VegasBaby

Don't forget about the boysenberry BBQ sauce. We had some boysenberry BBQ wings during the boysenberry festival and fell in love with the sauce. We get several bottles of it every time we visit the park!

Should be a great addition to Carowinds, I really like this slide tower that CF has been putting up at their parks. The trap door slides are a ton of fun and having three of them really helps with capacity issues. The other three tube slides offer a different experience for people that might be too scared to try out the trap door slides. I also like how they are keeping it included with park admission and not charging a separate fee for it.

I gotta go with Montezooma, I've been riding it since I was 8 years old and now I ride it with my kids. Mr. Freeze, Deja Vu/GIB, and Intamin Impluse coasters are also lots of fun. I know Deja Vu had reliability issues, but I was super pissed when SFMM got rid of it (especially since that spot is still vacant). I'm going to have to get up to Silverwood sometime soon to ride a GIB again. Speed the Ride was another fun Premier LIM shuttle, but it was dismantled when the Sahara closed and the pieces still sit in storage here in Vegas. It's really a shame that nobody bought this ride, it would've been perfect for a smaller park.

Yes, it should be a "Ghost Town" mid week now that the kids are in school. The park is open every day except Christmas, so the crowds are very minimal mid-week during the school year. I would avoid Labor Day weekend though, it will be packed.

Mike932, I'm glad you enjoyed your Knotts visit, it really is a fun park with some great rides. I love the coasters at SFMM, but my kids aren't ready for most of them yet, so we usually get Knott's season passes every year. Xcelerator is still a world class coaster and Silver Bullet is one of my favorite B&M inverts. I'm very happy that GhostRider is getting a much needed refurb as it was a kick a$$ woody for the first 5 years or so after it was built. Pony Express is a cool little coaster and never has much of line, so we usually ride it multiple times. Hopefully you checked out Montezooma too, it was my first looping coaster and my kids first looper as well (kind of a right of passage in our family). I really like the direction the park has gone the last few years in refurbing the log and mine rides and I think Iron Reef was a really solid addition for the park. My dream is for Knott's to get a Hyper (or even a Chance mini-hyper), but even if that never happens, it still has plenty of great rides and attractions. I'm taking the fam there tomorrow to get a few last rides on Ghostrider (my kids love it despite the roughness) and do some Xcelerator marathoning for myself. And yes, be sure to eat at Mrs. Knotts next time you are at the park!

Totally agree, I rode my first Intamin Impulse last month (V2 at SFDK) and absolutely loved it. It was really a fun ride and I ended up riding it like 5 or 6 times due to it never having much of a line. Superman and Medusa (and soon RMC Roar) get all of the attention at SFDK, but V2 is an excellent coaster that tends to get overlooked. These coasters don't take up much room, so I wonder why more parks haven't installed them?

Thanks for sharing your TR with us. Hershey and BGW are my two favorite overall parks and they have multiple coasters in my Top 10. Living in Vegas, I'm not able to get out East nearly as much as I would like, so I always enjoy reading about other people's experiences at these parks.

Agreed, I am looking forward to the TRs as well since I can't make it to the WCB this year. Looks like it will be a great time at two of my favorite parks.

I would expect the crowds to be very light as almost all of the LA and OC schools are back in session. I'm headed to Knott's on Friday to get a few last rides in on GhostRider and I'm hoping the park will be fairly empty.

I would definitely check out Knott's on the 13th. The park will be completely dead and there are plenty of great rides, even with the Ghostrider closure.

I would recommend going in the middle of the week. We went to Hershey for 3 days (Tues-Thurs) in the middle of June and the crowds were very minimal. We stayed at the Hershey Lodge, so we got the 1 hour early entry each morning. During the early entry, we were able to ride SDL, Comet, and Skyrush multiple times without having to get off and get back in line. At the 10am rope drop, we booked it over to Laff Track and waited about 10 minutes for our first ride, and then about 20 minutes for a second ride. By the time our 2nd ride was over, the line was about 30-40 minutes and stayed consistent the rest of the day. Fahrenheit was the only ride besides Laff Track that had a wait, and it wasn't bad at 20-25 minutes. Pretty much every other ride was a walk on or a 1-2 train wait at the most. The park was open to 10pm each night we were there and really seemed to empty out after 8pm.

What a great video, Hershey is such a beautiful park and has some amazing rides. We spent three days there in June and loved every minute of it.

These are great slide complexes and they give you a little something for everyone. The dropbox slides are my favorite water slides and having 3 of them should really help with capacity. Now CF needs to add this same tower to Knott's, the KBF Soak City hasn't seen an addition since 2006.

This! But whatever they do, they NEED it to be good for more than just a few years after the restoration. That's the only thing I fear if it's not an RMC...how long will the ride be good for before it falls back into being rough again? That being said, I just rode Boulder Dash early this season and it's been what, 5 or 6 years since GCI did their work and it's still running AWESOME! But Lake Compounce also only has three big roller coasters right now, two of them being woodies.... Completely agree with Robb here, I want to see Knott's do something that will keep the ride running great for years and years. I don't care if it's RMC topper track or GCI as long as it lasts. The worst thing would be to spend a whole bunch of $$$ to restore it and then have the ride quality deteriorate after 2-3 years. And yes, please get rid of the dang MCBR!

