So I was planning on doing a trip report on all that I've done so far this year. Busch Gardens Europe, Dark Knight media day, a couple of GADv Visits, Knoebels Opening weekend, Kings Dominion, and Holiwood Nights, but I realized how long that would take. So instead, I will just say that it was fun seeing all of you that I saw on those trips and we had a blast! For now, I will write up a report for this past weekend (Sunday/Monday) excursion Melissa and I went on.
Dan, Matt, Melissa and myself had planned on going to Dorney on Sunday night since they were originally scheduled to close at 10 PM. We were also going to meet up with Sue and Rich and grab some Ci'Ci's... but somehow, we screwed up, or Dorney changed plans, and they decided to close at 7:30. This put a bit of a damper on the original plans. I had work until 5 on Sunday and Dorney is 2 hours away from my job, realistically. I somehow managed to get all of my work done by 4, so Mel met me at my job a little after, and we were on the road by 4:30. Leaving the Jersey shore en route to PA on a Sunday evening sounds scary, but we had absolutely no traffic back ups the entire drive. We made it there in about an hour and 30-40 minutes. Sue, I'm sorry for not calling, my phone has been acting funny the last few days and keep turning off by itself for no reason. We will get to ride Voodoo together and get CiCi's next time!
Arriving at Dorney, we see Voodoo running from the lot. Smiles were made for both of us. We drove past the parking gate since no one was in there and parked pretty close to the gate. The park was dead. No wonder they closed at 7:30. Any who... Voodoo was the 2nd stop of the day. First stop was the bathroom behind Laser since Mel had to use it. I used the time to snap a few pictures...
^One day I will have to try that, possibly this year.
Ok, so she's done doing her thing, we decide to give Little Laser a try...
... Not a chance in hell.
(Some background on this ride for me...
I missed it on 2 visits to Six Flags Ohio, so I'm missing the credit.)
Walking to Voodoo we notice there are only about 10-15 people being held outside of the station. SCORE!!!
The ride was just as good as I anticipated. We boarded row 2 for maximum twist-age. (front row had a 5 train wait, and we wanted to get a Thunderhawk ride in. The launch(es) were intense, the brake worked, and the twisting was fun. I will most likely be returning to Dorney a couple of times to get more rides on this ride.
They don't allow line jumping OR jumping on people's heads while in line for Voodoo.
Now that we finished getting our credit run over, it was time to visit an old friend, Thunderhawk. It was 7:25 when we got to the stairs leading into the station. Half way up the stairs, a ride-op comes down and says "Park closes in 5 minutes, so the coaster is closed!" WTF?!?!
Fine, we run to Steel Force instead since it's right there. While approaching the big red steel thing, the ride-op is walking down the stairs to close the line. I wave him down, and we make it just in time. We got on the last train of the night in the front of the back car. There was a bit of a hold up though before getting to ride. Someone on the train in front of us decided to talk on their cell phone while on the lift. Ugh, stupid people. Regardless, we had a good ride on SF. Nice breeze for the first half of the ride, brakes seemed to barely touch the train, and the bunny hills have good air.
We took our time leaving the park since there wasn't much to do. We stopped by the candy store and got chocolate pretzels, and saw something that looked, to me, HILARIOUS. So picture a large woman, wearing a bathing suit bottom and a t-shirt barely long enough to cover her rear. Ok, got it? Now picture her holding a towel between her legs. Don't get it yet? Look at this...
I SWEAR it looks like it's hanging from her vaginal area.
That was too much, I almost fell over laughing. It might be one of those things that you have to be there to fully understand it's true comedic value.
I decided to take a few more pics while leaving the park and exiting the parking lot...
Once out of the parking lot, we took about an hour and a half to find CiCi's (I forgot to bring my GPS, never again). It's in Whitehall for those who care. It was just as we expected. Decent pizza, decent everything, good price. They did seem to have trouble keeping up with the demand of the supply though.
Finding our hotel wasn't too difficult from there. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott in Allentown. It was a very nice room, not exactly up to Marriott standards, but well worth the $70 I paid.
After a wonderful night at Dorney and a very cozy sleep, we were off to Knoebels. First we stopped at the Friendly's in Allentown right near the hotel, and get $3.49 breakfast specials. Very good deal for 2 eggs, 2 sausage and your choice of pancakes, French toast or toast... We drove past some carnival rides on the way...
We arrived at Knoebels a little before 11:30 to find this...
This was going to be a nice day. We weren't expecting to get hand stamps since the site said POP wasn't available today. Our plan was to just relax, get 2 $20 ticket books and just enjoy the beautiful day. To our surprise we found this...
Yay!
This turned out to be a life saver, because we would have spent way over $60 each if we paid to do everything we did.
First stop of the day was Twister. When we rode this opening weekend, it gave me the best rides I'd ever had on it, almost cracking into my top 10. This time was a let down compared to that. It was a still a fun ride, always is, but it was very slow, and didn't really pick up that much throughout the day. Maybe I'm jaded form all of the Voyage rides, but Mel said the same thing.
Flyers!!!!
