Aug 30-Sep 4 2023: BGW, KD, SFGAdv, Hershey

After not making it to any amusement parks in 2022, we decided to plan an east coast park trip to make up for it. Living in the PNW makes it rather inconvenient to get to parks easily.
I ended up adding 10(!) new credits to my list, putting me at 214 total.

Thursday August 31 - Busch Gardens

The day started off with heavy rains early from the tip of the hurricane, but quickly cleared up and was a perfect weather day for the park. The park was empty all day and all rides were a walk on. Pantheon was listed as temporarily closed, which had us worried as this is the main reason we came to BG.
We headed to DarKoaster and got a walk on ride. We had to turn back towards Italy due to the park's staggered openings. There was a small group of people waiting, and Pantheon started testing, so we decided to head there- and it was open! We got 2 rides back 2 back without having to get off the ride. This ride is super fun! The backwards launch over that hump has some unexpected ejector air. We then hit up Apollo's Chariot.

SIDENOTE: In the last few years, I started getting some motion sickness on coasters, which really sucks as I used to be able to marathon them. I forgot to take dramamine before we got to the park, so the 2nd ride on Pantheon kinda threw me off early, and Apollo really made it worse. I took the dramamine and we took a slow walk towards our next rides. More to come on this later...

After grabbing lunch and doing a lap around the park, we hit up InvadR, Alpengeist, and Griffon. Verbolten was closed due to repainting, and we decided to skip Loch Ness due to how I was feeling.

Tempesto didn't open until later in the afternoon, so we took a lap on that, another lap on DarKoaster and Pantheon.
I hadn't really recovered from feeling ill, so we called it a day, satisfied with getting 3 new ride credits.

Our original plan was to leave a day in between parks, but I REALLY wanted to hit up Kings Dominion because the last time we were there, Intimidator was down due to a cable snap. So I convinced my partner that we should go there just for a few hours, since it was on the way to our next destination.
I contacted my Doctor to ask for any other motion sickness remedies, and they suggested Motion Sickness Bracelets. I looked them up and laughed at the thought of these actually working- BUT, I was willing to try anything, so we found they were available at Walgreens and picked them up for ~$15. They are 2 elastic bands that sit on a specific spot on your wrists, and puts pressure on a specific pressure point that is supposed to relieve nausea. I decided KD would be the place to give them a try since we were only going for a few hours, so if they didn't work, it wouldn't be a big loss.

Friday September 1 - Kings Dominion

We arrived at KD with the goal of riding Intimidator 305 and Twisted Timbers. I put on my new Motion Sickness wristbands and kept laughing at my "voodoo bands". The park was pretty empty. We headed towards TT, but it was closed, so we made our way to Intimidator. It was a walk on and we were able to get 2 rides without getting off. WOW! I am SO glad we decided to stop here. What an incredible ride! Quickly added to my top 10 coasters! We then headed back to Twisted Timbers and were able to get 2 rides. This is a fantastic RMC. I love the corkscrew drop element.
NOTE: I am a huge RMC fan, but I realize that all of them contain at least a couple elements that are painful to me which detracts from most of the awesome ride. Mostly it's the multiple ejector airtime bunny hills in a row and some of the double down/twist elements that you can't really prepare for. I've learned to push my thighs up into the restraints to keep myself stapled as much as possible for these but it doesn't totally help.

We got a ride on Grizzly and hit up Twisted Timbers and I305 again before hitting the road. I experienced no motion sickness!

Saturday September 2 - Six Flags Great Adventure

We were afraid this park would be insanely busy- so we were prepared to buy Flash Passes, but the crowds were pretty light for most of the day. We ended up buying Diamond Passes because we plan to hit up at least Magic Mountain in the next year, so that made it worth it. I was armed with the Motion Sickness Wristbands again. My main goal was to ride Jersey Devil, so we headed in that direction and walked right on to it. This is a fun ride, but it didn't seem as intense as I had read from other reports. We hit up Nitro and Batman which are both still running great. We then headed to El Toro, and wow, this thing has aged terribly. The first drop and turn were ok, but otherwise it was extremely rough and uncomfortable. We headed over to Kingda Ka and felt it was also much rougher than we remembered. One ride was enough there. We hit up Medusa, and re-rode Jersey Devil, Nitro, and Batman. I wanted to try El Toro one more time, but my partner wasn't having it, so I went for a solo ride and sat in the middle. The second ride was WORSE than the first. So sad, I used to love this ride. We had our fill of rides and headed out. The wristbands work! I had no nausea after any of the rides. This really made me happy!

