TBpony414

No Waffle de Lys sucks At least I was prepared for that since we discussed it a few weeks back on here. I can't read the font on that map, do we think there will be any chance of a different waffle cart (or similar) or are we stuck with GAdv's new window waffles?

You got on a heck of a lot of rides! Funny about the tolls, I was just up there 2 weeks ago and we commented that nobody in my family actually knows how much we are paying in tolls every time we head up since we just zip through with the EZ Pass. I knew it was around $30 though. HITP is definitely worth the trip. The ride lines last year both times I went (on a Sunday) were not that bad. I think I waited the longest for the round-trip sky ride and it was about 40 minutes with the line filling the entire queue and spilling out towards Skull Mtn. It was absolutely worth the wait. Everything else was between 15-30 mins. People are watching shows, oogling at the beautiful light displays, getting in line for photo ops with the characters and huddling around the fire pits nomming on food and sipping hot chocolate so are too busy to ride rides. The colder it is the less people in line for sure. I'm excited that JL is in that area now as it'll be warm inside the queue!

You lucky duck, a Dragster rollback!! I read your blog post and the 1st picture of Gatekeeper keyholing with the pumpkins is beautiful. Thrilled for you that you were able to end the 2017 season on Millennium Force. I remember my mom and I talking with you guys in line at Coastermania when MF broke down at like 10:30PM and we had to help push the transfer track over while maintenance worked and worked to get it back up for just a couple more trains. Your mom said you always end your visits with a ride on MF so it's definitely fitting that you were on the last public train of the season!

Thanks very much bgtlover! That helps a lot, I know exactly where that is - assuming that is indeed where it ends up.

Can you give me some landmarks/rides for this new flyer location? I can't quite picture where it will go. I only know where the coasters are and the Icee stand- priorities!! Haha

That's wild Josh, sounds like the ride my mom and I had on green side last summer! It just kept flipping and flipping and flipping. Glad you finally got a good ride in - maybe ET Ryan brought you some extra good luck. I guess the jury's out on why you sometimes get lots of flippage on it and other times not so much. Completely unrelated, are you hoping to work Valravn again next year or something different?

I really enjoyed reading about your first 2 days in Japan! I've never been over there and doubt I'll ever get the chance to so it's great to be able to read TRs like yours to get a small bit of the experience. That hotel room is crazy tiny but I'm sure you were barely even in there enough to do more than sleep and shower!

Fun TR so far, except I made the mistake of reading this at my lunch break and now I'm starving. I've never played Fascination so next time I'm at Knoebels I'll have to stop and try it out. Looking forward to reading about your day at HP!

It's a toss up between Tangled Toilets and Jake's Castle costume as my favorites this year! Everyone really went all out to dress up and I'm amazed at how creative the costumes were! Looks like a really fun event. Great pics and narrative as always, thanks for sharing your good time with us.

Totally agree. Usually I'm a backseat kinda person but there are a few rides I prefer towards the front and Skyrush is one of them. Yes it's an absolutely amazing ride and it reminds me of Lightning Rod in that in order to enjoy it without really being thrown around like a rag doll, you kind of need to learn the layout and may have to sit in the first half of the train. That's totally OK of course so I do just that and have a great time. My favorite rides are ones with comfy seats and that I can hop on again and again without needing a break (or ice - LR's seatbelt left some nice bruises on my left thigh this summer from all those overbanks which was a new one!)

Awesome report, Chris! Looks like a beautiful day and it's always great to see people getting their kids into amusement parks at a young age. In my experience the purple (lake) side of The Joker flips less than the green side. All purple rides have given us 1-3 flips whereas on the green side we always seem to get flipped into oblivion. YMMV, of course.

Really loving this TR, Chuck! I've always wanted to go to Germany and hope to some day get there. The amount of fun you're having is felt by the reader through your pictures and witty comments. Somehow I never knew that there was a gorgeous bridge across from Neuschwantstein castle and that's where the famous views and photos are from! Super cool. Looking forward to seeing what's still to come!

Those lines sound almost as bad as my visit to Great Adventure on Friday! It was an absolute madhouse.

