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Was at the park last year on the 4th, wasn't too busy, but yeah: it was a Friday and had rained much of the day before and I think some showers in the morning. I'd expect it to be pretty mobbed this year especially if the weather is decent.

The water park flash pass is separate and additional to the dry park flash pass. There is a $20 one and a faster $30 one.

2. Here is the scoop on Hershey's Fast Track Pass program. It is an odd duck. Not ideal, but can serve its purpose, depending on your personal preferences and sensitivities. There are two option, day pass and evening pass. Day gets you nine coasters, evening gets you five. You get one ride on each of those 9/5. You're allotted something like 45m-1h time slots at specific times, to rides each coaster, in a particular order. You walk up the exit of the ride, present your fast track ticket, and an op punches out that coaster on the card and you board. They rope off rows in the standard queue, always in the middle of the train, to reserve for the fast track riders. You may only use those (generally less desirable) rows. They will be true walk on rides but there's often tension with confused/angered GP. If you've ever heard of a "wine flight" or "beer flight" at a decent restaurant, it's kind of like that, only it's a "coaster flight". Coasters included can vary based on what's running, but everything runs pretty much all the time, and pretty well, at Hershey. The standard fare for the full day is: Comet, Skyrush, SDL, Great Bear, Storm Runner, Sidewinder, Fahrenheit, Wildcat, Lightning Racer. You get to choose from two standard options of groups of five for the evening pass. I can't find my evening card from last year but I recall Storm Runner, Skyrush, SDL, and Comet were in my group of five. Day pass is $35, evening is something like $20 or 25. On light to moderate crowd days, I would recommend staying away from the passes as they dictate your entire day or evening schedule and basically take away your freedom to meander and soak it in. Only on totally slammed days, the pass is awesome for the price. My suggestion would be, make the best use of early morning hours with normal riding, then if crowds are huge in the evening do the pass. That way, again, you can see the park on your own schedule for part of the day, and make a later, more informed decision whether to get the FTP. ____________________________________ DelGrossos is 15min down the road from Lakemont. Free parking and individual ride tickets sold. They have my favorite drop tower, and I have been on LL, Jaro, KD's, and Knoebels's (which is similar but just not as perfect and smooth). Worth an ultra quick stop if for nothing but that and a good plate of a food. While I haven't tried working out the details, I'd sooner try for a slight rearrangement of days 4-7 before cutting a day short at Hershey, even with a preview night previous. I always have such a good time there, would not want to leave early.

Two guests on line for SFNE Goliath were discussing why loose articles are not allowed on rides: "Well you could just take a crap in your bag and then [gestures as if tossing the bag off a ride]." And then the girl at the bumper cars: "I don't even know how to drive. I'm just going to be ramming the wall the whole time." This girl on Skyrush was totally shaken up by the ride and let out a huge shriek when the restraints popped to ease the thigh crush on the brake run. It was a completely genuine reaction and everyone around was cracking up. Ehh.. had to be there, but it was funny.

^^^^That slide actually looks pretty awesomely messed up to me. Great pics, really enjoyed this TR.

Usually silent, occasionally a few "whoops", "woahhhs" or "weees". And I can definitely get the giggles on a really good first-ride. Except when I rode Skyrush first time, in which case I screamed at the top of my lungs halfway through: "THIS IS THE GREATEST COASTER ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET."

The perfect coaster would be a multiple-launch shuttle coaster that started at my front door and ended at both Hershey or Knoebels, with a switch in the track to choose between them. There would be two sets of LIMs on the track so that it can launch forwards and backwards, thereby bringing me to either park and then back home.

Geauga gear was still in stock last October. So was SlapChop . Got a Conneaut / Carousel shot glass. They were out of Blue Streak shot glasses. Not certain on shirts but I'm sure there must have been 1 or 2. May have been a sweatshirt too IIRC. {edit: photo resize}

Had a really great day at the park today. Actually got a true walk-on ride on Goliath ... walked straight up to the grouper, got row 2 and bam, gates open, on a train. Never seen that before. The front few rows of Goliath ride very nicely for me but my back row lap was really brutal and not that enjoyable. Wicked Cyclone did build a ~20 minute wait by late afternoon. Has anyone ridden in the last couple days? Both trains had this funny, high-frequency vibration that - and this is really funny but I swear everyone in my group agreed - tickled your feet. It was not squeaking at all and was running on nylon. Beautiful roaring sound. The course just blows my mind every time but the tickling kind of detracted from the ride. In about ten laps I'm still yet to get any seat outside rows 6-10, so it's still really hard to give this ride my full understanding. Why is Bizarro's lift hill so silent? The guy in the row in front of me pointed out that he didn't hear any chain dogs at all, and I was suddenly like, "woah, that's crazy."

At the Park. Empty thanks to morning rain. Looks clear for the rest of the day, good day to get some rides in.

CA - Tatsu CT - Wooden Warrior IL - Whizzer MA - Wicked Cyclone MD - Wild One NJ - El Toro NY - Cyclone OH - Gatekeeper PA - Skyrush VA - Intimidator 305

^ Yes, and fin brake systems.

Not the greatest, but this is the only pic I got of RockStar (flying carpet) when I was at DelGrosso's last month.

Pretty much sums up all of Montreal, for non-French speakers. It is the most obnoxious city I've ever had the displeasure of visiting.

Woah, they tore the roof off almost all the tunnel. It was all there last October, but in very poor shape. Looks to be some new beams strung across so hopefully the plan is to get it all rebuilt. Sadly the train is crawling in that video. Was there anyone else on the ride? How was the airtime? I'm really itching to get back here this year, just love this coaster. For anyone curious - the park and the ride ops could literally not care any less about loose articles or onride videos, plus there are no other guests to endanger.

