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It is NOT a packaged show. The only similarity is the title. They are all VASTLY different productions from the song selections to the cast to the choreography and costumes.

Wait until the afternoon to ride Iron Gwazi. Everyone goes to Iron Gwazi first and the line can be around an hour for most of the morning. By around 12:30 - 1:00 on weekdays, people have moved to other areas of the park and Iron Gwazi will be a 5 - 10 minute wait.

1) Monster Stomp is NOT the same at every park. Completely different tone and song list. I watched a clip of the 2022 show at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and it is vastly different from the Sea World one. The only similarity is the show's title. I know this since I worked on the show. 2) Did you even see the Longshoremen or Drag shows? Hard to have a trip report if you didn't experience either of them. The drag show (which I did see) was GREAT. Adult humor but nothing worse than you'd hear at HHN. And the Longshoremen were hilarious.

You wont need quick queue. Or at least wait til you're there. They have self service machines a few places in the park. It will most likely be dead and walk ons or < 10 min for everything.

I really hope China changes their policies at some point in the next year or so. I would really like to go back, but the idea of being locked inside a park (even a Disney or Universal park!) doesn't sit well with me. With my luck it would probably be some scary chinese knock off park we would get locked in!

Spent this past Saturday out at Knoebels with the family. I'll try my best to keep it short and sweet! Got there early for the Hallo-Fun family activities, so the kids decorated some cookies and trick-or-treat bags, then we all played a few rounds of bingo using corn kernels as bingo chips. They were giving away $20 and $40 books of tickets as prizes. The kids came pretty close, but no dice unfortunately. Rides started opening at 2 PM. Picked up a few of the discount vouchers at the Weis Markets in Catawissa beforehand, and was told at the ticket window that they wouldn't be able to redeem them because they were missing security features on the backs of the vouchers. Thankfully, kept my receipt, and a call from guest services over to the Weis confirmed that they were having issues with their printer, so they were able to redeem them after all and threw in an extra book of $20 as an apology for the trouble. A number of flats were closed throughout the day, so unfortunately no Flyers, no Looper, no Tornado, no Satellite, etc. Our first ride of the day was Flying Turns and IDK what they were doing this year, but from starting outside of the main ride entrance, we were on the ride in about 20 minutes. They were definitely operating at peak efficiency! Ride is still absolutely insane and one of my wife's top three coasters. After Flying Turns, we did Cosmotron (soundtrack: "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)" by Fall Out Boy), made a brief pitstop to grab some food (hot dogs, cheese steaks, pizza, and pierogies galore), then headed over to the Haunted Mansion. It feels like they've kept a lot of the classic bits but shuffled them around, as it kept me guessing throughout. Always a great ride, one of the best classic dark rides IMO. After that, kids headed over for a bit of fun on the Panther Cars, then we hopped on the Grand Carousel. Wait for an edge seat was pretty backed up so we just hopped in line for middle seats, still a great time. Then after that, my wife completed her Knoebels coaster "collection" by finally riding Impulse. She had done her first vertical lift with Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit last month, so we talked her into it, and surprisingly she didn't hate it! Still not a fan of that style of lift but everything else was fine. Her words. By this point, the sun was starting to set, so we headed off to beat the line for the Haunted Pioneer Train. We waited about 25 minutes for this, and got a round trip just as the sun had disappeared behind the Pennsylvania mountainside. This was our first time doing this during the Halloween season and it was great to see all the creativity and variety they put into their skeleton sets out in the wilderness! When we got off the Pioneer Train, darkness had settled in, and we decided to try and hit the Haunted Antique Cars before the line got really unreasonable. We still ended up waiting about 50 minutes, and right as we got on and started driving through, the car two in front of us ran out of gas. So we ended up waiting a little bit longer for them to get it going again. They filled the area inside and around Phoenix with an absolute ton of sets and displays. While there weren't any live scare actors jumping out from behind the walls this year, it wasn't needed because there was always a new gag or scene coming up. Our last ride of the night was Phoenix, and while my wife sat it out this time, the rest of us had an absolute blast with a fully lights-out ride going at full speed. Still far and away my daughter's favorite coaster! I think I need to get back on the weight loss train though, not gonna lie, I struggled a bit to fit inside the seat divider. Airtime motivation! We wrapped up our visit with a $20 bag of tokens split four ways over at the Fascination building, and although we weren't able to hit any bingos in the morning, my son rolled two lines to send him home happy! Apparently our next home improvement project is going to be building some Fascination cabinets from scratch and putting them in our garage. (I'm not holding my breath.) Picked up some potato cakes and kettle corn for the road, and we were off on our way home! Although it sounds like we didn't do much overall, we felt like we had an absolutely wonderful time from start to finish. Even with the long lines, we managed to keep ourselves entertained. The only downside is the creeping inflation; although we had $120 worth of tickets, they ran out by the end of the night; when coasters are $4 apiece and the haunted rides are $5 per person, it adds up quickly. Still, compared to anywhere else in the world, it's a fantastic deal and I can't fault them for raising prices when everything else is going up everywhere else as well. Can't wait to go back next season!

