Hersheypark (HP) Discussion Thread

[GayCoasterGuyA zonkey is a cross between a zebra and a donkey.]

From what I have heard, it would help if the lap bars were a completely different shape. They need more surface area contacting the legs. Kinda like the B&M clamshell design. They can put all the padding they want, if they don't increase the surface area of contact, you are still in for pain.

[_koppenA donkey is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family.]

The lap bars will be a completely different shape, but restraint design takes time. They can't just swap them out for new ones.
The Gerstlauer guy said they worked over a year for DDD's lap bars, to get them safe enough.

I'm confident that this ride will get new lap bars within a not to distant future, but in the meantime we just have to deal with the current ones. Big kudos to Hershey for actually doing the temporarily fix!

[A.J.Counts I305 as 32 credits...]

The problem that they have is that the lap bar (big blue bar that wraps around) and the grab bar (smaller blue bar that sticks out forward that you hold onto) are welded together as one piece, with the padding molded around them. They can't make any significant changes to the contouring without sending the restraints away to have new custom padding molded.

And, yes, the reason why it's uncomfortable is because the area of contact is so small.

I still think that another short-term fix would be to make the restraints harder to pull down.

[AstrojackFull Fledged Donkey Enthusiast!]

When the lap bar doesn't put your thighs into a death grip, there is no discomfort during the ride. My first ride in the back the lap bar never got any tighter. My second ride in the middle the bar got tighter after the first drop and after the first turn. It was uncomfortable rest of the ride, but I didn't mind it. My friend found the second ride to painful and refused to ride it any more. This was before the modifications. I hope they can figure out how to prevent the lap bars from getting tighter. Is there any other coaster with a floorless type design that only has lap bars?

[vdejarnetteI Guess Donkeys Are Okay]

I was at HP yesterday (finally) for the first time this season.

Got four rides on SkyRush (last row left wing, second row left wing, 7th row left wing, front row right wing), three of them after the sun went down, including front wing seat in the second to last train of the night. This thing is like riding a bucking bronco, an airtime machine unlike anything I've ever experienced in the US (and that covers almost everything east of the Mississippi except for Holiday World, Carowinds, and a bunch of smaller parks). I found that front/back is not so much important to the experience as whether you are on the left or right wing. The left wing gives more insane ejectors on the second crossover airtime hill and the S-curve airtime hill, and pulls the rug out from under you on the "modified stengel dive". It may be my new #1, but I gotta think on that, and maybe give Intimidator 305 another go to compare.

As for the restaints, I found them perfectly comfortable and relatively soft and giving. They do staple down as the ride goes on (I found this to be more noticeable on the right wing, all the more reason to ride on the left). This may be selection bias talking, but the only major complaints I heard were from skinny sticks of human beings (i.e. kids) or the overweight. If you have any muscle tone in your legs at all I cannot see the restraints being uncomfortable to the point of actually hurting. I had no trouble flexing or moving my legs to keep circulation while on the brake run.

The rest of the park is absolutely beautiful at night. It rained earlier so there was a thin layer of mist in the hollow all night, it was serene walking along the path between the amphitheatre and creek. This is probably the first time I've ever been to Hershey that I came in the afternoon and stayed till closing (I went 5-11) though I've been virtually every year dating back to around the time Wildcat opened. I think this will be my plan for future visits. I got multiple rides on all the coasters except Fahrenheit (long line as expected for a decent but not overwhelming ride), Sidewinder (already tried it with the new trains and it's still a boomerang), Comet (skipped it, old hat and the line is always brutal) and Roller Soaker/Wild Mouse (done before and not worth the wait). Here are some thoughts.

Storm Runner - Short but sweet, still very smooth and forceful. Years of loving this ride have allowed me to avoid the neck/shoulder bruises that the twisting jump into the brakes can cause. It kind of loses some of its impact after riding SkyRush since it is no longer the most intense thing in the park, but the layout is still all kinds of awesome.

