Great Adventure and Hershey Park PTR - 2008

**Warning- This page has a lot of pictures, so your loading time can take a while. Sorry if it causes an Inconvenience. Also, the trip report is extremely long (I know), but we did a lot on this vacation.**


So I recently got back from my ??????big?????? vacation. I had a great time for the week we were gone, but I am glad to be home. I am still exhausted. Anyways, here??????s my trip.

Day 1 - Driving

We drove for 9 hours or so from Ohio all the way to New Jersey. I was so bored in the car, it wasn??????t even funny.

Day 2 - Six Flags Great Adventure

We got to the park around 9:30. We were walking through the gates to get in when the guy tore the wrong ticket off for my mom, so we had to go over to Guest Relations to get it replaced. The day wasn??????t starting the greatest, but I had hopes it would change. Anyways when they dropped the ribbon, I headed to Kingda Ka to get that credit out of the way. When I get there, the line wasn??????t too bad and I tried to wait for the front. It went down hill from there. They were only running two trains at that time, and somewhere in there they stopped operating the ride temporarily to film for some TV show. It got so ridiculous that I ended up just riding in the 2nd row. In my opinion, I like TTD better than Kingda Ka; I don??????t know why, I just do. The rest of the day turned out to be pretty good. I got to ride all of the major coasters there (some more than once) in the first day with only 8 hours to do so. The Dark Knight isn??????t terrible, but I think the problem is that most people aren??????t expecting a small Wild Mouse coaster, so they are let down heavily. The rest of the rides are great, and once it got about 5:30, the lines shrunk so much that I got to ride things on-and-off like. Then to finish off the night, I got to ride the last train out on El Toro. That made my night.

Day 3 - Great Adventure - 1st Half of Day

Nothing new or especially exciting happened on this day. I was at the park until about 3 or so, and all I did was ride and ride until I could. There was only two problems with the day. 1) So many school kid groups that it annoyed the hell out of me. 2) My last ride there, Batman: The Ride, mysteriously broke down about three trains before I got on. I had just enough time originally that I could ride that quickly, and then run over to El Toro for a quick ride. But Batman just had to break down, so I only got to ride that. Otherwise, the park is a nice place that has some great coasters.

~Total Count: Batman The Ride - 4; Dark Knight - 1; El Toro - 6; Great American Scream Machine - 1; Kingda Ka - 1; Medusa - 7; Nitro - 5; Rolling Thunder - 2; Runaway Mine Train - 1; Skull Mountain - 1; Superman - Ultimate Flight - 3.


Day 3 - Gymnastics Olympic Trials - 2nd Half of Day

Women competed their first night.

Day 4 - Gymnastics Olympic Trials

Men competed their final night.

Day 5 - Gymnastics Olympic Trials

Women competed their final night. After the meet we drove to some small town 30 minutes from Hershey.

Day 6 - Hershey Park

We woke up at that small town and then drove over to Hershey. We checked in to the hotel and then took the shuttle over to the park. Let me tell ya, that parking lot is confusing. You literally drive in a circle and slightly away from the park before you get to the entrance. When we got into the park, I headed to Fahrenheit first. I waited about 45-50 minutes for it, but it was worth it (however I still think that Maverick is a little better). I just went in a circle next heading to Wildcat first. Walk-on, twice in a row. Little did I know, just about every coaster in the park except for Fahrenheit was a walk-on. I rode every coaster there, most of them at least twice, in 3 hours. That helped me a lot. I got to ride other rides than just the coasters, and I enjoyed every minute of it. At about 5 or so, every line shortened. Fahrenheit was down to 15 minute waits, and the rest of the coasters were basically running close to empty trains. All of this coaster riding and hill climbing was making me tired. Later that night, it was about 9:45, and I wanted to catch a quick ride on Great Bear. As I approached it though, the storms hit. Rain just poured down like there was no tomorrow. Once it lightened up a little bit, my mom and I made a run for it out the exit and into this huge line to wait for our shuttle. Lightning is striking right above our heads, the rain picked back up along with strong wind. We stood there for 40 minutes waiting on a shuttle, and after we got on, they left 4 people standing out in the rain and wouldn??????t let them stand on the bus. That was insane, and a lot of people complained when they got back to the hotel. It was a good day, but the evening kind of went down the drain (no pun intended [sillyme] ).

Day 7 - Hershey Park

The lines were the same today; 45 minutes for Fahrenheit, walk on for the rest. I just rode and rode that day and kept riding until park closing. The rides were great today too. Everything overall about Hershey Park I really liked. I even got to go ride the water rides that day, which was good because it was warm out. 1st Funny story: On Lightning Racers, the trains were running mostly empty. I was on the Lightning train, which had a total of 4 people in it (two in very front, one in 2nd, and me in the very back). The Thunder train on that race had 12 people in it total. Guess who won?????? Lightning. I think its amazing that weight/people difference and yet my train still won. 2nd funny story: I don??????t know if I??????m bad luck or something, but I got stuck on 4 different rides that day. Once on Comet, when I was waiting on the brake run, once on Wildcat while I was on the brake run, once on Lighting Racers on the brake run, and once on Great Bear on the?????? lift hill (You thought I was going to say brake run [:P]). Otherwise the day great, and I definitely want to go back in the next year or two.