Strolling along, we find ourselves in front of what drew us to Knoebels in the first place... the Flyers! The line for this was about 1 cycle at this point, and never got larger than a walk on for the remainder of the day. Snapping was had by both of us, we loved it, rode it 2 times, then went on to Fascination. It is MUCH easier to win this game when the only 2 people playing are you and your girlfriend
We played for about 20 minutes, scored over 30 points between the 2 of us, and carried on with our day. The Carousel was our next stop. We sat down on a bench by the ride first to finish our Italian ice. Mine was consumed first so I tried to find guests while Melissa ate hers...
No such luck finding people... let's go ride!
I think I had a total of 19 rings on one ride, 17 on another. Most of the GP decided to sit in the middle of the ride. It was rather humorous watching them get all pissy when they realized they couldn't reach the rings
Sky Slide was next...
I really thought I was going to fall out on the first ride, not so much on the second two rides. This is always fun nonetheless. Once finished with getting our slide fix, we wondered around, looking at the kiddie rides, smelling the great food being cooked and just relaxed for a while.
Waffle Ice Cream, Chicken Fries, Hamburgers... all were consumed throughout the day in between rides. We scored a few more flyer rides, and on the third consecutive round, I hooked a cable! I think I made Matt proud... maybe even brought a tear to his eye
Phoenix was our next stop... It was running well, but not it's best. Very bouncy on the bottom of the first drop and the drop before the double up. Re-rides were a plenty today.
Weird Al even made an appearance today at the park... he was caught marathoning Phoenix
^ He put on a few pounds though
Gasoline Alley was one of our next stops... Melissa drove, I took pictures, and played driving instructor. These next few pics were taken from the cars...
^OMG the Wipe out is open!!! (more on that after Gasoline Alley.)
Ok, so the Wipe Out. This ride is INSANE. I sat on the side that gets the crushing. Melissa nearly broke my ribs, thats how powerful this thing is. It isn't the longest cycle out there, but it might be the most intense. If it were any longer, my ribs would have cracked. I can't wait to ride with Dan or Matt
Fandango was ridden sometime after the Wipe Out and was as fun as usual. I love Frisbee type rides, in case you didn't know
We made our way back to the "front" of the park, and found a gift shop I hadn't seen before. They had some cool signs, stickers and gifts that I never saw at any other gift shops. This shop was right near the ferris wheel.
^Just to prove, I AM THE FRISSBEKING!
I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel, but Mel didn't, so that means we rode. She decided to take a nap while I enjoyed the view.
The rest of the day from here was kind of a blur. I know we rode High Speed Thrill Coaster, The Whip, Flying Tigers (which were SO much more fun than they look by the way), Flyers a few more times, Carousel once or twice more. We also decided to make a black and white calender of pictures of Melissa and I. It
WILL make millions, here are some previews.
More to come once we visit more parks on Sunny days... Anyway, here are more random pics from Knoebels for your pleasure.
It was nearing 6:00, and the rides were starting to close. One last ride on the Flyers we took. We sat in the same tub and were the only ones on the ride. The op must've been bored, lazy or sleeping so we got a 10 minute cycle. It was BLISS!!! We headed back to the gift shop, bought some goodies and were on our way home. 20 minutes into the drive, Melissa says "Harrisburg exit? Lets go to Hershey" I didn't think she was serious at first so I say "I'll go!"... one quick U-turn later, we are going south on 81 towards Harrisburg and arrive in Hershey's parking lot about an hour later. Even though it was already 7:36 and the park was closing at 10, we still had to pay $10 to park.
I took notice to the fact that I hadn't seen Fahrenheit run once during our walk to the gates. It was listed on the "closed rides" list in the front. Ahhh dammit. I guess we can't have everything
We stopped by Guest Relations to purchase our tickets and ask about the ride being closed. It had just gone down at 7:24... but the gentlemen felt sympathy for us, being from NJ and all, so he gave us a special pass to get on any ride we wanted without waiting. Once the tickets had been purchased, he looked on the computer again, and informed me that Fahrenheit was open again! Score!!!
Our first stop was the Reese's Challenge. We walked on immediately. Our team won, but Melissa beat me. She beat me all 3 times we rode. I hope this doesn't become a trend...
Fahrenheit was our next destination. The line looked to be about 30 minutes long. "Let's use the exit pass" The exit pass works silly for this ride. You don't go up the exit. You use the elevator and get nasty looks from people. I asked the operator what rows we were allowed to sit in, and he didn't mind where we sat so we took the front. I was getting kind of excited to ride this now, I wasn't really excited before. The lift hill is quite intimidating. From there, it's kind of blah. I liked the ride, don't get me wrong, but I'd give a 6 out of 10 if I were to rate it. My favorite parts were the lift, and the ending sequence. The drop is over way too fast to really feel the 97 degrees. The first 2 major inversions are way too big to even produce forces. It almost felt as if I was on a 2 seated B&M. Oh, yeah, the bunny hill gives AMAZING airtime, and the turn that follows looks dangerous while airborne.
Wild Mouse was our next stop, and it was amazingly scary. We skipped the GCI's and walked over to Storm Runner. MMMM Storm Runner. I love this ride. I'm glad Fahrenheit is there... that means more SR rides! My hands are getting a bit tired now so I will finish this with some more pictures and a brief overview of the rest of our night... We rode SooperDooperLooper 2 times in the front row without getting off... Comet once in the front, and Reese's 2 more times. It was an amazing day/night and can't wait to get back to any of the 3 parks mentioned above.
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Topic: PA Get Away 6/1-6/2 (Read 1636 times)
