Hersheypark

Hersheypark started out as a small park built for the employers of the chocolate making plant next door. However it soon became so popular that it was opened up to the public. It now houses a decent number of rides and is quite a large park, and quite an effort to get around due to a sizely hill in its centre.

This was by far the busiest park with coach loads upon coach loads of kids visiting the park at the same time as us. We later found out that the park was running a promotion where kids who turned up before a certain time would get in either for free or very cheaply. So we had a lot of schools who saw the opportunity for a day out. Great!

We had no choice but to formulate a plan on where to go. Unfortunately we couldn't get a morning ERS so we would have to join the crowds in queueing for the most popular rides.

So the first ride of the day turned out to be one of the best ones, their fairly new coaster Stormrunner. After queueing for 90 minutes I eventually got my front row ride, and wow! what a coaster. Using the same launch system as Kingda Ka, this one differs in that it has more than a top hat and actually has some unique elements in its layout. I would have liked to have had another go on this but I wasn't going to queue again when there was so much of the park to see.

Somewhere in the world there exists a perfectly smooth boomerang coaster. This isn't it

I've seen these Virtual Reality games before but I've never seen one where the participants have to jump up and hump the seats, which was what these people were up to.


The Wildcat was a pretty powerful wooden coaster but had a jump on a banked bend that I didn't find too comfortable. Never seen that before and never want to again!

The mouse turned out to be a pain to ride because it kept breaking down. Everytime I got to it I couldn't get on. It was near the end of the day that I eventually got to ride it, and it was OK.

In the UK, rapids rides would have waterfalls like these that would turn off when you got close. Not here however, so there was no way I was going to ride this one. The weather did take a turn later in the day and the rains got quite heavy, so I got wet anyway; the other downside to this was that the rides were closed as soon as rain started. This bad weather worked out to be a good thing as it lead to a lot of the kiddies leaving early.

We got stuck in the queue line for Rollersoaker, which turned out to be a blessing as it meant when it started up not all the water effects were running and there were no public around to shoot our train with the water cannons. This ride is a lot of fun though and should be included in all water parks. Its strange though that for a ride that gets soaked deliberately they can't run it when it rains. C'est la vie!!

The nicely named Sooperdooperlooper was the first full circuit looping coaster on the eastern half of America trivia fans. It was also a pretty good ride. This park was starting to go up in my rankings, it had lots of great rides.

Another B&M Inverter can also be found at this park. The Great Bear isn't bad, it has a unique layout but some of the pacing is a little out. It has lengthy straight bits where you think there could be room for some twists. It does however have the best start I've ever seen on these rides, replacing the normal turning drop with a "treble clef" helix element.

The new ride for this year was the peanut butter themed "Reese's Xtreme Cup Challenge". It was rubbish! The guns wouldn't shoot straight, it was too short and it was just disappointing considering the hype the park gave it in the run up to its opening. Even a consolitary free chocolate turned out to be crap, some people didn't even get that!

With the rain hitting the park in waves, the ironically named Storm Runner was closed longer than most of the rides in the park. A lot of club members were afraid they wouldn't get to ride it. I'm glad I chose to join the queue and get it out of the way first thing, before the rains hit.

Stormrunner is the first of these rocket coasters to have inversions and this is one of them, the strangely named Flying Snake Dive. Its actually rather strange to go through, you've barely got over the top hat hill and you're flying into this one.

The rains opened just after this train had launched, I hope it wasn't too painful for those who got on it.

Lightning racer was to be our evening ERS but I thought I'd ride it anyway, and I'm glad I did as the rain prevented it from running when it was time and we ended up not having it. The ride is perhaps my favourite in the park. When it was announced that we were having an ERS on this and not Stormrunner I was a bit perplexed but having ridden both sides (and winning the races I might add) I can fully understand why it was chosen. It's great fun throwing abuse to the other train and getting it back.

The Comet is another old PTC wooden coaster (boy did they leave their mark on this state) and like the others was a lot of fun to ride. I nearly forgot to take a picture of this one and had to run back to get it, which is why its so dark!

Ponchos aren't designed to be worn back-to-front as Andy demonstrates!

We had 10 hours or so at Hersheypark and I thought it was going to be too much time. As it turned out the rain triggered ride downtime meant we still had to rush about to get all the rides in. Stormrunner is a great ride and at this point was my favourite of the trip.

West to Lakemont if you please...