Physical

Thanks! Now I'm curious what exactly was discovered with that part to warrant a recall. Here's hoping it was something minor, like a seal that was wearing out quicker than expected.

So what part exactly was recalled? It sounds like some kind of hydraulic cylinder for the restraint locking mechanism, but I'm not positive.

Well I guess when you don't have to rush 9.7 out of 10 days you never learn how to dispatch the rides quickly.

Operations really aren't Dorney's strong suit this year. They weren't /terrible/ last year, so I'm really not sure what changed for this season. Steel Force is almost always stacking 2 trains for an unreasonable amount of time, I don't understand how, it's one of the longest coasters on the east coast! The B&M's are being stacked pretty badly, Possessed is running 5+ minute dispatches. Ops team needs to get their shit together this year, honestly.

Anyone that goes to CP on Memorial Day weekend or Disney are expecting lines, I've never been to Dorney, but if the lines are as non existent as they claim, a 10 min wait for regulars would probably be like a 3 hour wait to most people. For me it's more like "I've ridden this 100 times already, this isn't worth it if I can't literally walk directly onto the train and sit down" Or I'm heading in for an hour before work to ride anything I can walk straight on to.

I agree, it's very difficult to see just how tall it is when you're at the top of the park. The top of the tower is maybe 30 feet above you when you're in Hydra's station.

Can I get a gold star for not being afraid of Demon Drop? Only took an entire season of riding it every single day

There are anti-snapping workers at every park, even a rare few at Knoebels! At pretty much any park, there's some operators who allow snapping, and some who don't. As long as it doesn't specifically say "no snapping" (snapping doesn't always have to involve violent sail-whipping) on the sign, I'd say go ahead. Even if they stop the ride early, you could just come back later and they won't recognize you or there will be a different ride operator. And I'm pretty sure you can't get kicked out of the park for something like that. If a rude or angry teenage worker on a "family" flat ride could ban you from the park at any moment even if it's not for breaking any rules, it would be complete chaos. I know in PA with the PA rider act of 1994 if you ignore the instructions of a ride operator you can get kicked out of the park and the park is /technically/ supposed to press charges. Virginia had a few signs regarding following the instructions of the ops, so if the operator says something over the mic during the cycle, you don't really have a choice if you want to stay in the park.

Sure did! It was pretty apparent that it was B&M's first hyper, a few of the airtime hills have some.... odd shaping. It was exceedingly enjoyable though, I especially liked how the return hills follow the topography of the park, and are all different heights.

We decided to stop in on our way home from BGW last night (seeing as we had to drive right past the park anyway, it wouldn't make sense not to stop) We arrived right around 4:30, and we managed to get one loop around the entire park hitting all the coasters, the flyers, and Delirium before close. Dominator is still amazing, so is I-305. The operator on the flyers was yelling at us for "bending" the cables, which really is a shame considering last year the operators we had on the flyers were encouraging us to snap them. Guess it's time to strike off KD's flyers as one of the good ones. I just wish they would have something on the rider safety board that lets you know before your cycle that you can't snap them, that way we'd have known not to bother with them On the way out, we got stuck in that storm that caused the tornado warning. I-295 turned into a parking lot for about an hour, other than extremely heavy rain, I believe there was some slight hail (sure sounded like there was some hitting the roof of my car, but there aren't any dents to knock out of it today) and very high winds. All in all, a pretty decent 3.5 hour pit stop before a looooooong drive back to PA.

After our visit yesterday, all I have to say is "WOW." This park completely blew me away, some of the best staff outside of Knoebels, not a single bad coaster in the lineup, operations were amazing, the food was incredible, if I had to pick something to complain about it'd either have to be the layout of the park (It's absolutely awful! Never been lost in a park until yesterday, even with a map we still got lost at least three times) or the amount of food they give you in Festhaus. Felt like such a waste to buy a 25 dollar platter and only eat about 1/4th of it. Tempesto was probably the biggest surprise of the day, decently forceful, lots of very surprising airtime, and an overall fun ride. Griffon (my first dive coaster) wasn't nearly as intense as I was expecting, it was still a ton of fun, I just figured it would be more forceful and/or terrifying to ride. Loch Ness Monster is by miles the best arrow I've ever been on, that first drop in the back row really is surprising. Apollos Chariot has dethroned Nitro as my favorite B&M Hyper. Alpengeist was pretty good, but it was somewhat rattly, and the transitions into the entry of the cobra and into the mid course brake run threw me around in some pretty bad ways, kinda detracted from the ride a bit. Verbolten was shockingly forceful and a very fun ride. Other than the layout of the park I really can't complain about anything. It seems like BGW really is doing everything right, I can't wait to go back.

This happens occasionally. I think they call it a "false launch." From what I understand, it happens when there isn't enough pressure in the system. It's also known to cause the ride to unlock gates and fail to dispatch. After a couple tries, it'll launch slowly and rough and during this ride the holding break doesn't engage. Usually the ride runs normally after this happens once. It's not caused by pressure, seeing as it's an LIM launch and uses alternating magnetic fields to boost the train. I know what you're talking about regarding the false launch though, I've had a few rides on it where the initial boost out of the station was normal, but then it felt like we slammed on the brakes for about .2 seconds, slowing down the train dramatically. No clue what the cause is, but I've experienced it before.

