BRTeller

Has anyone else seen this nonsense? I hate to be insensitive, but this is literally coming from a person riding a ride 10 miles from where someone was ejected and killed for being too large a year ago. I swear it's like the world is losing it's mind, people actually believe there's a conspiracy to not let fat (her words, not mine) people ride rides... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kicked-off-harry-potter-ride-fat_n_5af09fbfe4b041fd2d2992c9?d_id=5771408&ref=bffbhuffpost&ncid_tag=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=us_main&fbclid=IwAR1VVy1V0Aa1Y3SEVpc95arGPBJa4gs07txFPH8PF_71FRZq0r_8ZYPxs1g

As someone that lives in the epicenter of PA, I'll do my best to give you at least time ranges for parks to maybe adjust and/or confirm your planning: Hershey Park is a two day park without skip the line, maybe a day in a half so take advantage of the early entry in your planning. You can enter the park the night before 2 hours before close for free if you have a ticket for the next day. Get there in the morning and start in the back and work to the front, hit Candimonium mid day and get Laugh Trak out of the way first as well as Fahrenheit as those two are the worst for capacity. You can do it in a day, but you're going to be rushing like crazy to do it. Dorney is a half day park honestly, you can make a day out of it, but you'll be re riding a lot. Knoebels is well worth an entire day, do everything you can here. The food, the coasters, the flat rides all of it's magical and you need to try and get night rides in on the coasters. Idlewild is another half day park and Delgrossos/Lakemont are honestly quarter day parks each. I honestly have trouble making a day out of any of these parks, but I'd say Idlewild is the most intersting out of the bunch. Kennywood is another full day park, it has quite the collection of unique rides and coasters. Steel curtain is absolutely amazing but be prepared to wait! They have various options for skip the line passes but they do sell out frequently, grab one of the more affordable ones for Steel Curtain alone. The rest of the coasters lines should be manageable throughout the day, skip if you feel something is a tad bit longer than it should be and get back to it later. Steel Phantom clears up at random times, so don't get stuck waiting 45 minutes for a walk on later. Waldameer I have the least experience with, but it's a half day park even if it's busy, it's worth the trip for their coasters but it's an average park in my opinion. Pennsylvania has some seriously cool small town parks and this is one is just average. Lakemont is the weakest overall, but I've heard since it's been cleaned up it's a bit better. I think your plan is fairly solid, but keep these things in mind with your plan. I really REALLY think you should give Knoebels more time than just driving to Altoona, you're going to be kicking yourself for wasting time at DelGrossos/Lakemont when each are an hour or two park at most and I really mean it, that's at most, with the drive between them you can do both in 3 to 4 hours. Either way have fun and I hope you enjoy what our state has to offer!

Grabbed a few photos today while in Hershey for work. Track has officially started to go vertical on Wildcat's Revenge.

I understand pricing out the kids that go and ruin it for everyone else, but these are pretty insane. I can only hope that the employees and service gets better but considering the last time I was at the park the one food worker made an inappropriate comment to my fiancee and made her uncomfortable. Then just about got into a fist fight with me over staring at him after the incident I'm inclined to say that's not going to happen. Their employees act like thugs, how do they expect their patrons to act any better?

I think for those wondering if this is an RMC or GCI it should be noted GCI did comment on this and also confirmed they won't be working on it on their Facebook page. With a send off post of sorts to their first creation, everything says RMC and let's be honest, any hope of GCI doing a titan track recreation is out the window. I mean, you gotta look at this from a business perspective. Go with GCI who is known for their wooden coasters now to replace their first prototype design that's largely agreed that's horrible now? Or go with a proven manufacturer that is guaranteed to be a huge success for the region? I get why people hoped for a GCI conversion, but it would of been a poor business decision on Hershey's part only for the sake of nostalgic. I would hold hopes out for a smaller park willing to take the discount on a prototype. I could really see Funspot or similar doing this, but even they opted for an RMC over GCI's new product for their next major coaster.