I agree! Ok just for you, here are the only two I took on Friday Hilarious Stinky Feet bathtub squirt game at iPlay. You shoot at either foot or the bar of soap. This was sadly as close as my cousin got to riding Ka on Friday. Fellow cold beverage in cold weather lovers, unite! The snack I stopped for earlier in the night when I was lost in the dark alone with the roaming scare actors was a chocolate shake from Johnny Rockets and I got quite a few looks at that as well haha. When I had the large Icee at 11 PM there were tons of people walking past us with huge throw blankets around them and several ladies shuddered when they saw me happily sipping away while they shivered and rubbed their shoulders. It's not like it was all that cold out, it was high 40's and absolutely no wind!

Thanks for the info on iPlay, we had a great time there yesterday! I played some skeeball and a few other random games, then sat myself down at a coin pusher machine and my eyes glazed over. Before we knew it it was just after 5 so we left and headed to the park. Unfortunately it was dark so I took zero pictures but below is a TR of how our evening went. We parked by the security tower at SFGAdv right at 5:30. Got through security in record time, went to the various locations to finish process our season passes, lunch meal deals and the photo pass. It was already crowded so we got in line for Flash Passes and that's when I realized we left all our IDs in the car since we are now following the minimalistic "don't lose your wallet or phone on coasters" lifestyle. Well, crap! Usually they hold an ID until you return the QBot but thankfully they told us if you have a season pass they can just scan that. Whew, crisis averted. Many thanks to alilstronger who mentioned a few pages back that the app had a discount on Flash Passes and we could ask to upgrade from regular to Gold and pay the difference. We were able to do that and save quite a bit of money! A lot of rides seemed to be having problems warming up and/or staying running so we weren't as productive as we usually can be but it was still a fun evening. Watched the parade of ghosts at 6PM and tried out Justice League. I'm absolutely horrible at shooting games but somehow got 98,000 points and crushed everyone in our ride vehicle! I thought it was a decent ride but was a little disappointed with how little time you spent in each room and how quickly we passed that cool Joker animatronic but it's a solid (and indoor!) addition. After that we took a few spins on Nitro and hit up Skull Mountain. Then I waited in a line for a snack and told the boys I'd meet them at the Flash Pass entrance Sky Screamer, which they wanted to ride. One of these days I'll learn to never split up from SO because he disappears and it has caused a lot of confusion trying to locate him in the past. When I say I'm meeting someone at the entrance to Sky Screamer I don't mean two buildings down at a dark picnic table, or 200 paces in the opposite direction at the dark bathrooms, I mean at the actual FP ride entrance. Since we were being minimalistic I was the only one with a phone and I also was the only one with money or passes but SO had the QBot. I got to Sky Screamer and waited, and waited, and waited... and the crowds kept getting heavier and heavier. They couldn't have gone too far but trying to find 2 generic looking guys in black hoodies in a sea of thousands of other people also in black hoodies with fog machines going was proving to be impossible. I was staying put though and just over 30 minutes later they finally showed up saying they went to ride Squashbuckler (I didn't even know what that was so would never have thought to look there) after Sky Screamer and it took much longer than planned to get on. At least we were reunited so could continue! We went back and forth about what to ride next since Ka and Superman were both listed down on the QBot but eventually decided to take the Sky Ride over to Bizarro. Had an awesome ride in row 2 and they were doing a decent job with 3 trains going. The amount of people who tried to ride with their velcro capes, blinky horns, etc. on and then struggled to remove those items with the restraints down was ridiculous but the ops did a good job dealing with it. Since our cousin was with us and he had never been there we wanted to get him on as many things as possible instead of just marathon El Toro all night like we normally would do. Next up was El Toro which was sporting quite a long standby line that was spilling out into the midway. Whoever was holding the line back before sending people up into the station did a great job as it never got super crowded up on the platform! They were not patting anybody down but asked people to put things in lo.ck.er.s. Shockingly, most people didn't comply which caused some chaos during loading as people struggled to put their phones away or throw things to friends behind the air gates. Could have used you, El_Toro_Ryan! Had 2 awesome rides in the magic seat at which point we were able to reserve Ka even though we hadn't seen it go. We had 35 minutes to kill so people watched and rode the parachute drop which was a walk-on. As we went to click our QBot to the attendant's, Ka went down and despite seeing people working on it for a while it never came back up. Eventually we bailed so the boys could get hot chocolate and I had an Icee because I am part penguin, then went on Zumanjaro and finished the day on Superman just before midnight. Our cousin had a great time and can't wait to go back next summer with us to experience the safari and the ton of other rides we didn't get on. I'll be back up in December for HITP and it looks like they're basically ready to turn on all the holiday lights already. A gold star to all of you who read this!

