I never expected to see another tumblr user know abt the forbidden frontier characters and lore!!!! It’s been my hyperfixation for a couple years now and I’m so sad that it’s not more well known. Keep spreading the good word!!
I never expected to see another Tumblr user who knows about the Forbidden Frontier lore and characters either!!!! It's good to know I'm not the only one here who knows about it, much less finding someone else who's fixated on it!!!
Oh Forbidden Frontier on Adventure Island, my beloved...
Guys, I'm researching the Forbidden Frontier interactive storyline at Cedar Point right now and I am going absolutely INSANE (/pos) over how much stuff there is!
There's lore!
There's exploration!
There's adventure!
THE FUCKING STEEL VENGEANCE CHARACTERS ARE THERE APPARENTLY??!?!
Someone take me back to Cedar Point 2019 I WANT TO EXPLORE THIS MYSELF SO BADDDD 😭
Do you guys remember that one "Number 5 is alive!" teaser poster from ~7 years ago?
This one:
UM.
GUYS, DOES THAT BUILDING IN THE TOP RIGHT LOOK FAMILIAR TO ANYONE ELSE???
IT'S LITERALLY THE SAME DRAWING.
THAT'S THE BEAST'S STATION!!!
WHICH MEANS THAT WE'RE CONNECTING THE STORIES OF CEDAR CREEK MINE RIDE (mentioned by name and logo) AND MAVERICK (via the mentioning of the name "Beauregard Chamberlain," which is the name of the Maverick character) AT CEDAR POINT (and by proxy, Steel Vengeance!) INTO THE KINGS ISLAND CONNECTED STORY TOO!!!
(Not to mention the direct naming of the "Sycamore Mining & Minerals Co." in the actual text, which is the in-universe mining company that The Beast is themed around!)
...
WAIT I JUST GAVE IT ANOTHER LOOK AND THERE'S ANOTHER CONNECTION POINT!!! AT THE BASE OF THE BEAST STATION DRAWING, IT SAYS "The Sycamore Mining & Minerals Co. Acquired in 1979" WHICH IS THE YEAR THAT THE BEAST OPENED. GUYS I CANNOT MAKE THIS UP THEY HAVE BEEN TEASING THIS CONNECTION ALL THE WAY BACK IN 2018!!!
Today's theme park ramble: The Battle for Cedar Point
The Battle for Cedar Point is a mobile app launched in 2017 by Cedar Fair (alongside a sister app, The Battle for Kings Dominion) that hasn't been updated since 2019. It's primarily centered in augmented reality games, interactive areas, and park trivia, and was a (successful) attempt at making some of the long waits a bit less boring. As of now, all of the AR interactions are no longer functional throughout the park, and it's effectively useless beyond trivia games and ride logging, but it's still an utterly fascinating app to me. Why?
Its story.
(NOTE: This is technically a Cedar Point lore post, and it's also VERY long under the cut :3)
As the resident theme park lore guy, it makes sense that a story surrounding technically-canon roller coaster gajinkas would peak my interest. In the actual game itself, there's not much story to be gathered beyond "roller coasters are having a turf war". It's in the advertisements and character/alliance videos where a bit more story can be deciphered.
There are 6 Cedar Point coasters that are represented in The Battle for Cedar Point: Valravn, Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, GateKeeper, and Steel Vengeance. Their characters are shown below (photos all screenshots of the app itself) (enlarge for full images).
When the app was launched, only 5 of these coasters were present in the game, as Steel Vengeance didn't exist yet. Cedar Point only made videos for these 5 coasters, detailing each alliance's motivations and ideals. Here are the official Cedar Point videos:
Additional videos were made going a bit deeper into the background of each alliance, which give us that dip into a potentially larger story. Most of these videos have been seemingly deleted by Cedar Point's main YouTube account, but luckily they were all archived and reuploaded by a Cedar Point archive YouTube account. Those videos are as follows:
What particularly stands out to me here is that in multiple videos, Valravn is either directly or indirectly referenced. In fact, all of them but Top Thrill Dragster references Valravn in some way, shape, or form.
Valravn refers to the clan as "a threat the likes of which the kingdom has never seen before" whilst making it clear that their motivation is conquest.
Maverick references it as a "terrible threat on the horizon" with a visual of shadows creeping in.
Millennium Force refers to it as a "terrible shadow looming" and then gives us this absolutely BANGER image of Millennium Force standing before the looming shadowed silhouette of Valravn:
Top Thrill Dragster's just doing its own thing. They're living fast, free, and fearless, and I gotta respect them for that lol
And then GateKeeper directly shows us Valravn in the stained glass alongside the words "But now, a new enemy stands at the gates, bringing nothing but conflict."
Additionally, in Battle For Cedar Point park merchandise, the silhouette of Valravn was oftentimes depicted looming in the background, with the Valravn character in the middle/in front of the 5 characters. Here's an example:
Putting all the pieces together...something tells me that Valravn might just be the "villain" of this story...
