Cedar Point Retires Dinos + Announces Forbidden Frontier on Adventure Island for 2019

© Cedar Point

Cedar Point has just made a pair of announcements regarding the park's 2019 season - first, Dinosaurs Alive! will be retired on September 3rd, 2018, and second, the park will be adding Forbidden Frontier on Adventure Island for summer 2019.

The demise of Dinosaurs Alive! is no surprise as the dinos are on their way to extinction at most Cedar Fair parks, but Forbidden Frontier sounds interesting and still holds quite a bit of mystery.

First, check out this video about the announcement:

Premiering next summer...🎬 pic.twitter.com/wqPrK9NjoH

— Cedar Point (@cedarpoint) August 21, 2018

The focus of the clip is to announce the retirement of Dinosaurs Alive!, and at the end we get the simple announcement of Forbidden Frontier.  But what is it!?

Happily, the park's website gives us a bit more information.  Here is a quote from the website describing the attraction:

 "Grab your map and prepare for a minute-by-minute real-life adventure, where you and others are challenged, questioned and pushed to the limits in both brain and brute power. Be immersed in interactive encounters with the island inhabitants, push yourself with physically active challenges that test your resourcefulness and fortitude! It's your job to discover and uncover all that you can; to solve the mystery surrounding the Forbidden Frontier, and return to tell the tale. Every ending is different and determined by you and the secrets you unlock!"

While I haven't had a lot of time to really digest that, it sounds like the dino path will be reused to create an entire setting, Forbidden Frontier, filled with interactive experiences, and there is a bit of escape-roomesque vibes coming through from the description as well.  I would imagine that all new sets and other features will be added (could they incorporate the former Shoot The Rapids area?) to Adventure Island.  The fact that the ending is different depending on how much you solve makes me wonder if there is some sort of technology involved, either wearable or a tracker that records progress.

That sounds very similar in some regards to what Knott's Berry Farm does with Ghost Town Alive!, which involves many actors and other interactive elements.

© Google Maps

Here is a look at Adventure Island currently.  Dinosaurs Alive! has an entrance bridge near Camp Snoopy, and from there you can trace the existing path that was built, which travels mostly through a wooded area with Millennium Force roaring overhead.  On the left of the island is the large cement plot left from the removal of Shoot the Rapids.  There is certainly a lot of space to work with here, depending on how much the park wants to move things around.

If more details on the attraction come out soon I will update this post.  The park does promise to reveal more secrets of Forbidden Frontier "as we unlock the treasure map," so stay tuned to their official website as well.