SDL - Love the look of the new orange trains, and they ride smoothy. It's a classic but really tame and anticlimactic after the tunnel. This had the longest line I've ever seen for it, all the way down the stairs and back around the foundation. Probably wouldn't wait this long again now that I've tried the new trains.

Great Bear - Awesome night coaster, especially with the view of the Hollow all lit up, but again just too short to be a great ride. The corkscrew underneath the SDL lift always catches me by surprise with its intensity.

Wildcat - Got one ride in the front row just after the turned on the chaser lights at dusk. This is definitely a front seat ride, especially with the MF views of the track at your feet. Last night was by far the best ride I've had on it since it opened back in 96. It was running fast and with just the right amount of roughness. YMMV, I did ride in the front after all.

Lightning Racer - Again, this is definitely a front seat night ride. More airtime and more forcefulness than I can ever remember getting on this ride in the past, but that may be due to the fact that I usually cross it off first after getting to the park in the morning and heading to the back. It is a delightful mess of track in the dark.

A note about the operations. They are not good, worse than I can ever remember. Just really really slow loading and unloading the trains, and its not just SkyRush. The SkyRush ops were leaving multiple seats open at the end of the night and I basically had to get call to get the ops attention that there were multiple seats in the front row that were not being filled while multiple single riders waiting for the front looked on in disbelief.

Overall, this is has become a premier park destination. With SkyRush they have filled out their coaster collection very nicely with the world beater Top-10 worthy ride that was missing (love Storm Runner but its just too short), the park's coaster collection now feels complete in a way, though I'm sure they will find a way to shoehorn more in in the future.

[tb81I Guess Donkeys Are Okay]

I was at HP yesterday (finally) for the first time this season.
As for the restaints, I found them perfectly comfortable and relatively soft and giving. They do staple down as the ride goes on (I found this to be more noticeable on the right wing, all the more reason to ride on the left). This may be selection bias talking, but the only major complaints I heard were from skinny sticks of human beings (i.e. kids) or the overweight. If you have any muscle tone in your legs at all I cannot see the restraints being uncomfortable to the point of actually hurting. I had no trouble flexing or moving my legs to keep circulation while on the brake run.

My one ride was in the back left wing seat. It wasn't really bad for me until the last third of the ride. I think I sort of got thrown to the side during one of the turns and it was when that occurred that the bar really came down. It just hit me in a really uncomfortable spot and I'm neither a skinny stick or overweight. Since Sky Rush was the first thing we did last Monday night, we then encountered the operations like you described which I think only made things worse for us. No doubt the ride is amazing and it probably has the strongest air time that I've ever encountered.

Let me agree with you about the park at night. I was incredibly impressed with it, especially seeing the wood coasters lined with with the chaser lights. Lightning Racer in particular looked amazing with that twisted mess of a layout.

- Todd

[giscoStarbucks Enthusiast]

Made my first visit to the park a few weeks ago and had a great time. I did the preview and knocked out most of the coasters the day before. That made my full day in the park a lot more enjoyable because I wasn't rushed to get all the credits.

As for Skyrush, that would easily be the best ride in the park if it wasn't for the restraints. By late afternoon it had one of the shortest lines of all the coasters unless you wanted the front.

[Homeboy23Beware of the freeze-dried donkey!]

I went to the park for my second visit of the year Monday. The first visit was before the "temporary" fix of the restraints which did kill my thighs. This visit Monday I had no issue whatsoever with the restraints. The softer padding they put on seemed to work fine with me. I rode three times in the middle seat and one wing seat (prior visit was all wing).

[jwilI Guess Donkeys Are Okay]

Made it to Hershey yesterday for the first time in probably 14 years, so a lot has changed from the way I last remember it. The only ride I had been on before was the SDL, and again that was as a kid so I hardly remembered how the ride would go before yesterday. The lines weren't too bad but still a tad long for a Wednesday, I thought. I talked to another guy from Philly who felt the lines were considerably worse than Great Adventure during the week and he was disappointed with his experience. Unfortunately I haven't been to GAdv in about four years so I cannot compare myself, but I think the problem lies in the ride efficiency--both operator and design.