Here's what my idea of the story is:
For years, the Kingdom of Cedar Point - made up of 4 distinct clans (Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, and GateKeeper) who resided in different sections of the kingdom - all lived in peace and harmony, defended and protected by the GateKeeper clan and kept under the order of the Millennium Force clan. Suddenly, a new clan emerges - the Valravn clan - which seems dead set on conquering the Kingdom of Cedar Point for itself. Clad in black armor and casting a dark looming shadow over wherever it goes, the Valravn clan begins its mission for conquest. Naturally, the other 5 clans are NOT okay with this new threat and what it could mean both just for the Kingdom itself, but for its way of life. And then that fear towards destabilization of their societies leads towards them turning against each other as well as Valravn. Some clans (Millennium Force and GateKeeper) fight and defend to protect the Kingdom itself. The Dragster clan is likely using the opportunity to expand its territory as well. The Mavericks...? It's really up in the air on it they're defending the Kingdom or just trying to get more for themselves. And then obviously Valravn is at the root of it all, aiming to take over the Kingdom entirely.
"But Joey!" I hear you asking, "What about Steel Vengeance! There's 6 total clans now! How does Steel Vengeance fit into the story of The Battle for Cedar Point?"
What an excellent question, person whom I'm assuming is asking this! Why don't I give you an answer?
When Steel Vengeance joined the Cedar Point roster in 2018 and was subsequently added to The Battle for Cedar Point, it didn't get any kind of fun hype video for the app like the other 5 did. As far as I know, they just added SteVe to an update without warning. Steel Vengeance isn't even mentioned on the Battle for Cedar Point page on Cedar Point's website. My guess is that they just figured it was a cool and popular enough ride to add to the game, and they already had the character design made for Blackjack, so it wasn't like they'd have to create a whole new character (similarly to how they use the BFCP Maverick character design for Beauregard "Mackerick" Chamberlain, the Maverick character in the Steel Vengeance/Frontier Town lore). It was an easy addition. And territory-wise, they just carved out the entire top half of the Maverick clan's territory.
Not even joking, that's what they did. You see all of the red section on top of the orange in the second image? That's all Steel Vengeance clan territory. That all used to be Maverick clan territory. (I'm sure the Mavericks weren't too happy about that XD)
Additionally, from this point, instead of Valravn looming in the background of merchandise/on the main game character logo, the Steel Vengeance trio (Blackjack, Chess, and Digger) would be there. (I'd put in an image, but I've unfortunately hit the image limit on mobile :/)
So what does this mean for the story?
In my mind, with the addition of Steel Vengeance into The Battle for Cedar Point brought the story established in the at-the-time new theming around Frontier Town, meaning that alongside the original clan turf wars of the pre-SteVe days, we now also have the world's pettiest sibling rivalry storyline of Steel Vengeance and Maverick (which I will TOTALLY write a ramble on at some point; the in-universe story of Steel Vengeance is so interesting to me).
Additionally, considering that Valravn was implied to previously have been the overarching antagonist, putting Steel Vengeance in the spot where Valravn was before may imply that it's Steel Vengeance that's now the main threat to the Kingdom.
Except there's something that doesn't sit completely right with me for the "Steel Vengeance is the main bad guy" explanation, and that's the Clan's motto.
Something I didn't mention earlier is that each Clan has a "motto" that they live by that gives a good insight into the ideologies and goals of each of them. Those mottos are as follows:
Valravn: For Victory and Conquest!
Maverick: For Freedom! For Glory! For Gold!
Millennium Force: Wisdom, Power and Order!
Top Thrill Dragster: Live free! Live Fast! Live Fearless!
GateKeeper: Protect the Realm!
Steel Vengeance: Take Back the Old West!
Steel Vengeance's only true motivation is to "take back the old west," which is only Maverick's territory. So maybe my original idea of Steel Vengeance's only contribution to this game being the addition of the Maverick/Steel Vengeance sibling rivalry was more accurate. Regardless, because Cedar Point didn't really put any effort into adding Steel Vengeance to the game, its existence doesn't make a lot of sense in the universe.
That being said...since the Frontier Town lore established by Steel Vengeance would hypothetically be canon to The Battle for Cedar Point...does that mean The Battle For Cedar Point is likewise canon to Frontier Town?
Alas, my questions will likely never be answered. The game hadn't been updated for 6 years now and all of the AR interaction points in the park have since been disabled. I highly doubt it'll make a return. But that doesn't mean that this app and its story aren't interesting to think and contemplate about!
If you managed to make it through, congratulations! This was originally only intended to be a couple of paragraphs long, but then I kept writing, and now here we are! I hope you enjoyed whatever this madness was! :3
If I were to make a lore post about the in-universe beef of the characters for Maverick and Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point, would anyone be interested/actually read it? I ask because I'm tempted to start making a post about them, but I want to make sure I wouldn't just be posting into the void lol
