TR: Hersheypark on 9/15, or "Wild Mouse Heaven"

Hershey was open from 5-10 on Friday, which is mostly for the "preview" guests, so there was going to be a lot of shark fishing for seats going on for the first night. This being my home park, I'm used to going on empty days, but these are the days when the park really shines. Kevin picked me up, and we were off to a night of great rides with no lines.

First things first, a ride on Storm Runner, which had a two-train wait (I could have just walked on, but I wanted to ride with some friends who we met up with, and they wanted the front seat). They were also running just one side of the ride, like they should be doing on a night like this. Next, we got on the first of many Lightning Racer rides. Kevin and I both usually favor Thunder (green), but Lightning (red) was giving it a run for it's money.

Next, we decided to ride the Wild Mouse. I don't normally ride the Mouse, but hey, it's a walk-on, why not? Besides, I've never had the chance to ride the mouse with four people. Well, it flew around the turns. Hershey doesn't like to brake the mouse until mid-ride, right before the drops. Well, we got a few re-rides going, and it was speeding out of control.

We walked across the midway and hit up the Wildcat. It was running well, so we ended up re-riding five more times. That's a lot of fun, but I felt it in the morning. They were running Rollersoaker without the water effects on, so we got a ride on that. All was going fine, until some kids splashed us at the end of the ride. Interestingly, that was only the second time I rode that since the year they put it in.

Sooperdooperlooper gave us six good rides (again, Hersheypark's re-ride policy meant we didn't have to get out of our seats for 80% of the rides the entire night). Comet was as braked as ever, and even though we sat in the Schmeck seat, one ride was enough. We gave Reese's Extreme Cup Challenge (RXCC) a ride, standing in the single-rider line. We all got in fast, even though the line was a little long. The park was starting to fill up about now. We made our way back out to Midway America, and took some more rides on Lightning Racer.

Then, we piled in the Wild Mouse again, for six consecutive trips. There was a lot of weight in the car, and after a few rides, the kicker wheels started to squeal when we traveled over them. The car was actually catching up with the car in front of it, and the speed caused massive airtime on the bunny hops. I floated through the second half of the ride, and it was beautiful. Another ride on RXCC, and we were out. We ended the night, like many before it, at the Cocoa Grill in Hummelstown. We got in well over thirty rides for the night, in a few hours.

Nice TR, I was wondering how Hershey's re-ride policy was because I am anticpating low crowds when I go next month and didn't want to have to walk through the queue each time.

Did they allow you to move to a different row if someone was waiting for your row but another row was empty, and did you have to ask for the re-rides or just stayed on the train without saying anything? *** Edited 9/18/2006 3:18:23 AM UTC by YoshiFan***

^Depends on who it is running but Ive never had a problem re riding if there is no line, just be sure to ask a ride op before you do it.

Nice TR, I was wondering how the Friday night crowds would be this month. I might give it a try this week.

That mouse is one of my favorites only for the sheer scariness of it flying around the turns at the top without brakes Followed closely by it almost throwing me out when I rode with a larger rider beside me. Wild Mouse INDEED!

I managed to pull off the same thing on wild one last time at SFA....funny thing about it is that SF parks usually have a much stricter policy where even if there's nobody waiting for your seat you still gotta exit & go around.

Good thing PKD still allows for as many rerides as you want in an empty seat & seat swapping though but with CF in charge now those days might soon be numbered in the future.