A Definite Hersheypark Happy!

My girlfriend and I left for Hershey Saturday morning in surprisingly warm weather! After a very uneventful, and probably one of the most boring drives in this country (boo PA Turnpike, and expensive on top of that!), we arrived in Hershey to that wonderful smell of chocolate! I had never actually been down Chocolate Ave. but our hotel was on this road today, so I finally have seen the lights and the factory and everything. Very fun in a completely touristy kind of way!

Our hotel was the Milton Motel, and while a very small place, it is a very nice hotel for the price! I'm a complete hotel snob, I love really nice, new, modern hotels, so initially I was a little leary of this place. But, for $50 a night, it was great! I definitely agree with it's 3-diamond rating, and highly reccommend the place if you're looking for a clean, comfortable room that's very inexpensive.

Next door to the Milton Motel is a great restaurant, another highly recommended place for Hershey visitors, a great sports bar called Dukes. The bruschetta was incredible, the portions were enormous, and I simply cannot say enough about the place! Both places are located on East Chocolate Ave. past Derry Ave., give 'em a visit if you're in town!

Hersheypark in the Dark (which is an ironic name since you're greeted by a large lighted sign ... ) turned out to be a great event! I loved the fact that there was no admission to the park, you can just walk in and wander around! Can't beat that if you just want to take in the sights. We decided pretty early on to get the wristbands though. With that, we caught a great aquatic mammal show, an amazingly good ride on the Comet (love the rename of all the rides and attractions!) and the best Wave Swinger ride, EVER! Hershey's swings are great, the cycle's long, and they don't keep you elevated at the end, so you can walk along with the ride when you're coming to a stop. Good stuff.

Caught a good ride on the Bear and headed for Midway America to ride the GCIs. Both gave great rides as usual. I really wanted to do Storm Runner, but the girlfriend's not so high on inversions, so she kept me away for tonite.

Next day we had to poke around Hershey some, as checkout was 11am and we couldnt get into the park until 2pm. We ended up just playing cards in the cafe in Chocolate world for a while, doing the tour for the 3rd and 4th times on our weekend and wasted a little time learning how to drive a stick shift in the Giant Center parking lot (she made it to 3rd gear with no problems! I was proud ... )

Sunday was even more dead than Saturday night was. Since we hadn't done Storm Runner the night before, we headed there first. 2nd seat with almost no wait. I absolutely love this ride, but the girlfriend didn't. So, she was incredibly nice, and let me ride two more times! Both times I headed for 2nd seat and ended up side-by-side with another single rider in the front seat! So within 30 minutes, I'd already had 2 front seat and 1 second seat ride on Storm Runner. I was absolutely in coaster-heaven at this point. Storm Runner is just simply amazing.

The rest of the park was running great too, I actually had fun on the Wild Mouse (although it beat me up). We rode Wildcat in the front seat twice in a row because no one else showed up in the station, Lightning Racer was amazing as usual. We caught a couple more rides back in Midway America, wandered up to hit a few coasters up in Comet Hollow and headed back to Dukes for dinner and to watch a quarter and a half of the Steelers POUNDING the Pats! Go Stillers!!

All in all it was a great weekend. Hersheypark in the Dark is a great way to run the Halloween event, especially since there's so much non-ride entertainment in this park. We didn't get to do the zoo, which I would have liked to do, but even that is open late, and is cheap (just a couple of tickets, or walk right in with a wristband). Storm Runner is king, Lightning Racer and Wildcat are an unbeatable combination, and even Great Bear and Comet deserve high marks. Hershey is definitely one of the sweetest places on Earth. We'll be back next fall to do it all again! Here's hopin' Dukes is still in business!

Glad to hear you had a good time there. I ended up there myself on Saturday night, because I was at a Halloween party that wrapped up a little after 9 (what's up with that?). Since I wasn't ready to head home, I figured I'd stop off at Hershey.

In just about 2 hours, from 10 until 12, I rode GreatBear twice, Storm Runner twice, and Lightning Racer 4 times, once in the front seat and three times in the last seat-- all re-rides from around 11:30 until midnight. There just wasn't anybody in that part of the park that late, so the trains were running mostly empty. Lightning won all four times Woo-hoo!

Impulsive, too bad you didn't get to ride Storm Runner on Saturday night. It was awesome with the low-lying fog. Up into the fog and above at the top of the hat, then back into the fog on the way down. Lightning Racer was fun in the fog too. A total ***** to drive home in though.

I agree with you about the Swinger. Nice to be able to just sit down on the swing and not have to jump up into it like on so many others, especially while trying not to bang your head off the upraised front bar.

I really liked this event. Sounds like they had pretty good crowds every weekend, mostly families though. So the lines for the coasters weren't long at all compared to what I'm reading about other places. Next year you should get to ride Turbulence too, Impulsive.

HP in the Dark is cool. You can't beat the $21 RAD pass. The waits are usually minimal. The longest I waited was for Lightning, errrr, Wicked Racers since they were only running one train on each side. That may have been a 30 minute wait.

The $18 for Haunted Harvest or $12 with the combo wristband is WAAAY to much money for what it was. Maybe $5 or $6 but no more. It was just your typical park haunted walk thru. Not very scary at all. Maybe if I was 6 or 7 I would have been scared. I just don't see it as being too scary for preteens.

I'd say if you plan of doing somthing scary in the Hershey area head to Lancaster and check out the Field Of Screams for the $18.

HP in the Dark= good deal for wristband Haunted Harvest combo = not a good deal

*** Edited 11/1/2004 11:54:33 PM UTC by coasterpunk***