The longest wait was Fahrenheit around noon, and of course it broke down temporarily while we were in line so that added an extra 30 minutes+ to the wait, but even without that it was still close to an hour. Since these were my first rides on all of the coasters, I'll detail my "virgin" experiences below (front seat for all rides, for reference):

Lightning Racer - First ride of the day and before 11 AM it was a walk-on as most patrons had not made it to this section of the park yet. Rode the Thunder train only and I have to say I really enjoyed it. The track was fast and smooth, definitely one of the best woodies I have ridden. The plan was to come back later and ride Lightning but we really ran out of time. El Toro is still the best woodie I've ridden but this one takes #2 for now.

Wildcat - Oh boy...hit this one second on the way back toward the main part of the park. It was rough, to say the least. Equal to, if not worse than, Hercules in its heyday, but I still enjoyed Hercules much more. I honestly can't say I enjoyed any part of this ride and would probably not ride it again. And people say the MF trains helped...I would hate to have ridden it before.

Fahrenheit - Probably my second favorite ride of the day. Going up in the vertical position is rather intimidating, and just like Maverick at CP, I love that greater-than-vertical first drop. While I do find Maverick to be the better ride still, Fahrenheit is not at all far behind. The first element off the drop and the double corkscrews are my favorite parts. Unfortunately the longest wait of the day, as I previously mentioned, and it broke down temporarily (not sure of the issue).

*After lunch at Subway we hit Coal Cracker, which is a pretty standard flume ride equivalent, I'd say, to any other. The only water ride we got on despite the heat. I wish they had a raft ride at the park but after doing research I see they removed it to allow for expansion of the small waterpark which sort of segregates Midway America from the rest of the park. It is unfortunate because the other closest park to my "home" address (GAdv) has a pretty awful raft ride.

Great Bear - This was my favorite ride of the day. Ended up getting a second ride at night, as well, which felt even faster. Out of all the B&M inverts I'd say this is definitely right up near the top, but it does lose some points for being too short (a point about the park in whole I'll expand on later). I really like the last barrel roll where you start to turn one way but the element flips you in the opposite direction.

SooperDooperLooper - The only ride I had ridden before and it was definitely more intense when I was a kid. Honestly it was very tame, I thought, with not much going on once you're through the loop. I felt like there should have been more after the tunnel to surprise you, but there isn't.

Skyrush - Hershey's newest Intamin toy was undoubtedly my most anticipated ride of the day. The unfortunate part is I don't know how to rate it. I sat in the front-left wing seat. The ride up the hill is FAST, to say the least, and you get some air just cresting the drop hill. The curve at the bottom of the drop was necessary to avoid running into local roads, and it really throws you in your seat. The rest of the ride is basically just the ejector sensation over and over. This does everything it can to throw you off the ride. On one of the last turns I definitely thought I was going to fall out, but of course the restraint saved me.

"Aggressive" is surely the perfect adjective for this ride. Luckily I didn't have the thigh problems like others have--honestly no pain at all. Still, I really felt awful immediately afterwards, and that is why I don't know how to rate it. It was fun and probably the most intense coaster experience I've had, but not all that intensity was good, I thought. I never walked away from a coaster feeling like I had been through a meat grinder before--perhaps I just wasn't prepared for the mix of strong positive and negative Gs, I don't know. After some more rides I'd know how to rate it, but for now I am undecided.

Comet - A classic old woodie which I found pleasantly surprising. It was smooth, in fact I experienced very little rattling, and I like the good mix of drops on the ride. It wasn't anything extreme but for it being nearly 70 years old, I think it has aged very well. I consider this one better than Wildcat.

*Another break here for dinner and healing from some lingering Skyrush effects.