Some thoughts from my visit to Kennywood this past Friday evening (10/28): - Finally got my first rides on Steel Curtain. I seem to recall mixed reviews on this ride, but I absolutely loved it. Aside from the Steelers theme, Steel Curtain delivers just about everything I like about coasters these days. The view from the top of the lift was incredible, the first inversion into the initial drop was very Drachen Fire-like, the airtime hills delivered every time and just being flung upside-down so many times was awesome. The ride seemed smooth to me, the seats were comfortable (loved the fact that it was lap bar only), and it seemed to maintain its speed quite well. If I have one negative thing to say about the ride, it would be the rather rude delivery of the "no loose items" policy by the ride op. I understand that people these days need to be beaten over the head with things because they don't think rules apply to them, but it's rather excessive being threatened with park removal and how everyone is watching you on the ride including "people you can't see over in the End Zone building". I'll let it slide since I was in a good mood and because I enjoyed the ride so much! - Exterminator was running in "Lights Out" mode. Oh. My. God. This was bonkers. I had no idea where I was at any point during the ride and I had a hard time walking straight after the ride was over. That was awesome! - Phantom's Revenge is still crazy after all these years. I rode in the last row and it seems like the ride is trying its hardest to pitch you into the ravine. And with as dark as the park is at night, night rides are truly outrageous. With there only being about a 3 train wait, repeat rides were required! - Jack Rabbit may not be a great overall coaster, but the legendary double down still offers the most terrifying airtime moment of any coaster I have been on. I also liked the fog and colored lights they had set up in the tunnel. It's a small thing, but it adds tremendously to the ride experience when it is dark out. - The two scare zones I went through (Hellbilly Hollow and Fear Fest) were awful. The scare actors didn't seem motivated (with one exception of a clown literally chasing a terrified child around!) and the dude with the harmonica in Hellbilly Hollow was more annoying than scary. Now to be fair, the park's entrance tunnel was so full of fog it was impossible to see in front of you, which was cool. But again, the scare actors seemed more interested in talking to each other than scaring folks. - And finally, there's the "new" Kangaroo. While the ride doesn't quite seem as intense as it used to be when you launch off the ramp, and the ride cycle time is painfully short, I haven't laughed this hard on a ride in ages. I had no idea about the "boing" sound effect that goes off every time a car goes over the ramp. That little addition made me literally lol the whole ride. Well done Kennywood. Well done! Security was pretty much everywhere including on bikes and police were posted along the edge of the park as well, so I did feel safe. I was surprised how dark the park was though. Some of the walkways were scarier than the scare zones just because they were so dark! I also enjoyed the new touches the park made for their 125th Anniversary. Kennywood looked the best it has in years. Looking forward to Holiday Lights in the coming weeks!

