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"This is going to be a mess at closing time!"
6:00pm is not a typical arrival time for a major amusement park. In this case, it was too late to spend the day at the park, and too early to enter for the evening price. Well, no. It wasn't too early for the evening price, it was too early for the next-day preview. Hersheypark has this great deal where you can buy your full-day ticket a couple of hours before closing, spend the evening in the park, then come back the next day. Better still, they only make you pay once for parking!
Well, it was still too early to take advantage of that deal, so I started by joining my parents for a visit to Chocolate World. The place was extremely crowded. I also saw ominous warning signs as I entered the parking lot, with tents pitched in the parking lot. What in the world is going on here?
We took the Chocolate World ride, Mom bought some chocolate, and we returned to the cars. Mom and Dad went on to the hotel in Lancaster, while I moved my car from the free Chocolate World lot to the expensive main lot. I figured I would stop off at a fast food joint down the road and grab a bite to eat before going to the park.
Almost as soon as I got out onto Hersheypark Drive I realized that was a very bad idea. A line of vehicles extended for a mile or more back away from the park. I quickly reversed course and joined the mob heading back to the park. What a mess this was turning out to be! Bear in mind, I had no idea what was going on at this point. It became pretty clear that there was some kind of a concert going on, though, and once past the lot where they were parking cars for the concert, I slid right on in to the Hersheypark lot, paid my $7, and got the ticket validated for my return visit the next day. A long walk through the parking lot and an expensive ticket got me in through the front gate. I had left my camera in the car, figuring that in the evening I wanted to concentrate on getting some riding done. My previous experience with Hersheypark was that the crowds tended to arrive early and leave early, so in the evening I should be able to ride most of the rides even on a short visit. That was the theory, anyway. I began my coaster tour with the Trailblazer. It's an ancient Runaway Train coaster, but it has been equipped with new trains...I think I read somewhere that they came from Premier Rides. That's not all that is new about this ride. The new trains look just like the old ones at first glance, but the seats are completely different. There is more cushioning now (yay!) and the ride now has individual ratcheting lap bars instead of the old one-position T-bars. It also has automatic lap bar release in the station, which the old train lacked, but the absence of return springs means the crew has to manually open the bars on empty seats, so when the ride is not busy I am not sure it saves much time. It looks kind of like the mechanism off of a Windstorm, which is understandable. The new train has up-stop wheels, and it seems the car floor is a little lower, and there is a threshold to step over when entering and exiting. Subtle changes to be sure, but overall, the new trains are fairly decent. I also noted some significant changes to the control system. There are now magnetic brakes on the station approach, and the train rolls in and parks very, very slowly. Someday the computer control guys are going to figure out how to park a train without taking a day and a half to roll through the station (and still missing the mark).
Sooperdooperlooper was a walk-on, so I did. It's a ride that kind of epitomizes the 1970's steel coaster...it's a Runaway Train with a vertical loop. Schwarzkopf may have even referred to these rides as "Looping Speedracer," thus suggesting the ride is a descendant of, say, the Whizzer at Great America. I also happen to think it is one of the two best inverting coasters in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [Footnote 1].
I made it around to Storm Runner and got to take a look at the ride. As big as it is, it wraps around a section of the park that isn't terribly accessible, and it's all waaaaaay up in the air. It doesn't dominate the park the way Top Thrill Dragster does, and in fact its height is offset a little by the tophat's relationship to the much taller Kissing Tower. The ride is integrated into the landscape in such a way that it is easy to miss, especially since it moves so fast that when you look over at it you seldom see a train. So the ride blends in and disappears, which is almost sort of the point of many of the rides at Hersheypark. In a contrary sense, it is very accessible. A midway path runs under the launch track, and supports for the ride are built right on the midway. Perhaps the best way to think of it is that it looks like it has always been there, like it just sort of belongs where it is. It doesn't hurt that the ride is very quiet in operation, with the noisy part of the ride buried back in the trees in a non-public area of the park. This is not Top Thrill Dragster with its 50,000 watt sound system rumbling away at the uptrack end of the launch and a set of sheaves spinning at 2,200 RPM at the base of the tower. No, the major intrusion of Storm Runner onto the midway is...er...a big white barn. That, and a confusion of temporary queues, queue entrance, photo booth, and ride exit all crammed into the space behind the Sidewinder. Come to think of it, in the past, the only real reason this path was open was for access to the maintenance gate beneath the railroad track. Now that path down to the gate is the overflow queue for Storm Runner. The ride is built over the Trailblazer, with its main brake run overlooking Trailblazer's ending helix.