Trailblazer - A very mild mine-train ride, excellent for kids getting on their first coaster. It gains some good speed around the final helix, but the biggest drop is probably 10 ft. Very calm and smooth.

Storm Runner - I was really looking forward to this ride, largely because I knew very little about it. It is an older Intamin launcher (being the first ever with inversions) and I'm not so sure it shows its age all that well. The loading is very slow despite the duel station design (it would work better with four trains, but there is nowhere to put them). Still the line was pretty short when we got on. The launch was certainly the best part and it caught me a bit by surprise. For whatever reason I found the restraints pretty uncomfortable around some of the inversions, and I have marks on my shoulders where they rubbed my skin painfully so. The last element was extremely painful for me and banged me around a good bit. Since I've been on both TTD and Kingda Ka, this ride felt like a miniature version of those with some added elements like a Fahrenheit or Maverick--an odd hybrid launch ride that doesn't really have an identity.

Sidewinder - Somehow I had never been on a boomerang coaster until this ride. Minus the couple of times my head got banged backed into the headrest, this was a decent ride for what it was. Getting pulled up backward staring down was one of the highlights for me, and going backward through the inversions is very disorienting. Overall not bad considering what it was, and the restraints were very comfortable.

There were a couple other flat rides in there and some arcade time, but at least we hit 95% of our goal for the day. I had wished the lines would be a tad shorter, especially later in the day, but it is what it is.

My overall satisfaction and rating of the park is a mixed bag, I'd say. I felt like there was a theme in terms of the coasters in the park, both good and bad. On the positive side, the rides do a very good job of mixing in with each other and interacting with other rides and the midways, which allow for ample viewing areas. There is also a nice collection of coasters here to keep you busy, and the flat collection is diverse, but I don't find they have a marquee flat and they are missing some of the staples (which were previously removed).

On the negative side, I felt just about every coaster was short and underwhelmingly so. With some rides I know what I'm getting into, like a Kingda Ka or the like, but to me it seemed the rides here should have (and could have) been longer to make them more satisfying. Outside of Intamin launchers, Skyrush is easily the shortest hyper-coaster I've ever been on (although I do understand why). The short ride problem leads to efficiency problems, meaning trains have to run the full circuit before another train can be sent off, and it also means only two trains per ride is possible (except for Fahrenheit which I did see running three trains before one was removed).

Overall I was pleased with my day at Hershey. I think the odd collection of Intamin's is unique, but to me it could be a lot better. My guess is 2016 will be the next addition. I'd like to see a river rapids return (unlikely), and some more marquee flats added (like a giant frisbee). Honestly I think Wildcat can go and be replaced with an El Toro-esque woodie (which is, of course, an Intamin creation). Perhaps a hyper-woodie in 2016? Other than that I'm not sure what other coaster style they could use other than more B&M designs. Maybe a floorless coaster style of some sort, or even a giga coaster, but I do realize space seems to be at a premium for the park preventing a good bit of outward expansion (although that robust parking lot could serve as much-needed room).

My final ride ratings are:
Great Bear - 8.8
Fahrenheit - 8.6
Lightning Racer - 8.0
Storm Runner - 7.4
Sidewinder - 7.2
Comet - 6.0
SDL - 5.0
Trailblazer - 4.0
Wildcat - 3.0
Skyrush - ???

[TheAmazingCPCan I park my donkey here?]

It is an older Intamin launcher (being the first ever) and I'm not so sure it shows its age all that well.

Erm, Xcelerator was the first Intamin launcher

I haven't gotten to Hershey since the new padding was added. I did get to ride on June 4, 10 days after it opened. I was there on a class trip and I couldn't believe how many people were complaining. I was uncomfortable, but that was because we sat on the brakes for 5 minutes because the ride ops were ridiculously awful. I didn't really feel pain. I just really hope they don't trim this down because of the stupid GP who can't handle a little intensity.