Serious problem, indeed. The "teens" I encountered in the city I worked as a LEO over the summer were more dangerous than older people with prior felony convictions for assault, gun offenses, and other violent crimes. The "kids" would pull AR rifles on soccer moms stopped in traffic and try to take their cars. The final straw for me leaving was watching surveillance video of one of several gun fights in a housing complex that looked like Call of Duty. Stolen cars and gunshots started becoming a common daily theme, especially during the weekends. I took 200 shell casings to the crime lab, just in one week, and those were the ones we actually recovered, being a fraction of the ones we didn't. The "kids/teens" we charged in July were all out by September, despite also shooting in crowded places. Maybe they'll set an example this time and hold them for four months instead of three. The suspect and others involved also know damned well who the other shooter was. I'm glad I took a pay cut to go to a much nicer community. Went from over twice the national crime average to half of the national crime average. I can sleep without prescription medication again... I say this because please, for your own safety, don't let your guard down just because you see what you perceive as a group of kids. They're more hardened than a lot of us will be in our lives and they won't hesitated to make you or your children victims. It's frightening. I wish I could take back what I know now.

The family and I headed to Hershey this past Saturday to check out Dark Nights, their inaugural haunt event. While they've had "Hersheypark in the Dark" for several years, this is the first time they've actually added a number of walk-through haunted houses to their lineup. We went in with pretty low hopes overall, expecting it to be packed and crowded based off what we've seen from HP so far this season, and since we weren't planning on buying any Fast Lane passes, we pretty much were resigned to only riding a handful of rides and hopefully getting through all of the houses. Although the park opens at 2:00 PM on their October weekends, we got into town around 12:00, hoping to grab some lunch at Chocolatier. We walked up the steps and asked for a table for four, only to find out that they were COMPLETELY booked the entire remainder of the day. Apparently they now take reservations, compared to last year where it was walk-up only. Oh well. Instead we pivoted over to Chocolate World for a while, and did their free factory tour dark ride. While this has usually been a walk-on for us in the past, the line ended up being about 45 minutes. And trying to walk through Chocolate World's retail areas was tough, as it was wall-to-wall people. A definite sign of things to come for the remainder of the day. After Chocolate World, we lined up outside the gates; the lines to enter were already back towards the tram dropoff points, and by 1:30 PM, they had started opening up four of the gates to begin letting people in. Our initial idea was to knock out Candymonium first, but it seemed like everyone else had that idea as well as those lines quickly backed up out of the building and all the way back to Starbucks. No big deal. We decided to skip it. Instead, we grabbed our wristbands for Dark Nights (as the houses are an upcharge, similar to what Six Flags does for their events), and waited near the guest services building waiting for them to drop the ropes. Our next plan of attack was to hit Cupfusion since that always gets a pretty long line and has slow throughput. Unfortunately, when rope drop happened, it was not yet open for the day, and a line outside of the queue had already formed for it. Time for pivot #2! We decided to walk towards the back of the park and hit the three coasters near the Boardwalk section. This ended up being the right move, as my son and I were greeted with a completely empty queue for Fahrenheit and got on the back row immediately. This is probably my favorite of the vertical lift coasters that I've been on, and is a ton of fun. Next up, we headed over to Jolly Rancher Remix, which is the old Sidewinder boomerang with a brand new paint job, some gorgeous Jolly Rancher shaped lights in the station, a pumpin' club music soundtrack, and a funky short little tunnel after the cobra roll with lights and scents. My daughter had missed out on it as Sidewinder every time we had previously visited, so this was a new credit for her, and my wife hemmed and hawed for a bit before deciding to make this her first boomerang as well. We were greeted again with basically no line here as everyone else was still in the front of the park. We got in the front two rows, and it was... fine? I guess? As far as boomerangs go, this is one of the better ones, but it's still nothing too special. My wife handled it pretty well at least while going forwards, but the backwards part completely messed her up and she decided to sit out rides for a while afterwards. While she was taking a break, my daughter decided to give Mix'd a try, which is a Zamperla Nebulaz situated directly between the two halves of JRR's cobra roll. It had a pretty long cycle and she really enjoyed it! And during her ride, my son and I jumped over to Storm Runner, which had the first inklings of a line, with about three groups of people in each line in the station. Only the left side of the station was open at this point. We ended up waiting about five minutes for a row in the middle of the train. This is still one of my favorite launched coasters; while KDK and TTD are fun enough and impressive for their sheer scale, having a full layout with absolutely insane elements makes this a top-tier pick in my book. Always a fun time! We took a short break here to grab some lunch in the park. With not much in that area open at 3:00 PM, our choices were pretty much limited to either Subway or Moe's. At this point I was taking a look at the app to see what rides were open, what was closed, what had long waits and what didn't. We noticed that Great Bear was posting a five minute wait, so my son and I scarfed down the rest of our sandwiches and headed off across the park to go get some wacky inverted goodness. When we arrived, we were greeted by this; Insert [sothatwasafuckinglie.gif] here. On the plus side, we managed to get a quick ride on the Hershey Tower, the only one of the Triple Tower that was open that day. Kisses and Reese's were both down due to staffing. There was no line for Hershey as it had just reopened, so we hopped on and started going up the tower... only for it to get about ten feet off the ground, make a *CLUNK* noise, and lower slowly back down to the ground. The ride ops came around again to recheck restraints, they started it up again, and... same thing. Then I got pelted in the forehead by one of those obnoxious little spotted lanternflies; second time in a row this has happened on my Hersheypark visits. Gah! Thankfully, third time was the charm and we got the full launch and drop experience. Afterwards, we doubled back across the park to meet up with my wife and daughter; my daughter was getting in a spin on Howler with a couple other kids while my wife was still recovering from her boomerang experience. We decided to take it nice and easy for a little bit with a ride on their miniature train, Dry Gulch Railroad. The queue was completely full, but we got on within three cycles in 20 minutes. It's a nice, relaxing way