Kris

Staines is the closest train station to Thorpe Park, where you'll need to catch the 950 bus to the park. It's outside the area of your travelcard so you'll need to buy a separate ticket. It'll probably take about an hour all up to get there. As far as I know there's no combined transport/entry ticket so you'll need to buy them separately. Have fun at Thorpe, it's a great park, and if you can make it up to Alton Towers as well I recommend it.

The reason, as I stated before, that a day's being spent on Dorney is because I have a friend who lives in the Philly area and it's a nearby park we're all going to head to for the day. His parents happen to live in Allentown so we'll probably end up crashing there for the night. I know it's not the best park in the world and I would probably give it a miss if it wasn't for my mate living in the area. I've been thinking and I may swap the second day at Hershey with Knoebels and then go to Hershey again on the Saturday and head down to Philly that night. It'll still mean almost two full days at Hersheypark but I'll be able to have day up at Knoebels and stay till night. Thanks for the advice, I really didn't think Knoebels was too important a stop but if it's as awesome as you guys say it is I'll probably regret rushing it. Any idea if Flying Turns will be running by then?

Thanks for the info/advice. I don't think I'll be able to extend my time at Knoebels because I want to spend as much time in the Philly area as possible to catch up with a friend I haven't seen in a couple of years. As for Quassy, I hadn't even considered it, but it sounds like a good idea.

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 - Knott’s 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.