Kingda Ka, but I consider that a thrill ride, so we're gonna go with Fury 325, with a runner up of Intimidator 305.

What's the weather policy like? Now that our date is near, we realized they're calling for rain. We both had to request off to make this trip happen, so we can't reschedule easily.

Back Left is also great for that "Holy shit I'm going to wind up in the parking lot" moment on the first drop.

Yeah it seemed like it was recently retracked. Pretty bummed myself that I couldn't get on it. I'd love to check the schedule but after our visit the other day I'm inclined to uhh.... not exactly trust it. I'm going to be in town in September regardless, so if those piers are open, great, if not, well there's always drinking on the beach!

Crowds will be light to moderate since you'll be going on a weekday. And next week is the last week of school for area public schools so the park won't be too crowded with locals. The longest I've waited for rides around this time is ~10-15 minutes for Alpengeist. Griffon, AC and Bolt were all 5-10 minute wait times on average and much less towards the end of the day. If you can arrive by opening, go ride Tempesto first and get that out of the way since that has the worst capacity of all the major coasters. Thanks for the insight! I'm totally unfamiliar with this park, haven't even looked at a map yet. What's the best way to hit everything? You said start with Tempesto and I know it's pretty much right next to AC, so we'd probably hit AC immediately after. From there, what's the best way to go around the park?

Eh, it sucked but it's not too big of a deal. Especially considering they actually issued us full refunds even though we used 8 tickets to ride Sea Serpent. Being at the beach beats waiting in 2 hour queues are Great Adventure if you ask me. I'm going to be in Wildwood again in September for a few days, figure I'll manage to get my rides in then.

Made my first trip out to Morey's today. Day didn't go quite as planned. We initially went to Great Adventure, but after riding Toro with only a station wait, we come out of the station to see the entire first set of switchbacks filled, and the line growing rapidly. After wandering around Great Adventure for an hour or two, we determined everything had hour plus waits, so we made the call to abandon the day at Great Adventure and head on down to Morey's. We were hoping to hit Nor'Easter, Great White, and Sea Serpent, however when we arrived we noticed only the pier with Sea Serpent was open. Calling the number on the sign out front of the closed piers, we determined that those piers were going to open at 6PM. After picking up 20 tickets and getting a ride on Sea Serpent (Which is not the worst boomerang I've ridden) we basically just walked the boardwalk and killed time until 6PM hit. Neither pier opened. After locating a supervisor she told us to head on over to Guest Services and ask. They basically told us that no, those piers don't open at all today. We asked for a refund considering the recording that states the piers hours says those piers open at 6PM every weekday, we actually got one. All in all, kind of a botched day on many fronts, still good fun though. Is this a common thing? The guest services manager we spoke to seemed like he had dealt with refund requests due to incorrect information on the recording before. He wasn't really surprised, just kind of asked for our ride cards and issued us a refund.

I managed to convince a group of 6 former Dorney ride ops to ride Blackbeards Lost Treasure Train because "The train is so long we're bound to get some airtime if we sit in the back!" I just wanted the credit

To me, Hydra is one of those coasters that I ride for fun, not for thrills. It's not necessarily a bad coaster in my books, just not as thrilling as the other floorless coasters out there.

Allentown! Either improve Dorney so it can compete with the other regional parks (Knoebels, Hershey, Great Adventure) or just build something new from the ground up

I don't have exactly accurate counts because I didn't feel like raking my brain for coasters I've ridden 10+ years ago, but here's my milestones since I started keeping track in early 2015 #1 Talon, Dorney Park #10 Great Bear, Hershey #25 Nitro, Six Flags Great Adventure #50 Fury 325, Carowinds Last coaster in my count: Twister, Knoebels "breakthrough" ride: Possessed at Dorney Park, initially made me want to see what other coasters outside of Dorney had to offer. Skyrush at Hershey made me want to experience as many coasters as possible.

Some do. It's more common on single operator flat rides, but there's no hard 'rule' about it either way. They also may behave differently. For instance most will act like an estop, cutting power to the ride. Others act like a cycle stop, that will slow the ride and park it normally. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Basically this. To elaborate a bit though, most coasters or thrill rides have some form of safety built into it so you can't just bump the dispatch button and accidentally send a train. For example, Demon Drop has a dispatch enable button that must be held down while you hit each cars dispatch button otherwise it won't send them. The flats that I've operated all had either a safety button or a safety foot pedal that must be held down from start to finish of the ride cycle, otherwise the ride would stop. I know for most flats it's to verify the operator is in the booth for the entire cycle, as well as allowing an easy way to cut a cycle if the ride doesn't have a ride stop button.

I haven't been to the park in June, so I can't say anything about that. However, if you're going to do QuickQueue, do the QuickQueue Unlimited. The regular QuickQueue only lets you skip to the front of the line once for each ride that has QuickQueue. We were only planning on getting it if the park is slammed. Sounds like quickqueue unlimited is the better deal if you're planning on hitting anything more than once.