to take in some views of the park. We took a quick break from doing rides to take a walk through their trick-or-treat trail, located in the otherwise closed Boardwalk section. Everyone was issued a medium-sized plastic bag, and there were a number of photo ops and people handing out pieces of Hershey's candy throughout a winding 10-15 minute long walk through this area. At this point, we decided to try our luck on Cupfusion again. The ride was now open and the app was posting a 45 minute wait. We got in line near the entrance, and 45 minutes later, we were still outside; we hadn't even made it to the covered part of the queue yet. We decided to cut our losses here and start preparing for the haunted houses. As the sun was going down and the temps were dropping to the mid-40's, we went back to a locker and grabbed some gloves and scarves to start bundling up. We took a walk to the back section of the park, where the first two houses were located, and were greeted by a display showing tribute to Hershey's rides of the past, as well as a display accurately reflecting what it felt like to ride Wildcat. Most of Wildcat's station has been completely stripped bare at this point, with just the framing remaining. Our first house was The Descent, located to the left of Laff Trakk. We waited approximately 15 minutes for this house. They were letting in groups of 8-12 people at a time, as there was a short pre-show scene with some live actors before the house proper kicked off. Some magical visor ended up being stolen that allowed the wearer to see their future, and we were tasked with following them into the sewers to try and get it back. There were a lot of neat effects in here, including some cutout sections of the floor that looked like holes you could fall into, and a misty blue laser at waist height which gave the illusion that you were wading through the water. It had a fair amount of scare actors and some good jumps. For my wife and daughter, this was their favorite house of the night, and I'd personally rank it at #2. Afterwards, we walked around to the other side of Laff Trakk, where they had the first scare zone of the night, "Midway of Misery". This looked promising, as there was a big archway with some fireball jets on the top and some gothic-industrial covers of 80's pop hits playing. Unfortunately, there were not many scare actors present in this scare zone; we noticed a grand total of two in here. We quickly found the line for the next house, Twisted Darkness, which was to be entered through the queue for The Whip. The line ended up stretching back to Musik Express, but that was primarily due to them scanning the Dark Nights bracelets at the entrance of The Whip. A lot of the stand-up Hershey Kiss scanners (the same kind they use for Fast Lane) weren't quite working properly with the RFID chips in the bracelets, and so instead they'd use handheld scanners to scan the QR codes printed on the bracelet. Once this backup was cleared the actual queue was mostly empty all the way to the merge point between regular bracelet users and Fast Lane users. We waited maybe ten minutes from here to get into the house, and this was one of the more well-done sadistic carnival themed haunted houses I've been in. Lots of actors, a bunch of great props throughout, and more than a handful of gotcha moments for all of us. This was my favorite one of the night. From here, we headed back towards Trailblazer for the location of the next scare zone, "Valley of Fear", and the next haunted house, the Haunted Coal Mine. Once again, the scare zone was definitely lacking in actors; we found one random zombified miner who was slowly dragging a pickaxe behind him, but that was about the extent of it. Unless you find fog scary, there wasn't really anything in this section to note. The line for Haunted Coal Mine (which was on the opposite side of the river from Trailblazer) was saying 90 minutes, but we ended up getting into the house in 30 minutes. Unfortunately since the queue was stretched all the way back over the bridge and into the pathway for Trailblazer, there were no lights back there, and I ended up tripping over a branch in the pathway, skinning a couple fingers and my right knee and slightly twisting my ankle. Not fun and definitely not the kind of "Twisted Darkness" I was hoping for. The house itself was okay. This definitely had the fewest amount of scare actors in it, but there was a cool part where you would enter a room meant to be an elevator, the doors would close behind you, and when they reopened it would lead to a different location. There were also some good effects here. Overall, nothing to write home about, but interesting to see them trying something different than the usual concepts. The final scare zone and haunted house took some work on finding. Although the exit was directly across from the Haunted Coal Mine, the entrance was all the way back in the Hollow area, with the queue starting in Dispatch Pizza. This haunted house, Creature Chaos, was less of a house and more of a haunted trail along the waterside near Great Bear and Skyview. We also had the opposite luck of what we experienced at the coal mine; this one said a 30 minute wait, and it ended up being a full hour long. Once the trail started, we were led into an auditorium with the creepy Professor Darkstone making a grand theatrical display of one of his mythical creatures. It looked quite impressive and was setting a good stage for what was to come; sadly, the remainder of the trail just wasn't nearly as interesting, as there weren't a ton of great places throughout the trail for the actors to surprise you. Many of the actors were just standing in place waiting for you to come near them. This one was universally agreed as being the biggest letdown of the night for us. You'll also note I didn't really write anything about the scare zone... and maybe that's because either we completely missed it entirely, or it was completely devoid of anything whatsoever. I understand this is their first year, and they may be dealing with staffing issues like everyone else, but all three of those scare zones were utter disappointments. Hopefully this will improve in the years to come. By this time, it was already 10:00 PM, at which point most of the rides were beginning to shut down. We found ourselves back at the Hershey Tower and the ride op graciously let us on for the final ride of the night. The park remained open until 11:00 for people to continue doing the haunted houses, but we decided having already seen all of what Hershey had to offer on that front that we should probably head out, grab a late night meal nearby, and rest up for the following day where we would be checking out Dorney Park's Halloween Haunt (write-up to come). All in all, it wasn't a terrible day at HP, but it's definitely not a case anymore where you can expect the park to be empty during the fall season like in years past. Go in with the expectations that if you want to ride rides, you'll need to pick up Fast Lane or be resigned to waiting anywhere from 60-240 minutes for any given ride. (Yes, one ride was posting a 4 hour wait at one point throughout the night.) Hersheypark definitely feels as they cannot handle the crowds as effectively as they used to. We'll be back probably sometime next month or early December for their Christmas Candylane event and we'll see if that's still the case then. Good night, Hersheypark.