Well, I mean it could of always caught on fire again... lol Anyways, when you have nearby parks like Knoebels and Kennywood, does this really matter? No, it doesn't. You can ride better versions of these destroyed rides at other parks in the same state. I don't like the current owner because I know his type in business and it's more of a personal issue with him than destroying the park. I'm still more saddened Williams Grove was let to rot but that's probably because it's only 20 minutes from my house.

My comment is coming more from my issue of arrogant Pennsylvania folk that often times find belittling one group to be acceptable and funny (Having lived in PA for almost 2 decades, there's definitely a type). To me, it's just in bad taste, the guy is trying to be some wolf of wall street wannabe with this latest stunt. I couldn't care less about the park or his intentions, he definitely bought it on false pretenses which is dirty, but hey, it's business. I just want the guy to fail because he seems like a d*ck. If it's going to go down though, he definitely pulled off making it go down in the biggest white trash PA way ever. That to me is comical, and here I thought Williams Grove finding that the parking lot made more money being a flea market to be more profitable was one of the biggest PA amusement park fails. I now stand corrected.

Some may be upset or sad, but with this latest "event" I'm glad the park is done. I'd rather the park be failed and the owners name tarnished than a man like that to continue to make any money what so ever by revitalizing it. Hope the rest burns to the ground at this point and with any hope the parks legacy will be remembered for something better than him.

Not sure if they do still, but they did a lot in the PA/MD areas about a decade ago. I know they used to do the York Fair out my way and also did The Great Frederick Fair for years (they may still be doing it). I always liked Reithoffer, made friends with some of the older employees throughout the years. Of course it's still a fair setting and that means some questionable operations at times, but the people I knew took safety very seriously at their shows.

This is really hard to process how this could happen on a modern designed drop tower. Something similar happened years ago (decades) on California Great Americas drop tower which I believe resulted in the addition of seat belts as standard design practice. I get it's been decades and most people associate drop tower Intamin incidents with Six Flags, but there is a reason why they've standardized these practices in their design. It's shocking to me any other company wouldn't be aware of these precautions and why they're there from pretty much every manufacturer. Perhaps the operators should of known, but I could also see why they would think it would be fine. The joke they made was in bad taste, but the restraints do look snug on him. Really sad all around, I have a few larger friends that are his build type and we push to put them on rides stapling them with seat belts and such. We had a trip planned here we cancelled for last week, I get chills even thinking about it. Never even considered this was a possibility and will keep this incident in mind for them regarding rides and restraints.

The park in April is a bit short staffed, but shouldn't be as bad as previous years now that things in the area are getting back to normal. All the major coasters should be up and running unless there's mechanical issues. I'd imagine the new rides should be ready by then since they started them so early, but they might be closed until May. You're not missing out on much except a boomerang. Apart from water rides I think you should be fine to do just about everything at the park. Also, I highly recommend avoiding the chocolatier, it's "okay" for Amusement Park dining, but it always has a ridiculous wait and is overpriced bar food. Hershey has some wonderful restaurants all within a mile. Any of the places at the Hershey Hotel are all good, Devans is also good and Hoolihans is essentially the same food as the Choclatier but less busy. All are Hershey owned properties and theres a ton of other great places all within walking distance of the park as well such as The Mill, Primanti Bros, Englewood to just name a few.

Hershey has been refreshing a good bit of their coasters and SDL/Sidewinder got updated color schemes as well. I've noticed this year lots of painting, I'm curious if the cost of material is down nation wide or something.

I want to think that this project as a whole is too good to be true type of situation, but the more that falls into place the more feasible it's becoming. I do not think the money will be an issue at all for this project, I think if anything, politics would hold a project like this up before anything else. Even then, I don't see it being too much an issue. I'm interested to see how this progresses from here on out and I'm sure the ride will have a ridiculous price tag, but 100 million dollar rides are becoming less and less rare these days with giant investments from the big players.

