Dorney CoasterMadness '04

This would be my 3rd CoasterMadness, my hubby’s 1st and the 3rd and final honeymoon stop for us. I was especially excited about my hubby riding Talon. He adored Fire and Ice so I kind of knew he would adore Talon as well.
No CM button again this year which I was bummed about. I can’t believe it’s cheaper to have sheets of paper printed and sealed in plastic then it would be to have buttons made!! :(

AM ERT: Steel Force, Thunderhawk and Lazer. We managed 7 SF laps, 1 TH lap and 2 Lazer laps. My hubby really loved SF, loved the airtime on Thunderhawk, and really liked Lazer. He was impressed with Dorney from the get go, stating it reminded him of a mini-CP.

Once the gates opened to the GP it was like the park was attacked from every school in the Pa area. I don’t have a problem hanging out with kids (I’ve got 2 of them myself!) but sometimes the mouths on these kids is unreal. They are using foul language (loudly) while there are families and young kids around. The good thing about crowds such as that is they will be GONE by PM ERT :)

One Talon ride is all it took for Eric to decide he liked it better than Raptor. He said he could not believe how smooth it is. I KNEW he’d like it!! :)

The view of missing "Hercules" was the best from SF. It looks like "Hydra the Revenge" will be covering some (if not all) of the land Hercules covered. Although far from a Hercules fan (I personally LOVED the helix though) it was still sad to see it gone :(
In a once bare lot of land sat "Revolution" which is a huge rock and puke and I opted NO. Eric and I hit up the rest of the park at our leisure then headed to the lunch.
As usual DP has a yummy lunch. Their chicken was wonderful again this year, Eric said the pot roast sandwich was good. Ice cream or sherbet for dessert. TONS of Pepsi to drink. Change of jobs announced, a game of "Who wants to be a Millionaire" was played, and of course the drawings for prizes, and of course again I didn't win anything :(

After lunch Eric and I went back to the hotel to rest up for PM ERT. We arrived back at DP around 6pm and relieved to see most of the school buses and crowd gone by then.

We hit up Thunderhawk several more times (front car only) Lazer a couple more times and I even rode Dominator a couple times. The coolest thing that happened was when someone in that line asked if they could see my tattoos. My hubby said I light up when I talk to someone about CP or Raptor, he is probably right :)

PM ERT: Talon and Wild Mouse. We had ridden WM once already so opted to stick it out at Talon. We managed 8 ERT rides and only can mention one thing that I didn’t understand. I can understand the no rerides (sort of, DP NEVER has allowed them in the past that I can recall) but WTH was the deal with the crew putting the harnesses down and locking them even before we had time to get into the row queue lines? On a couple of trips I KNOW the crew saw a group of us coming and instead of waiting, they simply put the harnesses down and sent out a train with like 2 people on them. That was crap! It’s not like they were trying for an interval since stacking is the name of the game on Talon, that was just rude! I know from personal experience as a ride op you would MUCH prefer a guest in that seat instead of having to do the seat belt and harness yourself. There would have been NO harm in simply waiting 1 more minute for the guests to arrive. That would be my only complaint, other than that every flight we had was awesome, and even did 3 in the front row :)

All in all CoasterMadness ‘04 chalks right up there with the previous 2 I’ve been to. We both really had a very nice time, got plenty of Talon rides (12) and we really enjoyed ourselves very much. I’m looking forward to wearing my "Hydra" shirt to CP next week!

Jo
2000 Raptor Crew
2002 Raptor Crew
2003 Raptor Crew

Yep, every schoolkid in PA was there. It's funny how the screams of terror coming from Talon in the dark turned to screams of joy around 10:00.

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geneticfreak said:
Yep, every schoolkid in PA was there. It's funny how the screams of terror coming from Talon in the dark turned to screams of joy around 10:00.

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Something else rather funny...
There was a seat belt check on one of the PM ERT Talon rides on the lift hill.
NO ONE made a sound when the train stopped. Everyone just sat there calmly till the belt was checked and the train took off once more.
You KNOW if the GP was on that train you would hear the screaming and cursing all the way to Steel Force!!

Jo
2000 Raptor Crew
2002 Raptor Crew
2003 Raptor Crew