Cedar Point partnering with charity for Frontier Festival

SANDUSKY — Cedar Point will partner with Prayers From Maria, a charity in honor of Maria McNamara, a young Ohio girl diagnosed with diffused intrinsic pontine glioma, a form of cancer, in 2006.At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, participants will plant a field of sunflowers adjacent to the Cedar Point Express Hotel at 1201 Cedar Point Drive in honor of McNamara. Guests will be able to walk among the flowers, take photos and make donations to the charity.Some may have visited the large fields in Avon, Ohio, that have been planted with millions of sunflowers since 2013 in honor of McNamara, who died on July 14, 2007, at the age of seven.Cedar Point has partnered with the Prayers for Maria organization as part of the 2019 Frontier Festival, which is June 7-30. Frontier Festival's central theme will focus on sunflowers, making the Prayers for Maria organization a logical partner.All proceeds from the sale of Prayers from Maria merchandise during the Frontier Festival will go to Prayers from Maria.The Frontier Festival will be a reprisal of the former Brew & BBQ event, though the new theme will be more family focused. Guests will still be able to enjoy over 30 craft beers, nine wines and six ciders. Plus custom crafted lemonades and new signature drink specially made for Frontier Festival.Additionally, Cedar Point has crafted an entire new menu lineup for Frontier Festival that plays off the former Brew & BBQ food items, but reinvents them with new offerings like fire roasted suckling pig with vinegar BBQ sauce, great plains bison chili with wild berry multi-grain boule, and roasted pork belly with mustard-peach marmalade, pickled onions, garlic toast.Editor's note: Justin Dietz is a Register correspondent representing CPFoodBlog.com and @CPFoodBlog on Twitter. The Prayers for Maria fields in Avon.