Hershey Park

Originally JH and I had planned to go to Kings Dominion for our Monday off, but on a whim changed our plans and went up to Hershey Park instead.

It turned out to be a gorgeous day at the park, especially since there were moments where it was overcast, so it stayed cool, though it did become a disadvantage at one point.

We started off by riding Great Bear, which is one of my top rides for the day. We moved onward to Storm Runner, which was designed by the same folks who designed Kingda Ka, and it uses a similar launch system and cars. If Kingda Ka is anything like what I experienced today with Storm Runner, I'm in trouble next week at Great Adventure. The shoulder restraints sat up too high for me so I ended up banging them into the restraints, and it made me sore.

It was starting to get warm by the time we finished those two rides, so it was over to the Roller Soaker, which as it's name implies is a coaster where you will get wet. JH and I don't know if people are just inexperienced or the park is trying to save on energy costs, but their way of loading and unloading cars was very inefficient today. Imagine three cars being loaded up, then sent to the bottom of the first hill, where each one goes one at a time, and the next one doesn't go until the first one finishes...and each ride is about 1.5-2mins long. During that time the next batch of cars have been loaded, and they're waiting for the first batch to finish before they get sent to the bottom of the hill. JH said that they didn't used to do it this way, they pretty much kept the cars continuously moving as much as possible. Who knows...

After that it was a trip to the Wildcat, which was a fun wooden coaster. A ride on their Wild Mouse ride was in order before heading to the Lightning Racer, which had to be one of my favorite coasters. It's a dueling coaster, so two cars are loaded and sent out at the same time to race one another. We ended up losing when we rode Thunder, but won when we rode Lightning. It's hard to say which side I like better, Thunder has a thrilling first drop, but on Lightning you get much more air time in your seat. I guess it will depend on what kind of mood I'm in ;-)

After those rides we were going past Fahrenheit (their newest coaster) and it had been closed earlier, but the repair folks were out working on it, so JH and I stopped to watch. We couldn't have timed it better because they were finishing up their work (fixing one of the tires that moves the coaster along after the brakes are applied at the end) and after an initial test, they moved their ladder out of the way, and brought a third car onto the track. We were immediately nearby the entrance, and about 20 mins later when they cycled through the cars, they reopened Fahrenheit, so we were able to get a very front seat rather quickly :-D The ride itself was fun, though JH hated the completely vertical first hill that we had to climb.

We hit Sidewinder, which is yet another boomerang style coaster of the same design as Two-Face in Six Flags America and Flashback in Six Flags New England, but this one uses standard sit down cars rather than inverted cars. I needed the credit for my coaster count profile, so I rode it yet again.

Next was Trailblazer, which to me is the type of coaster you bring your younger kids on to introduce them to a rollercoaster. We were thinking about hitting Comet and calling it a day, but then we saw that the Sooper Dooper Looper was finally opened up (it was closed earlier in the day) so we hopped on that once since there wasn't much of a line.

Overall it was a great day at Hershey Park, and since we now possess 2-day tickets, at some point JH and I will have to make another trip up there :-D