Dorney Park First Timer

I recently moved to the Allentown area from Buffalo, as I went to Penn State and decided this would be a good place to live for now. I live about five minutes from the park right near LA Fitness by 22. We arrived at about 5:30 on saturday evening, and the parking lot was packed. Besides being nervous about the size of the lines, I really didnt' have too many expectations for the park because I haven't heard too many great reviews about it; from the was hydra was a supposed let down to the way the park wasn't very pretty. Maybe it was just because my expectations were lower, but I had a great time.

The park seemed jam-packed as we entered, so we (my roomate and a few of his friends) headed back to Hydra. Surprisingly we only had to wait about ten minutes for the front seat. For what it is, I liked this ride. It was really unique and I appreciate that.

We then headed to Steel Force, which ended up having an even shorter line than Hydra. Later in the day, the ride ops here were really pumping out trains, albeit obnoxiously. "PUUUUUSH ON THE GATE, PUUUUSH." LOL. Anyway, the ride was great, much smoother than Magnum, though I'm not sure if that is a plus or not. (I am a Maggie fan).

Eventually we headed up to Talon, which had the longest wait of the night. We waited about 25 minutes for the back seat. Good ride, and was surprised to find that they videotape your ride. We got a good laugh out of watching that.

Next we went on hang time, which made me a little nervous as it seemed to be running on steroids. Wow. I screamed like a little girl on this one. Back at Darien lake this ride was a lot tamer from what I can remember. It was fun though.

All in all, we ended up going on all of the coasters and had a good time. I would have been more detailed, but I have to get to work and these are the highlights of my trip. Thanks for reading. Peace.

The ride ops were yelling at you to push on the air gates? That seems a little odd to me.

Glad to hear you had a good time though. I've only been to Dorney once, but had a great time as well. I actually thought the park was quite clean and pretty when we were there.

I remember Dorney having magnetically latched ride gates. They don't open automatically, so when the magnets are released they tell you to push the gates open.

I also like Hydra with its unique layout. What about the rest of the rides like Thunderhawk, Lazer, Meteor, and Revolution just to name a few. I will be heading down there in the fall for Halloweekends,thats my favorite time to go there is never any lines.

I like the magnetic gates, as it leads to faster loading after people get their heads around the idea. (The other major park in the area, Hersheypark, has air gates, which are annoying, and the small parks all have no gates at all, which is how I really like it.)

Hershey's gates are annoying because they don't open them until everyone is off the platform. I'm not quite sure why they do this, but it made the load time sometimes twice as long as it should have taken.

The only problem with the magnetic gates is that it doesn't give you much time to get past the gates before they lock. On the B&M's, there might be a group of two and then a group of 4 waiting, the 4 might ask if I want to go in front of them to sit with the group of 2 and the gate is locked already. Other times, people don't realize you have to push the gate even when the ops say to and they don't board the train so they have to re-open the gates which causes stacking since it takes longer to load and check the train.

I've still seen less stacking at Dorney than at Hershey, where I've seen way too much of it.