It appears to be your standard kiddie coaster with a faux wooden structure around it. Assuming to replicate a mini version of Colossus. You can get a better view of it at 3:16 and a few seconds before it.

I've heard the horror stories, but the five or so trips (Probably 15 days total) we've been to the park since it's opened I've only experienced one break down with us on it on our first ride. I think two years ago when we went for Christmas it also went down for weather for one of the days, but overall we've been lucky I suppose. It seems that when it is running, it runs well, just the periods it goes down for are extended. The launch is great, but the ride is great with or without it in my opinion. I could really see them ditching it after the re tracking didn't work, or completely work I should say.

The name isn't the best, but I at least respect the intention behind it. This layout even with a lot released already still surprised me some and definitely appears to be a top tier RMC which is something to look forward to!

The park tends to do fine as long as it's not any lightning forecasted. With a poncho and some warm clothes I'm sure today was absolutely amazing for those that risked it. We did the same thing at Kings Island 2 years ago during a rainy day/night. Did everything we wanted 20 times over and it's honestly one of my favorite days I've had at any park. Doing the indoor haunts as the only people walking through, the night ride marathons, we stayed until closing and I would take it over a mob of people. Going through a haunt full of actors as the only people in it is always ten times more terrifying than the typical conga lines.

I was honestly wondering the same thing. I made my first trip to the park over the summer and it was a complete sleeper for us. We rode it just as it got dark and it was honestly an easy top 10 wooden coaster for me. Reminded me of the Phoenix which I thought I was insane to compare it too. It was so much better than I thought and I wasn't even really aware the park had such a good wooden coaster. I honestly thought the only stand out ride was going to be Mr Freeze (which was also a top 10 for us) but wow we loved Eagle. This was after riding The Voyage earlier in the day so our threshold was pretty high all things considered.

It's SFA, there's a 99% chance the sign for the temporary closed broke so they brought out the indefinite closed one instead of purchasing/fixing the old sign.

SDL loop is entirely white now, I've been watching it progress for a few weeks now. They were first pressure washing the paint off then started painting it white. They've also started painting Sidewinder and a few of the slides. Seems like they did a pretty large contract with a local company that's redoing a fair amount of the rides/slides. The company posted up about doing the refurbishment work on a few local pages around here. It's a neat process and it appears we're going to see some fresh coats and color changes for next year. Cocoa Cruiser was also painted the inverse of Candimonium colors instead of the Skyrush colors, fits in a lot nicer with the theme and park.

It's a shame you didn't get on Alpengeist, it's the most intense B&M invert I've ever been on, granted it's a first half coaster more than a second half in terms of forces, but it's very intense. I enjoy Afterburn, Montu and Banshee more overall, but only by a small margin. Alpengeist really is a monster in terms of Inverts and I'd consider it a world class coaster. If you make it back to the park, I'd highly recommend making it a point to ride it, as it is one of the "stand out" coasters in terms of intensity and I know you said you felt BGW lacked that. The only reason I rank those other ones higher is honestly Alpengeist has a few rough spots it's formed over the years, but it's undeniably an amazing coaster still.