So glad they are refurbishing GhostRider, but I wonder who is doing the work? My wish would be for RMC to do it with topper track, but CF has never worked with RMC before. Whatever company Knott's chooses to use for the refurbishment, I really hope they can provide a long-lasting solution.

Thanks for the advice, we will be heading straight for the lower lot at opening.

Looks like I will be going to USH on Sept 4th for the first time in like 10 years. I'm taking my two older kids who have never been to the park, so they are pretty excited about it. Any advice for what rides/attractions to hit first and which ones have the longest lines? I see that that park opens at 9am that day, but are all the attractions open at 9am or is it only the studio tour?

I agree that you should head to Xcelerator first, it's in the back of the park and has no lines in the morning. I would probably head to Voyage to the Iron Reef next after Xcelerator. The other popular rides have much better capacity, so it's best to knock out Xcelerator and Voyage early. They usually open the gates 10-15 min before the park opens and then you have to wait for the National Anthem. They drop the rope as soon as the Anthem ends, and then you can head straight for Xcelerator. You can get discount tickets at the Knott's front desk, I'm not sure about the price but I think it's around $37. You can currently buy a 3 day advance ticket on the Knott's website for $42, so I would call the hotel and see what price is cheaper.

Yeah for X2 and Twisted Colossus you have to pay for a single reservation for a one time skip the line pass. $10 per person per ride for X2 and $30 per person per ride for Twisted Colossus. I don't like that deal either, my advice is just do Twisted Colossus first in the morning before there's a line, and X2 you can either do first on another day or go to X2 at bout 4:30-5:00 in the afternoon. So many people ride it first that the line tends to shorten dramatically around that time. Twisted Colossus is not an upcharge on the Platinum Flash Pass. You get a one time reservation on the Platinum, just like Superman and FT. X2 is still a $10 upcharge, but I would just recommend doing X2 as soon as the park opens and then get your Flash Pass.

I would also suggest to save your fast pass money and instead stay at the Hershey Hotel or the Hershey Lodge (the lodge is the cheaper of the two.) You will get in 3.5 hours before park close the day before your ticket and my experience is that the lines really die down at night. Plus you will get into the park an hour early at 9am and it's like having an hour of ERT on Skyrush, Comet, and SDL (those are the only 3 coasters that open early). I was able to ride Skyrush 4-5 times each morning I visited without having to get off. The preview night and the early entry are great perks and I think a better option than the fast pass.

Great trip report, I am really going to have to get up to Silverwood sometime soon. I loved Deja Vu when it was at SFMM and was bummed when they removed it. It's pretty amazing this little park has one of the two GIBs in the entire country. I also have fond memories of riding Corkscrew at Knott's when I was a kid, so it would be fun to be able to ride it once again.

That may not be as radical or far off as you think. My fingers are still crossed for GhostRider getting at least a partial RMC topper track makeover for 2016. With the Ghost Town 75th anniversary hints dropped by Ouimet earlier this year and by Raffi Kaprelyan at the Voyage media day, as well as a comment by Schilke at the last IAAPA that RMC had 'a little extra' planned for 2016 in addition to their 3 big projects (which we can know guess are Storm Chaser, Dollywood, & SFDK Roar), I'm (perhaps foolishly) optimistic. I think 2017 is when Cedar Fair really invests into RMC. I think that Ghostrider and Hurler at KD are going to be the first two to get the treatment. It may be 2017, but I do not think the decision makers at Knott's have any intention of I-Boxing GhostRider. From the statements out there, they seem pretty committed to keeping it a wooden coaster as a hat tip to the Knott family. I think they should keep GhostRider as a woody, it really doesn't need the IBox treatment. The layout is still fantastic and it was a Top 10 woody for the first 6 years or so before it started to get really rough. A RMC topper track makeover would restore GhostRider to its former glory, only with a lot better longevity this time.

Junior Bruins, eh? Any soft spot for Hershey? Anyways, Great Bear definitely has its place, especially at a park like Hershey that gets a lot of families. It's a great first inverted coaster, as well as a good step up from SDL. Totally agree, Great Bear was my daughter's first invert and she absolutely loved it. It's one of the smoothest B&M inverts and it really is a great ride (albeit a little short). I love how it interacts with SDL and flys over the water.

I rode Kong for the first time a few weeks ago and thought it was a pretty fun ride. The first drop seemed really fast and the inversions were pretty forceful. I just kept the back of my head plastered to the headrest and I had little to no headbanging. It's definitely worth at least one ride to check it out for yourself. SLC's get a bad rap around here but I've always found them to be fun coasters.

I'd try to make room for Hersheypark on your trip, it's only like 60 miles from Knoebels. It's a great park and has an incredible trio of Intamin coasters in Skyrush, Storm Runnner, and Fahrenheit. Skyrush has the most insane ejector airtime I've ever experienced and Storm Runner has a powerful launch and some great inversions. The park also has a fun B&M invert (Great Bear) and a great racing woody (Lightning Racer). Sounds like a great trip, be sure to post some pics and let us know how it goes.