Double Post but it has been months so. I wanted to give another update on the park as things had been better but are worse again. Also I have taken pictures also from the last day of Spookslot but I have a new phone and cannot link it up to my PC so a satellite image has to do. First the latest things not marked. 70th anniversary stuff has come and gone and the rebuilding of the fairy tale that was suppose to be complete in winter 2022 has already warped up. Now what is marked down, every ring I marked down is currently inaccessible for visitors as major constructions are going on there. Dark Red: This is the area blocked for the construction of the hotel, currently they are working on the foundation. l marked with pink how guest get to the main pathways what is basically going over the new dock of Aquanura. Orange crosses fairytale forest: Two fairy tales are undergoing heavy maintenance right now, Rapunzel and Little Thumbling both covered in scaffolding. Yellow: This used to house the Alice in Wonderland display for the 70th anniversary but is now taken down to make room for the winter area opening November 15th, this will see the return of the ice-skating ring for the first time in 3 years. Purple: Is for Danse Macabre, yes all of it. While the bit at Spookslot makes sense as that is the place where the ride is going to be placed, the lake will be used for a different purpose, namely to supply the site. Currently the lake has been dried up and filled with roads these roads go through the the trees what makes me think that the current gap will be placed next to the lake in the future and they close the current one. The dark yellow line is a new path to avoid having to go all the way to the bridges to avoid the construction work. The lavender line is the current queue for Fabula. Red: Save the big one for last. While not the biggest area but George and the Dragon is closed again. It has been open this year now and then sometimes only blue track sometimes only red track sometimes both. But this time they are going above and beyond. The ride will be closed until December 23th to undergo retracking work, currently pieces for track have been removed allover the ride and will be replaced with Iron wood rails, this is however temporary, as George and the Dragon will become a full on Hybrid coaster soon, when the ride reopens in December the corners on the Python side will be replaced with Titan track form GCI, with the idea that all track will be replaced in the coming years. Also Edna the dragon after 3 years will get her movement back, however no water splashing and no fire, just neck movement and Growls for now. Also for people wondering what is with the grassy area next to the Python, this is where they drop the removed track for now. Grey: This is just closed off because of everything going on behind it. Future: So we have all this going on till at least November 15th with only the Yellow area going open. Currently we have 4 other rides closing for maintenance soon: Symbolica 10 October till 21 October 2022 Villa Volta 10 October till 14 October 2022 Aquanura 16 October till 23 October 2022 And another big one: Droomvlucht: 31 October 2022 till 3 March 2023 Yes all four will overlap with the current stuff (except maybe the fairy-tales idk), and I have no idea what will happen to Flying Dutchman and Piraña November 15th as they usually close and get maintenance done during the winter months but they are not on the calendar this year, so maybe they want to compensate for other rides being closed. That was everything going on right now, lots to cover so yeah.

