cedar Point is messed up.
The 'Good'
Struggling here. The rides I guess. You get free access to the park but all I can say is once you've done all the rides, there isn't much else anything to do for the rest of the summer.
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| Meh |
Other than that, there isn't anything positive about Cedar Point. If you're thinking about working here in 2011 or any other season, don't - you'll regret it. Plenty quit after 1 week, some less. Only the hardy survive till the end.
~MJ
~MJ