I looked at the overflowing queue, then considered the rumors of very fast operation. Then I realized that I had left an important piece of equipment out in the car. I inquired at the entrance about the rumored eyewear restrictions and learned that I would have to come up with a cord for my glasses. I decided that I could wait until tomorrow, as it was a long trip back to the car. I did snoop through the various shops, though, to see if anything might change my mind.
Observation: While some form of eyewear retention device is apparently required on Storm Runner, such a device does not appear to be available for purchase anywhere in the park. Certainly it isn't available anywhere near Storm Runner. Honestly, this surprised me.
I watched the ride for a bit, then went on down the hill, past the wind turbine and the solar array, then around the back side of the rapids ride. Past the back side of the rapids ride is the Roller Soaker, which looked like it could be fun, but also looked like it was a heck of a lot wetter than I wanted to get with the sun going down. I picked my way past the water guns, geysers, and train mounted dump buckets, finally arriving at the back end of Midway America. There, a wood coaster awaited: Lightning Racer.
One of the first things I noticed about Lightning Racer is that the CHR disc jockey is gone. Good. I don't miss him one bit, and I'll bet the operators don't either. That's one of those things that probably seemed like a great idea at the time...get a popular radio personality to do the safety message...but it resulted in one of the most annoying ride safety recordings of all time. It's almost a shame it happened that way. Hmmm...Maybe what they needed to do was have the guy do about an hour and a half worth of spiels instead of repeating the same one every two minutes.
Well, the secret is out about Lightning Racer. The ride opened in 2000, and as of last fall, none of the track had been replaced. From the look of things in 2004, that appears to still be the case. A cursory glance and a front-seat ride reveals no obvious new wood on the track. I sat down in the train, pulled the lap bar down to the first locking position (which for me is as far as it will go), and fastened the seat belt. Within seconds, the train was off. How would it run with five-year-old track? I got my answer.
It doesn't run like new. I rode Thunderhead earlier this year, and that is what a GCI coaster is like when it is new. Lightning Racer is far from new, and the normal aging and weathering process of the wood has had an effect on the ride. It feels like the gauging isn't quite as tight as it used to be, and there is some vibration and an odd rattle in the sheet metal on the train. But the train tracks almost as true as it did when the ride was new, it's still fast, and it's still smooth. The combination of GCI's construction, Hersheypark's maintenance, and the GCI train make for a ride that feels well broken-in, but still good. None of the track on Lightning Racer has been replaced because none of the track on Lightning Racer needs replaced. It's not an extreme ride in any sense of the word, and it lacks the extreme airtime of Thunderhead, or indeed of just about any ride from that other modern wood coaster company. It's simply a fun ride, and it's what I like to call an "approachable" coaster. Anybody could ride it all day without getting beaten up by it or bored with it. It's a beautiful, exciting ride, and it is lots and lots of fun. GCI's stunning reinvention of the entire concept of the racing coaster works well. I still think Hersheypark has a winner with this one.
Midway America is a crowded area of the park extending from Lightning Racer around the back side of a large open field, over to the Wildcat. It seems odd that a park with this much open space in it would be so crowded, but I think it gives the area the look they wanted, with a fairgrounds feel to it. I bypassed the game joints, concession trailers, Music Express, Whip, and Ferris Wheel, on my way to Wildcat. Unfortunately Wildcat was closed for the evening in an effort to get everybody out of the queue in time for the evening laser show scheduled for 10:00pm. I had a very bad feeling about this. I saw what kind of a crowd was present for the Dave Matthews Band concert, which, incidentally, was audible from this area of the park, and I realized that would probably end at about the same time as the Hersheypark laser show right around 10:30-11:00. I made a note of the laser show timing. I walked on around, noting the Claw but stopping at the Frontier Flyer, the park's Larson Flying Scooter.
