VegasBaby

I love waterparks and we go to our local park here in Vegas (Cowabunga Bay) once or twice a week in the summer. Sometimes I'll do the slides, and sometimes I'll just chill with the kids in the wave pool and the lazy river. It's a great place to hang out on hot summer days and most of our good friends have season passes. However, I will admit that I rarely visit a water park when traveling, unless it's something special like Holiday World, Schlitterbahn, or the Wisconsin Dells. If I have to choose between coasters or waterslides, coasters win hands down. But I do love my local waterpark!

If you are staying at one of the Hershey properties, you can take advantage of the 1 hour early entry and get a bunch of rides on Skyrush, SDL, and Comet (some mornings it's like ERT on those rides). At park opening, I would head straight to the back of the park to hit Laff Track and Wild Mouse, and then move on to Fahrenheit and Storm Runner. Laff Track and Fahrenheit typically have the longest lines in the park, so once you knock those out, you shouldn't have bad waits on the other coasters. A lot of people go straight for Skyrush at opening, but then the line dies down later in the day. If it's not too cold, the log flume (Coal Cracker) is a lot of fun. There are a ton of good flats too, our family's favorites are the Flying Falcon (Huss condor), Frontier Flyers (flying scooters), Music Express, and The Claw (swinging pendulum). There are also a bunch of old school classic flats like the Whip and the Scrambler. Going for two days (plus the preview night), you should have more than enough time to hit everything you want to ride and get multiple re-rides. The park is huge and has so many ride options. It's one of my favorite parks in the country and you should have a great time.

C'mon Shane, don't leave us hanging like that!

I'm glad they are redoing the stunt show as part of the Ghost Town makeover. The old show was fun, but it had gotten stale after seeing it so many times. The article mentioned a 70 foot fall twice, so I sure hope it's a 70 foot fall as that would be awesome to see!

I was there for two days last week and Ninja was running two trains. They were letting Flash Pass users on every other train, which I thought was a good system for keeping the line moving (the same procedure was in place for the Gold Rusher flash pass). I did finally see a rollback on FT, and of course it's while I was in line. However, it only resulted in about 15 min of downtime, so it wasn't that big of a deal. The majority of that time was waiting for the train to finish rolling back into the station. It stopped about 50 feet from the station and then crawled back into loading position. A maintenance guy was already there by the time it finished rolling back, so they sent a few test trains and then we were good to go. FT is such a fun coaster and the hangtime at the top of the loop is just insane. I just wish they had been able to extend the track after the tophat so it didn't hit the brakes halfway down.

You may have just caught it on a bad day or got a bad train. I rode RRR about 15 times in a row (thanks single rider line!) on my visit to Orlando last fall and it was very smooth and comfortable. I was also bummed to see the Hulk in pieces but I am very excited for the rebuild.

They should celebrate by building a giant 400 ft tall b&m!

I totally agree with this, my youngest is current about 45", so she is really limited on what coasters she can ride. She still enjoys kiddie rides but wants to ride something bigger with her siblings. We went to Hershey for 3 days last summer and one of the deciding factors in going there was that they have 4 "big" coasters with a 42" height requirement--Laff Track, Comet, SDL, and Trailblazer. We have put off taking the kids to BGW until she is older bc she can't ride anything right now. BGW is one of my favorite parks and a 42" woodie would be a HUGE hit with families and give them something they currently don't have.

i saw a pic of someones chop six food from today. sorry, not much help. Is ChopSix included on the dining pass? It's not currently listed as one of the options.

This has been my experience as well. I've been to the park twice when it rained lightly almost all day and all of the rides were open. I can't speak about Tempesto though since my last visit was before it was built.

Can anyone please share the link to this deal? I don't think there was a link, I was emailed the deal with a specific code that was only good for me (non-transferable). I don't know if they were sent to all season pass holders or they just chose certain pass holders.

I wonder if they are waiting for RMC to be available to do that? Another possibility would be for GCI to come in a do a re-tracking like they are doing with GhostRider at Knott's. It seems to me that they are looking at these possibilities, otherwise I think they would've demolished it already.

Exactly, I can see why they would add VR to older rides like Revolution and Ninja (SFSTL), but it doesn't make any sense to add it to S:ROS/Bizarro/whateverit'scalled. Bizarro/Superman is one of the best coasters in the world and doesn't need a gimmick like this.

This is what I did when I visited in early October last year. Hit Cheetah right at opening and rode it 3-4 times without little to no wait. Then I rode Montu twice and took the Skyride to the other side of the park. Sheikra and Kumba were walk-ons to 1 train waits all day. I rode Falcon's Fury 10 times in a row in a little over an hour. The log flume is nothing special but the Congo Rapids ride is a lot a of fun. If you can visit the park during the school year on a weekday, you should have similar results. If Cobra's Curse is open by the time you visit, I would ride it in between Cheetah and Montu. Around 5pm I made my way back to Cheetah and rode it a few more times until the park closed at 6pm.

If you are looking to buy show tickets, both of these sites have a variety of discounted shows available: http://www.travelzoo.com/entertainment/las-vegas/ http://vegas.broadwaybox.com/ There are also half-price ticket booths around town, but the tickets are only available the day of the show. Link: http://www.tix4tonight.com I can give you some food options, but I would need to know more of what you are looking for.

Xcelerator pretty much only runs one train now. In fact, I haven't seen it run two trains in years. Last time we visited the park, I timed the dispatches and they averaged 2.5-3 minutes, which means the actual capacity is somewhere between 400-500 PPH.

I would love for that to be true. I rode SDL last summer and those Gerstlauer trains were very comfortable and butter smooth.

Dive coasters are a ton a fun and it would be unique from anything the park already has. There's only 3 in the whole country and none out West, so I think a dive coaster would be a huge hit for the park. Although I wouldn't be mad if the park got a Giga like Fury!

Looks like Knott's is doing more annual ride maintenance. Bigfoot Rapids is closed until 2/26 and Montezooma is closed until 3/4.

Great trip report, this looks like a fun little park. I'll have to check it out next time I'm in Phoenix.

A 4 seat model would be ideal for Knott's as that would really help with capacity issues, which is the major drawback with an Air Race.

" Agreed, I'd love to see them add a Zamperla Air Race or a Disk'O.

This is great advice, that hour of early entry is almost like having ERT on Skyrush, SDL, and Comet. Another bonus of staying at the Lodge (or the Herhsey Hotel, but that is more expensive), is that you get an extra hour on the preview night (3.5 hours vs 2.5 hours).

It was a lot of fun and the highlight of the studio tour when I was a kid.