Inside Universal Forums

Welcome to the Inside Universal Forums! Register a free account today to become a member. Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members and unlock our forums features!

  • Signing up for a Premium Membership is a donation to help Inside Universal maintain costs and offers an ad-free experience on the forum. Learn more about it here.

Hershey Park

Hersheypark trip report... had to go here instead of my planned Orlando trip for obvious reasons. This is the first time I’ve been to Hershey since 2015.

Candymonium was expectedly very good. Super smooth and the airtime on the second hill is awesome. Did the ride three times, and I got stuck for about 25 minutes on one of the break sections at the end on one of them (video attached). I think Mako is a bit longer of a ride and has a better back half, so I’ll still have Mako above this one. But the existence of a crowd pleasing hyper like this definitely is a big gain for the park.

The new Chocolatetown entrance is not exactly finished. It should be really nice when they actually get some foliage up around there.

I got talked into going on Thighcrush once, wish I didn’t. It’s still a very unenjoyable experience for someone who is pushing 6’3 and 210.

The new drop towers are really fun. Fahrenheit is still running really well. The Great Bear is still such a fun ride to me. It’s not particularly long but it’s so smooth. Not having Storm Runner sucked. Wildcat was only operating one train despite the line taking up half of the queue, which was dumb. Overall the operations and services were pretty poor, workers not nearly as effective as I remember. It was their first week back, so I’ll cut them a little slack.

I’m interested to see what they do with the extra land they have around Candymonium. They should stay in contact with B&M and see if they can get a Flyer or Floorless. Obviously if they can get RMC to redo one of the woodies in the back, they should pursue that before anything because the park is very unbalanced.

 
Hersheypark trip report... had to go here instead of my planned Orlando trip for obvious reasons. This is the first time I’ve been to Hershey since 2015.

Candymonium was expectedly very good. Super smooth and the airtime on the second hill is awesome. Did the ride three times, and I got stuck for about 25 minutes on one of the break sections at the end on one of them (video attached). I think Mako is a bit longer of a ride and has a better back half, so I’ll still have Mako above this one. But the existence of a crowd pleasing hyper like this definitely is a big gain for the park.

The new Chocolatetown entrance is not exactly finished. It should be really nice when they actually get some foliage up around there.

I got talked into going on Thighcrush once, wish I didn’t. It’s still a very unenjoyable experience for someone who is pushing 6’3 and 210.

The new drop towers are really fun. Fahrenheit is still running really well. The Great Bear is still such a fun ride to me. It’s not particularly long but it’s so smooth. Not having Storm Runner sucked. Wildcat was only operating one train despite the line taking up half of the queue, which was dumb. Overall the operations and services were pretty poor, workers not nearly as effective as I remember. It was their first week back, so I’ll cut them a little slack.

I’m interested to see what they do with the extra land they have around Candymonium. They should stay in contact with B&M and see if they can get a Flyer or Floorless. Obviously if they can get RMC to redo one of the woodies in the back, they should pursue that before anything because the park is very unbalanced.



That had to get hot after a few minutes. I've been stuck on Diamondback for maybe five minutes top and it was like being roasted.
 
That had to get hot after a few minutes. I've been stuck on Diamondback for maybe five minutes top and it was like being roasted.

It was cool at first because the view was pretty good, but it did got hot quickly. These things radiate a ton of heat. They gave us free drink vouchers afterwords though.
 
Yeah it’s smooth as hell and looks gorgeous from the ground as well. Having a hyper right inside the entrance is really unique too - you can easily start and end your day with it. To me it’s just the trims up the third airtime hill and before the showcase turn make you want a little bit more, though I get why they did it. This project was about building a pure crowd pleaser, the opposite of Skyrush.

Not sure what’s up with Orion, I’ve heard a lot of “meh” about it.
 
Yeah it’s smooth as hell and looks gorgeous from the ground as well. Having a hyper right inside the entrance is really unique too - you can easily start and end your day with it. To me it’s just the trims up the third airtime hill and before the showcase turn make you want a little bit more, though I get why they did it. This project was about building a pure crowd pleaser, the opposite of Skyrush.

Not sure what’s up with Orion, I’ve heard a lot of “meh” about it.

I noticed the trims on Candymonium’s airtime hills look very different than the one on Mako. Did you notice a difference?

I find the trim on Mako to be fairly jarring, so I’m hoping this new style at the bottom of the hill is a bit less noticeable.
 
It's also been a struggle to staff the seasonal parks. They rely heavily on foreign workers on work visas that weren't issued this year, plus they can't use dormitory style housing to bring workers in. If the park is only open for 8 hours like that it's covered by a single shift of workers rather than having two shifts. That combined with low crowds, it just makes sense to run those hours.
 
Going to be in the area Dec 9th-13th and want to check out Hersheypark. I noticed they are open at night, but will the rides be open? I don't know what the lockdown situation is like in Pennsylvania so I'm wondering how that is over there.
 
This was posted back in February on Screamscape:

"Hersheypark has now confirmed that they will open the park for the 2021 season on April 2. The park will begin with weekend only operations throughout most of April and May and move into a daily operations schedule starting on Memorial Day Weekend and run through to Labor Day Weekend in September. If all goes as planned the park will then move back to weekend operations for the rest of September with plans to host Hersheypark In The Dark once again in October, along with select operational dates in November and December for the return of Hersheypark Christmas Candylane."
 
Source: Screamscape

General Resort News - (6/3/21): Anyone know what’s going on with Storm Runner at Hersheypark? I’m told that the Intamin launched coaster has not run since the 2019 season, hasn't remained closed all of 2020 and and so far for 2021 from what we’ve heard. During a visit this week however, a reader noticed something new, a large roll of steel cable has been placed on top of the launch track.

Since Storm Runner uses a hydraulic launch system and not a magnetic one, the launch system attaches a small shuttle device to the underside of the train, which is attached to the launch motor by a cable system. This seems to be a clear sign that they are replacing / repairing the launch cable on Storm Runner, so hopefully we’ll see it open once again later this Summer.
 
For what it's worth, RMC commented on both FB and Twitter that they have a few ideas.
The "Any suggestions on what we could do with 3,100 feet of wooden track?" bit has me believing it could be RMC'd

But there are other options with wooden coasters now beyond just giving the RMC treatment, GCI's Titan Track for instance...so who knows
 
Top