We took Monday off to "rest", except we ended up walking a ton around Philly, which was probably a bad idea in hindsight since it was over 90 degrees and we had a full (and hotter) day of Hersheypark planned for Tuesday.

Tuesday September 4th - Hersheypark

We hadn't been here since 2014. Driving in to the park was crazy! We were surprised how long it took to make it to the parking lot. It probably took us at least 20 minutes to park- this was at 10:15am and the park opened at 11am. It was already uncomfortably hot, and we knew it was going to be a rough day so we opted to get Fast Track Unlimited passes just in case.
We decided to hit up Candymonium since it was new to us and right at the front. The ops were horrific on this ride. 3 trains, and it took over 5 minutes for each dispatch. This should have been at most a 10 minute wait and it took over 35. A decent B&M but we were not going to wait to re-ride this again.
Skyrush was down when we walked by, so we headed back to my absolute favorite ride in the park(*) StormRunner. This ride is still so damn good, I just wish it were longer. I thought if they combined StormRunner and Fahrenheit, it could be the perfect ride. Fahrenheit was next, and then we headed towards the main attraction- Wildcat's Revenge. WOW! I love it. This is probably my favorite RMC to date. (And yes, that's over Steel Vengeance. I haven't gotten to Iron Gwazi yet to compare). This really packs a punch and so many great elements (though this also had 2 that were uncomfortable for me- but the rest made it worth the re-rides). We hit up LaffTrak and Lightning Racer before taking a break. We made it back to Skyrush- one train ops, so it was rather slow, but still a great ride. The weather was really taking a toll on us (95+Sunny), so we hit up StormRunner again, then Wildcat's Revenge twice. We hit up SkyRush one more time before heading out around 4pm. Overall the lines weren't too bad, I'm guessing most people were at the waterpark. If it weren't so hot, we would have been fine without Fast Track, but it did help with avoiding standing in the heat for too long.
Once again, no motion sickness, so I'm definitely sold on these wristbands!

Overall this was a fantastic trip!

New Credits:

DarKoaster - Fun, loved the multi launches. 7/10

Pantheon - Excellent! 9/10

InvadR - Fun but short 7/10

Tempesto - Once is enough for me, terrible restraints- 6/10

Intimidator 305 - 10/10. Super fun!

Twisted Timbers - 8/10

Jersey Devil - 8/10 - my first RMC Raptor

Candymonium - 7/10 - it's fine, good for one ride.

LaffTrak - 6/10 - I was worried about the spinning, but the magical wristbands worked!

Wildcat's Revenge - 10/10 - another RMC success story.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

I'm surprised you were able to get on DarKoaster so quickly. We went in early August and everything was a walk on (like you, we got to stay on the train on Pantheon) and the reported wait for DarKoaster was 90 min. I'm sure it wasn't actually that long, but even 45 minutes was way too long for what I understand that coaster to be.

ApolloAndy:

I'm surprised you were able to get on DarKoaster so quickly.

Yeah, I really think the weather may have kept people away. It definitely looked like it was going to be a lot worse than it ended up being. Our second ride on DarKoaster had maybe a 10-15 minute wait max.

Manticore1977:

Verbolten was closed due to repainting

Why on earth would they have a major ride closed for painting on a summer season holiday weekend? #seasbestday

Also, I am glad to hear those wristbands work. I'm not quite there yet, but if more rides start to make me feel how a select few currently do, I would absolutely give those wristbands a try.

Thanks for the report! I really enjoy all of these parks and am thinking about a trip to hit them again in 2024.

BrettV:

Also, I am glad to hear those wristbands work. I'm not quite there yet, but if more rides start to make me feel how a select few currently do, I would absolutely give those wristbands a try

Yeah, I was VERY skeptical but really happy they worked, otherwise this trip would not have been as fun.

Disappointed to hear about El Toro getting rough. I was only there once, but it was a great ride and was one of my favorites.

Great TR Manticore1977.

I am 49.999 years old and am getting motion sickness on most rides, especially on hot sunny days.

I will definitely try the wristbands.

Did you try any spinning flat rides? I'd love to ride things like KI's monster again, but just looking at them makes my stomach recoil.

I'm a fan of ginger for motion sickness. You can get ginger gum at most pharmacies.

https://mythresults.com/episode43

buckeye brad:

Did you try any spinning flat rides? I'd love to ride things like KI's monster again, but just looking at them makes my stomach recoil.

The closest I got to that experience was Laff Trak at Hershey which had spinning cars. I used to love all the crazy flat spinners but haven't tried those in a while.