Greying out is generally what people are experiencing when they say they “blacked out” on a coaster.

We got in a pretty epic day today....probably the longest visit since we’ve been members since Fall 2015....9 hr visit.....I’ll back up to Saturday when me and my daughter decided to try to go up to Agawam around 12:30....we live only 30 min away so for us to drive up there whenever or stay for only a couple hours is no biggie....dude when we arrived at 1:00 the traffic to get to the general parking gate was backed up to the main road....never saw it like that....the weather was clear, sunny, and Effin hot AF.....it took 25 min to get to the gate....the parking lot was full to the back lot....we left However....I checked the forecast and it was supposed to rain all night saturday and into Sunday morning so I said to her “let’s come back tomorrow at opening.....nobody is gonna be here”.....she was like “heck ya”...... So we arrived today at 11:00 and just as I predicted we walked right in to the park.....met up with some friends and walked right on to Thunderbolt.....my younger son who isn’t tall enough for the big stuff likes Thunderbolt.....then we ate and met up with some more friends and headed to a Superman....walked on.....I complained to my fellow coaster enthusiast friend how it was lame that Superman was only using one train but now that I’ve read through this thread I know they’re using one train.....still are as of today....great great ride.... As the day progressed the crowd didn’t get out of hand.....pretty sure the morning conditions - heavy rain and forecast of rain - kept most folks home.....but it never rained until about 7......we did 90 minutes of water and then left and decided to hit Batman, Riddler, and a last ride on Superman when water closed..... Great thing here is that my 11 yr old daughter who has finally reached critical height for the big stuff finally decided to throw it down and actually get on the big stuff....she killed Batman twice and loved it....she was nervous about the restraints for some reason.....she got spoiled with the sweet restraints on Riddler.....then we hit Riddler real quick and then headed to the big guy - Superman.....this was the moment......I rode with her in car 4.....her friend rode in front....she never waive red....killed it....loved it and stayed on for a second ride as they let her and her friend reride without getting off....there was nobody in line.....she killed the second ride again..... And then we were so tired by 7:00.....we left.....I am still very surprised how the weather impacted the crowd.....awful on Saturday to epically empty inn sunday on the “chance of rain”.....we take advantage of these days cuz this is what happens.....also the park never closed early.....it didn’t rain really until 8 and by then they’re all in on the day.....I’ve been there when they close the park early “for weather” and no question it was cuz of the size of the crowd and not the weather..... All in all a really epic day......so proud of my daughter....she graduated to the big boys today.....