Is the mini bowling considered part of the arcade, do you know? What is the cheapest way to ride the spinner? There are 3 of us. Staying on topic, this is our cousin’s first time to SFGAdv! Prior to last month when he tagged along with us to BGW he had only been to SFA... once... lol. Poor guy. He absolutely loved Griffon and Apollo’s Chariot so I’m guessing he’ll love Nitro. Will report back, of course!

Thanks very much guys, we are finishing up at Red Robin and then will go over to iPlay for a short while. Count the potholes is a lame game so this is a better plan for sure.

Guys, I am an idiot and didn’t look at the schedule for today. We drove up from VA and have a bunch of time to kill before the 5:30pm opening tonight. Can anyone tell me - what time does the parking lot open? We want to be at/through security as fast as possible since it’ll probably be an absolute madhouse and go right for the flash pass center. If we go over there at 4:30 is that too early? Can we stand at security until 5:30 to breeze through?

Hershey area schools started Mon Aug 28 this year and the park was indeed dead. It was a gorgeous day and I was there for the Matchbox Twenty concert that evening. I wholeheartedly agree about their crappy skip the line system. The other asinine part is that you have to ride the rides in a certain order, so when you buy it you have to choose what ride to start with and then you must proceed in whatever the specified ride order is. You are also not allowed to substitute rides ("So I can't trade Fahrenheit for an extra ride on StormRunner?" "No.") and there is no option to pay for a single extra skip the line pass like you can at Kennywood for certain rides. Get with it Hershey - I'm trying to give you my money!!

1pm? Geesh gonna have to get the family members who haven't ridden Intimidator 305 yet over there early. Assuming they're running 2 trains on I305, even with the queue completely full it's only about a 35 minute wait. Obviously it's longer for the front row but the back is where it's at anyway. You should be able to get plenty of rides in - but head there early if you want to get on Volcano!

I think I saw "something" behind the trees there, as we were turning around. But still didn't think about it, afterwards. Yup, that's the spot that Sandcastle was in Bill! I stayed there a couple years ago when Breakers was booked up. While it was definitely outdated and we had to quite literally shove large couch pillows under the mattress to keep it from sagging so much in the middle, it suited our needs OK enough. We spent so much time inside the park that by the time we got back to the room the only energy we had left was to quickly shower and collapse in bed.

wow. . TBpony will be upset. . she LOVES that Extreme Sports show. I don't remember even SEEING Sandcastle Suites, and we not only stayed at Breakers for 4 days, and walked the boardwalk a few times, but also rode Magnum multiple times, and from the maps, it looks like it's visible from there. I know, I freaking loved that show!! Hopefully they are able to relocate it somewhere else Sandcastle was located right at Magnum's turnaround, as in almost underneath the structure. You probably saw it and didn't even notice.

QFT! Those pictures Boldikus posted are painful to look at after having such an affinity for the WDL cart.

Since we have 2017 passes it doesn't matter to us if we get Christmas out of them this year, but it's a nice perk for others! Thanks for chiming in, you too middle_keeny - I'll look out for them the first weekend in November.

That's very interesting indeed. Thank your cousin for the pictures! Can anyone tell me what the end of the year season passes for DW usually go on sale for? We bought passes for this year earlier this summer and are going back down for Christmas, so that works out well. However we are planning to visit again next summer for a couple days but depending on the cost of the passes it may not be worth it to purchase them for 2018. Just trying to plan ahead here!