Hersheypark 4/4/21

[Yoshi]

After 7 months of no parks and coasters I was looking forward to the beginning of the 2021 amusement park season until I saw the wait times on Hersheypark's app on Friday and Saturday. Friday was bad but Saturday was even worse with Candymonium with a 3 hour posted wait and Fahrenheit and Great Bear with 4 hour posted waits. I knew it wouldn't be walk ons like Easter a few years ago with everyone wanting to get out and start going places again after last year. My sister also went with me to the park.

 

The parking lot wasn't too crowded on Sunday but lines were still bad with some closed rides, slow operations and the distancing on many rides. Besides Lightning Racer and Storm Runner, some non coaster rides like the Whip, Pirate, the sports cars were also closed.

 

Mask compliance was really good but distancing was almost non existent. I would have rather seen every row loaded on the coasters such as Comet and Wildcat since it's better to be close to others on the coaster for a few minutes than close to everyone in line for a lot longer than that.

 

Candymonium is my favorite ride in the park. It's a really fun coaster although a little tamer than Nitro. Six Flags needs to send Nitro's ride operators to Hersheypark and show them how a B&M Hyper Coaster should be run, even factoring in Candymonium has seatbelts. Dispaches were taking an average of 3 - 4 minutes with the 3 trains double stacking.

 

It was good to see sooperdooperLooper open after being closed all last season. Before the train dispatched one of the ride operators was talking on the phone near the ride controls and I was wondering there was a problem. The train ended up stopping on the mid course brake run for around 5 or 10 minutes. The last part of the ride was of course really slow and almost felt like the ride could valley even with a full train. They handed out one time use Fast Track passes for the inconvenience.

 

I still can't decide if I like Justice League or Reese's Cupfusion better. Both are such great interactive dark rides with each wanting you to try them over and over to find the highest value targets.

 

I decided to give Wildcat another chance with Lightning Racer closed. Still rough and even with it being GCI's first coaster, I wouldn't be upset to see it converted to a RMC.

 

The monorail no longer has Blue Cross logos on it and instead has Hershey characters and candy names on the cars.

 

The Triple Towers were having problems all day. Later in the day the Hershey Kisses Tower did open. For the smallest of the 3 tower, it has a lot of air time.

 

It was still fun to be back in a park and ride coasters again.

 

Ride Count:

Candymonium, 1x

Reese's Cupfusion, 1x

Comet, 1x

sooperdooperLooper, 1x

Great Bear, 1x

Wildcat, 1x

Monorail, 1x

Dry Gulch Railroad, 1x

Hershey Kisses Triple Tower, 1x

Antique Cars, 1x

 

New monorail theming.

 

The pinwheel logo is being used again.

 

[The Master]

Sounds like a nice trip, shame Hershey's operations were not better. Hopefully they will improve as the season progresses. I was at GADV on March 29th and even Nitro had slow operations. Trains were sitting on the brake runs for 5 minutes, Batman was stacking even longer. 

[Thunderbolt]

Hershey Park gets it. Well maintained and beautifully cared for. Candymonium looks like a winner!

[coastercouple]

Had the same problem with Candymonium last Saturday, dispatches every 3 minutes, stacking 2 trains in the brake run. I would think they would want their marquee attraction to have better ops. Great Bear & SKyrush were running much better operationally.