I think it is well known by now that I am a huge fan of the Flying Scooter. It was, as you can probably imagine, one of the new attractions I was looking forward to at Hersheypark. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed. With only eight tubs (the Bish-Rocco park model has ten) it doesn't carry enough riders on each cycle. That combines with the ride's worst feature...riders are secured with seat belts that have a metal guard over the buckle release, so when the ride is over it takes several minutes for the operator to slowly walk around the ride and individually release each rider. This strikes me as one of the worst ideas I've seen on a new ride; there ought to be some way of providing a simultaneous release to get everybody off the ride at once. Is it really that much of a problem, people jumping off mid-ride? It doesn't seem to be at Kings Island... Anyway, all of this combines to turn a relatively short line into a surprisingly long wait. I climbed into the tub and did a quick pre-flight. The tubs seem to be a bit larger than the ones on the Bish-Rocco version, and they are certainly a bit heavier. The rudder also seems larger and heavier, and somewhat more difficult to move. I looked up. It looks like there are four suspension ropes, as on the Bish-Rocco ride, but it looks like on this ride, instead of wrapping around a turnback eye wrapped around the tub hanger, the rope has a termination on the end that looks a bit like a tie-rod end, with a spherical bearing set into the eye at the end of a short rod. I suppose that arrangement probably has favorable wear characteristics compared to the Bish-Rocco version. At first glance I couldn't tell whether the suspension ropes are close together or separated a bit.
The ride has a simplified drive system with two synchronized electric motors driving the ride center. It ramps up to full speed rather quickly, then at the end of the ride the motors seem to provide some braking action, bringing the ride to a reasonably quick stop (as opposed to the unreasonably slow stop on the Kings Island ride). My initial assessment is that the ride runs too fast. I was able to get a little bit of tub rotation, but not nearly the kind of action I am accustomed to from this type of ride. Signs around the ride warn against making sudden moves and indicate that tub 'bucking' is frowned upon. That said, between the high speed and the heavy tubs, I am not sure I could get these things to bounce around if I tried. I was a little disappointed by the ride action.
It was getting late, in fact it was after 10:00. The park didn't close until 11:00, but I remembered the traffic jam I sat in trying to get out of Hersheypark after my last visit, and that was with only Hersheypark traffic, on a day when the park wasn't terribly crowded. This was a crowded day in the park with a gigantic concert going on at the stadium that was probably going to end about the same time that the park closed. Knowing I still had a half-hour drive to Lancaster, and knowing I would be back in the morning, I decided it was time to leave. Besides which, on a Sunday, the park would probably be less crowded.
On Sunday morning, the park had been open for almost an hour, but the crowd was still shoulder-to-shoulder in Tudor Square, waiting to enter the park. I fear that I made a significant miscalculation. I made a beeline for Storm Runner. When I got there, I tried out the test seat. I knew I would fit without any issue, but I wanted to see how my bag would fit. There is a recess in the seat on the inboard side where it fit quite nicely. By this time, the entire ride queue was full, and about half-filled the temporary queue erected on the path leading down to the maintenance gate along Park Rd. I joined the queue, from which I took some photos of Trailblazer and Storm Runner. From that vantage point, you get a pretty good view of Storm Runner as it comes through the final approach brake, which is angled downward at a fairly steep angle. It's also a good place to see the track replacement switch between the brake run and the station. The blocking on this coaster is complicated a bit by the dual station and the need to have interlocking based on switch positions. A train cannot launch unless the uptrack switch is set to its station, as there are no brakes between the launch track and the station capable of stopping the train.
The station looks like a gigantic barn, but you won't find any barn owls here...Wolf pointed out a couple of weeks ago that it is possibly the most bird-hostile station ever constructed. Not only is there a plurality of ceiling fans, but every potential roosting surface above 6' from the floor is covered with long spikes. After nearly an hour, I prepared to board the front seat of the train in the left-hand station. While there were small baskets lining the wall on the exit side of the platform, the crew did not seem to be terribly concerned about "loose items", far from the paranoia about empty pockets we heard about from opening day. I was a little surprised when I was required to remove my very tiny belt bag (remember, the one I double checked to make sure the seat could accommodate it) particularly since the person who got off the coaster as I was boarding had ridden with hers. Apparently consistency is not a strong point with this crew. Luckily I had a knife in my pocket with which to cut the zip-tie [Footnote 2], and the unload side of the platform is reasonably secure since only one train has access to it.
