Hersheypark - September 16 and 17, 2023

It's been a fun year as a season passholder at Hersheypark, but it seems that my and my wife's visits to Hershey have come to an end given our schedule for the rest of the year. Also because they don't open a lot of the rides for their Christmas event, but oh well.

We decided to book "one last weekend" in Hershey for the year, and lucked out as it ended up being the first weekend for Hersheypark Dark Nights. It was great and I'll get into that after I talk about the rides.

Hershey also offers some wonderful flats:

Crowds were pretty light on Saturday early afternoon and really only got a bit denser just before the Halloween stuff kicked in. Even then, most lines were not too bad, as the haunted houses are big time attractions with long queues. Sunday was a rainy day, so the park was really quite dead, but Hershey managed to run everything that wasn't an Intamin all day. They somehow managed to get Storm Runner going during a break in the rain, and we got on the last ride before it closed again for the weather. Great timing!

Hershey's Halloween event is really well-done. The decorations around the midways are fantastic, the fog is really cool, and the scare actors are super into it and seem to be having a good time. We only had time for one haunted house, but it was definitely a higher-budget operation than what we've seen in other parks. Other people online compare Hershey's Halloween event to Universal's, and I could imagine the production values being pretty similar.

I thought the playlist in the park was really well-done too. Every song had some connection back to a spooky theme, and we heard 0 repeats over the course of a single day. Impressive when other parks can't manage to not repeat songs during the summer. Six Flags America, I'm looking at you and your weird broken playing-too-slow mixtape thing you have going on.

The one bummer about the Halloween event is that they turn off a lot of the ride lights to create a darker atmosphere. I get it, but one of Hershey's best strengths is how awesome their ride lights are. Lightning Racer and Comet have some of the most gorgeous lights of any coaster I know, and Wildcat's Revenge has some decent effects on the lift hill. I know some people prefer total dark rides in general, but man those lights are just fantastic and need to be on as often as possible. At least they kept the Ferris Wheel lit.

We stayed at the Comfort Inn near the Harrisburg Airport about 20 minutes away. It was a really good deal for the room, and the hotel was surprisingly nice. Definitely pays off to stay 15 - 20 minutes out of town, as staying in Hershey proper always costs an arm and a leg. My family used to stay at the Hershey Lodge back in the day, which is owned by Hershey Resorts and Entertainment, but now that hotel is routinely $400+/night during the season. That's more expensive than a lot of the Disney/Universal Orlando resort hotels, and it's literally just a decent hotel with a park shuttle service.

This is less about the park and more about me now. Just over a year ago for Labor Day weekend, my wife and I took an impromptu trip to Hersheypark. I bought her Six Flags passes for Christmas since I knew she liked roller coasters, and we had a good time at Universal and Disney on our honeymoon the year before. I spent that entire summer sitting out most of the coasters except smaller woodies, mine trains, and wild mice. But I was really interested in the coasters themselves, and she just seemed like she was having so much fun on them.

I chose Hershey because it was the park I was most comfortable at, having visited so often as a kid. I was determined to conquer my fear of 200ft coasters and inversions. I knew Candymonium and SooperDooperLooper would be good candidates to do it. I managed to get on both, white knuckle for sure, but it was the push I needed to do the rest of them. I rode every coaster in Hershey at least twice that weekend. It spurred an obsession for me. In less than a year, I accrued 85 new credits. Many of them came from Six Flags Fright Fest visits late last year to Great Adventure and New England, as well as a stop at Lake Compounce. Several more came on a massive 10-day road trip this past summer to Knoebels, Waldameer, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Kennywood, Hershey, and Dorney.

Almost exactly one year after cracking that fear wide open, having this last trip to Hersheypark felt quite poetic. And that ride on Candymonium on Saturday night was just a little emotional. I guess I'll show you why:

  1. Here's a picture of me during my first ride on Candymonium, Labor Day Weekend 2022. I'm middle-right. My first hypercoaster ever, and my face says it all. Absolutely overwhelmed. My wife is sitting next to me and looking directly at me to make sure I'm okay.
  2. Here's a picture of me on Candymonium this past weekend, on the far left - with all the airtime room I could get, in the back row, wearing a fucking Cedar Point t-shirt - not a worry or care, just enjoying the hell out of it.

For those of you who have read and followed along with any of my trip reports this year and last fall/winter, I sincerely thank you for coming along on this journey. There is more goodness to come. We hopped on Six Flags Diamond passes this year during the big sale, and I have a good feeling there is a Carowinds/KD/BGW/SFA road trip in the works next summer, and maybe even a stop at SFGAm. I went almost 30 years not riding this things and now I gotta make up for lost time. Oh my poor wife.

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