So I don't really think this is a cut and dry answer, some parks you'd probably be fine leaving them alone at while others I wouldn't risk it. So here's some tips I'd recommend based on family trips we've done in years past: 1. Research the park you're going to, honestly parks like Dollywood, Holiday World, Cedar Point are probably safe bets for younger ones to go alone and have more freedom. Some other parks such as Six Flags America, Boardwalk parks, Fun Spots, etc aren't necessarily unsafe, but the crowds and employees aren't as attentive as other parks. 2. We live in the 21st century and have cell phones, so that makes planning a lot easier. With that said, we used to have meeting spots before cell phones and a general area/time we'd meet back up at. I even do this with my significant other sometimes because when we're at parks we don't really like to have two phones on us since we only keep the one for my medical device. We always knew as kids to meet back where we said we would and I recall around 11 was when I started to get some more freedom at the safer parks to go on my own. 3. You know your kids better than any of us. Some kids are more mature than others to make responsible adult decisions. First, make sure they want to go on their own, if they're worried, it's easy for kids to panic and get scared. It happens, but this will depend on the maturity level that really only you can decide with your child. 4. Cell phones again make things easy now a days for planning in most cases. Go over the plan B though, explain to your kids the basics of safety. I learned this really young and it stuck with me and actually became more useful of situational awareness as an adult. Very, very important things for every kid to know: Never go with a stranger. If lost, only ask help from employees, if you REALLY can't find an employee with a nametag ask a group that appears to be a family, avoid people alone/strangers alone. Always trust your gut! If someone gives you a bad feeling it's probably for a reason. Locate guest services and lost kid locations in parks, same with first aids. These are always the safest locations to go if you become lost. I know some other posters have said "not anymore in todays age" and such, I don't actually agree with that statement. We're just as much at risk as we were years ago, we didn't get an influx of bad people in the last 20 years that suddenly decided to be bad people out of the blue. Just be smart and aware, you're the parent and as long as you give enough freedom while also being safe about it, it's a really good environment to let your kids grow. I know the days of running around amusement parks on my own at Cedar Point and Disney as a kid really helped me establish an independence I didn't really know I was gaining at the time. Now 20 years later those life lessons taught me a lot, I got lost once and it was at a park I was unfamiliar with when I was 12. With the planning I was taught from my parents I was able to find them within 30 minutes which was a relief for them and myself! It also taught me to be a bit more aware of my surroundings. Funnily enough, the only time I can distinctly remember ever feeling "stranger danger" was at the Hershey Hotel. I was actually 21 and looking at some bears around the gift shop table and this old man came up to me asking me about teddy bears. I was at the hotel on business with my first company and they were filming some shots for a commercial we were doing. I was in complete shock what was happening and he was trying to buy me said bear... I looked very young for my age back then, to the point that also at Hershey I got asked if I needed a kids menu on my 21st birthday with those same coworkers... they got a kick out of those situations, but I knew it was wrong and when the man realized I knew what he was doing he disappeared as quick as he appeared. So I don't want to say it's "never" happened, but I can say all those lessons from being younger paid off in that situation as well. In my opinion it's good to let your kids experience the world in as controlled of environment as you can, you won't always be there to offer that controlled environment, so learning young can really help later in life. I should also add that I normally went with my brother who was two years younger than me until I was about 12 or 13. I guess I didn't "go it alone" all the time, but by the time I was 14 I would take the buses at Disney World and such on my own. I knew to be responsible and my younger brother took a little longer to get to to that point. So again, it's not a one size fits all kind of thing.

Thanks for the info! We’re going tomorrow and I was contemplating buying frightlane, good to know our passes work.

What I'm thinking is 18+ for yourself, 25+ if you're accompanying anyone under the age of 18. Similar to liquor laws here in PA, you can't drink unless someone is at least 25 at the table if someone is under the legal drinking age, holds the person a bit more responsible for the younger members of the party. The fact is, the people that cause these issues are between ages 15 and 20 years of age 90 percent of the time, there needs to be a system to prevent this. Many malls and entertainment centers have similar policies, I'd have to imagine since the park was forced to close early, they would be willing to take fairly drastic measures to keep the younger trouble makers away.

For what it's worth, you can't waiver negligence away. Just as you can't sign your life away and such in the United States. There are limits to what you can sign someone to do in a contract of any kind. I don't think with what we know now that the park will fair well in the lawsuit. Another thing that doesn't cover negligence? Most insurance policies, so this could be a really bad situation for the park. I just can't really say what should happen with this one, it seems like a complete nightmare all around for everyone involved.