Water main break closes Cedar Point for weekend

Park apologizes, offers to honor tickets another day

This photo from Twitter user @daleehrh shows the entrance of Cedar Point on Saturday, which will remain closed the entire weekend because of a water main break.

HANDOUT NOT BLADE PHOTO

SANDUSKY — A broken water main Saturday shut down the Cedar Point amusement-park complex for the entire weekend.

Cedar Point was closed due to a water main break near the entrance to the park..

While Cedar Point officials predicted late in the afternoon that repairs to the pipe that failed early in the day on the Cedar Point Causeway would take only “several more hours to complete,” they said additional procedures to restore water pressure throughout the park and testing to ensure water quality dictated their decision to stay closed through today.

Crews work to repair a water main break near the entrance to Cedar Point Saturday. Would-be park visitors were turned away at the entrance.

“We recognize that this situation has caused many of our guests to be disappointed. We are sorry that this has happened,” read a statement posted on cedarpoint.com at 5:40 p.m. “All Cedar Point tickets will be honored on any operating day in 2014 where the park is open to the public.”

Crews work to repair a water main break Saturday near the entrance to Cedar Point

Earlier in the day, long lines formed at the park’s main entrance. Would-be park visitors were turned away on a day that promised to have some of the most temperate weather of the season.

Bryan Edwards, the amusement park’‍s public relations manager, said he did not know what caused the break, how much money the park would lose because of the park closure, or how many tickets had been refunded. He did say that visitors were given an option to use their tickets on another day or to have them refunded.

By afternoon, Cedar Point’s parking lots, normally packed on a Saturday afternoon in June, were desolate. Besides the main Cedar Point park, Challenge Park, and Splash City, the three resort hotels on the Cedar Point peninsula all were closed.

Klaus Tenbergen, who moved to Cleveland from Fresno, Calif., earlier in the week, found himself with little to do but take pictures of trees trimmed into the shapes of figurines near the causeway.

“It’s a long road to come here. ... I am slightly disappointed,” said Mr. Tenbergen, 53. “I came here to see the park, to explore where I live, to enjoy Lake Erie and the rides.”

Just down the road from the topiary, a Sandusky police cruiser blocked the causeway on the amusement park’‍s property, about 150 feet from the entrance, near what a park police officer said was the scene of the broken pipe. Repair workers could be seen milling around heavy equipment.