I boarded and pulled down the lap bar. Storm Runner's lap bar starts with pretty much the design I've often thought would work well on inverted coasters. The pivot point is at the base of the headrest, and from there the bar goes straight down and wraps around the front of the rider. This allows the bar to come down (get this) into the rider's lap instead of whanging against his stomach. An added bonus for this design is that if the latch should fail, most normal ride forces pushing against the bar won't push it open and clear of the rider. Not that Intamin is taking that chance; they attached a safety belt that comes up between the rider's legs. That's the theory, and that's the good part. Unfortunately, they didn't stop there. They added on a thin, flexible shoulder bar. It appears to be molded around a piece of spring steel, bolted to the lap bar pivot with four bolts on each side at the top. At the bottom, it is attached to the top of the lap bar with two more fasteners. It appears that the safety belt buckle is also attached to this shoulder bar assembly. The addition of the shoulder bar assembly totally screws up the function of the lap bar. In my case at least, the shoulder bar hits my chest and shoulders before the lap bar gets down into my lap. This means that there is nothing holding me down in the seat except for the shoulder bar, which, partly because it is flexible, and partly because anatomically the shoulders are a very bad way to do this, it does very poorly. They came really close to a good design for this coaster, then they completely ruined it. In a few moments I would find out just how badly they had botched it. The downtrack switch slid into position and we rolled across it to the launch staging area. This is, of course, familiar to me. The absence of engine noise is unfamiliar, but the process is just like Top Thrill Dragster. The train rolls up. With a "clunk", the clutch pin drops. The train rolls backward a foot or so. A voice says something like, "Get ready, here we go!". The train takes off. The launch is not as fast as Dragster, but it also isn't nearly as long. Top speed is on the order of 80 MPH, and Storm Runner gets up there in a hurry. Seconds later, the train crests the top hat, and I'm off the seat as simply doesn't happen on Dragster. This causes me a bit of consternation and I begin wishing that Storm Runner had grab-handles on the sides of the seat as on the Vekoma SLCs. Oh, not because of the airtime over the tophat, which is wonderful, but because coming down the other side involves a rollover that pops me out of the seat, then jerks sideways. Top Thrill Dragster does this on the downhill side, too, but on that, there isn't a narrow pad to grab me by the neck and try to rip my head off. Storm Runner has such a pad, and the effect is rather unpleasant. In fact, it was a trick that Storm Runner performed on each of its inversion elements: take me out of the seat, then grab me by the neck and pull me around the curve. I didn't get the nut-busting that some riders have reported, possibly because I am large enough to fill out the seat a little, which nicely stabilizes the lower body. But when I got off, my neck was rather sore from the beating it had taken. It's a shame, too, because for such a short ride, Storm Runner is at least interesting. It makes use of the energy it gets from that launch, and it does maneuvers that remind me a lot of Volcano at Kings Dominion. Ah, well, someone did say it was rougher at one end than at the other...but I don't remember which end was rough. Only one way to find out, I guess...
The line wasn't quite as long after I got off. It only extended out to the start of the permanent queue structure, which suggests to me that the back-up I saw when I arrived was the result of a late ride opening, and now the ride was taking people away faster than they could arrive. I also noticed a lot of people entering the queue were arriving from the exit ramp. Some 40 minutes later, I was sitting in the front seat of the last car in the left-hand train. Much to my surprise, the ride felt about the same in the back of the train as it had up front. I was expecting it to be more or less brutal that the front seat, to give more or less airtime over the top hat, to be more or less weightless in the inversions, whatever. But that didn't seem to be the case. It's hard to judge a ride on only two rides, but with the very short train, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference from front to back.
In all, Storm Runner is a good ride. It could easily be a great ride, but I found it far too violent. It isn't a headbanger in the sense of some of the B&M coasters or the old Arrow loopers, but it's a violent ride that rides perfectly smooth. It ought to be an insanely great ride, but it loses lots and lots of points for a truly miserable restraint system which fails to do what it should do, and does a lot of what it shouldn't. It looks to me like they could remove 400 fasteners from this ride (10 from each seat, 20 seats per train, 2 trains) and bring about a significant improvement. As it now stands, like the Comet, the Great Bear, Lightning Racer, and Wildcat, it is a good ride, but not at all outstanding.
After two rides on Storm Runner, I took the same route I took the night before, but proceeded directly to the Wildcat. The wait was perhaps 20 minutes, and I rode in the front of the train. Like Lightning Racer, the ride is holding up nicely, but it is getting a little rough again. Unlike Lightning Racer, the Wildcat has received a lot of track work since it was built. It's a beautiful ride, and in the front of the train it has a little airtime. Overall, I think I like Lightning Racer better, though.
