Cedar Point is having a tough summer already. The park’s highly anticipated Top Thrill 2 roller coaster is closed indefinitely to do maintenance on ride vehicles, meaning that the hottest thing in the park is unavailable. And now, if that wasn’t bad enough, the park has to deal with free-roaming camels.
The Barnyard, the Cedar Point petting zoo, has mostly the sort of animals you would expect to find in a petting zoo, including, sheep, goats, and piglets. But it also has camels. Now those camels are going viral after they somehow escaped their pen and began to explore the park.
Camels Run Wild At Cedar Point
Yesterday, two camels from the Cedar Point petting zoo escaped their enclosure and went on a walkabout throughout the park. A TikTok is going viral showing one of the animals as it wanders the property and nearly collides with guests before running off. Check it out:
@breathing_waterfall ♬ Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
I mean, that's certainly something you don’t see every day. The camel seems to enjoy being free, but the animal gets a little too wild. You can see one Cedar Point guest needs to hop over a fence to avoid being run down as it hops around the walkway before running away.
USA Today reports that the camels were corraled quickly and nobody was hurt while they were running around. It’s unclear at this point exactly what happened and how the camels got out in the first place, but we can be sure security measures will be reviewed.
More Issues At Cedar Point
The camel incident comes a couple of days after Cedar Point saw a massive infestation of mayflies that also went viral on social media. Animal life running a bit wild inside the park seems to be an ongoing theme this summer.
The other major issue this season has been the park’s newest roller coaster, Top Thrill 2 -- which was looking like it would be one of the best new coasters of the year -- because it closed shortly after it opened, and has remained that way for weeks while the ride vehicles are modified. It appears there was some sort of technical issue which was not discovered until after the attraction had been in operation.
Even during the week Top Thrill 2 was running it wasn’t without controversy. Safety rules released shortly before the coaster's opening revealed that no loose items were allowed on the ride, which while not an unprecedented decision made things difficult as the coaster did not have lockers in the queue. This meant guests would have to pay for lockers if there wasn’t somewhere else they could leave their things.
Cedar Point is one of the most popular theme parks in the Midwest, especially among roller coaster enthusiasts as the park has more coasters than most places in the world. The park's parent company, Cedar Fair, is currently in the final stages of merging with Six Flags. Once that's done they will form the largest amusement park company in the world. And hopefully, they can work toward fixing some of the ongoing issues in the park.
