Quick Trip to Dorney - 7/17

My friend and I stopped by DP today for about 2 hours in the evening. It was by far the most idiotic thing I have ever done. I don't even think I have seen the park more full. It was sort of an impulse decision to go down anyway, and by the time we got there I had realized it was a Saturday in July! I didn't see a whole lot of the park but here is what I did see. The parking lot was filled as was almost all of the overflow lot. There were TONS of buses that they closed a lane on Hamilton Boulevard to let them all leave. SF was running 3 trains! (which is a rare thing) It was sending the people through so fast it was amazing, the crew did a pretty good job. Talon and Thunderhawk were running two trains. (Didn't head down by Laser so not sure about it, but I would imagine two.) Dominator was insane, I could only imagine how long the wait was. All queues were filled for the green side and over half were filled for the red side. And, predictably, WWK was packed. We went on SF twice (2nd time being back seat) and Enterprise once.

Hydra track and other pieces have now been delieverd to DP. Riding Steel Force gives the best view besides White Water Landing probably. I was able to pinpoint station track (and possibly track for the brake run or transfer/storage area before the station) and a piece or two of track for a barrel roll. It was hard to see exactly every piece that was there, since we were going pretty fast through the helix, SF was running really intense tonight. Many footers are now everywhere on Herc's old site. There is a very clear line of footers where you can tell the storage area will probably be. The one trench I saw from SF was really deep, probaby as deep as, if not deeper than the trench on Talon. One last thing: while climbing SF's lift I looked over towards the area of the warehouse at the top of the employee parking lot. I saw some sort of crane and crates (probably for Hydra) but I saw what looked like Wild Mouse cars under tarps. Whatever they were, they looked to be 4 person seater cars. I didn't bother checking Wild Mouse to see if any of its cars were missing, perhaps these were something different. Can anyone help me out?

Sorry if this TR seemed a bit messy, I wrote it pretty quick. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pics. I can't wait till vertical construction starts on Hydra, it's gonna be a long 9 1/2 months till May of 2005! *** Edited 7/18/2004 4:42:02 AM UTC by DorneyMan88***

I'm pretty sure those cars you saw under tarps are part of one of the Hercules trains. And yes, the park was packed today. As a recommendation to anyone planning on going to Dorney, don't go on a Saturday during the summer, it's pure madness compared to weekdays.

Wierd, I was there from around 11 am to 1 pm and it wasn't busy at all. 10 min. wait for Talon, Steel Force was a walk on, and I had to wait for one launch on the green side of Dominator. Steel Force was aready running three trains at that time also. If they were running it anywhere near as fast as they were at Coaster Madness, then it should have been a sight to see, because that was impressive. I think this is the trench you were refering to. You can see the footers follow the contour of the trench, and yes it is deep.

We were there two weekends ago. It seems that in the early part of day everyone is in the water park and then after 4 or 5 pm its completely insane in the park. The water park was so packed also that the wave pool was like being in a can of sardines.

I was there at the water park, we rode three slides in 3 hours, ate lunch and realized it was silly to stay any longer. It was wall to wall people! Ugh, got on all the rides Friday night though, everything was a walk on all night.

Earlier in the day though a group of line jumpers were booted from the splash ride line, forget its name. A group in front of us didnt notice the line moved up and some kids cut in front of them. Said group got an operators attention and everyone around backed up their story. The kids actual thought what they did was ok, and said "they were holding up the line." Funny stuff. We are sending Dorney a nice letter.

This being my first trip to Dorney ever, I must say they have the two of the best water rides I have been on, the rapids ride and flume were a blast. A very clean, pretty well run park. Will probably write a tr of my whole trip this week.

It's always nice when a park enforces it's line jumping policy.:)

Yes as Heatherw had said we were there last weekend, and it was just too crowded. We hung in the wave pool,and the only coaster we rode was Steel Force because of the 3 train op. The wait was only about 15 minutes for the backseat.

The crowds they are drawing there on a weekend are just as bad as the crowds at SFA. They are pretty rude. I'll wait til the fall to make my way back there. The main reason we got our season passes this year was for our trips to Cedar Point.

Yes, the crowds were typical for the area like you said Coasterfantom2. Very rude.

One example is the line jumper. Another is when I was getting lunch and my girlfriend was holding a table for us. Four families sat down, two suburban, two city. Guess who asked if they could sit down and guess who didnt.

I must say that Dorney handles the crowds better than the two Six Flags parks in the area.