There are none, and never have been. In other words, you can't please everyone. Enthusiasts are highly efficient at complaining, as a group. My favorite park is Hershey for their well-rounded, high quality coaster collection in a clean, comfortable setting with very few annoyances. It's difficult to edge out Knoebels and after I do a camping trip there later this year, it may be back to #1. Coney Island was transformed from a seedy hangout to essentially the model for the modern amusement park, so it would be hard to argue against its status as a contender for best amusement park ever. Erlebnispark Tripsdrill looks to me like the best amusement park in the world today, and my #1 "bucket list" park.

...You see a truck painted with RMCTrucking and your heart skips a few beats before realizing it's an unrelated entity.

^^ One thing that can be done is grinding the track segment connections. All three joints in the pictured element appear to have scaffolding appropriately positioned for a worker to inspect/grind. Additional attention areas are probably for other various inspection/measurement/analysis: Weld integrity, signs of stress, warpage, surface characterization, etc. This picture is the "title image" from an easily-found youtube video of the ride during early 2014, look closely you can see there was already grinding work done at all three points. It stands to reason that further attention could make an improvement. It does seem a little surprising that such work alone could have such a great impact, given computer-controlled (presumably?) manufacturing, and self-centering segments as seen below (photocredit Scott Lynch flickr). On the other hand - Impulse at Knoebels (I know, different mfr) has had a huge amount of griding done, so it must be significant.

I don't usually make much of a "plan of attack" for parks, preferring a kind of spontaneous "OK, what's first, what's next? etc." Hitting up Volcano first at KD is the one big exception; strategically, it's an absolute must-do move. And you really do have to be quick about it, because it seems just about everyone there at opening knows the same trick. Be at the park before open, be at the front of the rope drop by Dominator (at least this is how it was done my visit last fall), walk briskly and directly there. This got us on the fourth or fifth front row dispatch of the day. By the time we walked around for a second lap the line was already "oh heck no" in length. So dilly dally at your own risk! Luckily, an empty I305 is a nice consolation prize to that Volcano reride.

Agreed. Bizarro can be quite unpredictable too. Typically dead, but if a crowd makes it's way over, lines build up quick thanks to the - ahhhh - casual ops. Yesterday three trains were on but one was being sent empty while we were waiting, and the line was quickly getting to be totally nuts behind us.

^If you include the discount days, there's a ton of them. Lines were about what I expected yesterday. I was getting on Toro consistently in 35 minutes all afternoon. The trick for quicker laps on busy days as I'm sure we all know is to just head through the masses quickly/directly, but respectfully, to the ~second-to-last row which is rarely busy. One lap I "settled" for a less full middle row. This bull maxes out your airtime so hard that it barely feels less intense. So incredible. Nitro wait also clocked in just under 40 for us as we got waved through by some kindly GP to fill in two seats in a middle/back row. GP was also getting riled up about line cutting so they actually put a security guard on the line. He overlooked from the stairs landing and confronted/removed at least one cutter. And yes, crew was flying at Nitro today. I've almost always seen terrible ops here, this was a nice surprise. Batman was our long wait at almost an hour.

That Best Western is awesome. It's cheap, reasonably clean, has tennis courts and pool (not that you'll have time), and best of all is close enough to walk to for lunch or a break from the heat. My last visit to KD was 99°F by noon and having that AC'd room to walk over to for lunch was about the greatest relief ever. Don't order from the attached Denny's around park close time. Or ever. It's insanely awful on every conceivable aspect of food service. Fingers crossed for you DanM

This is of course horrific news and thoughts and best wishes go out to the family. The following is all speculation. I have no involvement with the device, nor have I ever even seen it. That said, it all seems to follow clearly from the pictures and video. The attraction looks terribly and negligently designed in my view. You jump from a point that is directly above the support structure, thus you must actually manage to jump outwards to reach the safe area of the pillow. It appears that if you fall straight down from the jump point, you would land in an area either at the very edge of, or completely off of, the pillow. A nervous jumper who had second thoughts just as he/she started jumping could easily, it seems to me, encounter such a fatal landing. I like the attraction concept but I would design it entirely differently. I would have a cantilevered jump platform with a fixed bar above it. A harnessed operator, connected to the bar, would escort harnessed guests, also connected to the bar, to the edge of the platform. The pillow should be centered just beyond this point, and sufficiently large that a jump or fall in any direction, from the end of the platform, would be safely caught. The operator could then safely disconnect the guest's harnessing apparatus and the guest could safely jump from the platform, no matter how badly they butcher the trajectory. This would of course make the attraction more expensive to manufacture and significantly slower to run. Which are necessary tradeoffs for safety's sake, as anything short of such precautions is unforgivably dangerous in design. (added after seeing Robb's post): I think that lack of failsafe is exactly what is wrong with the ride itself. There are ways to design the apparatus so that this failsafe is there. Freaking out is part of using amusement attractions. There is stress involved, especially among people not used to traveling all over for different rides and thrills. You can't expect everyone to behave in perfectly rational ways when under such stress. People bite off more than they can chew on rides all the time, or get egged on to ride by friend/family. It's the job the ride design to take this into account and make the experience safe. The device should not allow a person who suddenly becomes freaked out to accidently kill themselves.

$25 this year for the asphalt boulder field.

Agreed, felt a few small bumps and shakes on Tuesday, not uncomfortable at all, but don't have any earlier rides on it to compare to. Didn't notice any difference between trains. I was more focused on how darn quiet the thing is, never heard anything like that before.