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The Frontier Festival, What is it?
Each year, Cedar Point kicks off summer with their Frontier Festival! The Festival takes place in “Frontier Town” in the back of the park where the Maverick and Steel Vengeance Roller Coasters are located.
The Festival is themed around specialty food booths, games, and live entertainment that interacts with the crowds. There are also specialty characters roaming around during this festival. This year, we saw Sagebrush Sue and Miss Keat, who both have restaurants in Frontier Town.
The main highlight of the event are the food booths and “Belly Washers”. This year, there are seven food stations and four belly washer stations. The food stations offer at least one food item and the Belly Washer Stations offer craft beers and/or cocktails. See our post on instagram below for each of the food booths.
In addition to food, the Frontier Festival offers various forms of entertainment. They have live music, crafts for kids, and eating contests!
The Frontier Festival goes on daily in the park from 12 PM – 8 PM, but the food booths close at 7 PM.
The Frontier Festival is a free event included with admission, but if you would like to try the unique bites at the food booths, you will need to purchase tasting tickets at the tasting tickets booth in Frontier Town. You can get 10 tickets for $59.95 or 6 tickets for $39.95. Everything is one ticket except the specialty cocktails.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Belly Washers come in a 8 oz pour per tasting ticket. You’ll get a pink wristband at the tasting tickets booth if you plan on grabbing a belly washer during this year’s event to prove you’re over 21.
What’s Changed?
For 2023, there a couple of new changes for the Frontier Festival. The first biggest change is the food theme! Last year’s theme was cherry, so all of the food dishes at the booths had a “cherry” theme. This year, the new food theme is Corn!
The characters roaming around the park are also different! Last year, we had the Mayor and his Wife, the Deputy, and the Grand Marshal.
One other change is that the Wild Frontier Nights separately ticketed event is no longer occurring alongside Frontier Festival. Wild Frontier Nights was an adults only event Cedar Point tried last year for the first time.
The biggest highlight was the ERT time available for Steel Vengeance and Maverick, with almost no waits and walk ons for both major attractions which often boasts waits around 2 hours during a normal park day.
Our Food Review!
Be sure to check out our YouTube video above! Overall, we loved this year’s Frontier Festival when we attended. It definitely seemed “toned down” this year compared to last year, with a few less stops for specialty food. One booth this year only offered Kettle Corn, which we thought wasn’t worth using one of tasting tickets for.
We purchased the 10 tasting tickets, and tried about half of the food and a few belly washers. For food, we recommend stopping at booths 1,2 and 6.
At booth 1, you’ find probably the best two food options from this year, the Corn Fritters and the Empanadas.
At booth two, be sure to try the Pierogis! Booth two also offers the Quesadilla, which we found lacking with just the Elote corn as a filling.
We ended up skipping booth three, four, and five. These booths had the corn ice cream, walking taco, and kettle corn. We felt that our tasting tickets could be spent better on the items we selected.
For booth seven, be sure to try the corn pizza. We thought it was good and had a nice spicy kick to it with the hot honey.
At booth six, you will find the corn cheesecake! We didn’t care for this option due to the pie crust, but the cheesecake filling was great!
Lastly, we tried one of the speciality cocktails, the Rambler, which was offered last year during Wild Frontier Nights! We were excited to try this cocktail (and might still get the Rough and Rowdy) again. This can be found at Belly Washers 3 at Fire Engine No 3 next to Wagon Wheel Pizza. The food and the drinks at Wild Frontier Nights was amazing, and will probably be our favorite event!
Entertainment Review!
We enjoyed the live music at the Farmhouse stage and the Frontier Town Stage this year. The bands were good, but I feel like it’s hard to “stop and listen” to these bands with the amount of time available for the festival. Since it’s only open about 1/2 of the park day, I found myself running around to try everything.
We didn’t get to the park until about 3 PM, and enjoyed the festival until about 6 PM. We also didn’t want to spend a full park day at just the Frontier Festival. My kids definitely wanted to stop by Camp Snoopy!
The kids crafts was awesome too! This was a nice chance to stop and keep the kids busy with some coloring and quick crafts. They still have the bracelets they made!
Conclusion
Overall, we love visiting the Frontier Festival each year! We hope this event continues to grow and expand. I don’t think I liked the corn theme over the cherry theme of previous years, but it was really nice to have something new!
We also love to purchase the Frontier Festival T-shirt, bandana, and button bundle that can be found in the General Store in Frontier Town. It’s $22.95 and you get all three!
This festival is great for season pass holders since there isn’t an extra fee to get in the park outside the cost of your season pass. It’s definitely worth getting the tasting cards and trying the food! I recommend getting the 6 tasting ticket lanyard this year, and grabbing the Corn Fritters, Empanadas, Pierogis, Pizza, and the Rambler!
