Hey there wonderful TPR people. Long time lurker here, thought it was time to take a leap into the posting pool. In June of this year a mate and I will be jetting over to the USA from Sydney, Australia for a month-long coaster odyssey. While I've done a few small coaster trips in the States and Europe this is definitely a much larger scale park trip than I've ever done before. I started out the planning phase by jotting down a few must-visit parks and then building the trip around them. The parks I started with were SFMM, SFGAdv, BGW, Dollywood, Holiday World, Cedar Point and Hersheypark. After that I filled in the blanks, with most driving days being days off from visiting parks. I tried to keep the long drives to a minimum but there's a day or two where we'll be in the car for 5 or 6 hours. Anyway here's the plan I've come up with, starting at the beginning of June:
Day 1 Sat - Arrive LA, hire car
Day 2 Sun - LA rest/sightseeing (or possibly go to Disneyland, been there before though so no big deal if missed)
Day 3 Mon - Six Flags Magic Mountain
Day 4 Tue - Knottās Berry Farm
Day 5 Wed - Fly to NYC
Day 6 Thu - NYC sightseeing
Day 7 Fri - NYC sightseeing/Coney Island
Day 8 Sat - Hire car, drive to Jackson
Day 9 Sun - Six Flags Great Adventure (will be pretty busy on a Sunday I'm guessing)
Day 10 Mon - Six Flags Great Adventure
Day 11 Tue - Drive to Doswell, VA stopping in Washington DC to sight-see for the day
Day 12 Wed - Kings Dominion
Day 13 Thu - Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Day 14 Fri - Drive to Charlotte, NC (long drive that day)
Day 15 Sat - Carowinds
Day 16 Sun - Drive to Pigeon Forge, TN
Day 17 Mon - Dollywood
Day 18 Tue - Drive to Santa Claus, IN (another long drive)
Day 19 Wed - Holiday World
Day 20 Thu - Drive to Kings Mills, OH
Day 21 Fri - Kings Island
Day 22 Sat - Drive to Sanduski, OH
Day 23 Sun - Cedar Point (would rather not go here on a weekend day, but have a Monday here as well and have visited CP before so not too fussed if I don't get on every coaster)
Day 24 Mon - Cedar Point
Day 25 Tue - Drive to West Mifflin, PA
Day 26 Wed - Kennywood
Day 27 Thu - Drive to Hershey, PA (going to leave West Mifflin early go to Hersheypark that day)
Day 28 Fri - Hersheypark
Day 29 Sat - Drive to Philadelphia, PA (might head up to Knoebels for a half day before heading to Philly, not sure yet. I didn't want to go to Philly at this part of the trip as we'll be almost driving through it near the beginning but I have a mate that lives there and this is the best time to visit)
Day 30 Sun - Dorney Park for the day and back to Philly for the night
Day 31 Mon - Drive to Agawam, MA leaving early and stopping at Lake Compounce for the day
Day 32 Tue - Six Flags New England
Day 33 Wed - Drive to NYC, fly to LA then home to Sydney
I tried to keep the park visits to weekdays, but the parks we'll be going to on weekends are either two day visits paired with a weekday or parks that I don't consider too important if we don't ride everything. The dates are set in stone so I'm not looking for any advice in that regard, I'm more interested what kind of wait times I can expect, whether or not any of these parks have a FastPass-type system I should consider, what sort of weather I can expect, and any tips or nuggets of knowledge in relation to things I may not have thought of/considered.
Thanks in advance for any help, I appreciate it.