Cedar Point Announces a New Themed Area Coming in 2023, Including the Park’s 18th Roller Coaster

You can’t stand pat in the amusement park business. You have to keep building, keep growing, and keep innovating, regularly adding new attractions and even entirely new lands to keep the customers filing through the turnstile. Cedar Point, the beloved amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, that’s been welcoming guests in one form or another since 1870, understands that as well as anybody. And so yesterday the park announced its latest addition, a new area called the Boardwalk located right next to Lake Erie. A video announcing the new land touts it as a modernized tribute to “the Cedar Point of yesteryear,” and with its assortment of carnival-style rides and a new take on a classic style of roller coaster, the Boardwalk is clearly indebted to the past of this great park.

The centerpiece of the Boardwalk will be The Grand Pavilion, which looks like it could’ve come straight from the White City from Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. Based on an entertainment hall that originally opened at the park all the way back in 1888, The Grand Pavilion will be home to restaurants and a bar, with outdoor seating letting guests gaze out on Lake Erie. The land will also feature a variety of family-friendly carnival rides, including a relocated and refreshed Atomic Scrambler and the Matterhorn, and the existing Ferris wheel and Troika spinner.

Of course when you think of Cedar Point you probably think of roller coasters. Already recognized as a worldwide leader in roller coasters, the park will add one more to its collection with the Wild Mouse, which shares its name with both a type of roller coaster and a specific one that existed at Cedar Point in the ‘50s and ‘60s. A wild mouse coaster is typically a compact ride known for hairpin turns and bunny hops instead of huge drops or inversions; Cedar Point’s new Wild Mouse will amp up the thrills by having cars that can rotate a full 360 degrees throughout the ride. Spinning coasters are a surefire way to knock me for a loop, so I’ll probably have to read about this one instead of ever riding it. The Wild Mouse will be one of two coasters in the Boardwalk, alongside the existing GateKeeper winged coaster.

The Boardwalk is expected to open in May 2023, on the opening day for the park’s 2023 season. You can check out the two-minute video announcing the new addition below. And if you want to grab Gold or Platinum Season Passes for 2023 at the current rate, you better do it soon; prices will increase in just under a month, on Sept. 6. You can do that here.