The park was even more crowded than it had been Saturday, and the line for the Wild Mouse was very off-putting. I crossed the park and caught a trip on the Comet, which has, probably to nobody's surprise, gained seat belts since my last visit. The first half of the Comet is really good, then there is that skid brake on the front end turnaround, and the rest of the ride is surprisingly unremarkable. I can't help but think that Comet would have an incredible finish if that brake weren't on so tight. As it is, it's a good ride, but it's far from great. It's almost a theme for Hersheypark.
I suddenly realized I didn't feel very good. It seems that I always manage to do something bad to myself at Hersheypark. My first visit, I sprained my ankle the night before my visit. Last time, it was very hot and very humid and I simply felt lousy by mid-afternoon. This time, I recognized the warning signs early, and decided to do something about it. Hersheypark sells two different kinds of hot dogs: Berks seems to be the dominant brand, but there is one stand across from the Kissing Tower that sells Nathan's hot dogs. So I went there and bought one, with chili and cheese. Believe it or not, it's the first time I have ever had a Nathan's hot dog in an amusement park. Yes, it was good. And it was more or less exactly what I needed. The food made a difference, and while I was in the neighborhood, I stepped into the Minetown arcade. That arcade has a very nice selection including several pinball machines, including both "Comet" and my favorite, "Cyclone." I think it's telling that when there is a whole row of pinball machines, the Cyclone machine is typically in much worse condition than the others, even other games of comparable age. The difference, of course, is that Cyclone is simply a better game than the others.
When I went past the Big Dipper [Footnote 3], it was closed, so I didn't manage to get a ride on it. Yikes! Ursa Major, Sidewinder, Wild Mouse...I was going to end up not riding as many coasters as I rode, but with a very long drive home and a very large crowd in the park, that couldn't easily be helped. There was one more ride I just had to take, and unfortunately it would take the rest of the afternoon as I needed to get out of the park by about 6pm. I returned to my vehicle to drop the camera and change into more appropriate clothing. Then I took the long walk back to the one coaster in the park I had never ridden: the Roller Soaker.
It took nearly an hour to get aboard. Waiting in the queue, would-be riders are practically guaranteed to get soaked, particularly since most riders wait until almost the end of the ride to unload their ammunition on the people waiting in the queue. Yeah, "ammunition". Each seat has a tank of water behind it, and each rider has a dump handle. Pull the dump handle, and the load in the tank gets spilled from under the suspended coaster car.
Roller Soaker isn't a particularly big coaster. It uses a monorail track, and each of the suspended cars seats four riders. The ride comes from Setpoint, the company that finished the Pteranadon Flyers, and they did a nice job with it. Each car has four seats, two facing forward, two facing backward. Riders are secured with the same basic lap bar as Storm Runner ought to have. It's a quick trip up the lift hill, but the lift slows to a crawl for the roll-over. The ride itself is taller, faster, but not a whole lot more exciting layout-wise than Scooby Doo's Ghoster Coaster at Kings Island, but it makes up for that with the water effects...geysers, water curtains, water cannon fired by the spectators below. The result is that nobody stays dry. And I took advantage of riding my myself by unloading both barrels on the people waiting in line. 8-)
It's a neat ride. It's a better interpretation of the term "water coaster" than those rides that are more like flume rides than coasters. After all, it's a coaster, surrounded by running water!
(pause for a moment to let that soak in...)
It took an hour. By the time I was done, it was time to go home. I really like Hersheypark, but honestly, I didn't have time to do it justice, largely because of the very large crowd. It's a great park, and it really requires a whole day to enjoy it all. Storm Runner ought to be a great coaster, but it suffers a bit from its train design, which by now shouldn't be unexpected for an Intamin coaster. Roller Soaker is a lot of fun even with its diminutive size. And the rest of the package is rounded out with a bunch of respectable rides. Hersheypark doesn't have the best rides available, not by a long shot. But their rides *are* fun, and when you get right down to it, that's what is important. I don't make it to Hersheypark very often, but whenever I do, I always find that it is well worth the trip.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: And it has a lot in common with the other top-2 inverting coaster in Pennsylvania. I'm not sure which of the two I like better...[Return to text]
Footnote 2: I don't trust those little side-squeeze plastic buckles, ever since my (previous) belt bag went flying while I was riding the Kennywood Jack Rabbit. I always keep my bag backed up now, with either a second strap, or by putting a zip-tie on the buckle so that it can't pop open. [Return to text]
Footnote 3: That would be Big Dipper as in Ursa Major, officially known as the Great Bear. 8-) [Return to text]
--DCAjr
(Whew! That was LONG!)
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