Hersheypark May 18, 2013

I don't get to Hersheypark very often because it's a long, boring drive - two hours long and boring because most of it is on the PA Turnpike, with the last leg involving about half an hour on 322W, which is in the middle of nowhere. Because the park tends to be crowded during the summer, I thought that May would be a good time to go. What I failed to take into consideration is the fact that there are a lot of school trips scheduled during the month of May. And on Saturday the kids sporting school T-shirts, primarily from music schools, were out in full force. The ride lines were not outrageous or unmanageable but long enough to preclude the possibility of getting in a lot of rides in a short time.

It took 50 minutes, about the maximum length of time I am able to stand, to get on Skyrush. The wait for Stormrunner was only about half an hour so I was able to catch a ride on that one. Although I've never been a great fan of Lightning Racer, I headed in that direction because I knew that there is hardly ever a wait to get on it. Maybe I've been selling that coaster short; it's enjoyable and a change of pace from the two aggressive thrill rides I'd just been on. I rode both the Lightning and Thunder side and came to the conclusion that Lightning is better; it seemed to have more airtime.

The queue for Fahrenheit looked prohibitive so I decided to grab another ride on Skyrush. As it happened, Skyrush was closed due to technical difficulties and here is where patience paid off. Because a number of people had gotten out of line, not knowing when the ride would reopen, I decided to wait it out for another 20 minutes. This strategy worked out well, as it had at Busch Gardens Williamsburg when Apollo's Chariot went down and no-one seemed to know that it was back up so that I was at the head of the queue. The last ride made my day. I cannot say enough about the glory of Skyrush. Although there are widely disparate opinions about this coaster, I happen to think that it's one of the very best I have ever ridden. I'm not in a position to say whether there has been any improvement in the restraints because I sat in the same seat (left front wing seat) on both rides and would have to try a number of different seats to get a reading on this, but I did not find the restraint uncomfortable and someone who sat in a different seat said that she didn't find it uncomfortable either, so maybe some progress has been made. I recently found out from Travel Channel that the edition of Insane Coaster Wars featuring the Skyrush shoot in which I participated last October is scheduled to air on June 23 at 8:30pm ET although they said to check back with them a couple of weeks before then because the programming was subject to change. The entire coaster series is scheduled to begin on June 9.

Well, I didn't get a lot of rides but it was a fun outing anyway and such a nice park.

^I would be more than happy to only have to drive 2 hours to get to Hersheypark. Lucky! Heck, that would also mean that I was that much closer to all those great PA parks.

Did you get to sooperdooperLooper?

I also find the Lightning side to be better. It is somehow smoother and more airtime filled. I think the slight difference in layouts makes a difference (some small transition changes could easily make a difference in the "flow" of a ride, I'd imagine). LR isn't what I'd call a "thrilling" coaster, but its pace, comfort level, and just "funness" keeps it easily in my top 10.

Glad to hear Skyrush is not uncomfortable. I'd love to re-ride it with the new restraints because I've been a big supporter of them not trimming it and just getting new restraints instead. It is my favorite Intamin steel if it weren't for the discomfort, so I'm quite excited to retry.

Your drive to Hershey is how I feel about my drive to Great Adventure. If the drive to GrAdv wasn't so prohibitively crappy, I'd go more often. Hershey's about an hour and 10 for me, so I tend to go there more often, even with Toro being my #1.

I was there Sunday. Walk-ons for nearly every ride at some poiont during the day, but I experienced the school kids on Friday at SFNE - and it was pure hell.

As for Skycrush, I have bruises on my right thigh right now. So the new restraints (which is just a spongy rubber type thing instead of plastic - or so I was told by some guy lapping it) haven't rectified the problem. It was so uncomfortable I could only manage 2 rides at a time, depsite being a walk on for the back row on my last 2. Such a shame because the airtime is insane.

Operations at this park are bad. 33% of Farenheits capacity is lost to fastlane each ride and no one was using it. They really need to rethink this.

The fastlane thing is now like that with Maverick and MF, also.

Grant, the roping off of sections on Fahrenheit or whatever they do IS highly inefficient. I have trouble understanding how such a nice park like Hershey just can't figure this out. While people may agree or disagree with virtual queue systems and other STLs, I think most would agree that capacity decreasing helps nothing.

When I was there last spring, they were filling the extra rows on Fahrenheit if they weren't going to be used.

That's completely asinine. Look at any queue management that doesn't suck and you can see them merge lines before the platform, not reserve part of the ride and let it go unfilled. Stupid.

GayCoasterGuy said:

^I would be more than happy to only have to drive 2 hours to get to Hersheypark. Lucky! Heck, that would also mean that I was that much closer to all those great PA parks.

Did you get to sooperdooperLooper?

Didn't get to sooperdooper Looper.

2 hours probably isn't a long drive in the overall scheme of things but it's a long drive for someone such as myself who's never owned a car, has limited driving experience and is a nervous wreck behind the wheel, especially after getting into an accident last year after leaving Dollywood. (In wrong place at wrong time; owner of vehicle that hit mine made a number of threatening phone calls, trying to shake me down for money.) Only other time I drove 2 hours was to SFNE because in my ignorance I booked a flight to Boston, not realizing that Hartford is the closest airport to that park.

Grant said:

I was there Sunday. Walk-ons for nearly every ride at some poiont during the day, but I experienced the school kids on Friday at SFNE - and it was pure hell.

As for Skycrush, I have bruises on my right thigh right now. So the new restraints (which is just a spongy rubber type thing instead of plastic - or so I was told by some guy lapping it) haven't rectified the problem. It was so uncomfortable I could only manage 2 rides at a time, depsite being a walk on for the back row on my last 2. Such a shame because the airtime is insane.

Operations at this park are bad. 33% of Farenheits capacity is lost to fastlane each ride and no one was using it. They really need to rethink this.

Sorry to hear about your experience with Skyrush. Because of two positive votes, I really thought that the problem might have been resolved. I think that with this coaster it all depends upon where you sit. Oddly, one of my fellow riders objected to the fact that there are no restraints for the torso. ??? It's true that you get whipped around a lot on this ride but after 15 rides total on Skyrush, I can say that injury to the upper body has never been an issue.

The situation with Fahrenheit is pretty screwed up.

In my experience, they've always pulled from nearby rows if nobody shows up with the passes. I'm not sure why they didn't do it on your visit.

^^ for some reason, they don't always pull from the line. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I find it to be asinine, as Jeff so succinctly put it. And those passes are another issue altogether. They are over 50 bucks if I remember, you get one ride on each coaster, and they just put you in the middle of the train. If you can only ride each coaster once with a STL pass, shouldn't you be able to at least pick your seat? Especially for that price?

Been on Fahrenheit twice and both times they were not pulling from the queue. Talk about killing capacity on an already below-capacity ride.

I tend to like HP in general but ride operations and staff seem to be sub-par compared to the relatively high niceness of the rest of the park. And I don't consider myself particularly picky when it comes to this sort of thing.

The high price is probably so that the Fast Lane, or whatever they are calling it, doesn't interrupt normal operations as much, but sending empty rows is totally ruining that reasoning.

I'm probably going to go to HP next month. Hope things are better by then. Maybe I'll just splurge and get the line-cutter this time around for me and my buddy.

I think fast-lane should be TWICE (As in double) as pricey. Unlimited rides with almost no wait? All that does is mess up regular admission-ers, and it makes the ride wait time signs inaccurate.