~Total Count: Comet - 3; Fahrenheit - 7; Great Bear - 4; Lightning Racer(Total) - 8; Roller Soaker - 1; Sidewinder - 1; Sooperdooperlooper - 5; Storm Runner - 3; Trailblazer - 2; Wild Mouse - 5; Wildcat - 6.

Now for the big bunch of pictures. Sorry again for any difficulty with loading this page.

SFGAdv:

Sorry for the lines. I took it through our back windshield.

I found the Geico water tower funny.















I really liked this one because it has the clouds in the sky and the silhouetted coaster.


That??????s one of my favorite shots!


The old Chiller building.





Hershey Park:








My other favorite shot!

















I found this water structure very colorful (I know I??????m simple?????? [hello]).





Sorry for that blurriness. My camera doesn??????t take pics that well at night.

Weird Support #1

Weird Support #2

Weird Supports #3 and #4

Weird Support #5

Weird Support #6

Weird Support Combo


Signs like these (above and below) were hanging around the park. These two specifically were hanging behind the body boarding in the Boardwalk.




These last three pictures just crack me up. This Roller Cow-ster was sitting just outside the entrance of the park.


I am glad you looked at my Photo Trip Report. If you don??????t feel like reading everything, the bare minimum basics are the Total Counts, which are marked with ~. Thanks again!

-CoasterStreak-

Nice PTR!
I remember when I went to Hershey in May, me and my friends were standing infront of the entrance to Storm Runner and it took us like an hour to find the road to get down to Trailblazer. Rofl.
How were the waterslides?
Aaaand, what do ya think the sign is about everybody?

Very nice and interesting Trip Report

Signs are for maybe somethnig n the water park? Or, they could be doing something like farenheit. "97 and fallin fast" and make a 10 degree drop. "10 degrees and still cold."

Well, we'll know tommorow.....

Awesome PTR mate, great!

Nice pictures

Today's July 1st...wonder what the announcement was?
My guess is a wave pool.


BTW, 32 rides in 1&1/2 days a SFGA, you must have had the flash pass (or VIP or something). My (our, me and drummerkid) best is 17 in 1 day. We've been trying to beat that since we set it.


Also, how'd you like Dark Knight?
I thought it was funny (but probably only b/c of the people I was riding with).
If they wanted to try to make a ride really intense and scary, they shouldn't have built a wild mouse. But whatever...still fun.

The Dark Knight wasnt terrible. It was the first wild mouse I had ever ridden, so yeah I did like it. Some of the theming was hard to see because of the whip through those mouse turns. Otherwise it wasnt that bad of a ride.

Actually, I did have anything special for SFGAdv, except maybe some luck. Besides The Dark Knight (and the "break down" on Kingda Ka), the longest line I waited in was about 25 minutes, and that was for El Toro. Maybe I just got lucky because all the other lines were like 5 to 10 minutes max. A lot of those rides in the count were taken on the first day after about 5:30. Cause at that time Nitro, Batman: The Ride, GASM, and Medusa were all walk-ons.

i keep forgetting to make theme park reports for when i go places[:(] i'll make one for alton towers when i go with my school in 6 days, I'm so happy, great report man, loved every pixel of it.

Here is today's big announcement...

http://www.hersheypark.com/boardwalk/seaquel/index.php

looks awesome, so they say it's coming in 2009, any idea what the predicted date is?

In all honesty, who knew this was coming? A lot of people I think were expecting them to get a wave pool to replace the river rapids ride. Was it almost too predictable?

Wicked trip report! Sounds like you were lucky at both parks to get so small queues!

i'll make one for alton towers when i go with my school in 6 days, I'm so happy, great report man, loved every pixel of it.

Wow, good luck with that! I went to alton yesterday, got a free ticket from my A level art teacher as he's taking his year 9 year group there, all 250 of them! But anyway, it was absolutely heaving with school kids everywhere, every single one of the big 4 coasters had queues over an hour. Although one good thing, Rita was running extremely well, the queue moved really fast considering its length.

Yeah but sorry, that was slightly off topic! What is the best coaster at hershey then CoasterStreak, i always think Great Bear looks the best?

That could technically be a matter of opinion, but I really liked, well... I dont know for sure [dunno] I liked all of them really, but the two GCI's, Fahrenheit, and Great Bear are probably more toward the top. Great Bear is a pretty great ride; the only problem is the end (after the corkscrew) because all it does is curve slightly one way around SDL and then back the other into the brake run. But yeah, its a good ride that I think is a little underrated.

thanks for sharing, great photos! [:D]